A Beginner’s Guide to New Testament Exegesis: Taking the Fear Out of Critical Method

by Richard J. Erickson

Publisher:

IVP

, 2005

Overview

Let’s face it. Just the word exegesis puts some of us on edge. We are excited about learning to interpret the Bible, but the thought of exegetical method evokes a chill. Some textbooks on exegesis do nothing to overcome these apprehensions. The language is dense. The concepts are hard. And the expectations are way too high. However, the skills that we need to learn are ones that a minister of the gospel will use every week.

Exegesis provides the process for listening, for hearing the biblical text as if you were an ordinary intelligent person listening to a letter from Paul or a Gospel of Mark in first-century Corinth or Ephesus or Antioch. This book by Richard Erickson will help you learn this skill. Thoroughly accessible to students, it clearly introduces the essential methods of interpreting the New Testament, giving students a solid grasp of basic skills while encouraging practice and holding out manageable goals and expectations. Numerous helps and illustrations clarify, summarize, and illuminate the principles.

This is a book distinguished not so much by what it covers as by how: it removes the "fear factor" of exegesis. There are many guides to New Testament exegesis, but this one is the most accessible—and fun!

Key Features

• Provides an accessible guide to New Testament exegesis
• Introduces essential methods of biblical interpretation
• Removes the “fear-factor” of exegesis

Contents

Top Highlights

“A clause, then, is any meaningful cluster of words that includes a verb form at its heart.” (Page 72)

“Textual problems with more than one well-supported and exegetically significant variant reading.” (Page 47)

“Textual problems which are otherwise negligible, but important for other reasons.” (Page 48)

“The term phrase refers to a meaningful word-cluster that lacks a verb form.” (Page 71)

“Only those problems that have a bearing on the meaning and interpretation of the text need our attention.” (Page 46)

Praise for the Print Edition

At last! A truly helpful and realistic book on how to do exegesis of the Greek New Testament! Richard Erickson is a skillful and sympathetic guide who has a knack for explaining the process and encouraging beginners to persevere through the necessary steps, methods and approaches required to do responsible exegesis. This is a first-rate book.

—Dr. Larry R. Helyer, Professor of Biblical Studies, Taylor University

This is a very readable and enjoyable beginner’s guide written from the perspective of an experienced teacher for his students. Erickson’s interest shines throughout his engaging book, which will excite readers and help in ‘taking the fear out of critical method’. Highly recommended.

—Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 2007

Product Details

• Title: A Beginner’s Guide to New Testament Exegesis: Taking the Fear Out of Critical Method
• Author: Richard J. Erickson
• Publisher: IVP
• Publication Date: 2005
• Pages: 239
• Resource Type: Monographs
• Topic: Exegesis

About Richard J. Erickson

Rich Erickson serves as associate professor of New Testament for Fuller Online and at Fuller Seminary Northwest, in Seattle, Washington. On the faculty since 1984, he played an active role in the development of Fuller’s first off-campus cohort-based MDiv program. Erickson has over 25 years of teaching, administrative, and pastoral experience in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Colombia, Mexico, the Netherlands, China, and Cameroon. He has also published various articles on New Testament studies, and a textbook, A Beginner’s Guide to New Testament Exegesis: Taking the Fear Out of Critical Method (InterVarsity, 2005), also available in Italian. He has translated into English various Swedish-language publications, including Jean Paillard, In Praise of the Inexpressible: Paul’s Experience of the Divine Mystery (Hendrickson, 2003) and Lena Malmgren, Barbed Wire and Thorns (Hendrickson, 2007), and currently underway, a commentary on the Letters of John by Birger Olsson. He is an ordained minister in the Church of the Lutheran Brethren