Southern Seminary Quote of the Day

In reference to an acceptable exegetical method:

"Meaning is not found at the level of a single word or even a sentence. Meaning is found at the level of paragraph and discourse."

The Beast's Lair has tried to make this point in various ways throughout the last couple of years. I will comment more when I have the proper time, but I have read a book called "Exegetical Fallacies" by D.A. Carson and it has changed much of the way I think and do exegesis.

We have to do these nasty little things called "thought flow diagrams" where we trace the argument through an extended passage of Scripture. It is hard as nails to do correctly. But the point is an important one, to properly understand what the text is saying as the whole, not just the part.

Our professor made an interesting analogy to YouTube, the popular online video website where you can watch virtually anything for free from other user's uploads. He said there was two "spoofs" of the "Back to the Future" trailer. One was called "Breakback to the Future" and the other was called "Back to the Butcher." Interestingly enough, both spoof trailers, which were trying to make their spoof in very different ways, used some identical clips from the movie.