#50-2-Follow: 50 NT Scholars to Read and Follow—Grant Macaskill

The modern practice of exegesis is a very particular way of engaging with the biblical texts, driven by the values and priorities of the modern academic world. (The word “exegesis” itself is actually very recent, although it sounds old.) Usually, this is about retrieving something historical, whether that is the author’s original meaning or some set of circumstances behind the text. That’s fine, and the results of modern exegesis can be very important, but we need to appreciate that there are other ways of engaging with the text that might be more relevant to our task, depending on what we are really trying to do when we read the Bible. Sometimes this can simply involve recognising that ancient readers of Scripture (such as the New Testament authors or other contemporary Jewish readers) did not practice modern exegetical method when they read or combined scriptural texts. They followed different interpretative and creative principles. Sometimes, it means learning to read the Biblical material in different ways, in dialogue with theology or with ideological reflection. When we are trying to use the Bible in normative ways, in relation to ethics or doctrine, that becomes particularly important: we are often horribly naïve to the assumptions we make when we try to make our modern exegesis the basis for truth claims.