Kaiser, Walter, C. Toward an Exegetical Theology: Biblical Exegesis for Preaching & Teaching. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1998. pp.268. $28
Most faithful exegetes of the Bible would agree that honest exegesis is essential for delineating any biblical text’s original message. This interpretive process should consider both the historical-grammatical analysis of the biblical text and its theological message. That said, this exegetical process is never easy, to say the least; it demands a lot of work and effort. Even after doing all the hard work, the preacher/ teacher is left with almost no clue about translating this authorial intent from its specific context to his contemporary audience. To solve this dilemma, Kaiser provides an exegetical method, namely the ‘Syntactical Exegetical Theology Method’, that emends the gap between the grammatical-historical (analytical) study of Scripture on the one hand and the delivery of the biblical message to those in the pews on the other hand.
Thus, this book’s primary purpose is to help preachers/ Bible teachers strengthen the local churches as they learn how to apply the syntactic exegetical theology method to various genres of the biblical text to prepare sermons that convey authoritative biblical truths. Truths derived from the single meaning of the biblical text that is the original authorial intent and not truths found somewhere else in the Bible but not in the text under consideration. This book then is a sort of “How To” book that aims to guide how to exegete and proclaim Scripture to contemporary audiences.
Kaiser divides his volume into three parts. In the first part, he explains the exegetical crisis. He correctly stresses that application/ applications can never be separated from the text’s single authorial meaning for any given biblical text. Any application can have authority over the congregation only if it is derived from the divinely inspired text. Then, Kaiser gives a brief background on the history of exegesis, the different approaches to interpreting Scripture, allegorical, scholastic, the reformers, rationalists, grammatical-historical, and the more recent critical approaches.[1]
In the second part, he lays out the building blocks of his exegetical method. First, a word or a phrase has a limited range of meaning. To delineate the precise meaning of a word/phrase in a biblical passage, one cannot depend solely on lexicons since this meaning is not independent of its given context. Second, Kaiser moves from context to syntactical analysis. In this stage, the exegete should decide what literary type the biblical text is under consideration. (p.91). Form criticism may be helpful at this stage since it can shed some light on the text’s internal structure and the precise limits of a specific paragraph (prose) or couplet (poetry).
Third, Kaiser provides a chapter on the theological analysis of the biblical text. He gives insights on how to move from the descriptive stage of exegesis (then) to the significance of the word to contemporary audiences (now). Doing biblical theology should be through proper exegesis. Finally, Kaiser proceeds to the homiletical analysis. He includes eight samples of syntactical block diagrams (these samples are from both Testaments and different genera) to help the readers apply the syntactical- theological method practically. The third part of the book deals with special homiletical issues, such as the use of narrative and poetry in expository preaching.
Kaiser’s book is significant for two reasons. First, because it addresses a critical issue upon which the life of the church of Christ depends, honest exegesis is essential in a post-Christian, quasi- post-modern world, where the mainstream culture thinks of truth (mostly religious truth) as relative truth. Second, this pioneering work had invoked many evangelical scholars to attempt to amend the gap between the syntactical study of Scripture and the delivery of the biblical message to the church. Kaiser’s book is not thorough enough; he did an excellent job defining the problem and providing basic guidelines to solving it. However, the book lacks detailed discussions on various issues: the importance of historical backgrounds for exegesis, the different approaches to biblical theology, and how to deal with them. Moreover, the section on narrative was short, and the place of narrative within biblical literature was vague.
Although Kaiser includes various samples for homological analysis, some details about his block diagrams were unclear. Also, I wish that he had included some more information on his charts. Finally, I wish he placed “Verbal Analysis” (Chapter 5) before “Contextual Analysis (Chapter 3.) because exegesis begins with smaller structures and proceeds to larger blocks. Of course, one should consider the context of the smaller words and idioms, but one cannot start with the context, which (itself) consists of words, and then proceeds to syntax.
[1] Tradition criticism, canonical criticism, and redaction criticism (see pp. 63-65)
Out of Egypt 