Ecclesiocentric Hermeneutics

We’re using Dan McCartney and Charles Clayton’s Let the Reader Understand for our Advanced Exegesis class. It is quite good, and this one portion struck me as especially good for the times:

The NT operates with a principle that believers are identified with Christ, or, to use Paul’s phrase, they are “in Christ.” (Paul uses the phrase a host of times, but see especially Rom. 8:1-17; Phil. 3:9-10; Eph. 2:5-6, 13.) As a consequence, the NT frequently extends the OT to apply to Christians. This is so pronounced a tendency in Paul that Richard B. Hays claims that Paul’s use of the OT is principally ecclesiocentric rather than Christocentric. (pg. 49)

The authors then go on to mention how believers are Abraham’s seed (the seed of Abraham), as well as stones (that rock was Christ).

And this is consistent with Peter Leithart’s observation that baptism is an anointing.  We are anointed ones in the anointed one.

Master of Dreams

In Genesis 37:19 Joseph’s brothers call him a “master of dreams.” Now for the life of me I cannot figure out why Bible translators do not render it this way. They all opt for “dreamer.” Even Young’s “Literal” translation puts it “a man of dreams.”

But the Hebrew says ba’al chalom.

Baal, you know that one right?