Biblical interpretation down through the ages - during the time of Christ

The literal/plain method continued to be the method of interpretation among most Jews during the time of Christ.  Unfortunately, it was the same sharp literalism used before His coming.   As Bernard Ramm well observed:

...the  net result of a good movement started by Ezra was a degenerative hyper-literalistic interpretation that was current among the Jews in the days of Jesus and Paul.  The Jewish literalistic school is literalism at its worst.  It is the exaltation of the letter to the point that all true sense is lost.  It grossly exaggerates the incidental and accidental and ignores and misses the essential.

And yet it can't be denied that literalism was the accepted method.  Misuse of the method doesn't mean the method itself is wrong.  The method itself wasn't at fault, but rather the misapplication of it.

The literal/plain method was also the method of the apostles.  Although F.W. Farrar had some unusual ideas, I believe he said this rather well:

The better Jewish theory, purified in Christianity, takes the teachings of the Old Dispensation literally, but sees in them, as did St. Paul, the shadow and germ of future developments. Allegory, though once used by St. Paul by way of passing illustration [see Gal 4:24], is unknown to the other Apostles, and is never sanctioned by Christ.

R.B. Girdlestone confirmed this in his writings:

We are brought to the conclusion that there was one uniform method commonly adopted by all the New Testament writers in interpreting and applying the Hebrew Scriptures.  It is as if they had all been to one school and had studied under one master.  But was it the Rabbinical school to which they had been?  Was it to Gamaliel, or to Hillel, or to any other Rabbinical leader that they were indebted?  All attainable knowledge of the mode of teaching current in that time gives the negative to the suggestion.  The Lord Jesus Christ, and no other, was the original source of the method.  In this sense, as in many others, He had come a light into the world.

Even liberal-minded C. A. Briggs agreed that Jesus didn't follow the method of His day:

The apostles and their disciples in the New Testament used the methods of the Lord Jesus rather than those of the men of their time.  The New Testament writers differed among themselves in the tendencies of their thought...in them all, the methods of the Lord Jesus prevail over the other methods and ennoble them.

As we can see, it wasn't necessary for the apostles to use a different method to properly understand the Old Testament, but rather to correct the extremes of the existing method.  Moreover, since there's a vast difference between explaining an allegory (Gal 4:24) and using the allegorical method of interpretation, we must conclude that the New Testament writers interpreted the Old Testament literally/plainly.


(to be continued)