When I was at university, studying a Bachelor of Arts, literary interpretation was brought into just about every subject, including Biblical Studies. In Biblical Studies I was introduced to a number of different types of literary interpretation, such as Feminist literary criticism and Marxist literary criticism, among others. At the heart of these different types of literary interpretation was the idea that the Bible was merely another piece of literature which can be approached and analysed using the same methods that are used to interpret literature.
However, the Bible is not just a piece of great literature. The Bible is described as inspired scripture. It is described as alive and powerful. It is described as something that is life-giving. It is described as a powerful weapon. The same thing cannot be said of the works of Shakespeare or Tolkien. The author of the Bible is described as God Himself. It would be pretty unforgettable if He came to a book signing.
Academic methods of literary interpretation involve trying to see the Old Testament in the way that the authors of the Old Testament who were living in Old Testament times would be seeing things as individuals who could not transcend their historical milieu. However, this method fails to take into account that these authors were inspired by the Holy Spirit with regard to what they were writing and that, because of this, their writing transcended their time and circumstances.
While the interpretative method of trying to see everything in the Old Testament in the way that someone living during the Old Testament times would have seen it holds up in certain instances and can often provide greater understanding regarding the meaning of something in the Old Testament, it does not hold up in others and it should never be used when foundational Christian doctrine takes precedence.
Religions contemporary to Old Testament Judaism, such as the Ugaritic religion, should not be used as a tool for interpreting the Old Testament because they existed during a similar period in history and were practiced in cities which were located close to Israel. If a future archaeologist dug up the remains of a satanic church which was located near to a church and then superimposed the religion of the Satanists onto the church so that there could be a better understanding of what happened at the church, we would be horrified. However, the majority of Biblical scholars use this methodology for their research.
The literature of the Bible and the literature of other ancient near eastern cultures cannot be seen to be equal because the authors of the other ancient near eastern texts were not inspired by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, any comparison between the Biblical texts and these other texts has to be undertaken with a level of caution. Jesus taught that the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth. He did not say that we should study the literature of cultures which were contemporary to the Bible to find the truth. He did not teach that we should see them as more authoritative regarding the interpretation of holy scripture than holy scripture itself.
Reading Jesus and the New Testament events concerning Him back into the Old Testament was the interpretative method that the authors of the New Testament used. It was the interpretive method that Jesus used Himself on the road to Emmaus. I don’t think that we would have a New Testament if they hadn’t been using this method. In fact, if Christians can’t read back the accounts of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament into the accounts of the Spirit of God in the Old Testament, we might as well give up on Christianity and churches might as well shut their doors. Perhaps this method of literary interpretation could be called Holy Spirit literary criticism. It is necessary that a Christian adopts this interpretative method and uses it. This is actually a fundamental part of what it means to be a Christian.