A Christocentric Interpretation of Hosea 1-3: An Application of Sidney Greidanus's Contemporary Hermeneutical Method

Abstract

Many hermeneutical approaches have been utilized to interpret the Old Testament in light of Christ throughout church history. Sidney Greidanus, in his Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, has formulated a redemptive-historical Christocentric hermeneutic that provides set criteria, clearly defined terminology, and a balanced approach to interpreting the Old Testament through the redemptive-historical fulfillment of the New Testament. For this reason, I have chosen to apply Greidanus’s seven ways of interpretation to Hosea 1:1–3:5 and analyze the selected preaching texts to determine if his methodology is affective.

Chapter 1 introduces the thesis of the study, the difficulty of interpreting the Old Testament in light of the New Testament, and Greidanus’s methodology as a possible solution to the difficulty. Chapter 2 outlines a survey of scholarship of hermeneutical methods used to interpret the Old Testament in light of the New Testament. Chapter 3 includes a summary of Greidanus’s methodology, which is utilized in this study to analyze Hosea 1–3. Chapter 4 contains a structural outline for Hosea 1:1–3:5, and chapter 5 contains the preaching texts I will use throughout the study and the reasoning for dividing the text as I have demonstrated. Chapter 6 observes the importance of identifying the historical context of the selected preaching text before providing interpretation and application to the text, and the chapter highlights how I will proceed in overviewing contextual observations for each preaching text. Chapters 7–10 analyze the selected preaching texts of Hosea 1:1–3:5 by overviewing the historical context of each preaching text and then by utilizing Greidanus’s seven ways of interpreting the Old Testament in light of Christ. Chapter 11 contains a critical analysis of Greidanus’s hermeneutical methodology. Chapter 12 concludes that Greidanus’s methodology is biblically faithful to the text and it shows there are numerous ways to preach Christ throughout the dramatic narrative of Hosea and Gomer, and through the prophetic message of judgement and hope to Israel. Greidanus’s methodology could be used to analyze the remainder of the book of Hosea and other books in the Old Testament.