HOW TO READ THE BIBLE F O R A L L I T S W O RT H
The primary task of Bible study is to determine what the Scriptures meant at the time they were written and how that meaning applies to us today. This vital guide focuses on the historical contexts of the Bible and explains differences between the Old Testament narratives, the Epistles, Gospels, Parables, Psalms, and more. It's a practical approach to Bible study -- one that makes good sense and is easy to understand. This new edition includes, among other changes, a new section on the Song of Songs and an updated list of recommended commentaries and resources.

“A practical approach to Bible study in an easy to understand style.” —Bookstore Journal “A very useful reference book for the layperson who is engaged in study of the Bible.” —Booklist “...provides keys to interpreting the genre, and discusses the hermeneutical questions it raises for today’s Christians.” —New Testament Abstracts “This is a book about hermeneutics, without jargon or footnotes. It is very readable and makes good sense.... Carefully thought out and written.” —Journal for the Study of the Old Testament “...readable, clear, and well-written book on hermeneutics.” —Christian Standard “Fee and Stuart have delineated the hermeneutical principles for the valid interpretation of the variety of literary genres found in Scriptures. Fee and Stuart fulfill the objectives they set for themselves admirably. A book with this focus meets an obvious need.” —Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society “...stimulating in helping the earnest Bible student understand the Old and New Testaments better.” —The Preacher’s Magazine “...makes significant advances over most other books of the genre and which is certain to be highly useful.” —Interpretation “...will be a blessing to all who want to enjoy the Bible....a ‘must’ for all who are bothered about angels, trumpets, earthquakes, beasts, dragons and bottomless pits.” —The Presbyterian Record

CONTENTS
Preface Introduction: The Need to Interpret The Basic Tool: A Good Translation The Epistles: Learning to Think Contextually The Epistles: The Hermeneutical Questions The Old Testament Narratives: Their Proper Use Acts: The Question of Historical Precedent The Gospels: One Story, Many Dimensions The Parables: Do You Get the Point? The Law(s): Covenant Stipulations for Israel The Prophets: Enforcing the Covenant in Israel The Psalms: Israel’s Prayers and Ours Wisdom: Then and Now The Revelation: Images of Judgment and Hope Appendix: The Evaluation and Use of Commentaries 10 15 31 49 66 85 103 124 148 163 181 205 226 254 270

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

We want to hear from you. Please send your comments about this ebook to us in care of the address below. Thank you.

How to

READ the BIBLE for All Its

WORTH
Second Edition

A Guide to Understanding the Bible

Gordon D. Fee & Douglas Stuart

How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth Adobe Acrobat eBook ReaderTM format Copyright © 1981, 1993 by Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530 All rights reserved. ISBN 0-310-24480-3 Cover design: Zondervan

For our parents Donald and Grace Fee and Streeter and Merle Stuart from whom we learned our love for the Word

A B B R E V I AT I O N S O F T R A N S L AT I O N S

GNB

JB KJV

LB NAB NASB NEB NIV NRSV RSV

The Good News Bible (formerly Today’s English Version), 1976 The Jerusalem Bible, 1966 The King James Version (also, the Authorized Version), 1611 The Living Bible, 1971 The New American Bible, 1970 The New American Standard Bible, 1960 The New English Bible, 1961 The New International Version, 1973 The New Revised Standard Version, 1991 The Revised Standard Version, 1952

