Bible 10 How To Write An Exegetical Paper & Questions March 21, 2014

Exegesis: Textual Background Skim the entire book (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) Read the headings, skim Jesus’ words, read occasional topic sentences This will help you get a general feel for the book Look up a structural outline of your Gospel For example: Figure out where your text fits into the structure Carefully read immediate context AT LEAST 2 chapters before and after your text Read chapters in the same section of your text Write notes of what happens in each section

Exegesis: Cultural/Historical Background Read your passage carefully and highlight, underline, or write down words, phrases, sayings, quotes, or anything that you think might be significant or difficult to understand. Look those terms or phrases up in a Bible Dictionary For example: Look up your passage in my Green Book IVP Bible Background Commentary by Craig Keener Take note of background information you missed

Extraction Section In the extraction section, you will be: 1.Retelling everything that happens in your text to the smallest detail. 2.Incorporating the information that you gleaned from Background research. For a guide to formatting check out the paper on my blog: formatting/

Interpretation Section What did this mean to the original audience? The original audience of Jesus’ words/action (Pharisees, Disciples, Crowds, etc.) The original audience of the written Gospel. (1 st century Palestine inhabitants) If you cannot answer this question, then you probably did not do a sufficient job on your background section.

Application Section Contemporize. Before doing any personal application, draw modern parallels. Characters Objects Societal Phenomena If Jesus wanted to communicate (either through action or word) the same thing today, what would that look like? Apply. Now that you know what it looks like today… What does it mean to you? How will you live your life differently? How would you look at Jesus differently?