Rule of First Mention
I am not able to follow the thread logic display very well. I made a personal wiki version that is searchable to help me manage the context of the conversation.
I think you mentioned the rule of First Mention somewhere that I lost. I do not subscribe to it either.
In this hermeneutic a metaphor must be the same in every mention. This rule alone makes the interpretation self-correcting and humanly impossible to invent.
Self-correcting Lets use leaven as an example. Some say that leaven represents sin. So we start interpreting it as sin.
Sinless bread... OK Before passover, they remove sin from their homes... WHAT? Passover represents the cross where sin is removed. If they could remove their own sin before then, Christ died in vain. The kingdom of heaven is like sin... What? How can that be?
The Greek has no rule that it must be the same everywhere, so they invent different meaning for each instance.
But we go back and see that the disciples realized Jesus was not talking about the bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees.
Teaching works everywhere. Jesus was the untaught teacher, and the marveled how he could teach with authority. You put away old teaching prior to Passover in order to learn something new from the cross, where a new covenant is made and the mystery from the beginning is revealed.
The Kingdom of heaven is like teaching, it start small and grows until it fills the whole. He taught us to fill the Kingdom of Heaven by making disciples and teaching them.
The Kingdom of heaven is equated with the New Jerusalem by many. Jerusalem means 'teaching of peace' so the New Jerusalem is the New Teaching of Peace. It was ushered in when Jesus said, "You have heard... but I say."
Humanly impossible Now consider that every garment represents works, every donkey a prophet, Every kind of water is associated with the Word, etc. No human could take the literal Bible and produce a hidden narrative concerning Christ if he invented it. All we can do is observe and marvel. We haven't yet gotten into the hidden narrative (though the post on Ge 38 is getting close). Every verse participates in painting a picture of Christ.
There is a set of rules that constrain our interpretation. The Rule of Every Mention is probably the most important. The rule of Samson's riddle might be of equal importance.
Reply
I respect your opinion. In terms of the fig tree in Genesis and the fig tree Jesus cursed I believe there is a connection. Besides rules of hermeneutics or exegesis, that interpretation is something that the spirit revealed to me. Sometimes when we read scripture we get one interpretation and then we can read it again and get another interpretation. Praise God if you have another interpretation. That is the beauty of a forum group.