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I

n one of our lighter moments we toyed with the idea of calling this book Not Just Another Book on How to Understand the Bible. Wisdom prevailed, and the “title” lost out. But such a title would in fact describe the kind of urgency that caused this book to be written. How-to-understand-the-Bible books abound. Some are good; others are not so good. Few are written by biblical scholars. Some of these books approach the subject from the variety of methods one can use in studying Scripture; others try to be basic primers in hermeneutics (the science of interpretation) for the layperson. The latter usually give a long section of general rules (rules that apply to all biblical texts) and another section of specific rules (rules that govern special types of problems: prophecy, typology, figures of speech, etc.). Of the “basic primer” type books we recommend especially Knowing Scripture, by R. C. Sproul (InterVarsity). For a heavier and less readable, but very helpful, dose of the same one should see A. Berkeley Mickelson’s Interpreting the Bible (Eerdmans). The closest thing to the kind of book we have written is Better Bible Study, by Berkeley and Alvera Mickelson (Regal). But this is “not just another book”—we hope. The uniqueness of what we have tried to do has several facets: 1. As one may note from a glance at the table of contents, the basic concern of this book is with the understanding of the different types of literature (the genres) that make up the Bible. Although we do speak to other issues, this generic approach has controlled all that
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has been done. We affirm that there is a real difference between a psalm, on the one hand, and an epistle on the other. Our concern is to help the reader to read and study the Psalms as poems, and the Epistles as letters. We hope to show that these differences are vital and should affect both the way one reads them and how one is to understand their message for today. 2. Even though throughout the book we have repeatedly given guidelines for studying each genre of Scripture, we are equally concerned with the intelligent reading of Scripture—since that is what most of us do the most. Anyone who has tried, for example, to read through Leviticus, Jeremiah, or Proverbs, as over against 1 Samuel or Acts, knows full well that there are many differences. One can get bogged down in Leviticus, and who has not felt the frustration of completing the reading of Isaiah or Jeremiah and then wondering what the “plot” was? In contrast, 1 Samuel and the Acts are especially readable. We hope to help the reader appreciate these differences so that he or she can read intelligently and profitably the nonnarrative parts of the Bible. 3. This book was written by two seminary professors, those sometimes dry and stodgy people that other books are written to get around. It has often been said that one does not have to have a seminary education in order to understand the Bible. That is true, and we believe it with all our hearts. But we are also concerned about the (sometimes) hidden agenda that suggests that a seminary education or seminary professors are thereby a hindrance to understanding the Bible. We are so bold as to think that even the “experts” may have something to say. Furthermore, these two seminary professors also happen to be believers, who think we should obey the biblical texts, not merely read or study them. It is precisely that concern that led us to become scholars in the first place. We had a great desire to understand as carefully and as fully as possible what it is that we are to know about God and his will in the twentieth century. These two seminary professors also regularly preach and teach the Word in a variety of church settings. Thus we are regularly called
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upon not simply to be scholars but to wrestle with how the Bible applies, and that leads to our fourth item. 4. The great urgency that gave birth to this book is hermeneutics; we wrote especially to help believers wrestle with the questions of application. Many of the urgent problems in the church today are basically struggles with bridging the hermeneutical gap—with moving from the “then and there” of the original text to the “here and now” of our own life settings. But this also means bridging the gap between the scholar and layperson. The concern of the scholar is primarily with what the text meant; the concern of the layperson is usually with what it means. The believing scholar insists that we must have both. Reading the Bible with an eye only to its meaning for us can lead to a great deal of nonsense as well as to every imaginable kind of error—because it lacks controls. Fortunately, most believers are blessed with at least a measure of that most important of all hermeneutical skills—common sense. On the other hand, nothing can be so dry and lifeless for the church as making biblical study purely an academic exercise in historical investigation. Even though the Word was originally given in a concrete historical context, its uniqueness is that that historically given and conditioned Word is ever a living Word. Our concern, therefore, must be with both dimensions. The believing scholar insists that the biblical texts first of all mean what they meant. That is, we believe that God’s Word for us today is first of all precisely what his Word was to them. Thus we have two tasks: First, to find out what the text originally meant; this task is called exegesis. Second, we must learn to hear that same meaning in the variety of new or different contexts of our own day; we call this second task hermeneutics. In its classical usage, the term “hermeneutics” covers both tasks, but in this book we consistently use it only in this narrower sense. To do both tasks well should be the goal of Bible study. Thus in chapters 3 through 13, which deal in turn with ten different kinds of literary genres, we have given attention to both needs. Since exegesis is always the first task, we have spent much of
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our time emphasizing the uniqueness of each of the genres. What is a biblical psalm? What are their different kinds? What is the nature of Hebrew poetry? How does all this affect our understanding? But we are also concerned with how the various Psalms function as the Word of God. What is God trying to say? What are we to learn, or how are we to obey? Here we have avoided giving rules. What we have offered are guidelines, suggestions, helps. We recognize that the first task—exegesis—is often considered to be a matter for the expert. At times that is true. But one does not have to be an expert to learn to do the basic tasks of exegesis well. The secret lies in learning to ask the right questions of the text. We hope, therefore, to guide the reader in learning to ask the right questions of each biblical genre. There will be times when one will finally want to consult the experts as well. We shall also give some practical guidelines in this matter. Each author is responsible for those chapters that fall within his area of specialty. Thus, Professor Fee wrote chapters 1–4, 6–8, and 13, and Professor Stuart wrote chapters 5 and 9–12. Although each author had considerable input into the other’s chapters, and although we consider the book to be a truly joint effort, the careful reader will also observe that each author has his own style and manner of presentation. Special thanks go to some friends and family who have read several of the chapters and offered helpful advice: Frank DeRemer, Bill Jackson, Judy Peace, and Maudine, Cherith, Craig, and Brian Fee. Special thanks also to our secretaries, Carrie Powell and Holly Greening, for typing both rough drafts and final copy. In the words of the child that moved Augustine to read a passage from Romans at his conversion experience, we say, “Tolle, lege, Take up and read.” The Bible is God’s eternal Word. Read it, understand it, obey it. Permission has been granted by Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, to use material in chapters 3, 4, and 6, that appeared earlier in different form as “Hermeneutics and Common Sense: An Exploratory Essay on the Hermeneutics of the Epistles,” in Inerrancy and Common Sense (ed. J. R. Michaels and R. R. Nicole, 1980),
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pp. 161–86; and “Hermeneutics and Historical Precedent—A Major Problem in Pentecostal Hermeneutics,” in Perspectives on the New Pentecostalism (ed. R. P. Spittler, 1976), pp. 118–32.

