The Skills

I imagine exegesis having three general moments, and to get at those three moments, I teach nine different skills. Here is a table to explain what I mean:

Here are short descriptions of each skill we practice in Into the New Testament. Follow the links to find out more about the skill.

1. Zooming In

The first moment in exegesis is just trying to figure out the general flow of things. What is going on? What is this text about?

Tracing Action and Argument

What is the shape of a New Testament story's plot? What is the conflict in the text? Where is the high point of the action? In these activities, you will outline both narrative and non-narrative texts, looking closely at what kind of argument takes shape over several verses.

Ready to practice? If you you want to go directly to practice activities, click on Activity Grid in the navigation bar at the top of any page.

Comparing Similar Texts

Many times, the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke have similar stories, but their details are different. Some passages in Paul's letters are closely related to each other too. Here you will discover how similar New Testament texts are alike and different from each other.

Comparing Translations

Why do we have so many translations, and why do they differ? In these activities, you will compare English translations of the Greek New Testament and reflect on the perspective from which you evaluate a translation or create your own.

2. Looking Around

In the hospital, if someone is oriented to time, place and person, they are aware of their surroundings and can describe the world in which they find themselves. In this exegetical moment, you move from a general understanding of the text to a closer reading, looking at specialized vocabulary, characterization, setting and so on.

Studying Words

A key word may be something simple, like the word for "road" or "way." A key word may also be something with explicit theological content, like "righteousness." In these activities, you will use a lexicon and a concordance as well as your Bible to find clues to a word's meaning in one context from reading the word in several contexts.

Paying Attention to Time

New Testament texts also include all sorts of references to time. Things like days of the week, seasons of the year, festival times and times of day are mentioned, as well as more explicitly theological references to time, such as those referring to "the Day of the Lord." Here you will practice recognizing time markers in NT texts.

Paying Attention to Place

Like any other stories, New Testament stories have settings. The setting we look at in these activities is the narrative setting, not the setting of the time and place where the NT document may have been written. Is the action taking place in a synagogue? On a mountain? In a particular city? Here you will be looking at texts to see what they say about their location. 

Getting to Know Characters

Characters may make several appearances within the New Testament or only one. They may have names in the story or not. The characters are sometimes human beings, sometimes demons. Many times God is a character in the stories. In these activities, you will look at how characters are portrayed differently by different authors and decide what might be "in character" for them, given what each author tells you

3. Zooming Out

Texts and their readers always exist within broad networks of relationships. In the third exegetical moment, you do some things to attend to the contexts of a text.

Seeing the Big Picture

With all this close reading, we could end up spending all of our time with details and never have a sense of how the details shape a larger picture. In these activities, you will practice looking for connections between individual texts in the New Testament and the larger message of the books in which they appear.

Doing Something Creative

How would you tell a portion of scripture to a child? How would you tell it to anyone without a Bible handy? What might you say in a letter to one of the characters? How might you pray the text? Here you practice interacting with the text in self-consciously imaginative ways.

What's Next?

Click on one of the skill titles to read resource material on that unit of Into the New Testament, or click the next button to go to the Activity Grid and choose a problem to start working on.

Go to Activity Grid