Exegetical Toolkit, Part 1
Introduction and Setting in Context
(avg. read time: 8–17 mins.)
My new series for this year gives me the opportunity to develop an idea for a teaching series that never materialized at my previous congregation. In this series, I am not necessarily looking to teach exegesis (or interpretation) from the ground up. After all, there are certain fundamental matters I will not be going over here. Rather, I want to review some tools that are used in the procedure and which compose an exegetical toolkit one can draw from.
One can find recommended volumes on learning exegesis elsewhere, but one that is not as widely known that I would add to such lists of recommendations is In Step with God’s Word written by my old professor (and occasional publisher) Dr. Fredrick Long.
Not only does it provide informative guides to various steps in interpreting God’s word, but it also helpfully lays out primary, secondary, and tertiary procedures depending on one’s level of engagement with the text and one’s background knowledge/experience in scriptural interpretation. I was introduced to it in my NT901 class with Dr. Long, and the tertiary information was most helpful for our advanced level of work, and primary and secondary procedures thus correlate, broadly speaking, with beginner and intermediate stages. Readers of both of our works will certainly find disagreements (such as on text-critical matters and various other details), but I want to emphasize that this can be a helpful textbook to guide anyone wishing to engage Scripture more deeply. For this series, I will not be strictly dependent on it, but it helps as a resource for guiding what most of the parts herein address.
I should also state at the outset that no part in this series will be dedicated to discussing the work of the Holy Spirit in scriptural interpretation. This is simply because the Spirit is not a “tool” in the toolkit, and he is one who is above the process, undergirding it, and surrounding it, so to speak. I have written on this matter to some extent in my post about being a biblical scholar, and there have been scattered other reflections on the work of the Spirit in relation to Scripture (also see here). In addition to those reflections, I would like to quote here Long’s summary of some of the Spirit’s work in the interpretation and implementation of Scripture:
1. The Holy Spirit, who is completely in concert with God’s reality and love and desire of a relationship with people, will help people acquire a basic pre-understanding of essential truths for interpreting Scripture (Acts 26:18; 2 Cor 4:6; Heb 6:4; Eph 1:17–21; 3:16–19; Col 1:9–12). This pre-understanding would include God’s love for all creation and people, God’s mission to save us from sins, and God’s formation of a people who walk in the light, who perform ‘good deeds’ in the world, and who participate in God’s mission in the world (e.g., Matt 5:3–16; Gal 6:9–10; Eph 2:10; 1 Tim 2:1–7; Titus 2:11–14).
2. The Holy Spirit will foster in us a receptive disposition or yearning for Scripture, like newborn infants longing to be fed by a mother’s milk (1 Pet 2:1–3). This may be experienced as motivation, especially in an attitude of love, which seeks to respect, value, and understand ‘the other,’ i.e., that which is different, other, and strange to us. Scripture is precisely such a stranger to us, coming to us in a different languages, times, cultures, and literary forms….
3. The Holy Spirit will work for the total salvation of our hearts, minds, souls, community, and all of creation….
4. The Holy Spirit helps us to be aware of Scripture and brings to our remembrance scriptural notions and words so that we may correlate scriptural ideas. In this sense the Spirit may ‘guide’ us to ponder particular words and verses as pieces of evidence to help us interpret Scripture. As a testimony, I have often experienced the Spirit’s help to be more efficient in research and thus finding something that I remembered or that I need in a timely manner when I am actively conducting research prayerfully and attentively….
5. The Holy Spirit sustains and supports the human capacities to comprehend the truth of Scripture. Paul described a ‘renewing of one’s mind’ (Titus 3:5; Rom 12:1–2; Eph 4:23). Such renewing of the mind can be restorative of proper discernment and rationality (Heb 5:12–14)….
6. Even further, the Holy Spirit may indeed broaden one’s ‘spiritual insight’ into the nature of God, Scripture, human relationships, and life more generally. Such insight may manifest itself in creative, sympathetic, and probing reflections when interpreting Scripture.1
What we are discussing in this series are tools for interpretation, with which the Spirit can guide and shape us to develop more skill. This will not be comprehensive any more than a toolkit or toolbelt can hold all the tools one will ever need. My focus is on tools that will be more generally useful.
Finally, we should get specific here. One can lay out various principles in how these tools should be used, but the best way of seeing their usefulness is to see them actually at work with a specific text. I thought it might be cheating to use 1 Cor 15, since I already wrote on that text quite extensively for my dissertation, and specifically vv. 42–49 were my focus in my class with Dr. Long. Rather, I want to look at Revelation. And we will focus on a text that works well as an introduction to the book for those intimidated and disoriented by it: the actual introduction in Rev 1:1–8.
Setting in Context
Exegesis/interpretation requires relating a text to its context. Depending on the amount of text you are working with, the context could be a phrase, a clause, a sentence, a paragraph, a section/unit, a chapter (though for the Bible this division is usually a later introduction), a book, a corpus of books by the same author, and indeed the entire canon of Scripture or other texts besides (these texts might be referenced in some way or more generally contribute to how words, phrases, and so on were understood). More immediate levels of context can also be referred to as the “cotext,” particularly in the approach known as “discourse analysis.” Of course, there are also levels of context that go beyond the written text. There is the implied context of the situation or occasion of writing, including personal histories of author and audience (which may or may not be accessible today to varying degrees). There are various levels of the larger historical and cultural context. And there is the more universal context of broader trans-cultural concepts and themes with which a text might have connections.