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INTRODUCTION: THE NEED TO INTERPRET very so often we meet someone who says with great feeling, “You don’t have to interpret the Bible; just read it and do what it says.” Usually, such a remark reflects the layperson’s protest against the “professional” scholar, pastor, teacher, or Sunday school teacher, who, by “interpreting,” seems to be taking the Bible away from the common man or woman. It is their way of saying that the Bible is not an obscure book. “After all,” it is argued, “any person with half a brain can read it and understand it. The problem with too many preachers and teachers is that they dig around so much they tend to muddy the waters. What was clear to us when we read it isn’t so clear anymore.” There is a lot of truth in that protest. We agree that Christians should learn to read, believe, and obey the Bible. And we especially agree that the Bible should not be an obscure book if studied and read properly. In fact we are convinced that the single most serious problem people have with the Bible is not with a lack of understanding, but with the fact that they understand most things too well! The problem with such a text as “Do everything without complaining or arguing” (Phil. 2:14), for example, is not with understanding it, but with obeying it—putting it into practice.
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We are also agreed that the preacher or teacher is all too often prone to dig first and look later, and thereby to cover up the plain meaning of the text, which often lies on the surface. Let it be said at the outset—and repeated throughout—that the aim of good interpretation is not uniqueness; one is not trying to discover what no one else has ever seen before. Interpretation that aims at, or thrives on, uniqueness can usually be attributed to pride (an attempt to “out clever” the rest of the world), a false understanding of spirituality (wherein the Bible is full of deep truths waiting to be mined by the spiritually sensitive person with special insight), or vested interests (the need to support a theological bias, especially in dealing with texts that seem to go against that bias). Unique interpretations are usually wrong. This is not to say that the correct understanding of a text may not often seem unique to someone who hears it for the first time. But it is to say that uniqueness is not the aim of our task. The aim of good interpretation is simple: to get at the “plain meaning of the text.” And the most important ingredient one brings to that task is enlightened common sense. The test of good interpretation is that it makes good sense of the text. Correct interpretation, therefore, brings relief to the mind as well as a prick or prod to the heart. But if the plain meaning is what interpretation is all about, then why interpret? Why not just read? Does not the plain meaning come simply from reading? In a sense, yes. But in a truer sense, such an argument is both naïve and unrealistic because of two factors: the nature of the reader and the nature of Scripture.

