Biblical Hermeneutics and Exegesis

What is Biblical Hermeneutics and Exegesis?

Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation. In written texts, the same words can take on different meanings depending on the context, but the correct interpretation is the one that aligns with the author’s original intent. The goal of hermeneutics is to uncover this intended meaning. Biblical Hermeneutics is the study of principles and methods for interpreting the Bible, considering its original audience while recognizing God as its ultimate author.

Exegesis is the interpretation of the Bible by a critical objective analysis of the text. Exegesis is thus the practical application of interpretational principles to specific texts to find its meaning. This is often contrasted with eisegesis, which is the interpretation of the Bible based on a subjective analysis of the text.

Assumptions

This wiki entry assumes the following characteristics of the Bible:

• Divine inspiration and authority: God is the ultimate source of the Bible, yet He used human authors with their own personalities, vocabularies, and contexts in writing it
• Biblical inerrancy: The Bible in its original manuscripts, is completely free of error in everything it affirms
• Canonical Unity: The Bible forms a unified narrative of God’s redemptive plan

There may be differing views on the validity of these assumptions, but evaluating them lies outside the scope of this entry.

Why is Biblical Hermeneutics important?

For most believers, the Bible—the Word of God—functions as the ultimate authority for faith, doctrine, and moral living. Because Scripture is regarded as God’s self-revelation, the way one interprets it directly shapes one’s understanding of God’s character, purposes, and instructions. If a passage is misunderstood or interpreted apart from its intended meaning, the result can be serious: a person may sincerely act in ways that contradict God’s will while believing they are being obedient. Sound biblical hermeneutics protects against these dangers by providing principles and methods that help readers interpret Scripture faithfully, responsibly, and in alignment with its intended message.

Like all forms of communication, biblical texts operate according to rules and patterns that make meaning possible. There are coherent ways to understand language, genre, context, and authorial intent, and there are also interpretations that distort or ignore these factors. Good interpretation seeks to uncover what God communicated through human authors, while poor interpretation (eisegesis) imposes foreign ideas, personal biases, or modern assumptions onto the text.

Biblical Hermeneutics Principles

Hermeneutical principles can be organized into two broad categories.

1. Primary hermeneutical principles refer to interpretive guidelines that apply to any form of communication
2. Biblical hermeneutical principles are interpretive guidelines that apply specifically to the Bible

Primary Hermeneutical Principles

Primary hermeneutical principles refer to interpretive guidelines that apply to any form of communication.

Consider the context

A writer always communicates from within a particular environment, shaped by his own experiences and by what he assumes his audience already understands. To discern the intended meaning of a text, an interpreter must take these layers of context into account.

Authorial context

Authorial context concerns the relationship between a text and the author’s own life—his circumstances, experiences, worldview, and concerns. Understanding these factors can shed light on the author’s motivations and the purpose behind the writing.

When interpreting biblical texts, we must also recognize that the human author’s words are also shaped by God’s divine inspiration. The Bible presents a unique dual authorship: human authors wrote with their own language, style, and perspective, yet God guided their writing so that the resulting text faithfully communicates His message.

Literary context

Every word and sentence gains its meaning from the flow of the text around it. Proper interpretation requires attention to the immediate paragraph, the wider chapter, and the overall argument and structure of the book. No passage should be read in isolation from its literary setting.

Social and cultural context

Social and cultural context informs the interpreter of the norms, expectations, and practices that shaped how people in the text would act, think, and interact. It helps the interpreter grasp how the original audience would have understood the events or teachings described.

Examples include:

• Community obligations and social expectations
• Social roles (fathers, mothers, elders)
• Marriage customs and gender expectations
• Rules of hospitality
• Clothing, food, and ordinary daily practices
• Family patterns (such as patriarchal households)

Political context

Political context draws attention to the governmental structures and political conditions present at the time of writing. These factors shape how people perceive authority, justice, conflict, and public life.

Examples include:

• Structures of power (empires, kings, governors)
• Legal systems and forms of citizenship
• Taxation, military presence, and political unrest

Religious context

Texts involving religious claims must be interpreted within the belief systems and practices that shaped them. Understanding the religious world of the author and original audience clarifies how they would have understood doctrines, rituals, and spiritual authority.

• Beliefs, rituals, practices, festivals, and laws
• Competing belief systems

Consider the genre of text

An author would use different genres of text to communicate an intended meaning for his purpose. Therefore, the genre of text would determine how we should interpret the language or meaning—whether literal, poetic, symbolic, legal, narrative, or instructional. Proper interpretation requires applying the rules appropriate to that genre. For example, text within a poetry genre is not meant to be taken literally like descriptive texts within a historical narrative.

*Some of the principles are taken from How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart.

Historical Narrative

Historical narratives in the Bible are purposeful non-fiction accounts that recount past events. This genre includes books such as Genesis and Exodus, as well as the gospel accounts.

