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Biblical Exegesis: A Beginner's Handbook
John Hayes and Carl Holladay have thoroughly revised and expanded this best-selling textbook, adding new chapters on emerging methods of interpretation and the use of computer technology for exegesis. All bibliographies have been updated, and Scripture has been converted to the NRSV. This new edition retains the features of the early editions: a minimum of technical terms, solid introductory guidelines in exegetical methods, and a valuable presentation of exegetical theory and practice. It is ideal for general introductory exegesis courses, introductions to the Old and New Testaments, and introduction to preaching, as well as for pastors and lay leaders.
230 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
August 18, 2022
اگر به خاطر معرفی مفصل منابع مطالعاتی در پایان هر فصل نبود، دو ستاره میدادم.
July 24, 2022
I am of two minds on this book. On the one hand, it is clear, accessible, broad, and practical as a handbook and introduction. It gives the reader short introductions to various kinds of criticism and exegetical foci or methods. I know of no other textbook that accomplishes the same things with such brevity. It is also surprisingly neutral, though several kinds of criticism and exegesis are given a small amount of space. This could be the bias of the authors or the fact that the book is a bit outdated. I personally didn't mind as most of those forms of criticism are fairly self-explanatory and methodologically overlap.
On the other hand, it is nowhere near as practical as Fee's NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS, nor does it present a detailed or step-by-step method of exegesis. Readers will easily read the book and potentially walk away not knowing how to do exegesis (as I understand it) at all. The book's neutrality is also somewhat mysterious. While it does not present anything shocking or new, a conservative or evangelical picking up the book may find some sections a splash of cold water to the face. And fundamentalists would probably go apoplectic. I would have expected a gentler introduction to understanding different presuppositions we bring to the text. One of the positive things about the book is its brevity, and I suppose this is part of the trade-off.
This book is a good survey of what kind of criticism, methods, tools, and resources are out there and gives a very broad introduction to approaching exegesis. It would be partnered well with something that teaches a more practical method of exegesis using the historical-grammatical method like GRASPING GOD'S WORD or NEW/OLD TESTAMENT EXEGESIS.
On the other hand, it is nowhere near as practical as Fee's NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS, nor does it present a detailed or step-by-step method of exegesis. Readers will easily read the book and potentially walk away not knowing how to do exegesis (as I understand it) at all. The book's neutrality is also somewhat mysterious. While it does not present anything shocking or new, a conservative or evangelical picking up the book may find some sections a splash of cold water to the face. And fundamentalists would probably go apoplectic. I would have expected a gentler introduction to understanding different presuppositions we bring to the text. One of the positive things about the book is its brevity, and I suppose this is part of the trade-off.
This book is a good survey of what kind of criticism, methods, tools, and resources are out there and gives a very broad introduction to approaching exegesis. It would be partnered well with something that teaches a more practical method of exegesis using the historical-grammatical method like GRASPING GOD'S WORD or NEW/OLD TESTAMENT EXEGESIS.
September 20, 2023
A solid introduction to exegesis, but I must emphasize the word "beginner's" in the subtitle. This truly is an introductory crash course, and aims to be as brief as possible, and therefore has some considerable limitations.
For example, the book introduces approaches without demonstrating them. For example, in the chapter on form criticism, it mentions that form critics would compare the miracle stories in the Gospels to other ancient miracle stories in order to better understand the genre of pericope, and therefore better analyze the content of the stories. It is at this point that the writers should have actually done this; they should have shown how Markan miracle stories might be compared side-by-side with another ancient miracle story. They mention methods, but rarely demonstrate them by walking through actual passages and texts with any detail.
The book is helpful, as only the most basic introduction. For many students, it's a good starting point. However, I don't think a student could read this book and actually "do" any real exegesis. They'd need to go beyond this book and track down examples in order to really learn how the methods can be employed.
For example, the book introduces approaches without demonstrating them. For example, in the chapter on form criticism, it mentions that form critics would compare the miracle stories in the Gospels to other ancient miracle stories in order to better understand the genre of pericope, and therefore better analyze the content of the stories. It is at this point that the writers should have actually done this; they should have shown how Markan miracle stories might be compared side-by-side with another ancient miracle story. They mention methods, but rarely demonstrate them by walking through actual passages and texts with any detail.
The book is helpful, as only the most basic introduction. For many students, it's a good starting point. However, I don't think a student could read this book and actually "do" any real exegesis. They'd need to go beyond this book and track down examples in order to really learn how the methods can be employed.
January 13, 2022
Yum. Ok. I read it for research purposes re: uni research project BUT from a broader perspective it’s a rly good book for getting some insight into biblical history which I think could be super interesting if ur interested in biblical themes and imagery in literature. Moreover, it’s really really well written and a very easy read which is rare for biblical study books. Only 4 bc I skipped a lot for it lacking relevance to my project therefore can give a fair opinion of all chapters.
September 19, 2022
It's a great introduction to exegetical modalities and practical guide to application.
April 8, 2023
An in-depth and helpful overview of different methods of Biblical exegesis.
