What to Read Next?

clayton stirling bartholomew c.s.bartholomew at worldnet.att.net
Fri Oct 9 02:49:48 EDT 1998


vince-s at juno.com wrote:
> 
> Having read Carson's "Exegetical Fallacies" -and taken its admonitions to
> heart-, I have been trying to determine how to perform a proper 'Word
> Strudy'.  I am somewhat uncomfortable with the term, being that many word
> study methods have propagated various errors.  I continue my reading with
> Louw's "Semantics...", but its emphasis is similar to Carson's, and I
> don't feel that I'm gaining a method for approaching the text at the word
> level.

Vince,

Back in 1990-91 I read everything I could get my hands on regarding lexical
semantics. One book now stands at the top of my personal list on this subject:
Moises Silva, Biblical Words and their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical
Semantics, Zondervan 1983, revised ed. 1994. This is a work you should own
since you will want to read it several times to absorb the contents
thoroughly. 

The runner up, is a book that describes the theory behind the famous Semantic
Domain Lexicon: J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Lexical Semantics of New Testament
Greek, Scholars Press, 1992.

If you want to see how all the elements of exegesis are put together using a
test case then read: Silva, Moises, Explorations in Exegetical Method:
Galatians as a Test Case, Baker, 1996. 

A note of caution: 

After reading all of this and other works you will probably still need to
develop your own method of exegesis. I have tried numerous times in vain to
follow the patterns described by text books on exegesis, for example the
famous book by Gordon Fee. I have always failed in these attempts. I think
these books are of great value for laying down guidelines but like the Mosaic
Law,  one usually ends up breaking most of the rules most of the time. 

-- 
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062



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