Exegetical Method & Practice: What we're doing

Love Sechrest, the newest addition to Fuller’s NT faculty, is keen on the “practice” part of this Exegetical Method and Practice course that I’m taking with her. Sure, we’ll be learning the method in lectures and reading, but the focus of our assignments is on practice. We have an assigned Greek text for every session of the class; first we’re going through Romans and then Revelation. We are assigned either to do a translation of that text or a journal entry of questions related to the English text. The journal entries should contain 6-10 question from categories such as literary, historical, theological, and some critical questions from secondary literature (but a lighter emphasis on this last category).

On top of those daily assignments are several assignments related to our primary selected passage. Mine is Revelation 4:1-11. For this passage, we will do 1-3 page summary of text criticism in the passage, a sentence diagram of any 7 continuous verses from our passage, and an arcing diagram. Since the narrative of Revelation is not conducive to “arcing” (and don’t ask me what that is, because I don’t know yet), those of us with Revelation passages (me) will submit an arcing diagram for Romans 4:1-16. We will also submit an “Exegetical Working Paper” for the rest of the students in the class to read for the day when our passage it going to be discussed (discussion for my passage is on 5/14). The “working paper” will be three pages (single-spaced) summarizing the significant exegetical and theological issues for our passage. Finally, our final exegesis paper will be based on this passage. This is expected to be 10-15 pages and should put forth a thesis statement and argument regarding how this passage should be interpreted. That might be a little difficult for me because I find it hard to stick to one meaning in any given passage.

Here’s the weight for grading:

Daily translations and journals (15%)
Exegetical assignments (15%)
Exegetical working paper (30%)
Final exegesis paper (40%)

A lot of work! To be honest, though, I would prefer more work because (1) it spreads the grade out amidst lots of assignments and (2) it provides for a greater learning experience. The grading appears to hold a high standard: A is 96 or above; A- is 93-96; B+ is 90-92! Not much room for error.

As far as learning method, we will be reading through the hard copies of Michael Gorman’s Elements of Biblical Exegesis: A Basic Guide for Students and Ministers and David Alan Black‘s New Testament Textual Criticism: A Concise Guide. Those are the books that were required for purchase. But we also have an electronic reader including large selections from Gordan Fee’s New Testament Exegesis: A Handbook for Students and Pastors, Joel Green’s Hearing the New Testament: Strategies for Interpretation, Sandra Hack Polaski’s A Feminist Introduction to Paul, Amy-Jill Levine’s, et al., “Roundtable Discussion: Anti-Judaism and Postcolonial Biblical Interpretation” from the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 10/1 (Spr 2004). On this CD-ROM reader, we also have two introductions from a commentary on Romans (Dunn) and one on Revelation (Beale). It seems to be a pretty good mix, and not narrowed in on one author’s approach. It will highlight the traditional historical-critical methods, literary methods (particularly OT intertextuality), and we will even explore ideological/reader’s response methods such as African American, Postcolonial, and Feminist hermeneutics.