Constitutional lawyers specialize in the exegesis of the constitution and the history of its interpretation. Often in searching texts, the interpreter is not one of the primary or original parties in the communication event. Not everyone in the early church chose to look for multiple meanings in the interpretation of the text.
The Task of Biblical Exegesis
Grammatical criticism includes all attempts to answer questions relating to the language of the text. Usually, depending on the nature of the text, questions may emerge from the text in a non-systematic order. C., "The Task of Exegesis" in the Background of the New Testament and its Eschatology (ed.
TEXTUAL CRITICISM
Tov, E., Den tekstkritiske brug af Septuaginta i bibelforskning (Jerusalem: Simor Ltd., 1981). Weingreen, J., Introduction to the Critical Study of the Text of the Hebrew Bible (London/New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). Taylor, V., The Text of the New Testament: A Short Introduction (London/New York: Macmillan and Co. Ltd./St.
HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Twentieth Century English Versions of the Bible (rev. ed.; Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1983). Encyclopuediu Judaica (16 ~ 01s.: Jerusalem/New York: Keter Publishing House Ltd./Macmillan, 1971). ed.), The New Westminster Dictionary of the Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1970). Finegan, J., The Archeology of the New Testament: The Mediterranean World of the Early Christian Apostles (Boulder/Beckenham/Croom Helm: Westview Press, 1981).
GRAMMATICAL CRITICISM
This means, first, the immediate context of the passage in which it occurs. We all realize that some terms used in the KJV now mean something completely different. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (revised ed.; London/New York: Oxford University Press, 1952; reissued as The New Brown, Driver, and Briggs.
Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Christian Literature (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1979). Funk, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1961). Concordance with the Apocryphal Deuterocanonical Books of the Revised Standard Version (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982).
Redpath, A Concordance to the Septuagint and the Other Greek Versions of the Old Testament Including the Apocryphal Books (3. Sien ook An Expanded Index of the Hatch-Redpath Concordance to the Septuagint [Jerusalem: Dugith Publishers, 19741.). Morrison, C., An Analytical Concordance to the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament (Philadelphia/London: Westminster Press/SCM Press, 1979).
Barr, J., Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament (Londër/ . Nju Jork: Oxford University Press, 1968).
LITERARY CRITICISM
Its placement at this point in Luke's story makes it crucial to the overall development of the story. Questions about the literary placement and function of a passage can sometimes be usefully phrased in other ways. As we noted earlier, a passage shares and contributes to the meaning of the larger literary unit.
How we understand the description of property, in other words, is directly related to the literary genre in which the description occurs. In the nineteenth century, investigations of the biblical text tended to focus on historical, documentary, and literary matters in a different sense. Literary and documentary criticism especially sought to discover the various sources upon which the final form of the biblical texts was based.
The Book of Psalms proved to be one of the first blocks of biblical material to be usefully analyzed from form-critical perspectives. The impact on our understanding of the New Testament was as dramatic as it had been with the Old Testament. For example, the healing of the Gerasene demon exhibits intriguing variations in each of the synoptic accounts.
Bultmann, R., History of the Synoptic Tradition (rev. ed.; Oxford/New York: Basil BlackwelhHarper & Row, 1968).
TRADITION CRITICISM
Very often, one encounters different versions of the same hymn in hymnbooks of different denominations. How do the two versions of the same commandment in the Decalogue relate to each other? How do these elaborate forms of the Sabbath ordinance relate to crude or other forms.
Many of the stories of the Pentateuch have been analyzed in terms of the history of the tradition. At this level of tradition, one would have had tales of a kind common to many cultures. One of the most widespread traditions in the Old Testament concerns the redemption from Egypt.
Further discussion of this aspect of the text will take place in the next chapter on editorial criticism. Even textual criticism sometimes plays an important role in establishing the history of the tradition. The final form of the text thus functions as the final norm and control for all tradition-critical inquiry.
Gunkel, H., "Jacob" in sy What Remains of the Old Testament and Other Essays (New York/London: Macmillan Company/Allen and Unwin, 1928).