T h e R e a d e r a s a n I n t e r p re t e r
The first reason one needs to learn how to interpret is that, whether one likes it or not, every reader is at the same time an interpreter. That is, most of us assume as we read that we also understand what we read. We also tend to think that our understanding is the same thing as the Holy Spirit’s or human author’s intent. However, we invariably bring to the text all that we are, with
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all of our experiences, culture, and prior understandings of words and ideas. Sometimes what we bring to the text, unintentionally to be sure, leads us astray, or else causes us to read all kinds of foreign ideas into the text. Thus, when a person in our culture hears the word “cross,” centuries of Christian art and symbolism cause most people automatically to think of a Roman cross (†), although there is little likelihood that that was the shape of Jesus’ cross, which was probably shaped like a “T.” Most Protestants, and Catholics as well, when they read texts about the church at worship, automatically envision people sitting in a building with “pews” much like their own. When Paul says (in the KJV), “Make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Rom. 13:14), people in most English-speaking cultures are apt to think that “flesh” means the “body” and therefore that Paul is speaking of “bodily appetites.” But the word “flesh,” as Paul uses it, seldom refers to the body— and in this text it almost certainly did not—but to a spiritual malady, a sickness of spiritual existence sometimes called “the sinful nature.” Therefore, without intending to do so, the reader is interpreting as he or she reads, and unfortunately too often interprets incorrectly. This leads us to note further that in any case the reader of an English Bible is already involved in interpretation. For translation is in itself a (necessary) form of interpretation. Your Bible, whatever translation you use, which is your beginning point, is in fact the end result of much scholarly work. Translators are regularly called upon to make choices regarding meanings, and their choices are going to affect how you understand. Good translators, therefore, take the problem of our language differences into consideration. But it is not an easy task. In Romans 13:14, for example, shall we translate “flesh” (as in KJV, RSV, NRSV, NASB, etc.) because this is the word Paul used, and then leave it to an interpreter to tell us that “flesh” here does not mean “body”? Or shall we “help” the reader and translate “sinful nature” (as in the NIV, GNB, etc.) because this is what Paul’s word really
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means? We will take up this matter in greater detail in the next chapter. For now it is sufficient to point out how the fact of translation in itself has already involved one in the task of interpretation. The need to interpret is also to be found by noting what goes on around us all the time. A simple look at the contemporary church, for example, makes it abundantly clear that not all “plain meanings” are equally plain to all. It is of more than passing interest that most of those in today’s church who argue that women should keep silent in church on the basis of 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 at the same time deny the validity of speaking in tongues and prophecy, the very context in which the “silence” passage occurs. And those who affirm that women, as well as men, should pray and prophesy on the basis of 1 Corinthians 11:2–16 often deny that they should necessarily do so with their heads covered. For some, the Bible “plainly teaches” believers’ baptism by immersion; others believe they can make a biblical case for infant baptism. Both “eternal security” and the possibility of “losing one’s salvation” are preached in the church, but never by the same person! Yet both are affirmed as the plain meaning of biblical texts. Even the two authors of this book have some disagreements as to what certain texts “plainly” mean. Yet all of us are reading the same Bible and we all are trying to be obedient to what the text “plainly” means. Besides these recognizable differences among “Bible-believing Christians,” there are also all kinds of strange things afloat. One can usually recognize the cults, for example, because they have an authority in addition to the Bible. But not all of them do; and in every case they bend the truth by the way they select texts from the Bible itself. Every imaginable heresy or practice, from the Arianism (denying Christ’s deity) of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and The Way, to baptizing for the dead among Mormons, to snake handling among Appalachian sects, claims to be “supported” by a text. Even among more theologically orthodox people, however, many strange ideas manage to gain acceptance in various quarters. For example, one of the current rages among American Protestants, especially charismatics, is the so-called wealth and health gospel. The
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“good news” is that God’s will for you is financial and material prosperity! One of the advocates of this “gospel” begins his book by arguing for the “plain sense” of Scripture and claiming that he puts the Word of God first and foremost throughout his study. He says that it is not what we think it says but what it actually says that counts. The “plain meaning” is what he is after. But one begins to wonder what the “plain meaning” really is when financial prosperity is argued as the will of God from such a text as 3 John 2, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth” (KJV)—a text that in fact has nothing at all to do with financial prosperity. Another example takes the plain meaning of the story of the rich young man (Mark 10:17–22) as precisely the opposite of “what it actually says,” and attributes the “interpretation” to the Holy Spirit. One may rightly question whether the plain meaning is being sought at all; perhaps the plain meaning is simply what such a writer wants the text to mean in order to support his pet ideas. Given all this diversity, both within and without the church, and all the differences even among scholars, who supposedly know “the rules,” it is no wonder that some argue for no interpretation, just reading. But as we have seen, that is a false option. The antidote to bad interpretation is not no interpretation, but good interpretation, based on common-sense guidelines. The authors of this book labor under no illusions that by reading and following our guidelines everyone will finally agree on the “plain meaning,” our meaning! What we do hope to achieve is to heighten the reader’s sensitivity to specific problems inherent in each genre, to help the reader know why different options exist and how to make common-sense judgments, and especially to enable the reader to discern between good and not-so-good interpretations— and to know what makes them one or the other.