March 5, 2011
One of the many flavors of introductory biblical criticism books available. What I enjoyed about this book—and one of its particular aims—was its fresh, non-technical presentation of thoughts and ideas under consideration, casting new light on familiar concepts and grounding them in the everyday world, and how it made plain the many questions we oftentimes intuitively ask about the text, but aren't fully aware of doing. This book takes the common sense from which the sophistication of biblical criticism has been built and exposes it, which is truly delightful.
When I read that it was going to have a two-testament approach, I was skeptical. Other such books that have attempted a more holistic, inclusive outlook (such as To Each Its Own Meaning by McKenzie and Haynes), have tended to draw from their pool of examples unevenly. It is certainly instructive, for instance, for a person in New Testament studies to see a certain methodology or concept applied to a Hebraic text (or vice versa), but to see this play out in one's specific field of study—especially when dealing with an introductory book—is a necessity. Although many of the examples given in this book are widely used, appearing in other forms of this literature, I was pleasantly surprised by the very balanced treatment of both testaments throughout. This increases its value to students of both fields. The only place where I felt more could have been provided was in the discussion of textual families, which focused almost exclusively on New Testament texts without revealing the hidden secret (at least to new exegetes) that the so-called Masoretic Text is really a family or type of text and not a single manuscript.
One book belonging to this type of literature is Reading the Old Testament by John Barton. I love that book. And this is certainly no match for Barton. But one thing Barton lacked was any historical treatment of the texts. This book includes a very welcome chapter on historical criticism including a brief introduction to Reception History. The latter proved worthwhile because it revealed to me a conundrum I experienced when talking about biblical interpretation with certain varieties of religious folk. I would say something about doing historical work with the text, and they would respond favorably, but interpret me to be speaking about interpretations of the text throughout history within the church (like what Augustine or Luther might have thought the text meant). Thanks to this book, I now understand them to be speaking of Reception History, a valuable tool of interpretation to be sure, but something entirely different.
Another welcome insight provided by this book occurred in the chapter on Grammatical Criticism, where it laid out various common pitfalls encountered by those attempting to gain an informed reading of the text through its grammar and syntax. I have a feeling that some of this is discussed in a book I've been meaning to read by James Barr called The Semantics of Biblical Language. This was incredibly revealing and even corrected a few mistakes that I, myself, have made in the past.
There are, however, a number of problems. Its treatment of what it calls “special focus” exegesis (like cultural, gender, sexual, economic, and other such perspectives) is appallingly brief. It lumps together the past thirty or forty years, which saw an explosion of new critical perspectives that radically changed the field of biblical studies, into one chapter. And that is the single shortest chapter in the book. What it does in that chapter, it does well, such as introducing us to Liberation Theology (and giving me my first glimpse at Queer Theory), but one would expect at least as much time and attention to this whole new arena as was given to the other in chapters 2-10. This is where a book like To Each Its Own Meaning outshines it, with individual chapters dedicated to things like Social-Scientific Criticism, Rhetorical Criticism and Intertextuality, Narrative Criticism, Reader-Response Criticism, and Feminist Criticism. This is a serious fault of the book. It is floating above a two-star rating only on the strength of its other parts. And, finally, I have mixed feelings about the Appendix—a section on computers and internet. The authors acknowledge how out-of-date it will likely be by the time it is published and that is certainly true at time of my reading. But I'm really not sure how helpful it is. Whatever generation is reading this book nowadays is pretty computer and internet savvy. If the Appendix tells them anything that would be useful to their studies, it is quite likely that they already know about it or have experience with it. Additionally, if they were going to go the route of exposing their readers in a general sense to different computer software useful in biblical studies, it would have been beneficial to include references to less known, but just as helpful and powerful alternatives that exist outside the proprietary world (like BibleTime, Xiphos, Alkitab, and PocketSword).
When I read that it was going to have a two-testament approach, I was skeptical. Other such books that have attempted a more holistic, inclusive outlook (such as To Each Its Own Meaning by McKenzie and Haynes), have tended to draw from their pool of examples unevenly. It is certainly instructive, for instance, for a person in New Testament studies to see a certain methodology or concept applied to a Hebraic text (or vice versa), but to see this play out in one's specific field of study—especially when dealing with an introductory book—is a necessity. Although many of the examples given in this book are widely used, appearing in other forms of this literature, I was pleasantly surprised by the very balanced treatment of both testaments throughout. This increases its value to students of both fields. The only place where I felt more could have been provided was in the discussion of textual families, which focused almost exclusively on New Testament texts without revealing the hidden secret (at least to new exegetes) that the so-called Masoretic Text is really a family or type of text and not a single manuscript.
One book belonging to this type of literature is Reading the Old Testament by John Barton. I love that book. And this is certainly no match for Barton. But one thing Barton lacked was any historical treatment of the texts. This book includes a very welcome chapter on historical criticism including a brief introduction to Reception History. The latter proved worthwhile because it revealed to me a conundrum I experienced when talking about biblical interpretation with certain varieties of religious folk. I would say something about doing historical work with the text, and they would respond favorably, but interpret me to be speaking about interpretations of the text throughout history within the church (like what Augustine or Luther might have thought the text meant). Thanks to this book, I now understand them to be speaking of Reception History, a valuable tool of interpretation to be sure, but something entirely different.
