Talk:Eisegesis

this article uses words like "pseudoscience" which are inherently judgemental. moreover, it criticizes and deprecates a whole field of study. whether or not the poster agrees with eisegesis is not the point whatsoever. anybody who came looking for dispassionate information about eisegesis would find no useful material here. i don't know anything about this topic -- which is why i'm here! -- but think someone should tell me whether they agree with my assessment. le 07:04, 26 January 2006 (UTC)


 * As per edit history and my email to le (above) :- I have completely re-written this page, discarding nearly all of what was said before because I felt it was from a certain theological point of view. I'm aware of my personal feelings about eisegesis in relation to Biblical texts. Perhaps, somebody could provide an account of why they think eisegesis is good. This would certainly balance the argument. Oliver Keenan 15:06, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks to users who have further cleaned up my edits, including the NPOV bits. Oliver Keenan 16:17, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Does the term eisegesis deserve a page of its own? I get the sense that the word is not clearly defined, and is used only as a disparaging term.

From one definition given in this article, it seems that eisegesis is the same thing as what some people would call "finding a personal meaning in the text." But if the meaning is personal, then it isn't meant to be applied generally, and shouldn't be considered on par with exegesis.

On the other hand, the article also says eisegesis is considered "poor exegesis" in biblical scholarship. In that case, can eisegesis even be considered an interpretation method at all?

It just looks like the word eisegesis does not lend itself to a neutral point of view. Aardvark92 20:19, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

After a quick internet survey, I've updated the final section of the page to cover the idea of eisegesis from various religious perspectives. It appears that the word eisegesis is nearly universally used as a criticism of one's opponents. The debate is not so much whether eisegesis is good or bad, as this article previously stated, but what constitutes eisegesis. Aardvark92 14:43, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

"While exegesis attempts to determine the historical context within which a particular verse exists..." Isn't this rather hermeneutics? At least that is what I got from the Exegesis article. Artur Buchhorn (talk) 20:41, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that the statement "Jews, in turn, might assert that Christians practice eisegesis when they read the Old Testament as anticipating Jesus of Nazareth.[citation needed]" Shouldn't need a citation. It is not stating what people think but what given the situation people might think. And it is correct as one group anticipates Jesus and the other doesn't when reading the Old Testament by definition. It IS an opinion and on THAT basis needs to be considered or rewritten, but it doesn't require a citation. User talk:Supercarrot3000 05:04, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Exegesis / Eisegesis : Asymmetry
A quick skim over the two articles for "Exegesis" and "Eisegesis" would almost lead one to believe that the former applies in many fields of religious and secular consideration, whereas the latter is limited to the Christian faith. Is it just me, or should there be a certain symmetry between the two, and any discussion under "Exegesis" pertaining to a particular faith/perspective should have some parallel in the "Eisegesis" article?

Just a $0.02 opinion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.78.90.0 (talk) 21:31, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

On Catholic & Orthodox stands on Protestant Bible-reading
Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians say that all Protestants engage in eisegesis, because the Bible can be correctly understood only through the lens of Holy Tradition as handed down by the institutional Church; this is articulated in the Dei verbum.

Problems with that:
 * 1) It is rather uninteresting to know what "Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians", i. e. some of them, say. It would, perhaps be interesting what the Roman Catholics etc. say, if that could be said, but a simple opinion that happens to be the one of a Roman Catholic is, at first, just that.
 * 2) articulated in the Dei Verbum: This is an apostolic constitution, usually cited with its incipit. Here the article is false and would suggest that it is articulated in the Word of God (which is the translation of Dei verbum.
 * 3) "by the institutional Church": the word institutional has a slight Protestant-propagandistic touch here.
 * 4) Now for more important things: No, Roman Catholics (I can't speak for Eastern Orthodox) do not say that all Protestants by way of being Protestants engage in eisegesis, because it would be eisegesis to read the Bible other than according to tradition. Roman Catholics do generally say that keeping the Tradition out of the picture makes them prone (not: sure) to fall into error, and they obviously do say that they actually are in error somewhere in any case, or else they would be Catholics. But being in error does not mean engaging in eisegesis.
 * 5) It is true that Protestants seem to engage in a lot of actual eisegesis - they can't seem to be able to refrain from putting their slogan "saving faith and faith alone" into just about any verse of the Apostolic letters where even on Protestant grounds an objective observer would be bound to say it has nothing to do with this specific verse. Similarly, most of the time they don't seem to be able to read the Sermon of the Mount in the manner it appears to the unbiased observer as obviously intended to be read: as a standard of how to act which is meant to be actually put into practice, with the implication that this might be difficult but is both possible and necessary. Instead the Protestant reading generally seems to be "you seem to want commandments? I give you as much commandments that you may get sick of them; and just know that you can't fulfill them anyway". So, the Protestants do engage in eigesis, but not as a matter of principle by reading the Bible without the lense of Tradition, but as a matter of actual fact by actually reading the Bible, in many cases, through the lens of Protestant prejudice ignoring what stands there. "Ignoring what actually stands there" is the definition of eisegesis. It is possible, though, to observe Protestants at not doing eisegis. (Though maybe the probability is greater in scholarship than in sermons?)--2001:A61:20A1:301:C0A:1D0E:9064:6B8 (talk) 10:21, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Spurious religion/science comparisons (not just Christian)
A related topic is the way in which many religious people find affirmation in parallels between some teaching of their faith and some theory or discovery of modern science. For example, some Christians perceive a parallel between the Big Bang and creation, and some Hindu thinkers perceive a parallel between evolution and the Dashavatara. I don't know if there's already an article somewhere on Wikipedia that specifically addresses such comparisons and criticisms thereof, and such an article would require contributions from experts (e.g. philosophers), but I think it would have a lot of potential value. 118.211.97.134 (talk) 01:10, 18 November 2017 (UTC)