Customer Reviews

Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture

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Peter Leithart's Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture is the most helpful book I have ever read on how to interpret the Bible -- a topic of serious interest for me for almost 40 years. In my seminary days, I learned that historical grammatical exegesis is the only way to approach the Bible. The problem was that certain passages in the New Testament clearly interpreted the Old Testament in ways that did not conform to the literal mold. Could we follow the exegetical methods of Jesus and Paul, or were they operating on principles that are beyond our ken?

In six chapters with titles like "Words are Players" and "Texts are Music," Leithart not only uncovers the exegetical methods of Jesus and Paul, but he shows his readers how to follow their path by ending each chapter with relevant insights on John 9. In the process, Leithart relates Biblical interpretation to the interpretation of literature outside the Bible, offers withering criticism of Biblical critics, discloses serious flaws in conventional hermeneutical wisdom, teaches us the music of the Biblical text, and, most importantly, shows how all Scripture is about Christ. Leithart does this all with penetrating theological insight, wry humor, and even more than his customary eloquence. I literary could not put the book down.

If there is only one book you read on Biblical interpretation, this should be the book. It is too well written and profound to be considered a "textbook," but it is so full of insight and such a delight to read that a kind professor might give his students a break and assign them a book that would be sheer pleasure. Anyone serious about reading the Bible and looking for guidance in reading not only deeply, but in a manner that is faithful to the Bible as Holy Scripture should read Leithart's Deep Exegesis.

It has been taken for granted in the last century that the venerable medieval exegesis of the quadriga, as well as any hermeneutical practice prior to the nineteenth century, was "pre-critical," and hence unscientific, unreliable, and fanciful. Rigorous grammatico-historical exegesis, it has been argued and accepted, is basically the only way to go, whether you're liberal or conservative. Ironically, conservatives have militantly defended this stifling limitation on the Bible's ability to speak to us, because they fear that opening up the meaning of the text at all will leave it victim to the interpreter's whim to twist the text however he wishes.

In Deep Exegesis, Peter Leithart comes out firing on all cylinders against this odd modernist myopia, showing that it destroys the integrity of the Biblical text, as surely as it would destroy any other work of literature on which such a method was used. He employs very recent discoveries in the philosophy of language, philosophy of history, and literature, to vindicate and enhance a very ancient understanding of how texts work, arguing that a "literal" conservative hermeneutic need not be minimalist but can be as deep and broad as the Scriptural narrative itself.

Leithart keeps our journey along this sophisticated path pleasant and easy by enlisting dozens of examples from literature, pop culture, and everyday life to illuminate his argument, and by his characteristically lighthearted (forgive the pun), readable style.

I found this book to be profound, witty, thought provoking and extremely helpful. For many years, the biblical interpretation I found left me dissastisfied. I knew there was more to the text than what I was hearing or reading, but I could not find it with the tools I had. Then, when I began to read Dr. Leithart and others it seemed as if a new world opened up for me. This book provides a clear explanation and defense of that approach. If you want to see more in the Bible than you have in the past, then I suggest you get this book.

Deep Exegesis
I enjoy reading books relating to hermeneutics. This was a particularly interesting book to me.
Peter Leithart, Senior Fellow of Theology and Literature at St. Andrews College, has added to my library a book that has opened my eyes, or opened them anew, to some important truths.
Time and space will not permit an in-depth review. For this reason I shall note what stood out to me as interesting and worthy of consideration:
1.Leithart seems to like essentially literal translations of the Scripture due to the fact that words have meaning and should be translated as such, as opposed to the idea that words are "malleable" (pg 6) and can be changed (in such manners as gender neutral translations, or in dynamic equivalence translations where ancient idioms are changed to present day idioms). He has a point that should be seriously considered. After all, we must have a text which is true to the original text. If not, what is the use of exegesis?
2.Leithart also brings up a very interesting point when he posits that the meaning of a text can change with time. He uses the example of someone who shoots a person and is charged with attempted murder. When the victim dies a few hours later, the circumstances have changed, so the shooter is charged with murder. The point to be seen here, is not the fact that the meaning of a text changes, as Leithart says. The point is that subsequent events give us a different perspective on the text, thus influencing our understanding of the text as well as the text's significance to us. Leithart's point, never the less, should be seriously considered, because we must look into backgrounds, etc. if we are to understand a text, and in that he and I agree.
3.Another thing that Leithart mentions is structure and themes in texts. That is important. We need to look at the big picture before we dig into the narrow portion of a few verses. We should see what themes are at play as well as what the structure is, and what we are lead to in latter portions of the text.
One thing that I did not like is that Leithart seems to appreciate a grammatical-historical hermeneutic, but does not seem to confine himself to that; and I believe that one must adhere to that to be true to the text.
In the end, I enjoyed the book and will probably refer to it again. It is a book for readers with advanced reading capabilities, who will take the time to think through what is said, and for readers who have discernment and a will to rightly divide the Word of God.
Thanks to the kind folk at Baylor University Press for providing this copy of Deep Exegesis for review.

