"OT Exegesis" gets a new edition

[Update March 20 --- This book can now be sampled here.]

What an author meant roughly 3,000 years ago can be difficult to determine. Of course, readers are seldom called to such a task ... unless they are reading Homer or the Old Testament.

Old Testament scholar Douglas Stuart equips Bible students for the task in his popular, Old Testament Exegesis (Westminister John Knox). The fourth edition will hit bookstore shelves this spring.

Stuart has made a career of trying to help folks interpret the Scriptures. In addition to being a professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, he co-authored the best-selling How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (Zonderan) with Gordon Fee, and has written widely-acclaimed commentaries (Exodus, Ezekiel, Hosea-Jonah, and Malachi).

In Old Testament Exegesis he walks readers through --- literally step-by-step --- the process of analyzing and interpreting passages. He takes time explain each of 12 steps:

• Text
• Translation
• Historical context
• Literary context
• Form
• Structure
• Grammatical data
• Lexical data
• Biblical context
• Theology
• Secondary literature
• Application

In the Preface, Stuart spells out the usefulness of his book: "It is for the vast majority of all seminary students and pastors. It is predicated on the conviction that even the most intelligent people cannot understand procedures and concepts that are not somehow explained to them, and that there is no shame in seeking such explanations inspite of the fact that most seminary professors do not volunteer them. Old Testament exegesis has regular procedures and concepts, and these can be taught to almost anyone willing to learn. It is a tragedy that so few seminary students ever really feel sure of themselves in doing OT exegesis --- and most pastors apparently abandon the practice altogether."

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Sensitive to the time-crunch that many pastors operate under, Stuart also provides instruction on how to shorten the 12-step process. Most valuable are his many reference work recommendations (one of the features requiring a fully-updated fourth edition).

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Fee, professor emeritus at Regent College in Vancouver, wrote the companion volume, New Testament Exegesis (Zondervan).

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The audio presentation of an OT Survey course by Stuart can be accessed here for free.