Critical explanation of scripture

Usage examples of exegesis.

Although primarily the new science of theological exegesis in the Church did more than anything else to neutralise the historical value of the New Testament writings, yet, on the other hand, it immediately commenced a critical restoration of their original sense.

New Testament, and was consequently obliged to adopt the Gnostic exegesis, which was imperative as soon as the apostolic writings were viewed as a New Testament.

Biblical exegesis to a fixed theory appears in its historical greatness and importance.

But there is a desire to treat the given material in a strictly scientific manner, just as the Gnostics had formerly done, that is, on the one hand to establish it by a critical and historical exegesis, and on the other to give it a philosophical form and bring it into harmony with the spirit of the times.

But, as this method implied the acknowledgment of a sacred literature, Origen was an exegete who believed in the Holy Scriptures and indeed, at bottom, he viewed all theology as a methodical exegesis of Holy Writ.

This is effected by the method of Scripture exegesis which ascertains the highest revelations of God.

We must here content ourselves with merely pointing out that the method of scientific Scriptural exegesis also led to historico-critical investigations, that accordingly Origen and his disciples were also critics of the tradition, and that scientific theology, in addition to the task of remodelling Christianity, thus began at its very origin the solution of another problem, namely, the critical restoration of Christianity from the Scriptures and tradition and the removal of its excrescences: for these efforts, strictly speaking, do not come up for consideration in the history of dogma.

Freud, the exegesis of all those unspoken phrases that support and at the same time undermine our apparent discourse, our fantasies, our dreams, our bodies.

For if exegesis leads us not so much towards a primal discourse as towards the naked existence of something like a language, will it not be obliged to express only the pure forms of language even before it has taken on a meaning?

And in order to formalize what we suppose to be a language, is it not necessary to have practised some minimum of exegesis, and at least interpreted all those mute forms as having the intention of meaning something?

In other cases, not a few, the Scriptures, perverted from their true purpose and wrested by a vicious and conceited exegesis, were brought into collision with the law written on the heart.

By processes of exegesis which critical scholarship regards with a smile or a shudder, the helpless pope was made to figure as the Antichrist, the Man of Sin and Son of Perdition, the Scarlet Woman on the Seven Hills, the Little Horn Speaking Blasphemies, the Beast, and the Great Red Dragon.

We maintain that a true historical exegesis, with far less violence to the use of language, and consistently with known contemporaneous ideas, makes it denote the death of Christ, and the events which were supposed to have followed his death, namely, his appearance among the dead, and his ascent to heaven, preparatory to their ascent, when they should no longer be exiled in Hades, but should dwell with God.

Nothing but the most desperate exegesis can make these and many similar texts signify simply the purging of individual breasts from their offences and guilt.

Against this exegesis we have to say, first, that, so far as that goes, the vast preponderance of critical authorities is opposed to it.