Samson

680 Words2 Pages

Text-event is a key practice in translation that helps to deepen the understanding concerning books of the bible in the category of historical narrative genre. Text is the direct object of the narration and events have meaning according to interpretation. The overall meaning in the narrative of the historical account is not inherent to the event. In actuality the memory of the event has different perspectives. The biblical authors were not neutral in how they portrayed a story, but bias in there account. Text-event, though sometimes fuzzy in its borderlines, can bring about a truly deeper and significant understanding of underlying plot, character, and story themes.
It can be said that text-event is an important method to implement in order to grasp the true relationship between what the author is trying to say through the main character of the story. The situations that the lead character may find themselves in or how certain situational perspectives are highlighted; might further the importance of what the author is portraying. Text-event is important to implement when reading scripture because it is essentially one more stepping stone closer to understanding the text holistically.
The story of Samson in Judges 16:15-35 is a great historical narrative example to use for applying text-event. Judges is a book that shows the transition between the leading of God’s sovereignty and a divine monarchy. In this story Samson is born into the Nazirite vow, no razor is to touch his head because he is the Lord’s chosen. The presence of the Lord dwells with Samson, but he takes this honor of being the Lord’s chosen for granted. The story that I want to bring into light is Samson and Delilah. If the wrong hermeneutic were applied ...

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...text-event can be; laziness, unknown concept, or uninterested. These reasons are frustrating to a congregant because they are following accordingly. There is a large amount of trust that a lay-member gives to the head pastor. If they are not being led in the best way, then the pastor is doing a disservice, not only to themselves, but to the body of Christ.
Pastors need to make every effort to strive for deeper understanding of the bible. If a pastor doesn’t want to lead his congregation in the truest way possible, but instead do as he sees fit, he should not be a pastor. It is a pastor’s job to recreate the event through the text in order to bring the congregation deeper into the understanding of the divine word. When a pastor only stays at surface level or waters down the event through self-reflection, then the divinely inspired meaning in the text is lost.

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