A Beginner's Guide to New Testament Exegesis: Taking the Fear out of Critical Method

Richard J. Erickson

Jan 2013 · InterVarsity Press

About this ebook

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. And a wealth of exercises tied to each chapter are available on the web. 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!

About the author

Richard J. Erickson (Ph.D., Fuller Theological Seminary) is associate professor of New Testament at Fuller Seminary Northwest in Seattle, where he has taught exegesis to students for over twenty years. Erickson has also taught courses at Lutheran Brethren Seminaries in Kaélé, Cameroon, and Sendai, Japan, at Seminario Bíblico de Colombia in Medellín, at Seminario Teológico Presbiteriano San Pablo in Mérida, Yucatán, and at Tyndale Theological Seminary in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Erickson has published several articles in professional journals and in Faith and Fellowship, the denominational magazine of the Church of the Lutheran Brethren, the church in which he is ordained. He has also presented research papers at professional meetings and is a frequent speaker at various churches and conferences.