beginning students of the Bible, but it is just a tool like any other.5 In any situation, one tool will work better than another, but the skilled interpreter understands that most every tool has its proper use. Thus it is both true and not true that the literary approach to the Bible goes back to the time of the early church. One chapter in this volume will introduce you to the ancient art of rhetoric. This interpretive method existed long before the writing of the NT, and it comprises one of the
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