Brother, the issue isn’t my vocabulary — the issue is your method. You keep insisting that Jesus and Paul interpret the OT by something “closer to eisegesis than exegesis,” and that this “Messianic logic” is a legitimate hermeneutical tool. But that claim itself places your interpretive framework above Scripture, because you’re treating divine revelation as if it were a reasoning mechanism that can override authorial intent. Jesus does not reinterpret Moses by adding implications Moses never meant; He reveals what Moses always meant but was not fully understood until fulfillment. Paul does not extend Abraham or Habakkuk by “divine logic”; he says the mystery was hidden and is now revealed — not invented, not reasoned out, not logically extrapolated. When you say the NT uses a method “closer to eisegesis,” you are admitting that your hermeneutic allows meaning to be imported into the text from outside the text. That is not how revelation works; that is how private authority works. And when you defend this by saying you “stress nuance and implications,” you’re not submitting to Scripture — you’re giving yourself permission to supply meanings the prophets never wrote and the apostles never claimed. That is why I call it a logic grid: not because I dislike your terminology, but because your method functionally elevates your interpretive instinct above the inspired text. The NT interprets the OT because it is revelation interpreting revelation, not because Jesus and Paul used a hermeneutic you now believe you can imitate.
Groovy & OMC
I really enjoy the back and forth between the two of you in your hermeneutical jousting. In general, the two of you, as seen in this discussion, illuminate two broadly different ways of dealing with the Hebrew Bible in or out of context with the current theological needs.
On one hand Groovy wants to mine the underpinnings all scripture as equally revenant to modern theological positions. Thus many modern day Christians only look at the Hebrew Bible as a Rorschach test to see what images spring to mind that support their current faith model. Thus the psalms is a deep well from which buckets living water flows that nourishes our beliefs. It is a quarry from which you mine rocks supporting your faith edifice. I think this is a totally legitimate use of this resource. If you "see" things there that support your current model of Christianity more power to you.
However, the process that OMC is complaining about suggests you could do the same thing for Shakespeare or Edgar Allen Poe. If you are looking for insights into reality independent of the intent of the authors, then there are many sources to pull from because of your primary need is for validations to support your current theology. The criticism of the approach is that it largely discounts the intent and purposes the author had in mind when the psalm was written and it discounts the human agony/ecstasy that is foundational to the man/God experience. A great deal is lost when the only thing of value in the psalms is validation of 21st century theological/creedal/denominational preconceptions.
As a young person going from 1st grade through 8th grade in our public school as part of our morning exercises we would Pledge Allegiance to the flag then repeat in total from memory "this year's Psalm." To this day, some 60+ years later I can still repeat all 8 of those psalms I learned back then. I added this personal note in demonstration of the power and beauty of the Psalms.
In general, I very much support and like the more structured way of understanding the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament express here and in other conversations by OMC. Its fundamental framework is to understand the writers in their historic and mythological settings. But that process has many requirements that are difficult to accept and even a deeply educated person like OMC must occasionally bail out on that methodology. The search for a coherent context in both text and history test the limits of all classically trained biblical scholars. For instance, the assumption that OMC expresses when he says, "Psalm 6 is David’s plea..." is that David is the actual historic author of this psalm or any other psalm. David died about 150 years before the invention of Hebrew literary writing and many of the psalms are literary masterpieces. Now, it is possible that David may have created a substantial number of songs as that is inherent in the biblical narrative. Those songs may have been popular in and around the little village of Jerusalem in David's day of about 1,000 to 1,500 people including children. Like all cultures ancient tales, songs and narratives are passed down generation by generation in non-literary societies.
The power and beauty of the psalms are independent of who composed them, edited them or what evolutionary route they traveled over the centuries. Their value and validity is in the texts themselves.
IHMO, the value and attractiveness of the psalms is in the power, intimacy, honesty, anger and humility of the man/God relationship that makes much of what passes for our modern "Christian" concepts of the man/God relationship look weak, inadequate and lacking personal honesty.
