Quotes About Exegesis

That we affix no sense unto any obscure or difficult passage of Scripture but what is materially true and consonant unto other express and plain testimonies.

The book of Revelation is filled with symbols, yet these symbols refer to things that are literal. They have literal referents (see, for example, the explanation that appears in Revelation 1:20).

Biblical literalism is for the simple.

To be in Christ is to be a living exegesis of the narrative of Christ, a new performance of the original drama of exaltation following humiliation, of humiliation as the voluntary renunciation of rights and selfish gain in order to serve and obey.

it is the only New Testament book on which Calvin did not write a commentary.

survey—preparation and overview, or introduction • contextual analysis—consideration of the historical and literary contexts of the text • formal analysis—of the form, structure, and movement of the text • detailed analysis—of the various parts of the text • synthesis—of the text as a whole • reflection—on the text today • expansion and refinement—of the initial exegesis

G. K. Chesterton's comment is apt: "though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators."1 So also Luther's: "Some have even brewed it [Revelation] into many stupid things out of their own heads.

It is more of a job to interpret the interpretations than to interpret the things, and there are more books about books than about any other subject: we do nothing but write glosses about each other.

Whenever you see, in an official lectionary, the command to omit two or three verses, you can normally be sure that they contain words of judgment. Unless, of course, they are about sex.

Another part of the problem is that exegetes have for years simply not been trained in the political thinking of the ancient world, so that just as we have exported sixteenth-century theology back into ancient Galatia and made Paul's letter address our post-Reformation concerns in their own terms, we have exported modern political assumptions back into ancient Asia Minor and made Revelation, and Paul too for that matter, address our political anxieties in their own terms.

My third note is that when we therefore use scripture in little bits, cut off from their proper context and made to dance to our tunes instead, all sorts of doubts can creep in, like weeds among the wheat.

make sure we are doing justice and honour to scripture itself, rather than simply using it within schemes of our own making.

una buena exégesis de las Escrituras conduce a una exégesis correcta de la vida de la persona.

The first question we should ask about what we are reading is not "How does this apply to me?" Rather, it is "What is this passage saying in the context of the book I am reading, and how would it have been heard in the ancient world?

Literalism is a hermeneutical decision (often implicit) stemming from the belief that God's Word requires a literal reading.

a literal reading of Genesis is not the firmly settled default position of true faith to which one can "hold firm" or from which one "strays." Literalism is a hermeneutical decision (often implicit) stemming from the belief that God's Word requires a literal reading.

The body of the ponderous scholarly exegesis that began to bather around Busch in his lifetime and picked up speed after his death is witness to the humorlessness of much writing about humor.