My old professor Ben Witherington has an adage he frequently uses in his writing that “a text without a context is just a pretext for whatever you want it to mean.” We inherently recognize that a text needs a context, but in practice the context readers use is not always whatever is actually provided in the surrounding text. As such, I prefer to put the point in another way: context will always be provided to a text; it is simply a question of where the context comes from. People can—and often do—take statements “out of context” by ignoring what has already been supplied to help make sense of a statement, but they inevitably give it some other context to force it to make sense in a way they find more suitable for whatever purpose. Someone who does this is essentially saying by their actions, “I reject this context and substitute my own.” At the same time, even if the original context is brought “in tow” with the reference to a statement, so that the larger context is evoked, the new context does have a new effect on how we understand the older text. This will be something to address further in another part of this series when we discuss the NT use of the OT.
While authors structure their texts in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, it is not always clear how a text’s structure works. When structures such as verse divisions, chapter divisions, section/unit divisions, and (in modern Bibles) topical headings are used, there are inherently interpretive decisions being made about the boundaries of a text and its immediate context. The same applies even to punctuation given to Greek texts that originally lacked them. And one can divide texts up into multiple smaller sub-units, which involves yet other interpretive decisions. Such interpretive decisions are best justified inductively or abductively.
Moreover, when it comes to relating a text to its context, we must also consider how to describe such relationships. Inductive Bible study can be particularly helpful with this, such as through its focus on major structural relationships. One of the definitive volumes on inductive Bible study by David Bauer and Robert Traina lists the following such relationships:
Recurrence (i.e., repetition of terms, phrases, clauses, or even themes)
Semantic
Contrast (stressing difference of entities; signaled with “but,” “however,” etc.)
Comparison (stressing similarities of entities; signaled with “as,” “like,” etc.)
Climax (movement from lower to higher and highest intensity with the focus on the realization of the last)
Particularization (movement from general to particular)
Generalization (movement from particular to general)
Causation (movement from cause to effect; signaled with “consequently,” “therefore,” “thus,” etc.)
Substantiation (movement from effect to cause; signaled with “because,” “for,” “since,” etc.)
Cruciality/pivoting (movement of events or ideas to a crucial turning point)
Summarization (abridgment of material preceding or following what is summarized)
Interrogation or Problem/Solution (movement from question to answer or problem to solution)
Introduction or Preparation/Realization (provision of necessary background information to prepare the audience)
Instrumentation/Purpose (reference to the means of achieving an end; signaled with “in order that,” “so that,” etc.)
Rhetorical
Interchange (movement back and forth between ideas, characters, etc.)
Inclusion/Inclusio (“bracketing” or “bookending” units with the same words or ideas at the beginning and ending)
Chiasm (organizing in order followed by reversal of the same order, whether or not a specific middle “hinge” is involved; a text could be organized as ABCB’A’, ABCC’B’A’, or so on)
Intercalation (inserting material in the midst of another larger narrative or argument that begins and ends after the intercalated material)2
These relationships represent practically universal forms of organizing communication, and they can operate at multiple levels of context like we have laid out previously. Inductive Bible study focuses on book surveys in outlining these relationships, but the units can then be broken down into smaller portions and the internal dynamics can be outlined similarly. By the same token, inductive Bible study tends to work with translations in the reader’s mother language, but it can be and has been applied with knowledge of the original languages.
Long’s book provides some orientation for inductive Bible study, and Bauer and Traina’s book is probably the premier source in terms of providing both theory and practice. Both also refer to many other sources. There are many other resources available. My friend Kei Hiramatsu featured an extensive survey of past sources in addition to his own study in his published dissertation (which will be available in paperback this year). Others at Asbury Theological Seminary have written their dissertations using IBS (yes, there are plenty of jokes made about the use of this abbreviation every year). Kay Arthur has written much about it, and her Precept Ministries provides resources for aiding such Bible study. There is a Journal of Inductive Bible Studies. And there is a website designed to help orient people to the method.
Application to Rev 1:1–8
The unit of text we are working with here is Rev 1:1–8, the introduction of the book of Revelation. Why this boundary? Besides the sheer consideration of wanting a fairly sizable sample of text to work with, it is marked off from what follows by the fact that John speaks of himself in the first person in 1:9 while the first person is used by “the Lord God” in 1:8. John will still provide introductory information in v. 9 and following, but it is after the shift in question. This section also identifies the sender, the triune God, the messenger, John, and the recipients, the seven churches in Asia to be explicitly identified later. Additionally, it prepares for the angelic mediation for explaining the revelation in the opening sentence of 1:1. Verse 8 rounds off this part of the introduction with the closing identification of who is sending this message of revelation before the mediator identifies himself. In between these boundaries, the text can be further subdivided into an introduction identifying the senders and the text as an apocalypse/revelation (1:1–3), an epistolary prescript that in some ways resembles others we see in the NT (1:4–6), and oracles declaring the future action and identification of the source (1:7–8). This threefold subdivision comports with how the text as a whole draws on features of apocalypses, prophecies, and letters.
