Page 19 - Homiletics I Student Textbook

Grasping the Text in Their Town

This is the most important part of this interpretative journey. In this step one must purposefully block
out his contemporary world, set presuppositions aside, and seek to discover the original intended
message of the author to the people of his day. Consideration in this step is given but not limited to the
following:

1. Who is the author and to whom is he writing?
2. What is the historical, cultural, political, and geographical setting?
3. What is the general, immediate, and following context?
4. What is the grammar structure and syntactical arrangement of the text?
5. What words were chosen and how are they used?

The key to this part of the journey is observation. This goes beyond seeing the text to examining the text
with great scrutiny, to the finest of details. Upon completion of
this careful examination, the main thoughts that the author is
conveying to the recipients of his message will become most
evident. These thoughts are recorded as statements of past action
and summarized into a single statement with both a subject and a
complement. This statement is the single meaning of the text for
the biblical audience at that time in history.

Grasping the Text in Their Town
What is the time-bound exegetical principle in this text?
What did the text mean to the original audience then?
24

Measuring the Width of the River to Cross

What are the differences between the biblical audience and people today?
25

…the Christian today is separated from the biblical audience by differences in culture, language,
situation, time, and often covenant. These differences form a river that hinders us from moving straight
from meaning in their context to meaning in ours. The width of the river, however, varies from passage
to passage. Sometimes it is extremely wide, requiring a long, substantial bridge for crossing. Other times,
however, it is a narrow creek that we can easily hop over. It is obviously important to know just how
wide the river is before we start trying to construct a principlizing bridge across it.
26

In this step, one must purposely examine the differences that exist
between what the biblical audience was experiencing then versus
what people are experiencing today. There may be differences of
time, language, culture, covenant, or life situation. Such differences
play an important role in determining just how far our time travel
has taken us – how wide the gap is between life then and life now.

24 Duvall & Hays, 22.
25 Duvall & Hays, 22.
26 Duvall & Hays, 22.
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