Are questions about the Old Testament from a purely Christian perspective off-topic? [closed]

Question

This morning a question arose about whether Jesus fulfills a prophesy in the Old Testament. From a Christian perspective, this a fairly standard lens through which to look at the Tanakh. Obviously, the question is quite foreign (and potentially offensive) from the Jewish perspective. Richard commented:

This site is not about determining doctrine. Asking if this is a reference to Jesus is clearly asking about doctrinal interpretation. If you want to know that, you need to ask on Christianity.SE.

Should we redirect these questions to the Christianity site?

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After-action report

This question was asked in October 11 of 2011. On October 15, the question was closed as off-topic. Presumably, this meta-question played a role.

In December of 2011, we agreed on a new guideline for questions:

Questions are on topic if they are focused on the text, rather than things to which the text may apply.

Under those guidelines, the initial version of the question is off-topic for us. It might have been on-topic at Christianity.SE. However, nobody addressed this particular question at that time, so it remained closed.

On February 21, 2013, the question was reopened and I initiated a conversation to decide what to do about it. As a result of that conversation, I edited the question into it's most recent form. The key changes were:

• Add a reference to Matthew (and added the matthew).
• Moved the text from the bottom of the question to the top.
• Interspersed comments that clarify where the source of the question seemed to be.

In essence, I converted the question into "How does the New Testament interpret Micah?" But this took some heroic effort on chat and in editing to pull off. Leaving the question closed might have been the better solution.

Answer 1

I think if we start down the path Richard suggests, we will greatly limit the scope of the site and probably not get much traction as a community.

The simplest defense of these sorts of questions is that they reflect a particular principle of Biblical hermeneutics:

The Christo-Centric Principle: "The mind of deity is eternally centered in Christ. All angelic thought and ministry are centered in Christ. All Satanic hatred and subtlety are centered at Christ. All human hopes are, and human occupations should be, centered in Christ. The whole material universe in creation is centered in Christ. The entire written word is centered in Christ."

But how would a Jewish participant answer such a question? I don't think it's too much to ask them to apply their own principles to the text. A good alternative would be the Historical-grammatical Principle. Since the question leaves open the possibility of a different interpretation besides the Christian one (in fact the question is exactly about whether there is another way to view the text), the door is wide open for other answers than the one suggested by the asker.

Does that mean there will never be one, true answer for these questions? Yes.

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Addressing dancek's comment:

The Wikipedia article reflects the historical fact that, for better or for worse, Jewish and Christian scholars have done the most to shape Biblical hermeneutics. Whether you like it or not, the experts in the subject will likely come primarily from one or the other of those traditions. (I should note here, that many scholars from the Christian tradition would reject the Christo-Centric Principle, but at least as many, following the example of St. Paul, believe it is the only correct way for Christians to interpret the Tanakh.) If we, who are generally not experts, pick and chose from the list of principles, we risk being unable to attract true experts.

There are a number of Talmudical methods that I'm not comfortable with:

• the interpretation of certain words and letters and apparently superfluous and/or missing words or letters, and prefixes and suffixes
• the interpretation of those letters which, in certain words, are provided with points
• the interpretation of the letters in a word according to their numerical value (see Gemaṭria)
• the interpretation of a word by dividing it into two or more words (see Noṭariḳon)
• the interpretation of a word according to its consonantal form or according to its vocalization
• the interpretation of a word by transposing its letters or by changing its vowels
• the logical deduction of a halakhah from a Scriptural text or from another law

But if a Rabbi who was able to interpret the Tanakh in one or more of these ways were to begin participating here, I'd be overjoyed. For that matter, I'd welcome a Muslim scholar or any other expert who is willing to study the texts of the Bible with us.

Ideally, every question would have a handful of answers representing the very best that each school of hermeneutics has to offer. The danger with allowing too many questions from a single perspective (e.i., Christian questions) is that it will discourage participants from other traditions. But declaring all questions from particular viewpoints off-topic doesn't seem like the right solution to the problem.

Answer 2

The defining characteristic of this site (as I see it) is that it focuses on understanding the text of the Bible. Questions that encourage examination of that text are, by definition, on topic.

To my mind, doctrine is problematic because it can begin leading the site away from the topic at hand. Consider these similar questions:

Does this passage assert the doctrine of the Trinity?

How does this passage assert the doctrine of the Trinity?

The first is on topic as "It doesn't." is a possible answer. In this case, doctrine is part of the question, but not the focus. It doesn't matter if the passage is Galatians or Genesis. Meanwhile the second question has a really good chance of getting off-track because the passage is secondary to the doctrine. But doctrine is simply the most likely thing to be given priority over the text:

How does this passage justify slavery?