Here, I should also provide my translation of the text for reference:
1:1 The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him to show his servants what must happen soon/directly/quickly, and he made it known, by sending [him], through his angel to his servant, John, 2 who witnessed to the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, as much as he saw. 3 Blessed is the one who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy and who keep the things which have been written in it, for the time is near/approaching.
4 John to the seven churches that are in Asia: grace to you and peace from the one who is, [and] the one who was, and the one who is coming, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, 5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of/over the kings of the earth. To the one who loves us and released us from our sins by his blood—6 and he made us a kingdom, priests to God and to his Father—to him be glory and strength forever and ever; amen.
7 Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even the ones who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over him. Indeed, amen. 8 I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, the one who is, [and] the one who was, and the one who is coming, the Almighty One.
As this is the introduction, it has no preceding text, except on the levels of canon and corpus (provided one thinks that this properly belongs with the Johannine corpus, like I do). We will examine its role in the canonical context another time (but I have made observations more generally here and here). In the aforementioned post on the Gospel and Revelation, we have already seen some links between this text (among others) and the Gospel according to John along with the Johannine epistles. These include uses of language and themes signifying testimony/witness, glory, and so on. One could also add the significance given to the blood of Jesus, the use of the language of the OT, and the summary of the gospel, but these are more general affinities with the rest of the NT than anything particularly characteristic of John. Still, they are connections with the larger Johannine corpus. The way the Trinity is presented here is peculiar in its particular expressions, but it resonates with points we have seen elsewhere in the NT, and it prepares for what we will see elsewhere in Revelation.
As for the context of the book itself, the introduction here establishes many aspects of what we will continue to see in this book going forward. God is introduced here as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as all the persons explicitly speak and act. John is also introduced as the writer, and his angelic company is also introduced. The introduction declares that what follows is divine revelation primarily communicated visually then orally/aurally, that it constitutes prophecy, and that it is to be “kept/observed” by those who receive it. All of these points will be reiterated in the course of the book, including in how John will be shown various things (4:1; 17:1; 21:9–10; 22:1, 6, 8), referring to the revelation as prophecy (19:10; 22:7, 10, 18–19), and keeping either what is said specifically in this book (22:7, 9) or what the audience has already received (2:26; 3:3, 8, 10; 12:17; 14:12). 1:7 sets up the Lord’s coming, which will be narrated in ch. 19, and which is anticipated elsewhere (16:15; 22:7, 12, 17, 20; cf. 2:5, 16; 3:10–11). There are still other points that prepare for the rest of the book, but we will focus on those later when we focus more on particular words and phrases.
The fact that the introduction establishes the source of this revelation enforces attention on John’s subsequent narration of his first vision in 1:9–20, at which point he is instructed to write what he has seen (1:19), which was anticipated in the introduction (1:2). That vision then leads into the messages to the churches in chs. 2 and 3, which are clearly designed to be read by all of them even as they are directed at one church at a time. (In these cases, as well as the heavenly vision of chs. 4 and 5, the chapter divisions seem fairly sensible.) The description of Jesus in that vision is drawn mostly from OT texts, but it is also anticipated in this introduction. Him being dead and now alive forevermore (1:18) is anticipated by the gospel summary of his death, resurrection, and reign forever (1:5–6). The eternality implied here is also reinforced by his description as “the one who is, the one who was, and the one who is coming” (1:8; cf. 1:4). He also describes himself as the “first and the last” (1:17), which echoes his self-description as the Alpha and the Omega in 1:8. All of this is attested by John in 1:9, who has even prior to this writing attested to the word of God and the testimony of Jesus, all of which is established earlier in 1:2.
To this point, we have noted many respects in which this text functions as the introduction for Revelation, and there will be more points to note yet as we dive further into the text. All of these aspects make clear the relationship of introduction or preparation/realization for this book. There are also many examples of recurrence of terms that we have noted and still others to be explored. Other recurring elements are more thematic or conceptual, such as the epistolary form implied by this opening being reiterated in the individual letters to the seven churches, as well as the larger frame including the ending of ch. 22. To that point, we have also noted some of the elements of inclusio that appear in this introduction and ch. 22. And again, others will be noted as we continue this series. The concept and grammar of instrumentality is made clear from the beginning in how divine revelation is conveyed. Finally, the dynamic of climax in the narration of this book is set up not only from the preparation provided in the introduction to the climax in Jesus’s second coming, but it is also exemplified in the gospel story summarized here with Jesus taking his place as the ruler of the world after his death and resurrection.
Part 3: Grammatical-Syntactical Analysis
Fredrick J. Long, In Step with God’s Word: Interpreting the New Testament with God’s People, GlossaHouse Hermeneutics & Translation Series 1 (Wilmore, KY: GlossaHouse, 2017), 31–33.
David R. Bauer and Robert A. Traina, Inductive Bible Study: A Comprehensive Guide to the Practice of Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 94–122.