Another welcome insight provided by this book occurred in the chapter on Grammatical Criticism, where it laid out various common pitfalls encountered by those attempting to gain an informed reading of the text through its grammar and syntax. I have a feeling that some of this is discussed in a book I've been meaning to read by James Barr called The Semantics of Biblical Language. This was incredibly revealing and even corrected a few mistakes that I, myself, have made in the past.
There are, however, a number of problems. Its treatment of what it calls “special focus” exegesis (like cultural, gender, sexual, economic, and other such perspectives) is appallingly brief. It lumps together the past thirty or forty years, which saw an explosion of new critical perspectives that radically changed the field of biblical studies, into one chapter. And that is the single shortest chapter in the book. What it does in that chapter, it does well, such as introducing us to Liberation Theology (and giving me my first glimpse at Queer Theory), but one would expect at least as much time and attention to this whole new arena as was given to the other in chapters 2-10. This is where a book like To Each Its Own Meaning outshines it, with individual chapters dedicated to things like Social-Scientific Criticism, Rhetorical Criticism and Intertextuality, Narrative Criticism, Reader-Response Criticism, and Feminist Criticism. This is a serious fault of the book. It is floating above a two-star rating only on the strength of its other parts. And, finally, I have mixed feelings about the Appendix—a section on computers and internet. The authors acknowledge how out-of-date it will likely be by the time it is published and that is certainly true at time of my reading. But I'm really not sure how helpful it is. Whatever generation is reading this book nowadays is pretty computer and internet savvy. If the Appendix tells them anything that would be useful to their studies, it is quite likely that they already know about it or have experience with it. Additionally, if they were going to go the route of exposing their readers in a general sense to different computer software useful in biblical studies, it would have been beneficial to include references to less known, but just as helpful and powerful alternatives that exist outside the proprietary world (like BibleTime, Xiphos, Alkitab, and PocketSword).
May 14, 2011
I enjoyed this book tremendously, and learned a great deal. I thought it would be a chore to read, but I ended up whipping right through it in three days. The Bible is a fascinating,complex, controversial, and remarkable book,and this guide--written for first year seminarians--serves as an excellent place to begin the academic study of the Good Book.
There are many lenses through which one can study the bible: historical criticism, form criticism, canonical criticism, feminist criticism, etc. These are all honorable, interesting points of view into an ancient text, and I am glad to know more about each school of thought. Yet, as I read, I kept thinking of Walt Whitman's poem "When I heard the learn'd astronomer":
WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; 5
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
As engaging as it is to deconstruct the Bible, it remains a book with a synergistic power beyond the sum of its parts. And that, my friends, is why I read it.
There are many lenses through which one can study the bible: historical criticism, form criticism, canonical criticism, feminist criticism, etc. These are all honorable, interesting points of view into an ancient text, and I am glad to know more about each school of thought. Yet, as I read, I kept thinking of Walt Whitman's poem "When I heard the learn'd astronomer":
WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; 5
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
As engaging as it is to deconstruct the Bible, it remains a book with a synergistic power beyond the sum of its parts. And that, my friends, is why I read it.
March 4, 2016
The bottom line: If you are seeking an introduction to the world of exegesis, this is a good place to start.
From its back cover, Biblical Exegesis “introduces solid guidelines on exegetical methods” and presents how these methods play out in practice. This book is not an in-depth analysis of exegetical methods, nor does it claim to do that.
What Biblical Exegesis does accomplish is to equip readers with a basic set of ... http://www.chesadaphal.com/biblical-e...
From its back cover, Biblical Exegesis “introduces solid guidelines on exegetical methods” and presents how these methods play out in practice. This book is not an in-depth analysis of exegetical methods, nor does it claim to do that.
What Biblical Exegesis does accomplish is to equip readers with a basic set of ... http://www.chesadaphal.com/biblical-e...
December 11, 2015
I am using this as a text in a hermeneutics course that I am teaching in the spring. I read an older edition of it in seminary, so I was mainly familiarizing myself with this newer edition. It continues to serve as a great "starter" book for the principles and processes of biblical exegesis, interpretation and application.
May 9, 2016
An easy to understand guide on the various ways to study the Bible. Easy explanations for beginners and the more advanced. Bibliographies on each chapter give direction on where to look for more in-depth study.
March 8, 2011
Solid, clear presentation of biblical interpretation theory and method. Essential to understanding the Bible.
October 29, 2012
A helpful handbook!
January 20, 2015
Biblical exegesis, third edition
I found the book to be very interesting and informative. It explains how to exegesis a bible passage in the most informative way.
I found the book to be very interesting and informative. It explains how to exegesis a bible passage in the most informative way.
January 15, 2017
It was okay.
I talk about it in more detail on my blog:
https://seminary2016.wordpress.com/20...
I talk about it in more detail on my blog:
https://seminary2016.wordpress.com/20...
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews