Is it common for exegesis to begin with secondary material rather than with the text (and prayer)? or is it a quirk of Osborner's organizational structure?
Doesn''t everyone begin by bringing something to the text....?
Osborne argues that we begin with a sense of the historical context. Surely this is absolutely essential. We must know something about "Pharisees" before interpreting a ext in which they play a part. But, he then says, "This preliminary material is open to later correction during the detailed exegesis or study of the passage. Its purpose is to narrow down the interpretive laws so that we might ask the proper questions, forcing us back to the times and culture of the original writer and the situation behind the text. We will therefore have a control against reading twenty-first-century meaning back into first-century language."
To me this is an eminently sensible approach...
He then argue for a sense of the broader structure. It is important to know that Mt 5:1-12 is the beginning of the first block of teaching Material in the Gospel. How do we interpret the last words of Jesus in Matthew if we pay no heed to the words at the time of his birth which tell us that he is Emmanuel - God-with-us?
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