important to list what you do not yet understand. We move from the first circle to the second in order that the first meaning of the immediate text is put within wider context of the life and circumstances of the author of the book, what the author was “about.” The questions we would want to ask are: Who was this person, what did he intend to say, and why did he wish to say it? Answering these questions is often much more difficult than it seems. First, we can never get back into the mind of the