The overarching storyline of biblical history can be summarized as follows:

1. God, the Creator, made humans in His image, intending them to be stewards over the earth.
2. Humans were deceived by the Devil, fell into sin, and faced the consequence of death.
3. God provided redemption by sending His Son, Jesus, who atoned for sin and conquered death.

Historical narratives record events as they literally happened, often including:

• Descriptions of events and actions: Battles, journeys, and significant historical occurrences.
• Cultural, social, political, religious, and geographical context: Provides background for understanding events.
• Theological commentary: Explanations for why events occurred (e.g., punishment due to sin).
• Human conversations: Speeches, debates, prayers, and disputes.
• Divine conversations: Exchanges with God, angels, the Devil, or other spiritual beings.
• God-human conversations: Commands, instructions, judgments, and covenant agreements.

General guiding principles for interpreting biblical historical narratives

1. Usually does not directly teach a doctrine (except otherwise clearly worded as a doctrine)
2. Usually illustrates doctrine(s) taught propositionally elsewhere
3. Records what happened, not what should or ought to happen (thus may not be a good model to follow)
4. Not always told whether what happened was good or bad
5. All narratives are selective and incomplete, not all details are given

Specific guiding principles, depending on the type of content

1. Description of events and actions, including details and commentary added to provide context
   With the assumption of biblical inerrancy, one should hold that all events recorded as historical narrative in the Bible did happened and the explanatory comments or interpretive remarks provided by the biblical authors are regarded as accurate. However, several qualifications must be kept in mind:
   • Quotations of people’s words (e.g. praise, teaching, or reporting): Inerrancy applies to the accurate recording, not necessarily the truth of the content expressed by the speaker. Even then, recorded words reflect the essential content of an exchange rather than a verbatim transcript
   • Numerical imprecision: Reporting round numbers or approximations (e.g., 1.5 kg instead of 1.52 kg) is not considered erroneous if the context does not demand precision.
   • Paraphrased or varied wordings in recorded speeches or events—if the meaning remains the same
   • Copyist errors in manuscripts: Scribal mistakes or variations due to copying processes do not invalidate inerrancy, as the doctrine refers to the original manuscripts.
2. Conversations
   A central principle in interpreting conversations is that they reflect the speaker’s knowledge and perspective. The reliability of the content of the conversation depends on the speaker:
   • God: Words are fully true.
   • Person guided by God or knowledgeable in divine matters: Words are likely true.
   • Devil or deceptive figure: Words are likely false or misleading.

Common interpretive errors of historical narrative

• Allegorizing: a text that clearly narrates history should not misinterpreted as only intended to be an allegory
• Decontextualizing: inferring meaning from any part of the text should consider its context
• Moralizing: historical narratives are written to retells event of the past, not to illustrate principles

Poetry Literature

A distinctive feature of biblical poetry is its focus on emotional expression, such as adoration, reverence, love, despair, joy, and humility. To convey these emotions, poets frequently employ imagery and figurative language, including metaphor, simile, hyperbole, and symbolism. The words primarily reflect the emotional state, beliefs, and desires of the author, rather than directly conveying God’s will. This genre includes books like Psalms and Lamentations.

The purpose of biblical poetry is to guide readers in expressing themselves to God through praise, prayer, and worship, across a range of emotional and physical circumstances. Therefore, poetry should therefore not be treated as a source of doctrinal truth.

Wisdom Literature

Wisdom literature is a genre of texts that provides moral and practical guidance for living a virtuous or successful life. In the biblical context, wisdom relates to living a godly and righteous life. This genre includes books like Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes.

Interpretive guidelines for Proverbs

• Proverbs provide general practical guidelines, not guarantees from God
• Most proverbs use a variety of literary techniques to make a point, they are not meant to be taken literally

Prophecy

Most modern people would understand the word “prophecy” as foretelling the future. However, in the biblical context, prophecy refers to a genre in which God communicates His message to His people through human messengers called prophets. While prophecy may include predictions of future events, its primary purpose is to convey God’s judgment, mercy, covenant warnings, and promises. This genre includes books like Isaiah and Jeremiah.

The purpose of prophetic literature is both communicative and corrective: it calls God’s people to repentance, warns of impending judgment, offers hope for restoration, and reveals God’s overarching plan for redemption. While prophecies may contain literal future events, their messages are always embedded in historical, social, and covenantal contexts. Therefore, prophetic texts should be interpreted with attention to the historical setting, literary style, and theological intent, rather than being read solely as predictive forecasts.

Some Old Testament prophecies carry a “second meaning,” known as sensus plenior, which is a fuller sense revealed in the New Testament. This deeper meaning was not fully intended or known by the original author, and it can only be recognized retrospectively. We cannot legitimately assign a second meaning on our own authority; it becomes valid only when the New Testament explicitly applies the passage. For example, Matthew 2:15 cites Hosea 11:1, which originally referred to Israel as God’s “child” in the context of the Exodus. Hosea’s words celebrated God’s love for His people and were not a prediction of the Messiah. Matthew, inspired by the Spirit, applies this language analogically to Jesus, the true Son, whose flight to Egypt mirrors Israel’s history. This illustrates how second meanings reveal God’s unfolding plan through Christ and how typology functions in Scripture. Analogical or typological fulfillments should never be imposed arbitrarily; they are recognized as valid only through New Testament revelation.

