1. New Testament General

Abstract

Now in its fourth edition, Biblical Exegesis continues to offer a highly readable and comprehensive introduction, aimed at undergraduates and seminarians coming into the world of critical analysis for the first time. This edition builds substantially on the format set out in the original 1982 edition, together with the chapters subsequently added in 1987 and 2006. But the entire work has been thoroughly re-edited and updated by Carl Holladay, following the death of John Hayes in 2013. Chapter 11 of the 2006 edition has been fully rewritten, all the bibliographies have been updated and reorganised, and an extremely useful new chapter, coyly dubbed an appendix, has been added on the growing array of digital resources now widely available to students. All in all, this book seems to succeed admirably in its stated aim of providing an accessible guide for ‘beginners who are learning about exegesis for the first time’ (p. ix). The key focus in the book is on helping students not just to look at Old and New Testament texts but to see them—a theme which is worked through in a concluding new chapter by Holladay. Echoing perhaps the Johannine distinction between sight and insight, all of the essays in this book set out to introduce students to the kind of critical questions being asking across the field of biblical studies, from textual criticism and the numerous sub-genres of the Historical Critical method, through to the postmodernist world of gender identity and postcolonial advocacy. There is also a chapter on the practical skills needed to integrate these different perspectives, those noticeably less of the ‘how to do it’ checklist approach found in some other introductory textbooks. All in all, therefore, this refreshed edition should continue to serve the contemporary student every bit as well as its predecessors.