Exegesis vs. Eisegesis: Are You Reading Scripture or Reading into It?

I went to ten years of seminary and skipped out on fast food to buy Logos books because I wanted to know as best a human could how to interpret the Bible well. I had teachers and mentors—and especially one pastor—who clearly had the tools I lacked for pursuing a careful and confident understanding of Scripture.

My desire impelled me into the world of scriptural exegesis—and away from its doppelganger, eisegesis. I want to submit to the text, not make the text submit to me. But how can I make sure to exegete and not eisegete? Ultimately, the direction of your heart—toward the Lord or toward some other God—will determine whether you truly listen to his speech in Scripture. But if your heart is for the Lord but your mind needs some assistance gaining listening skills, I’ll try in this article to provide you some categories and tips that will help you engage in exegesis.

Understanding the basic concepts

Let me introduce exegesis to you, at least in the way I think about it.

What is exegesis?

“Exegesis” is the word that careful interpreters of Scripture use to describe their interpretation.

People who know and use this word tend to know enough Greek to recognize its etymological source: exegesis is “drawing out of” (ἐξηγέομαι/exegeomai) the text what’s in there. In the Greek of New Testament times—though the word is not used in the New Testament—exegesis (ἐξήγησις) came to mean description, explanation, or interpretation.¹

Exegesis in English today is the technical term for careful, methodical scriptural interpretation.

Someone who performs exegesis is an “exegete.”

An approach to Scripture such a person takes is called “exegetical.”

What is eisegesis?

“Eisegesis” is a back-formation, a word invented to distinguish exegesis from its evil twin. Eisegesis is interpretation that goes the wrong direction: it “draws into” (Greek εἰς/eis) the text a meaning that the interpreter puts there, even if unintentionally.

Contrary to what some articles on the internet say, the word eisegesis does not derive from the Greek word εἰσηγέομαι/eisegeomai. That word had a distinct meaning in ancient Greek, and it had nothing to do with interpretation.² The word eisegesis is actually a kind of obscure pun for nerds. It was invented only in the late 1800s.³

Like most evil twins, eisegesis can deceive the unwary for a good while. It is a technical term for bad Bible interpretation, especially the kind that obviously imports meaning from elsewhere—from one’s denominational tradition or preferred worldview, for example.

A real-life example of eisegesis

I heard someone on YouTube recently insist, at length and with some initially credible detail, that Bible translations the world over are hiding the truth by refusing to translate a certain Greek word correctly. That word was μέλλω, which is usually translated “about to.” Sure enough, this someone showed eight passages in which μέλλω was (allegedly) mistranslated as a mere future, not as conveying imminence. For example, most often μέλλω is translated as it is in Luke 19:4: “He was about to pass that way.” But in many eschatological passages, translations include no idea of imminence, translating μέλλω as a simple future: “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Luke 3:7).

I’m naturally suspicious when someone says that a given word always means the same thing. Language just doesn’t work that way. Human language is not math. This is my intuitive hermeneutics guiding my exegesis.

I also had categories ready for this question. I had software tools. Two years after leaving Logos’s employ, I still feel the urge to say: I turned to Logos not out of contractual obligation but because it is genuinely the best tool for the job. The Bible Word Study is something I could not live without.

The first category I reached for was “semantic range.” What senses are among the range of meanings that the word μέλλω can convey? Instantly—thanks to Logos and the tools in it—I had a large stack of verses using μέλλω to examine for contextual clues. And I was awash in literary and grammatical labels like “periphrasis” and “futurity.” I could understand these because others in the tradition of exegesis had slowly established them and then taught them to me.

Try Logos’s Bible Word Study on μέλλω for yourself. Start a free trial!

I had other tools to turn to as well—tools with their own labels, such as “lexicon,” and their own set of conceptual tools and literary labels, such as “sense 1” and “extrabiblical citation.” Ultimately, through the BDAG lexicon, I confirmed what I had seen on my own in the Logos Bible Word Study: Native speakers and writers of Koine Greek simply did not use μέλλω to communicate imminence (something “about to” happen) in every last instance; it sometimes conveys merely that something will happen, or that someone intends for it to, at an undetermined point in the future.

