What is exegesis

What is exegesis?

The term is derived by transliteration from the Greek word exegesis, meaning narration and explanation. As the term suggests, exegesis is the science of interpretation. It is closely related to hermeneutics. Whereas hermeneutics seeks to establish the ruling principles of biblical interpretation, exegesis seeks to fix the meaning of individual statements and passages.

Exegesis is predicated on two fundamentals. First, it assumes that thought can be accurately conveyed in words, at least originally. Secondly, it assumes that the content of scripture is of such importance for man as to discover exactly what God seeks to impart through his words.

In other words, exegesis is the careful, systematic study of scripture to discover the original, intended meaning. This is biblically a historical task. It is the attempt to hear the Word as the original recipients were to have heard it, to find out what was the original intent of the words of the Bible. This is the task that often calls for the help of the “expert” that person whose training has helped him or her to know well the language and circumstances of the texts in their original setting. But one does not have to be an expert to do exegesis.

 Learning to do exegesis

At its highest level, exegesis requires knowledge of many things: the biblical languages; the Jewish, Semitics, and Hellenistic background; how to determine the original text when the manuscripts have variant readings; the use of all kinds of primary sources and tools. But even if you do not have access to all of these skills and tools, you can learn to do good exegesis with your own skills, however, you must learn to use the work of others.

There are two basics questions one should ask of every biblical passage: those that relate to context and those that relate to content. The questions of context are also of two kinds: historical and literacy.

(i)                 Historical context: The historical context, which will differ from book to book, has to do with several things: the time and culture of the author and his readers, that is, the geographical, topographical, and political factors that are relevant to the author’s setting; the occasion of the book, letters, Psalm and prophetic oracle, or other genre.

(ii)               The literary context: This is what most people when they talk about reading something in its context. Indeed this is the crucial task in exegesis. Essentially literary context means that words only have meaning in sentences, and for most part biblical sentences only have meaning in relation to preceding and succeeding sentences.

The questions of content

“Content” means the author’s actual content. “Content” has to do with the meanings of words, the grammatical relationships in sentences and the choice of the original text where the manuscripts have variant readings. It also includes items of historical context, for example, the meaning of denarius, or a Sabbath day’s journey, or “high places,” etc.

The required tools for doing exegesis: There are tools that would help you to do good exegesis. They are a good Bible dictionary, a good Bible handbook, a good translation, and good commentaries.

The Second task: Hermeneutics

In the tools, a good translation is basic tool to know original language that is concern with hermeneutics. Although the word “hermeneutics” ordinarily covers the whole field of interpretation, including exegesis, it is also used in the narrower sense of seeking the contemporary relevance of ancient texts. In the hermeneutics we need to ask question about the bible meaning in the “here and now.” But we must not begin with here and now because one must also learn to study the Bible, which in turn must inform one’s devotional reading. And that brings us to proper “hermeneutics” begins with solid “exegesis.” The reason one must not begin with the here and now is that the only proper control for hermeneutics is to be found in the original intent of the biblical text.

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