T h e N a t u re o f S c r i p t u re
A more significant reason for the need to interpret lies in the nature of Scripture itself. Historically the church has understood the
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nature of Scripture much the same as it has understood the person of Christ—the Bible is at the same time both human and divine. As Professor George Ladd once put it: “The Bible is the Word of God given in the words of [people] in history.” It is this dual nature of the Bible that demands of us the task of interpretation. Because the Bible is God’s Word, it has eternal relevance; it speaks to all humankind, in every age and in every culture. Because it is God’s Word, we must listen—and obey. But because God chose to speak his Word through human words in history, every book in the Bible also has historical particularity; each document is conditioned by the language, time, and culture in which it was originally written (and in some cases also by the oral history it had before it was written down). Interpretation of the Bible is demanded by the “tension” that exists between its eternal relevance and its historical particularity. There are some, of course, who believe that the Bible is merely a human book, and that it contains only words of people in history. For these people the task of interpreting is limited to historical inquiry. Their interest, as with Cicero or Milton, is with the religious ideas of the Jews, Jesus, or the early church. The task for them, therefore, is purely a historical one. What did these words mean to the people who wrote them? What did they think about God? How did they understand themselves? On the other hand, there are those who think of the Bible only in terms of its eternal relevance. Because it is God’s Word, they tend to think of it only as a collection of propositions to be believed and imperatives to be obeyed—although invariably there is a great deal of picking and choosing among the propositions and imperatives. There are, for example, Christians who, on the basis of Deuteronomy 22:5 (“A woman must not wear men’s clothing,” NIV), argue literally that a woman should not wear slacks or shorts. But the same people seldom take literally the other imperatives in that list, which include building a parapet around the roof of one’s house (v. 8), not planting two kinds of seeds in a vineyard (v. 9), and making tassels on the four corners of one’s cloak (v. 12). The Bible, however, is not a series of propositions and imperatives; it is not simply a collection of “Sayings from Chairman God,”
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as though he looked down at us from heaven and said: “Hey you down there, learn these truths. Number 1, There is no God but One, and I am he. Number 2, I am the Creator of all things, including humankind”—and so on, all the way through proposition number 7,777 and imperative number 777. These propositions of course are true; and they are found in the Bible (though not quite in that form). Indeed such a book might have made many things easier for us. But, fortunately, that is not how God chose to speak to us. Rather he chose to speak his eternal truths within the particular circumstances and events of human history. This also is what gives us hope. Precisely because God chose to speak in the context of real human history, we may take courage that these same words will speak again and again in our own “real” history, as they have throughout the history of the church. The fact that the Bible has a human side is our encouragement; it is also our challenge, and is the reason that we need to interpret. Two things should be noted in this regard: 1. In speaking through real persons, in a variety of circumstances, over a 1500-year period, God’s Word was expressed in the vocabulary and thought patterns of those persons and conditioned by the culture of those times and circumstances. That is to say, God’s Word to us was first of all his Word to them. If they were going to hear it, it could only have come through events and in language they could have understood. Our problem is that we are so far removed from them in time, and sometimes in thought. This is the major reason one needs to learn to interpret the Bible. If God’s Word about women wearing men’s clothing or people having parapets around houses is to speak to us, we first need to know what it said to its original hearers—and why. Thus the task of interpreting involves the student/reader at two levels. First, one has to hear the Word they heard; he or she must try to understand what was said to them back then and there. Second, one must learn to hear that same Word in the here and now. We will say more about these two tasks below. 2. One of the most important aspects of the human side of the Bible is that to communicate his Word to all human conditions, God
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chose to use almost every available kind of communication: narrative history, genealogies, chronicles, laws of all kinds, poetry of all kinds, proverbs, prophetic oracles, riddles, drama, biographical sketches, parables, letters, sermons, and apocalypses. To interpret properly the “then and there” of the biblical texts, one must not only know some general rules that apply to all the words of the Bible, but one needs to learn the special rules that apply to each of these literary forms (genres). The way God communicates his Word to us in the “here and now” will often differ from one form to another. For example, we need to know how a psalm, a form that was often addressed to God, functions as God’s Word to us, and how psalms differ from the “laws,” which were often addressed to people in cultural situations no longer in existence. How do such “laws” speak to us, and how do they differ from the moral “laws,” which are always valid in all circumstances? Such are the questions the dual nature of the Bible forces upon us.

