1. Ways of Interpreting Scripture
Modern Scholarship – Barth and Bultmann

2. On your whiteboard:
What are the three methods of interpreting the Bible?
Give an example of each one.
Which do you think is the most appropriate/useful in understanding the Bible? Why?

3. Objectives
Understand the approaches of Barth and Bultmann

4. Karl Barth Think - What is revelation?
According to Barth, God reveals himself to people all the time.
But sometimes they can be mistaken in interpreting this revelation.
God did reveal himself completely and unmistakably - in Jesus.
Human language is inadequate to convey revelation.
So the NT is a human attempt to put into words something that can’t really be expressed. We should interpret it allegorically. It is a human-created “story of God”. It is NOT the words of God.
CLIP

5. Rudolf Bultmann Much of scripture is myth.
Myth = story that’s not literally true but has meaning behind it
We need to demythologise the NT to find the meaning