Putting aside questions on the rules of hermeneutics themselves, the degree a question is about the Bible is the degree to which it is on topic. How much doctrinal baggage a question (or for that matter, an answer) carries with it is completely orthogonal to its topicality.

Answer 3

Yes, it's off topic

My explanation is below.

Definitions

For some rough definitions:
Doctrine is a set of beliefs that are associated with a tradition or religion
Exegesis is the translation or interpretation of Biblical text
Hermeneutics _{(for completeness)} is the methods and theories used to translate and interpret Biblical text.

The current community guidelines:

Questions regarding how a passage is interpreted (exegesis) are fine. This has been established quite fully here on meta.

Questions regarding hermeneutics are also fine. That is, after all, the name of the site.

Questions regarding doctrine are off topic.

The problem

The problem with this delineation is that exegesis is based on a doctrinal stance. You cannot interpret text without some doctrinal background. Every text that we read and understand, we interpret based on our own understandings and beliefs. This concept is referred to as the hermeneutic circle (ie exegesis defines doctrine and doctrine helps interpret text).

While this is an interesting situation, it's not one prevents us from distinguishing between exegesis and doctrine.

The clarification

The question is whether a post is off topic if it's about scripture from a given perspective. I would have to say that Yes, it is off-topic. The reason that it is off topic is because it's asking about a doctrinal stance on text, not about the interpretation of the text.

Therefore, since it's asking about doctrine, I believe it's off topic.

Answer 4

We have already established^{[citation needed]} that questions must start from the text, not from doctrine. The cited question starts from the text, so so far that seems fine. However, asking if the reference is to Jesus makes the question about Jesus, a doctrinal question, instead of making it about the text (what does this mean). It's a subtle point, and one we've struggled with, but doing this is a violation of our existing policy. But don't stop reading; there's a solution to get what you're looking for later in this answer.

Further, a question of the form "what does this mean" is a strong question for our site. It invites many different perspectives, one of the goals in our FAQ. A question that is limited to "does this mean X" (for any value of X) is an example of the X/Y problem, where instead of asking about the underlying problem you ask about a proposed solution. That leads to frustrating, narrow questions that distract from what we should be focusing on, the actual text. It also means we can end up with several similar questions that can't be closed as duplicates because one asks "does this mean X?" and antoher asks "does this mean Y?" and so on. We want to bring related answers together, not spread them out. Even if asking this question weren't a violation of our existing policy, it would still be a bad idea.

However, there is a way to ask this type of question appropriately if you feel you must. If you hover the mouse over the up-vote arrow on a question, the hint text you see includes the phrase "this question shows research effort". That's because Stack Exchange isn't supposed to be a place to fling low-effort questions; a not-atypical response on some sites is "what have you tried?" (and some have even defined keyboard shortcuts for this; it comes up that often).

So, it is legitimate to present a hypothesis as part of the question, the same way you might, on another site, say "I tried using such-and-such technique but ran into X problem; thus-and-such looks promising because of A, B, C", etc. But such a hypothesis in a question should meet minimal quality standards of an answer (other than completeness); specifically, it must show your work.

Bad: Is this a reference to Jesus?

Still bad, but not as much: My pastor says this is a reference to Jesus; is it? (You at least showed us why you might think so. Citing your pastor would improve this. Citing a scholarly source would improve it a lot.)

Ok: This looks like the same language that (gospel) uses to talk about Jesus; is this a reference to Jesus too? (It's not obvious that gospels are relevant for interpreting Tanakh; showing why you make the connection would improve this. If you're looking for answers using a particular hermeneutic approach only, this is a good time to say so.)

Good: According to (logical argument goes here), this looks like it should be a reference to Jesus. But that obviously doesn't fit with the original audience of this text. How do we reconcile this? Is it a reference to Jesus using the principle of multiple-fulfillment? (Shows work and anticipates a problem.)

The key with all of this is that, while you are offering a line of investigation in the question, the question remains general. A Jewish, Atheist, Muslim, or other answer would still fit, because your question is "what does this mean?", not "is this Jesus?". That's the kind of question we want here.

Answer 5

I'm the one who asked that question which brought up this discussion :)

I think it's fine as long as the context is defined.

This reminds me of the original stack exchange site, stack overflow. There's so many categories of programming languages it caters to: C#, Asp, Ruby, Python, JavaScript, etc.

Questions re: C# pertain to a certain number of people, and Ruby caters to a different group.

I think it's totally okay to ask how "Christians" interpret a certain part of the bible, and how "Jews" interpret a certain part of the bible.

I don't see why we can't do both.