T h e F i r s t Ta s k : E x e g e s i s
The first task of the interpreter is called exegesis. Exegesis is the careful, systematic study of the Scripture to discover the original, intended meaning. This is basically 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 good exegesis. In fact, everyone is an exegete of sorts. The only real question is whether you will be a good one. How many times, for example, have you heard or said, “What Jesus meant by that was . . .” or “Back in those days, they used to . . .”? Those are exegetical expressions. Most often they are employed to explain the differences between “them” and “us”—why we do not build parapets around our houses, for example—or to give a reason for our using a text in a new or different way—why hand-shaking has often taken the place of the “holy
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kiss.” Even when such ideas are not articulated, they are in fact practiced all the time in a kind of common sense way. The problem with much of this, however, is (1) that such exegesis is often too selective, and (2) that often the sources consulted are not written by true “experts,” that is, they are secondary sources that also often use other secondary sources, rather than the primary sources. A few words about each of these must be given: 1. Although everyone employs exegesis at times, and although quite often such exegesis is well done, it nonetheless tends to be employed only when there is an obvious problem between the biblical texts and modern culture. Whereas it must indeed be employed for such texts, we insist that it is the first step in reading EVERY text. At first, this will not be easy to do, but learning to think exegetically will pay rich dividends in understanding and will make even the reading, not to mention the studying, of the Bible a much more exciting experience. But note well: Learning to think exegetically is not the only task; it is simply the first task. The real problem with “selective” exegesis is that one will often read one’s own, completely foreign, ideas into a text and thereby make God’s Word something other than what God really said. For example, one of the authors of this book recently received a letter from a well-known evangelical, who argued that the author should not appear in a conference with another well-known person, whose orthodoxy was somewhat suspect. The biblical reason given for avoiding the conference was 1 Thessalonians 5:22: “Abstain from all appearance of evil” (KJV). But had our brother learned to read the Bible exegetically, he would not have used the text in that way. For that is Paul’s final word in a paragraph to the Thessalonians regarding charismatic utterances in the community. “Don’t treat prophecies with contempt,” Paul says. “Rather, test everything; and hold fast to the good, but avoid every evil form.” The “avoidance of evil” has to do with “prophecies,” which, when tested, are found not to be of the Spirit. To make this text mean something God did not intend is to abuse the text, not use it. To avoid making such mistakes one needs to learn to think exegetically, that is, to begin back then and there, and to do so with every text.
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2. As we will soon note, one does not begin by consulting the “experts.” But when it is necessary to do so, one should try to use the better sources. For example, in Mark 10:23 (Matt. 19:23; Luke 18:24), at the conclusion of the story of the rich young man, Jesus says, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.” He then adds: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom.” It is often said that there was a gate in Jerusalem known as the “Needle’s Eye,” which camels could go through only by kneeling, and with great difficulty. The point of this “interpretation” is that a camel could in fact go through the “Needle’s Eye.” The trouble with this “exegesis,” however, is that it is simply not true. There never was such a gate in Jerusalem at any time in its history. The earliest known “evidence” for that idea is found in the eleventh century (!) in a commentary by a Greek churchman named Theophylact, who had the same difficulty with the text that we do. After all, it is impossible for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, and that was precisely Jesus’ point. It is impossible for one who trusts in riches to enter the kingdom. It takes a miracle for a rich person to get saved, which is quite the point of what follows: “All things are possible with God.”

Learning to Do Exegesis
How, then, do we learn to do good exegesis and at the same time avoid the pitfalls along the way? The first part of most of the chapters in this book will explain how one goes about this task for each of the genres in particular. Here we simply want to overview what is involved in the exegesis of any text. At its highest level, of course, exegesis requires knowledge of many things we do not necessarily expect the readers of this book to know: the biblical languages; the Jewish, Semitic, and Hellenistic backgrounds; how to determine the original text when the manuscripts have variant readings; the use of all kinds of primary sources and tools. But you can learn to do good exegesis even if you do not have access to all of these skills and tools. To do so, however, you must learn first what you can do with your own skills, and second you must learn to use the work of others.
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The key to good exegesis, and therefore to a more intelligent reading of the Bible, is to learn to read the text carefully and to ask the right questions of the text. One of the best things one could do in this regard would be to read Mortimer J. Adler’s How to Read a Book (1940, rev. ed. with Charles Van Doren, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972). Our experience over many years in college and seminary teaching is that many people simply do not know how to read well. To read or study the Bible intelligently demands careful reading, and that includes learning to ask the right questions of the text. There are two basic kinds of 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 literary. Let us briefly note each of these.

