This past Sunday I tried to determine if I should participate in the adult Sunday school class, which was talking about Biblical interpretation, or if I should seclude myself in order to do work associated with my job as Director of Religious Education.
My most recent post revealed that I chose Sunday School, and that I benefited from Jim's discussion of how the Bible's conflation of God and King aided colonization efforts in Africa.
Another thing I gained was an understanding, at long length, of the terms exegesis and eisegesis. I have heard these terms often, even looked them up, and never known, really, what on earth they were saying.
This week Keith described exegesis as looking at the text for what it is, and analysing it based on its context: who, when, why" kinds of questions. This analysis is objective and critical.
The other term is eisegesis, and refers to what we do when we read our own context and experience into a text. When you listen to a song, are you applying the relationship in your life to the one described in the song? When you read the Bible, are you appalled by the treatment of women, because such treatment is odious in your culture or system or morals? That's the result of eisegesis, or a subjective reading of a text.
Today I asked the 9th graders to respond to these images:
They provided a litany of comments to each other, which I eavesdropped on as I walked around the classroom. I then summarized what I heard to the class, and it occured to me that they had engaged in both these kinds of analysis. It was not part of my lesson plan, but I put both words up on the board, and asked Ms. Rayburn to look up the spelling in case I was wrong (I was). I said what I thought they meant, and how the class had been engaging in both. I didn't tell them that I hadn't learned these terms myself until that weekend....
I think it made them feel important! We continued to refer to those terms during the rest of our discussion of the graffiti and cave paintings we looked at.
What has been interesting this afternoon is that I've looked at a few videos that talk about exegesis and eisegesis. They are all about Biblical interpretation, and they all warn against eisegesis, the subjective reading. I find that curious.
First of all, I think it's hard to distinguish between these two kinds of analysis. Can we really be objective? I don't think so.
Second of all, eisegesis is, to me, the more relevant of the two kinds of analysis, because a text's meaning is created from what you bring to it. A text is dead until a reader injects meaning into it.
We will encourage eisegesis in our classroom. I'll talk to the classes tomorrow about my findings.
In other news, we were in the library with the tenth grade today, taking standardized testing. After the test was done, the students were asked to sit quietly in the library while the others finished in the library computer lab. I was watching. It was interesting to see which students remained sitting and stayed in their chairs with their phones, and which went over to the book shelves to explore titles. The students with the highest averages in the class went over to the books. Those who struggle with reading and writing stayed with their phones.
One boy came over and explained to his friend, who was talking to me, that a new book in a zombie series had come out. It held up the book, and was so excited. It's just the kind of book that I would be sorry to see students holding up, were I not reading Donalyn Miller's The Book Whisperer. She says, let them read whatever they want - any reading is so much better than no reading, that there is no room for judgment.
Now, I agree. This student, who is often less than engaged in class, was speaking with uncharacteristic excitement about this series, which is a horror series. Of course our class would be boring to him, if that is what he wants to read about.
More on this book later - after I finish it. It was my goal to finish before the end of February, so I need to read the last chapter before I go to bed. I've already promised this copy to three other English teachers before it's due back to Inter-Library Loan at Earlham.
My most recent post revealed that I chose Sunday School, and that I benefited from Jim's discussion of how the Bible's conflation of God and King aided colonization efforts in Africa.
Another thing I gained was an understanding, at long length, of the terms exegesis and eisegesis. I have heard these terms often, even looked them up, and never known, really, what on earth they were saying.
This week Keith described exegesis as looking at the text for what it is, and analysing it based on its context: who, when, why" kinds of questions. This analysis is objective and critical.
The other term is eisegesis, and refers to what we do when we read our own context and experience into a text. When you listen to a song, are you applying the relationship in your life to the one described in the song? When you read the Bible, are you appalled by the treatment of women, because such treatment is odious in your culture or system or morals? That's the result of eisegesis, or a subjective reading of a text.
Today I asked the 9th graders to respond to these images:
 |
| Graffiti under the bridge in Richmond |
 |
| An embellishment on the railing of the gorge trail |
 |
| Cave paintings from 30,000 BCE |
 |
| Petroglyphs from 10,000 BCE |
I think it made them feel important! We continued to refer to those terms during the rest of our discussion of the graffiti and cave paintings we looked at.
What has been interesting this afternoon is that I've looked at a few videos that talk about exegesis and eisegesis. They are all about Biblical interpretation, and they all warn against eisegesis, the subjective reading. I find that curious.
First of all, I think it's hard to distinguish between these two kinds of analysis. Can we really be objective? I don't think so.
Second of all, eisegesis is, to me, the more relevant of the two kinds of analysis, because a text's meaning is created from what you bring to it. A text is dead until a reader injects meaning into it.
We will encourage eisegesis in our classroom. I'll talk to the classes tomorrow about my findings.
In other news, we were in the library with the tenth grade today, taking standardized testing. After the test was done, the students were asked to sit quietly in the library while the others finished in the library computer lab. I was watching. It was interesting to see which students remained sitting and stayed in their chairs with their phones, and which went over to the book shelves to explore titles. The students with the highest averages in the class went over to the books. Those who struggle with reading and writing stayed with their phones.
One boy came over and explained to his friend, who was talking to me, that a new book in a zombie series had come out. It held up the book, and was so excited. It's just the kind of book that I would be sorry to see students holding up, were I not reading Donalyn Miller's The Book Whisperer. She says, let them read whatever they want - any reading is so much better than no reading, that there is no room for judgment.
Now, I agree. This student, who is often less than engaged in class, was speaking with uncharacteristic excitement about this series, which is a horror series. Of course our class would be boring to him, if that is what he wants to read about.
More on this book later - after I finish it. It was my goal to finish before the end of February, so I need to read the last chapter before I go to bed. I've already promised this copy to three other English teachers before it's due back to Inter-Library Loan at Earlham.
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