Spend any time reading about the Bible and two odd-looking words will turn up. Exegesis. Eisegesis. They are spelled almost the same, they are both Greek, and people who use them tend to assume you know what they mean.
They are worth knowing, because they name the difference between two things every reader of the Bible does. One is finding out what a verse says. The other is deciding what it says before you look.
The two words
Both come from a Greek verb that means "to lead" or "to guide."
Exegesis (ex-uh-JEE-sis) has the prefix ex, "out." It means leading the meaning out of a text: asking what the words meant to the person who wrote them and the people who first read them, in their language, in their world. It is the oldest word of the two, and it is what scholars mean when they say they are "doing exegesis" on a passage.
Eisegesis (eye-suh-JEE-sis) has the prefix eis, "in." It means leading meaning into a text: arriving with an idea and finding it in the verse, whether or not the verse put it there. The word was coined in the 1800s as the opposite of the first one, and nobody uses it as a compliment.
Here is the thing to hold onto. These are not two kinds of people. Everybody reads things into the Bible, because everybody arrives with something: a tradition, a sermon they remember, a saying they learned as a child, a point they want to win. The difference is whether you notice. Exegesis is the discipline of noticing.
What reading in looks like
"Money is the root of all evil." It is one of the most quoted lines in the English language, and it is not what the verse says.
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.
1 Timothy 6:10
The saying drops "the love of." That turns a sentence about greed into a verdict on wealth itself. Most people who quote it have never noticed the missing words, because the saying got there first and the verse was read through it. That is eisegesis at its most ordinary: the idea arrived before the text did.
The needle gate. Jesus says something hard about the rich.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.
Mark 10:25
You will sometimes hear that "the eye of the needle" was a low gate in Jerusalem's wall, which a camel could get through if it knelt and its load was removed. It is a memorable explanation. It is also a medieval one, and no such gate has ever been found. The saying is meant to sound impossible, and the disciples in the very next verses react as if it is.
Notice what the gate does. It makes a hard verse easier. Reading in is not always adding an idea. Sometimes it is sanding one down.
And it runs in every direction. A reader who wants the Bible to look foolish can read that into it just as easily as a reader who wants it to be comfortable. The whale that is not in the book of Jonah has been used for both.
What reading out looks like
Jonah's fish. Everyone knows Jonah was swallowed by a whale. Read the verse.
But the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Jonah 1:17
The Hebrew is dag gadol, a big fish. Nothing more specific. When Matthew's Gospel refers back to the story in Greek, it uses ketos, a sea monster. The whale came later, through translation and art. Exegesis asks what word is actually there, and then lets it stay as vague as the author left it.
The guest room. For centuries English Bibles said Jesus was born in a manger because there was no room "in the inn." The newest translation of that verse says something different.
And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place in the guest room.
Luke 2:7
Why the change? Because of how Luke uses the word. The Greek is kataluma, and Luke uses it once more, for the room where Jesus eats the Last Supper.
and say to the owner of the house, 'The teacher asks you, "Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?"'
Luke 22:11
When Luke means a commercial inn, in the story of the Good Samaritan, he picks a different word. So translators let Luke's own vocabulary decide, and the innkeeper who turned the family away, a character in every Christmas pageant, turns out not to be in the text. That is exegesis: the author's usage settles the meaning, not the pageant.
How to tell them apart
Three questions, and you can ask them of any verse, including the ones you love most.
- Where did this idea come from? The verse, or somewhere else: a saying, a sermon, a song, a picture on a wall. If you cannot find it in the words, it walked in from outside.
- Would the first readers have heard it that way? A Greek-speaking church in Corinth did not know about a gate in Jerusalem. A Hebrew reader of Jonah did not picture a whale.
- Does it make a hard verse easier, or a plain verse say more than it says? Both are signs that something is being led in rather than out.
None of this tells you what to believe about a verse once you have read it out. That part is yours. Exegesis just makes sure the verse gets a turn to speak before you do.
For further exploration
Three things to read with the text open:
- Read 1 Timothy 6:10 in the King James and in a modern translation. Count the words the famous saying leaves out.
- Read Luke 2:7, Luke 22:11, and Luke 10:34. Find the two different words Luke uses for a place to stay, and notice which one he chose for the birth.
- Pick a verse you know by heart. Ask yourself where you learned what it means, and whether you have ever read the verses around it.
Sources
- 1 Timothy 6:10; Mark 10:25; Jonah 1:17; Matthew 12:40; Luke 2:7, 10:34, 22:11 (NRSVue)
- The New Oxford Annotated Bible, essay on the interpretation of the Bible and notes on the verses above
- John Barton, A History of the Bible, on how the Bible has been read and interpreted
- Online Etymology Dictionary, entries for exegesis and eisegesis