The 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; and the occasion of the book, letter, psalm, prophetic oracle, or other genre. All such matters are especially important for understanding. It simply makes a difference in understanding to know the personal background of Amos, Hosea, or Isaiah, or that Haggai prophesied after the exile, or to know the messianic expectations of Israel when John the Baptist and Jesus appeared on the scene, or to understand the differences between the cities of Corinth and Philippi and how these affected the churches in each. One’s reading of Jesus’ parables is greatly enhanced by knowing something about the customs of Jesus’ day. Surely it makes a difference in understanding to know that the “penny” (KJV), or denarius, offered to the workers in Matthew 20:1–16 was the equivalent of a full day’s wage. Even matters of topography are important. One who was raised in the American West—or East for that matter—must be careful not to think of “the mountains that surround Jerusalem” (Ps. 125:2) in terms of his or her own experience of mountains!
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To answer most of these kinds of questions, one will need some outside help. A good Bible dictionary, such as the four-volume International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ed. G. W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988) or the five-volume Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible (ed. Merrill C. Tenney, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975) or the one-volume New Bible Dictionary (ed. J. D. Douglas, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), will generally supply the need here. If one wishes to pursue a matter further, the bibliographies at the end of each article will be a good place to start. The more important question of historical context, however, has to do with the occasion and purpose of each biblical book and/or its various parts. Here one wants to have an idea of what was going on in Israel or the church that called forth such a document, or what the situation of the author was that caused him to write. Again, this will vary from book to book, and it is much less crucial for Proverbs, for example, than for 1 Corinthians. The answer to this question is usually to be found—when it can be found—within the book itself. But you need to learn to read with your eyes open for such matters. If you want to corroborate your own findings on these questions, you might consult your Bible dictionary again, or the introduction to a good commentary on the book, or look at Eerdman’s Handbook to the Bible (ed. David Alexander and Pat Alexander, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973). But make your own observations first!

The Literary Context
This is what most people mean when they talk about reading something in its context. Indeed this is the crucial task in exegesis, and fortunately it is something one can do well without necessarily having to consult the “experts.” Essentially, literary context means that words only have meaning in sentences, and for the most part biblical sentences only have meaning in relation to preceding and succeeding sentences. The most important contextual question you will ever ask, and it must be asked over and over of every sentence and every paragraph
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is, “What’s the point?” We must try to trace the author’s train of thought. What is the author saying and why does he or she say it right here? Having made that point, what is he or she saying next, and why? This question will vary from genre to genre, but it is always the crucial question. The goal of exegesis, you remember, is to find out what the original author intended. To do this task well, it is imperative that one use a translation that recognizes poetry and paragraphs. One of the major causes of inadequate exegesis by readers of the King James Version, and to a lesser degree of the New American Standard, is that every verse has been printed as a paragraph. Such an arrangement tends to obscure the author’s own logic. Above all else, therefore, one must learn to recognize units of thought, whether they be paragraphs (for prose) or lines and sections (for poetry). And, with the aid of an adequate translation, this is something the reader can do.

The Questions of Content
The second major category of questions one asks of any text has to do with 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 a number of the items mentioned above under “historical context,” for example, the meaning of denarius, or a Sabbath day’s journey, or “high places,” etc. For the most part, these are the questions of meaning that one ordinarily asks of the biblical text. When Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:16, “Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer” (NASB), one should want to know, Who is “according to the flesh,” Christ or the one knowing him? It makes a considerable difference in meaning to learn that “we” know Christ no longer “from a worldly point of view” is what Paul intends, not that we know Christ no longer “in His earthly life.” To answer these kinds of questions one will ordinarily need to seek outside help. Again, the quality of one’s answers to such
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questions will usually depend on the quality of the sources one uses. This is the place where you will finally want to consult a good exegetical commentary. But please note that consulting a commentary, as essential as that will be at times, is the last thing one does.

