Biblical exegesis sounds like a complex theological term, but at its heart, it’s about understanding the Bible’s true meaning—what the original author intended to convey to their audience. It’s not just casual reading or translating; it’s digging deeper through intensive analysis. How does one get to the original intended meaning by the author though? And do we always need to engage in “exegesis” when reading the Bible, or can we access the original intended meaning through reading itself without the intensive analysis?
Reading Fluency: The Gateway to Deeper Understanding
A fluent reader of the biblical languages (that is, Biblical Greek and Hebrew) can read and understand the original meaning of the text without the need of external aids, such as a dictionary or grammar textbook.
Studies in the neuroscience of reading have shown that fluency is key for deep reading and comprehension. When we read fluently, our brains can focus on the subtle shades of meaning within the text, which is essential for drawing out the author’s intended message.
In other words, fluent reading makes the intensive analysis of exegesis unnecessary in many cases. If you can intuitively understand the meaning of a text as you read it, you do not need to analyze it carefully to get to the original intended meaning. So do we really need exegesis?
Exegesis: Explaining the Meaning
Fluency helps us grasp the meaning, but exegesis takes it further by articulating and explaining that meaning. It uses specialized language (metalanguage) to analyze the text’s grammatical and linguistic features, providing a well-reasoned justification for a particular interpretation.
Tools like grammatical categories, parsing, and diagramming provide a framework for this analysis, but they’re most effective when built on a foundation of reading fluency. Why? We do not want to over-analyze every word of the biblical text. In many cases, a good reader can properly intuit the original meaning without the careful analysis characteristic of exegesis. We want to use careful analysis when the text demands it–when fluent reading still leaves us with questions.
An example: Romans 2:28-29
The Greek text of Romans 2:28-29 has been interpreted in different ways. Originally, listeners understood the verses using their intuition as Greek speakers. Today, without this intuition, we need to explain our understanding, even if it’s intuitively correct.
One debate focuses on the clause, “His praise is not from man but from God.” Some believe this specifies which hidden Jew is being talked about (grammarians would call this a restrictive relative clause), while others think it’s additional information about the hidden Jew (this would be called a non-restrictive relative clause).
To resolve this, we can examine similar relative clauses in Greek. In Paul’s writings, restrictive relative clauses separated from their noun are never more than four words apart. In this passage, the separation is 22 words, making it a non-restrictive relative clause.
Those who originally heard Romans 2:28-29 read in the public assembly would have intuitively understood that the relative clause was non-restrictive. That’s how these clauses work in Greek. Careful grammatical analysis confirms this for us when our Greek intuitions do not necessarily conform to the original readers’ intuitions.
Conclusion
Biblical exegesis is both art and science, combining intuition (gained in reading fluency) and articulation (gained through careful grammatical study) to uncover the meaning of the biblical text. Fluency is the gateway, while exegetical tools provide the framework for explanation. By integrating both, we can strive for a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the Bible’s timeless message.
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