Digital Logos Edition
World-renowned scholar Michael Gorman presents a straightforward approach to the complex task of biblical exegesis. This third edition of Gorman’s widely used and trusted textbook (over 60,000 copies sold) has been thoroughly updated and revised to reflect developments in the academy and the classroom over the past decade. The new edition explains recent developments in theological interpretation and explores missional and non-Western readings of the biblical text. Adaptable for students in various settings, it includes clear explanations, practical hints, suggested exercises, and sample papers.
“A more modest and appropriate primary goal would be to achieve a credible and coherent understanding of the text on its own terms and in its own context.” (Page 5)
“Exegesis, then, is investigation, conversation, and art—in context. As conversation and art that takes place in particular contexts, and in collaboration with interpreters in different contexts (past and present), exegesis requires an openness to others and to the text that method alone cannot provide. However, without a method, exegesis is no longer an investigation. Thus the principal focus of this book is on developing an exegetical method.” (Page 8)
“An analytical approach is fundamentally a modern way of studying texts that seeks to understand them in terms of their historical development, their literary features, or both.” (Page 9)
“Exegesis may also be defined as a conversation. It is a conversation with readers living and dead, more learned and less learned, absent and present. It is a conversation about texts and their contexts, about sacred words and their claims—and the claims others have made about them. As conversation, exegesis entails listening to others, even others with whom we disagree. It is a process best carried out in the company of other people through reading and talking with them—carefully, critically, and creatively—about texts. The isolated reader is not the ideal biblical exegete.” (Page 6)
“The second factor, therefore, is context—literary and rhetorical as well as historical, social, and cultural.” (Page 46)