The Tools
For the most part, then, you can do good exegesis with a minimum amount of outside help, provided that that help is of the highest quality. We have mentioned four such tools: a good Bible dictionary, a good Bible handbook, a good translation, and good commentaries. There are other kinds of tools, of course, especially for topical or thematic kinds of study. But for reading or studying the Bible book by book, these are the essential ones. Because a good translation (or better, several good translations) is the absolutely basic tool for one who does not know the original languages, the next chapter is devoted to this matter. Learning to choose a good commentary is also important, but because that is the last thing one does, an appendix on commentaries concludes the book.

T h e S e c o n d Ta s k : H e r m e n e u t i c s
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 this book we will use it exclusively in this way, to ask the questions about the Bible’s meaning in the “here and now.” It is this matter of the here and now, after all, that brings us to the Bible in the first place. So why not start here? Why worry about exegesis? Surely the same Spirit who inspired the writing of the Bible can equally inspire one’s reading of it. In a sense this is true, and we do not by this book intend to take from anyone the joy of devotional reading of the Bible and the sense of direct communication involved in such reading. But devotional reading is not the only kind one should do. One must also read for learning and understanding. In
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short, one must also learn to study the Bible, which in turn must inform one’s devotional reading. And that brings us to our insistence that 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. As noted earlier in this chapter, this is the “plain meaning” one is after. Otherwise biblical texts can be made to mean whatever they mean to any given reader. But such hermeneutics becomes pure subjectivity, and who then is to say that one person’s interpretation is right, and another’s is wrong. Anything goes. In contrast to such subjectivity, we insist that the original meaning of the text—as much as it is in our power to discern it—is the objective point of control. We are convinced that the Mormons’ baptizing for the dead on the basis of 1 Corinthians 15:29, or the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ rejection of the deity of Christ, or the snake handlers’ use of Mark 16:18, or the “prosperity evangelists’” advocating the American dream as a Christian right on the basis of 3 John 2 are all improper interpretation. In each case the error is in their hermeneutics, precisely because their hermeneutics is not controlled by good exegesis. They have started with the here and now and have read into the texts meanings that were not originally there. And what is to keep one from killing one’s daughter because of a foolish vow, as did Jephthah (Judg. 11:29–40), or to argue, as one preacher is reported to have done, that women should never wear their hair up in a top knot (“bun”) because the Bible says “topknot go down” (“Let him who is on the housetop not go down,” Mark 13:15)? It will be argued, of course, that common sense will keep one from such foolishness. Unfortunately common sense is not so common. We want to know what the Bible means for us—legitimately so. But we cannot make it mean anything that pleases us and then give the Holy Spirit “credit” for it. The Holy Spirit cannot be called in to contradict himself, and he is the one who inspired the original intent. Therefore, his help for us will be in the discovering of that original intent and in guiding us as we try faithfully to apply that meaning to our own situations.
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The questions of hermeneutics are not at all easy, which is probably why so few books are written on this aspect of our subject. Nor will all agree on how one goes about this task. But this is the crucial area, and believers need to learn to talk to one another about these questions—and to listen. On this one thing, however, there must surely be agreement. A text cannot mean what it never meant. Or to put that in a positive way, the true meaning of the biblical text for us is what God originally intended it to mean when it was first spoken. This is the starting point. How we work it out from that point is what this book is basically all about. Someone will surely ask, “But is it not possible for a text to have an additional (or fuller, or deeper) meaning, beyond its original intent? After all, this happens in the New Testament itself in the way it sometimes uses the Old Testament.” In the case of prophecy, we would not close the door to such a possibility, and would argue that, with careful controls, a second, or fuller, meaning is possible. But how does one justify it at other points? Our problem is a simple one. Who speaks for God? Roman Catholicism has less of a problem here; the magisterium, the authority vested in the official teaching of the church, determines for all the fuller sense of the text. Protestants, however, have no magisterium, and we should be properly concerned whenever anyone says he or she has God’s deeper meaning to a text—especially so, if the text never meant what it is now made to mean. Of such things are all the cults born, and innumerable lesser heresies. It is difficult to give rules for hermeneutics. What we offer throughout the following chapters, therefore, are guidelines. You may not agree with our guidelines. We do hope that your disagreements will be with Christian charity, and perhaps our guidelines will serve to stimulate your own thinking on these matters.

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