I performed an act of “exegesis,” because I refined my interpretive intuitions about human communication with carefully formed concepts, useful labels, and trusted tools.

Eisegesis is what, I soon discovered, this YouTuber was doing. This YouTuber brought a preconceived notion to the text, a theological view called “preterism,” in which end-time promises in the New Testament are viewed as already having been fulfilled. I cannot, on the basis of the word μέλλω, say that preterism is all wrong. But I can say that the preterists I found online discussing μέλλω read “into” that word a meaning that—because of my exegetical tools—I know to be incorrect.

Eisegesis is more than just misreading. We all do that sometimes. Eisegesis is importing meaning into the text that you want to find there and then yelling, “Eureka!”

How to do exegesis instead of eisegesis

Now here’s what everyone immediately wants to know: How do I know I’m doing exegesis and not eisegesis? What is the golden key, the silver bullet, the holy algorithm, that will reliably produce the former and not the latter?

Is exegesis even possible?

It’s obvious: Exegesis is what I do with the Bible; eisegesis is what other people do with it. Right?

Wrong. If exegesis were always easy to distinguish from eisegesis, presumably we would have fewer theological disagreements in the Christian church. And there would be only one commentary for each book of the Bible. (And Logos would be much cheaper, though far less enjoyable.)

In real life with fallen and finite people such as ourselves, the line between exegesis and eisegesis is not always clear. These twins are (oh, forgive me, reader) conjoined. To use another image: The wheat of good Bible interpretation and the tares of bad will grow together till the end of the age.

But even if doctors have not yet gained the ability to perfectly separate these twins, there are two distinct heartbeats. For if there is finally no difference at all between reading out of the Bible and reading into it, we are of all men most to be pitied. In such cases, God would be stuck behind the bars of the limits of language and of human nature. Every group that thinks it hears him would be hearing only its own echo.

This is more or less what certain skeptics say about evangelical Bible reading. And I will briefly dig into this objection in a follow-up to this piece on hermeneutics. Just you wait.

Exegesis as careful labeling

To “draw out” of a text what is there, you must begin by seeing with clarity what is in fact there.

So exegesis necessarily entails the careful use of conceptual tools. These could be as simple as:

• grammatical labels such as “noun” and “verb,”
• literary genre labels such as “narrative” and “poetry,” and
• literary device labels such as “parallelism” and “hyperbole.”

These could be as complex as:

• discourse markers,
• text-critical dilemmas, and
• elaborate chiasms.⁴

Exegesis pays attention to:

• the meaning of individual words,
• the literary context of any sentence,
• the historical-cultural context of the audience and author,
• the intertextuality (quotations, allusions, and echoes of previous scriptural—and other—texts), and
• syntax (the relationships between words and phrases).

You can do exegesis without technical labels, but you can’t do it without the concepts those labels point to. And the most efficient way to share those concepts with others is to use commonly recognized labels. In other words, other exegetes will recognize your Bible interpretation as “exegesis” when you are able to slow down and give names—names drawn from the tradition of Christian literary and theological analysis of Scripture—to the textual features you see.

To exegete is to learn to put agreed-upon labels on features of ancient human communication using intuitions formed, unavoidably, by your contemporary human communication. It is to understand a text better than you used to because you used labels to slow yourself down and unpack the passage.

Finding help for your exegesis

Presuming that the would-be exegete is a regenerated Christian believer who is praying for illumination, obeying Christ in daily life, and (therefore) attending and serving in a properly constituted local church—presuming all that, I can offer some practical resources for doing exegesis over eisegesis.

1. Find good models

My most important pastoral mentor often said that good interpretation is caught as much as taught.⁵ If exegesis is the careful use of technical tools that refine and put labels on readerly intuition, then it’s something like an art (intuition) being helped by a science (technical tools). And the way to learn exegesis, as with any combination of art and science, is through explicit instruction from models. (When is that not the answer?)

