Students with no knowledge of Greek will be able to use much of the guide, especially Chapter I. We hope that this book will eventually encourage you to acquire a knowledge of the language itself. Evaluate each of the variants based on the author's style and vocabulary (the criterion of intrinsic probability).
The term "exegesis" is used in this book in a consciously limited sense to refer to the historical investigation of the meaning of the biblical text.
INITIAL STEPS FOR ALL GENRES
In the exegesis paper itself, only those textual decisions that really affect the meaning of the passage need to be discussed. The advantage of the diagram is that it forces one to identify each word in the passage grammatically. The next three steps isolate three of the content questions (textual questions have already been covered in Step 3).
Are there genuine ambiguities that make a definite interpretation of any part of the passage impossible.
SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR DIFFERENT GENRES At this point you are ready to wrestle with the questions of historical
Is your understanding of the answer an adequate response to the historical situation as you have described it? Rather it is to determine the meaning of the text in its actual literary context. Is there any internal clue to John's purpose in using the image?
Regarding the question of the historical situation and purpose of the book, you should read Beckwith, p.
FURTHER STEPS COMMON TO ALL
Consider the broader Biblical and theological contexts
THE APPLICATION
Fee, "The Textual Criticism of the New Testament," in Biblical Criticism: Historical, Literary, and Textual, by R. Transposition: A scribe changed the word order (or sometimes sentence order) from that of the text he copied. Fee, "The Textual Criticism of the New Testament," in Biblical Criticism: Historical, Literary, and Textual, by R.
Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research; Ed. 4. This is especially true, for example, of Cv (in/from) and &Iq (in/so that) in I Cor. It is possible to use many specific words in one context.
In the NT the devil is called the &pxwv of the demons in the Synoptic Gospels. It is customary to argue, in light of certain wording in vs. In the interpretation of the parable (Luke 8:11-15), the emphasis shifts from the sower to the seed, which is "the word of God." and its effects on humans.
16 directly to the interpretation of the parable of the sown seed; (b) uses the Q version of the first theorem, which is interested in those who enter in seeing the light; (c) in v.
THE EXEGETICAL TASK
- Analyze the passage’s relation to the rest of Scripture
Look specifically for textual variations that would affect the meaning of the text for your congregation in the English translation. This could be part of your interpretation of the text when explaining its meaning to the congregation. Again, you'll want to be sure of the specific nuances of all these words for the meaning of the passage, but you shouldn't feel compelled to explain everything in a sermon.
Here you will be doing your audience a favor by sharing a compressed form of some of the relevant data with them. In this regard, you may wish to consult one of the better studies of Christian midrashic techniques as they appear in the NT. Don't let such things get in the way of preaching to become all-consuming.
In addition, you should also familiarize yourself with the nature and composition of the church(s) to which the letter was written. This is one of the absolutely crucial steps in the exegetical process, because your letter is ultimately a response to something. Here, in particular, you will learn much more for your understanding of the text than you will find necessary to include in a sermon.
With the help of several exegetical aids, you should feel that you have a good understanding of the text, both its details and its place in the book of the Bible. Make a list of possible life issues that are explicitly mentioned, implied, or logically derived from the passage.
MOVING FROM EXEGESIS TO SERMON
- SPEND SOME TIME IN REFLECTION ON THE TEXT AND IN PRAYER
- BEGIN WITH A SENSE OF PURPOSE
- DECIDE ON THE INTRODUCTION AND CONCLUSION
- CONSTRUCT AN OUTLINE
- CONSTRUCT THE SERMON
Where does the passage seem to fit within the entire system of truth contained in Christian theology? You should have thought carefully about how your passage and its various parts might apply to your own life and that of the congregation. Are the life issues of the passage primarily instructive to individuals or primarily to corporate entities, or is there no distinction?
Deciding on the focus and objective of the sermon will go a long way in helping you decide how to proceed with the outline and content. Try to decide what the congregation needs to know—r hear—from the passage, as opposed to what you needed to know to prepare the sermon. Your two best criteria are the passage itself and your response to it.
The body or content of the sermon will be largely determined by how you plan to begin and end. Let the outline touch on the various points of the text, but let the logic of the presentation be your own, so that you build towards the conclusions you laid out in step 9, above. It may serve as an introduction, the application of which will be the rest of the sermon, taking some points of interpretation; it may come later as you move from the twentieth century back to the first and then back to the twentieth century.
Or it can be referred to point by point as you go through the sermon. To be biblical you must let your words be clothed with the authority of the Word as it is found in its first century setting; but to be relevant you must make that Word come alive in your own twentieth-century environment.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT IN GENERAL
The purpose of this chapter is to draw attention to the various sources of NT exegesis. The key to using the Greek text for exegesis is to keep reading it regularly. Kubo's book gives the basic meaning of words as they appear in the NT text.
It is based on word frequency: words that occur more than 50 times in the NT are assumed to be known (but are listed in Appendix I). One of the useful features of Kubo is that word frequencies (how many occurrences in a book/how many in the NT) are listed for each word. Friedrich Blass and Albert Debrunner, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature; tr.
Harris, “Appendix: Prepositions and Theology in the Greek New Testament,” in The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, ed. Walter Bauer, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature; 2nd ed.; ed. 141 New House, Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich (eds.), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament; 10~01s.
Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament Illustrated from the Papyri and Other Non-literary Sources (London: Hodder & Stoughton repr. Geden, A Concordance to the Greek Testament according to the Texts of Westcott and Hort, Tischendorf and the English Revisers; 5. rev.
HISTORICAL-CULTURAL BACKGROUND
Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. eds.), The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Supplementary Volume (Abingdon Press, 1976). Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus: An Inquiry into Economic and Social Conditions during the New Testament Period (Fortress Press, 1967). Musaph-Andriesse, From Torah to Kabbalah: A Basic Introduction to the Writings of Judaism (Oxford University Press, 1982).
Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah: An Historical and Literary Introduction (Fortress Press, 1981). Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1972-). eds.), The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible; 5 ~ 01 s. Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East; Illustrated New Testament from Recently Discovered Texts of the Greco-Roman World; Ed. 4.
E). HISTORICAL CONTEXT IN PARTICULAR
E). LITERARY CONTEXT
G). GOSPEL FORMS
G). PERICOPE ANALYSIS
G). THE ORIGINAL LIFE SETTING
A). HISTORICAL QUESTIONS
A). LITERARY CONTEXT
BIBLICAL THEOLOGY
SECONDARY LITERATURE
Bibliographic Aids
Without access to these two invaluable tools, you simply cannot expect to do serious and up-to-date work on anything in NT. For a more than adequate list of the best New Testament commentaries for each of the New Testament books, see DMS, chapter 15. A good translation not only translates the words of the original into their best English equivalents; it also reflects the style, spirit and even effect of the original wherever possible.
Your familiarity with the original passage and the audience you are writing for. EXEGESIS TOOLS AND RESOURCES 149 or preach, allows you to choose your own words to increase the accuracy of the translation. Your translation should leave the same impression on you as the original.
This book contains serious, thoughtful discussions about the particular problems of translating the Bible from one language to another. This book extensively discusses the major twentieth-century English translations of the Bible, giving copious examples of each translation and commenting throughout on the translation techniques and assumptions involved. Howard Marshall (ed.), Interpretation of the New Testament: Essays on Principles and Me8hods (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1977).
Thiselton, The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description med særlig henvisning til Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer og Wittgenstein (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1980). Fee og Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for AlZZts Worth (Zondervan Publishing House, 1982).
A HANDBOOK
