New Testament Exegesis

Third Edition

A Handbook for Students and Pastors

Gordon D. Fee

Copyright © 2002 Gordon D. Fee

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Westminster John Knox Press, 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202-1396.

Scripture quotations from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible are copyright 1946, 1952, © 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint material from A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature, third edition, revised and edited by Frederick William Danker and based on Walter Bauer’s Griechisch-deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der frühchristlichen Literatur, sixth edition, ed. Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, with Viktor Reichmann and on previous English editions by W. F. Arndt, F. W. Gingrich, and F. W. Danker, © 1957, 1979, 2000 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from Synopsis of the Four Gospels: Greek-English Edition of the Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum, edited by Kurt Aland, are reproduced in this text by permission of the German Bible Society. English text (Revised Standard Version, 2nd Edition) © 1971 Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Greek text © 1964 and 1983 German Bible Society, Stuttgart.

The page reproduced from the Novum Testamentum Graece, 27th Edition © 1898 and 1998 by Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart. Used by permission.

Book design by Sharon Adams

Cover design by Mark Abrams

Third edition

Published by Westminster John Knox Press

Louisville, Kentucky

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

ISBN-13: 978-0-664-22316-8

ISBN-10: 0-664-22316-8

To

Maudine, Mark, Cherith, Craig, and Brian

who taught me that exegesis

is not an end in itself

but must always be applied

We have been studying cheerfully and seriously. As far as I was concerned it could have continued in that way, and I had already resigned myself to having my grave here by the Rhine!… And now the end has come. So listen to my piece of advice: exegesis, exegesis, and yet more exegesis! Keep to the Word, to the scripture that has been given to us.

Karl Barth

(On the event of his formal farewell to his students in Bonn, just prior to his expulsion from Germany in 1935. Quoted in Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976.)