2. Books and resources

But if you’ve already had good instruction from good models, then I think the most practical thing you can do is to grab good exegetical tools and start using them.

I really love The Hermeneutical Spiral, by Grant Osborne. It contains countless practical pieces of advice for exegesis. So does Interpreting the Pauline Epistles, by Tom Schreiner. Logos carries many other books on hermeneutics that have much to say about exegesis.

Such books will often give you step-by-step processes to follow, questions to ask, things to look for, and—all-importantly—labels to use when you find those things.

3. Step-by-step instructions

I remember the days when “exegesis” began with me reading the passage and asking myself, “Now what?” I had no idea what to do next.

If you have had literally no idea what to do in biblical exegesis, Logos Workflows can help. They are step-by-step guides (a few of which I wrote, such as English Word Study) with questions to answer and blanks to fill in. These scaffolds are meant to fall away after a time. But they can be immensely helpful to the beginning or intermediate student.

Another important set of exegetical tools you may want to use on a regular basis comes in the Logos Exegetical Guide. Give the guide a Bible reference—Matthew 5:22, say—and it will organize information from your Logos library according to certain important steps in the exegetical process.

The Exegetical Guide will give you:

• Notes, highlights, sermons, and other material you have created on the given passage
• Important textual variants in your passage and how to study them in greater depth
• A list of the most important words in your text with links to study them further
• A list of grammatical constructions found in your passage with links to grammars that discuss them in greater detail
• Links to commentaries and resources that discuss key words in your text—even commentaries that aren’t on the book you’re studying
• Important cross references
• Links to ancient literature, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls or the apocrypha, that reference your passage
• Links to commentaries and journals on your particular passage

A library-powered assistant for your study

Let me offer just one more tip: I’m getting more and more excited about the Logos Study Assistant, a powerful tool that searches my Logos library for answers to my questions.

I have asked it a few exegetical questions in recent weeks, and each time I have been happy with the results. I asked it about the Greek word μέλλω, for example, and this is what it came up with:

Claude and Gemini and other tools do, in my testing, offer valuable responses to questions like these. But they don’t link me to further discussions in my Logos library, and they don’t rely on vetted resources the way Study Assistant does (because, by definition, I have vetted the resources that go into my Logos library, but only the great AI spirit knows what books it has consumed on its way to giving me an answer). Also, because Study Assistant usually just paraphrases relevant material from my books, it doesn’t hallucinate—and it can (other users tell me they notice this) speak with a little more humility instead of the false confidence that other AI tools sometimes have.

Exegetical questions are often conceptual questions, things I never thought a computer could answer. I think I’m ready to say that the Logos Study Assistant—when paired with a good Logos library—is a useful substitute for an exegetical mentor if you lack such a person in your life. And if you do have more advanced exegetical skills, it is a phenomenal his girl Friday. I have a video coming out on AI tools in Bible study on my own channel soon, and Logos fares well.

Conclusion

Scriptural exegesis is valuable because God’s word is valuable, because living a life pleasing to him is incredibly valuable. If you consistently perform eisegesis rather than exegesis, you are your own God. How can you say you love someone but then refuse to listen to him? There are infinite riches to discover in God and, therefore, in his word. Let us pray that the Lord would not permit us to replace his words with our own.

Share your thoughts

What’s the difference between exegesis and eisegesis? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Mark Ward’s suggested reading

Related content

• What Is Exegesis & Why Is It Important? Plus, How to Start
• What Is Hermeneutics? | Kevin Vanhoozer
• What Is This Thing Called Bible Study?
• 7 Steps: How to Do an Inductive Bible Study
• How to Ask Excellent Bible Study Discussion Questions

1. William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago, 2000).
2. BDAG says it meant, “to bring to bear on a matter,” and it offers the glosses “display” and “apply.” Arndt, Greek-English Lexicon, 294.
3. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v., “eisegesis.”
4. Though I am of the party that tends to believe that proposed chiasms are usually eisegetical!
5. Technically, he said this of expository preaching, not good interpretation. But the two are so related that the latter applies to the former: Good exposition requires good exegesis.