REDACTION CRITICISM
Unlike a synopsis, a harmony of the Gospels attempts to harmonize the various stories into a single, coherent story. By reading each of the accounts carefully, the interpreter notices that each account has its own distinctive profile. Another important difference occurs regarding the confession of the Roman centurion standing guard at the crucifixion.
Regarding the former, a redaction-critical analysis of Luke attempts to explain Luke's omission of the cry of abandonment. Did Luke simply change the form of the confession he had before him in Mark. With regard to the former, the editorial critic discovers that the emphasis on the agony of the cross and suffering of Jesus is indeed completely typical of Luke's Gospel.
Similarly, the Chronicler's view is well known and used to explain the difference in the situation. Scholars have long noted that 1 Samuel 8-12 contains two basic attitudes (and likely sources) related to the origins of the monarchy. Or to emphasize that obedience to the law is a condition for ownership of the land.
Markssen, W., Mark the Evangelist: Studies in the Editing History of the Gospel (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1969).
STRUCTURALIST CRITICISM
How a reader decodes the text or makes the text its deep structure to resonate with the reader's deep structures. The structuralist critic reads a text without reference to the element of time; In fact, every effort has been made to exclude the time dimension unless it is a particular concern of the text. Thus, even in analyzing the structures of a text, we can be particularly alert to pairs of opposites in the arrangement of the text.
This structuralist interpretation of Genesis 1:l-2:1 tends to remain at the surface level of the text. The Parable of the Prodigal Son consists of two parts, the first focusing on the prodigal son and the second on the older brother. They are concerned with the story in its current form, the final form of the text.
In the story, God appears not only as the creator of the quest, but also as Jacob's opponent. A structuralist interpretation of the book of Psalms has shown that the psalms can be understood in terms of their deep structures. We noted above how structuralists analyze the narrative structure of the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
Patte, D., Paul's Faith and the Power of the Gospel: A Structural Introduction to the Pauline Letters (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983).
CANONICAL CRITICISM
CHAPTER 11
Before discussing some of the more practical aspects of exegesis, perhaps a few suggestions should be made at this point. When this happens, the translator gets to hear his or her own voice, not the voice of the text. Integrating Exegetical Procedures 135 encyclopedias, and other aids to inform the exegete's own formulation of the questions to be answered and the interpretation to be arrived at.
Rather than constituting the exegesis, one's investigation of various aspects of the passage provides that from which the interpretation is prepared. The exegete must ask, at the end of the exegesis, whether the letter as a whole illuminates or obscures a passage. It may be full of factually correct information but fail to illuminate or display an understanding of the passage in any obvious way.
It often happens that an exegete spends a lot of time studying aspects of a passage that in the end turn out not to be very important at all for the final exegesis. However, the exegete may, after deliberation, decide that it is this aspect of the passage that will be the first to be discussed in the exegetical paper. This level of synthesis requires the exegete to weigh each part of the investigation in light of the other parts.
The exegete must have developed sufficient familiarity with the passage to be able to determine which aspects of the passage need elaboration and which do not.
Archaeological Reconstruction
Just as historians no longer write the history of Israel and the early church by retelling the biblical story, they are no longer simply bound by the evidence of the Bible. In making these moves, the beginning exegete would do well to remember that the autonomy of the text and its message must be respected. Also distinctive, compared to the task of doing theology, is the nature of the audience.
Behind this position is the assumption that the text speaks or can speak directly to the needs of the reader. When reading the Bible for personal appropriation, as much attention must be paid to the different dimensions of the text to which these different techniques apply as when reading the Bible for professional reasons. Professional exegetes can also learn a lot from this artistic appropriation of the Bible and Biblical themes.
Modern readers at"- presents the picture of someone standing outside the text, "looking at the Bible they often find themselves sensitive to the many dimensions of. M., "On the choice of models for the reconstruction of Israelite pre-monarchical history" in Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. Nineham, D., The Use and Abuse of the Bible (London/New York: Macmillan Press Ltd./Barnes and Noble, 1976).
Pannenberg, W., “The Crisis of the Scripture Principle” in his Fundamental Questions in Theology: Collected Essays (Philadelphia/London: Fortress Press/SCM Press, 1970) 1.
REVISED EDITION
BIBLICAL EXEGESIS