This is one of the best books on understanding the Bible that I've read. Leithart goes through different aspects of understanding the biblical text, constantly coming back to John 9 in order to illustrate what he means.

Leithart starts off by arguing that the text of Scripture is important: we ought not view it as a husk to be stripped away and discarded in order to get at the kernel. He then suggests that texts add meaning to what has gone before. So, in John 9:14 we are told that Jesus had healed the blind man on the Sabbath day. This crucial piece of information had been withheld until now, and it colours all that goes before. Meaning emerges as we read through the chapter.

Leithart then proceeds to discuss poetic meanings (like John pausing to tell us what the name of the pool means in 9:7) and intertextual allusions (such as creation out of dust in John 9:6 and Genesis 2:7). He also looks at structure, and notes that the interrogation of the blind man's parents forms the hinge of a chiasm. Leithart concludes by asserting the Christ-centred nature of all sound interpretation.

At times Leithart seems to get bogged down by talking about people like Spinoza and Oedipus, but this is still an excellent book for those who read theology at a first-year seminary level.

When I was taught to study the Bible I was told there are rules to follow. Those rules prevent us from falling into the nonsense of that allegorical (read: Catholic) method. Never mind that the apostle Paul explicitly uses an allegorical method in Galatians. Despite what we see the apostles doing with the Scriptures, their conclusions are only reliable because of inspiration - or so I was told. I have been on a bit of a journey with hermeneutics and exegesis over the past few years. I slowly realized that there had to be more to it than just grammar, syntax and vocabulary.

Peter Leithart seeks to explore just that. It's not that he is looking to do away with the importance of the words and their meanings. Instead, he wants to affirm their importance by recognizing that there is more to them than their meaning. He says

Reading Scripture has to do with attending to the specific contours of the text - the author's word choices, structural organization, tropes and allusions, and intertextual quotations (vii).
Words matter and he knows it. There is more to reading Scripture than that, however, and he seeks to demonstrate it with his second aim:

My second aim is to learn to read from Jesus and Paul (vii).

This sort of reading does away with the "they-were-inspired-but-we're-not" mentality that seeks to determine a thoroughly modern method. Instead, since the Biblical authors were inspired, why wouldn't we want to follow their method? If we have a God-given message wouldn't we want to discern a God-given method? Certainly we would. And inspired guides are a reliable source.

Leithart makes use of several metaphors to explain the method. Husks, Players, Events, Jokes and Music are familiar images and quite useful for reading Scripture. Each one is explained in turn through each chapter. The most helpful and powerful (in my opinion) were Jokes and Music. Both metaphors take the literary nature of scripture into serious consideration. Classic literature makes use of images and events from other authors in previous pieces. Music is multi-layered and cannot be explained by chord-progression. He explains his metaphor of a joke by saying that the punchline is only understood when the various referents are understood. You can only find humor in a punch line if you move beyond the grammar. Meaning in scripture is built upon previous types, events and people.

Leithart's book is wonderful! Here is a man who takes scripture seriously. He takes it seriously enough to let it make the rules. I think many modern Christians have found Bible reading difficult because of the imposition of so many modern rules and regulations. Instead, let's see that reading Scripture is like reading a novel. There are new connections around every corner. Under every tree Christ is waiting to take us on a journey to know him.

NOTE: In accordance with the regulations of the Federal Trade Commission I would like to state that I received a complementary copy of the aforementioned text for the purposes of review. I was not required to furnish a positive review.

I first purchased this book because I enjoyed reading the books of James B. Jordan (particularly "Through New Eyes") so much, and this author's relationship and comparison to him. But Peter Leithart has an irreverent, disrespectful tone that I just found completely unacceptable.

A couple of examples:
pg 61 When describing Jesus healing the blind man, Mr. Leithart tries to sound tongue-in-cheek about how how onlookers must have felt about Jesus stooping to write in the dirt, and his wording is "Here is a blind man waiting to be healed, and Jesus is playing and spitting in the dirt like a schoolboy"

pg 62 "in moving us through the experience of the first century Jews......When the surprise of the healing has worn off, the Jews, and we, realize that there is something potentially shady about this Jesus"

Chapter 4: There is an entire chapter entitled "The Text as a Joke"..with multiple examples of passages as "jokes"

Now, before anyone, perhaps the author himself, says I have missed the point and none of these references were intended to be taken as factual or the author's personal beliefs; I would tell you I KNOW. (I admitted them to be tongue-in-cheek and attention-getters) I'm making the point that these type of "get your attention" phrases and verbage is direspectful, irreverent, unresponsible, and unacceptable.

My apologies to the author Peter Leithart for the one star critique, I do appreciate the time you put in developing this book. I consider myself an average Christian male, college educated with a degree in science; I'm not writing this critique to warn, but to inform readers like myself, to the over use of uncommon vocabulary spoken among the middle class populace. This is of coarse my own opinion; I did not get very far into the book due to the use of uncommon vocabulary, and this is the only reason for my one star rating.