Apocalyptic Literature

Apocalyptic literature is a subset of prophecy that is characterized by symbolic visions, cosmic imagery and revelations about the end times. The main apocalyptic book in the Bible is Revelation.

Interpretation requires careful attention to symbolism, historical context, and theological themes, as much of the imagery is metaphorical rather than literal. Apocalyptic literature should not be read primarily as a chronological roadmap of future events, but as a revelation of spiritual realities and God’s redemptive plan for humanity.

Epistles

The epistles in the Bible are letters written by apostles and early church leaders, primarily to churches or individuals, addressing theological issues, ethical instructions, encouragement, and pastoral guidance. Unlike narrative or poetic texts, epistles are primarily didactic and propositional, aiming to communicate doctrinal truths and practical applications directly to their recipients. However, it is important to note that epistles were not primarily written to expound Christian theology, but theology applied to or directed towards a particular need, which has implications for how we should go about interpreting it. This genre includes letters such as Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, James, and 1 Peter.

One major challenge in interpreting the epistles is the issue of cultural relativity—determining which instructions are culturally conditioned and which transcend culture. Because the letters were occasional documents, addressing particular situations and concerns of their time, we can interpret their instructions only in light of that original context, rather than assuming they automatically convey timeless truths or principles.

Interpretive principles for the Epistles

• Distinguish core principles from cultural applications: Identify the central, timeless message of Scripture and separate it from instructions shaped by the cultural and situational context of the first century.
• Discern inherent morality: Distinguish what the Bible presents as universally moral from what is contextually guided or culturally influenced
• Consider consistency across Scripture: Pay attention to teachings and stances that the Bible presents consistently, while noting areas where different applications or emphases may exist.

Biblical Hermeneutical Principles

Biblical hermeneutical principles are guidelines for interpreting Scripture that take into account factors unique to the Bible, its composition, and its purpose.

Consider multiple modern translations

The original language that the Biblical books are written in is either Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek. Understanding what the author intended requires attending to these original languages, since translations do not always convey the full nuance of the source text.

Translators make two major decisions that shape the text we read today: the choice of source manuscript and the translation approach.

Modern translations often incorporate insights from older or more reliable manuscripts and reflect advances in scholars’ understanding of the original languages. Consulting multiple translations allows readers to see how different translators have rendered the same passage, highlighting interpretive choices and linguistic nuances.

Source text

We do not possess the original manuscripts, but the vast majority of existing copies are largely consistent. However, there can be meaningful differences, particularly among New Testament manuscripts, between earlier and later copies. Textual criticism is the discipline dedicated to analyzing these variants to approximate the original wording. Depending on which manuscript a translator chooses to follow, the resulting translation may vary.

Translation approach

In the translation of any words or ideas from one language to another, there would be differences between the original language and the receptor language, in terms of words, grammar, idioms as well as in culture and history. Different translators may adopt different approaches, which can significantly affect the reading experience. The two primary approaches are:

• Formal equivalence: Emphasizes preserving the structure, grammar, and wording of the original text as closely as possible
• Dynamic equivalence: emphasizes conveying the meaning of the original text, even if it requires changing words, idioms, or sentence structures to suit the receptor language

Additionally, the original text may contain lexical ambiguity, where a word has multiple possible meanings, and structural ambiguity, where a sentence can be interpreted in more than one way due to word order, clause relationships, or grammatical nuances—subtleties that can be lost or obscured in translation.

Scripture interprets Scripture

Under the assumptions of divine inspiration, inerrancy, and canonical unity, we can approach difficult or ambiguous passages in the Bible by interpreting them in light of clearer passages. By “clearer passages,” we mean sections of Scripture where the meaning is more explicit, the context is straightforward, and the language or teaching is unambiguous. These passages can help shed light on those that are more complex, obscure, or figurative.

Theological coherence

The principle of theological coherence emphasizes that Scripture presents a unified and harmonious revelation of God, despite being composed over many centuries by different human authors. Because the Bible is inspired and inerrant, its teachings, when properly understood, are consistent and complementary rather than contradictory.

Interpreting Scripture with theological coherence means reading individual passages in the context of the entire Bible. Doctrines, moral instructions, and theological themes in one part of the Bible should align with what is taught elsewhere, even if expressed in different forms or literary styles.

Progressive revelation

The principle of progressive revelation recognizes that God’s truth and redemptive plan were revealed gradually throughout Scripture, unfolding over time from the earliest promises in the Old Testament to their fulfillment in Christ and the teachings of the New Testament. Later revelations often clarify, expand, or bring to completion what was only partially understood earlier. This does not imply that the earlier revelations were false, but rather that they were incomplete.