What "pants" Teaches Us About "elohim" ("God")

Dale Tuggy makes a nice point about Biblical interpretation here.

I'll reproduce it below the fold:

A Puzzle About (Biblical) Interpretation

Context, context, context.  It is said that to know the meaning of a verse in the Bible, one has to know the surrounding context.  One has to know the meaning of the immediate context (the several verses before and after the one in question) and the broader context (e.g. the book it is written in, etc.)

How, then, does interpretation ever get started?  For simplicity sake let's reduce the Bible to three books and each book to four verses (the numbers don't matter to see the puzzle--and let's suppose that each verse is a single sentence).  Suppose we focus on the first book and verses 1, 2, 3, and 4 (which, we're supposing, are all of the verses).  In order to understand the meaning of 1, we must understand the meaning of at least verse 2 (and perhaps verses 3 and 4).  But to understand the meaning of 2, one must understand the meaning of at least 3 (and presumably 1 as well).  But to understand the meaning of 3 we must understand 2 and 4.  But to understand 4....  And thus we have a potentially vicious hermeneutical circle. It won't help to appeal to our understanding of books two and three since the same problem applies to each of the books as well.  To understand the meaning of anything it seems that one must already understand the meaning of everything.

David is God: Follow-up

An anonymous commenter asks what I think the upshot is from Dale Tuggy's recent post I put up on the blog.  Instead of commenting back, I decided that this required a post of its own.

The Bible Teaches That David is God

This is clever and makes a nice point or two.  (I might add, the Bible also teaches pacifism, annihilationism, Tuggy's-subordinationism, modern-egalitarianism, and many other trendyisms).

The Bible holds many hidden wonders. In addition to its explicit teachings, by careful reasoning we can draw out many implications of what it says, by comparing various parts with others. Aided by various evangelical apologists and theologians, I’ve made a few discoveries which I am now privileged and humbled to share with the world.
Step 1: prove that Jesus is God
1. When the prophet Isaiah says “Prepare the way of the Lord” (Isaiah 40:3) the “Lord” there is God, Yahweh.
2. Mark applies this to Jesus; the “Lord” when he quotes Isaiah is Jesus. (Mark 1:3)
3. Therefore, Jesus is God. (1,2)

Step 2: prove that Jesus is David