When used about the Bible, what is the meaning of:
Eisegesis,
Exegesis,
Hermeneutics ?
Spirit Home > Words About the Bible > Exegesis and Hermeneutics
Eisegesis [ < Greek eis- (into) + hègeisthai (to lead). (See 'exegesis'.)]
Eisegesis is what's being done when someone interprets the Bible according to notions that were born outside of the Bible. It's when we read stuff into Scripture. (For instance, the idea of the United States as a "Christian Nation" is the creation of egos who gloat over being powerful. It has no basis in history or fact, but more important, it has no basis in the Bible. Thus it arises from eisegesis. Yet some leading US politicians and pastors interpret the Bible through this notion.)
To some extent, eisegesis is unavoidable. We don't come to the Bible with a blank slate. A lot of
living and learning went into each of us. If we really bring
our whole selves to the study of the Bible, all that stuff in
us will and should have an impact on how we learn
from the Bible. Here's where prayerful obedience and discipline
come in, for the Spirit rewards hard work and harder prayer. The hard work
uncovers what the Bible is telling us, and the obedience sets
aside the ideas we cherish so that we may take on the Bible's
vision. The same living and learning that would have made us do
an eisegesis of the text instead becomes the raw material for
re-visioning our lives and thoughts (hermeneutics) in the light
of what the Spirit reveals in Scripture (exegesis).
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Exegesis [ < Greek exègeisthai (to interpret) < ex- (out) + hègeisthai (to lead). Related to English 'seek'.] To interpret a text by way of thorough analysis of its content. In its most basic Bible-relevant meaning, exegesis means finding out what the Spirit originally was saying in the Bible passage through its author.
Exegesis is what comes out of the Bible, as against what gets read into it. (Of course, the ways we use to find out from the Bible are often merely ways to put something into it 'between the lines'. That's really eisegesis in a Halloween costume.) In a more theological setting, exegesis means what comes from the use of certain methods of studying the Bible. Just about every imaginable method already has a name, and there are all sorts of mixes, but the main types are :
Most Bible students use most of the methods in their own way at some time, even if they don't think they do. All of them are often helpful, sometimes not at all helpful, and occasionally downright deceptive. It's best to see all methods as tools for the Bible student to use prayerfully, rather than as rules to follow or conclusions ('scholarly consensus') that one must accept. There are many angles and facets to most passages of Scripture, and the different methods can help you get at more of them.
If you aren't doing some kind of exegesis, you are not finding out what the writings themselves are saying. But what good is knowing eternal truth if it doesn't matter to you? Thus, exegesis is just one important step in studying the Bible; there also needs to be hermeneutics (see below).
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"Exegesis...is an act of love. It means loving the one who speaks the words enough to want to get the words right. It is respecting the words enough to use every means we have to get the words right. Exegesis is loving God enough to stop and listen carefully." -- Eugene Peterson, in *Theology Today*, April 1999, p.10
back to word listhermeneutics [ < Greek hermeneu(te)s (interpreter). ] The science of interpretation of a story or text, or the methods used in that science.
For Bible study, hermeneutics is about the ways you discover meaning in the Bible for your life and your era, faithfully taking the original intent into today's world. The Bible is not meant to be a lazy read; when you read it, you use ways to figure out what it means and how to live it. There's a science and art to that: hermeneutics. (There's a page on this site that has more on doing this.) Hermeneutics is a kind of discernment process, a way of mining for truth to live by. Discernment is a task that's best not done alone, but by a Spirit-led community that lives and breathes this Biblical Word. Such a community lives a hermeneutic of the Bible, and the testimony of each person in it is a living viability apologetic for the God of that Bible. However, interpretation is not something you can just slough off to the Spirit-led community and leave it there. It is your responsibility, your task, to shape your faith through the Word, to help the community shape its own faith through the Word. It is a hermeneutical responsibility to be taken with the utmost of diligence.
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There's a lot of talk nowadays about "hermeneutic
distance", which means that you are not actually in the life
and times of Scriptural happenings and people, and even if you
were, you may not be in the role you think you would be. The
part of it most talked about is the fact that as times change,
so does the setting for what God is trying to say to you
through the Bible. Our era is not the same as Jesus', or even
your father's. It's a hot topic now because so much is changing
so fast. Churches make far too little of this, as if unchangingness
is what counts, when in fact change also counts, because no
learning or growth happens without change. Non-believers and
'liberal-church' believers make far too much of it, as if the more
things change the less they stay the same, and when in fact
most of the core matters of life change more in
form than in substance. Each era develops its own set of
likenesses to the era of Jesus.
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For more about using the Bible, check this out.
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| ver.: 08 January 2011. Exegesis and Hermeneutics. Copyright © Robert Longman Jr. |