Wednesday-Content: Conclusión
The tasks described in the previous five articles have focused in a special way on the study of the most important words of the passage you will be teaching. If you have managed to carry out those tasks, you will have accomplished your main objective and reached Wednesday’s objective.
- Objective: To determine the contextual meaning of key terms and finalize your understanding of the passage, having interacted with scholarship.
- Goal (Mile-Marker 2): To have written contextual didactic descriptions of important words, along with a draft of the exegetical idea of the passage.
If you have additional time, you can also include some other activities to deepen your understanding of the passage. Of course, there is also another option … advance your work instead of deepening it!
Additional Ideas
- Read that one article you didn’t read previously. It is possible that at an earlier time you chose not to read a longer article about some special concept or word in your passage. Perhaps at the time you weren’t sure you had the time for it or didn’t see it as important. Maybe now, after you have finished your homework, you see that you do have the time or that you could benefit from going deeper.
- Continue memorizing your passage. The work you have done on the words of your passage will have greatly enriched your appreciation for what you have been memorizing. However, there is also the «danger» that you may not like some parts of the translation you have been learning. You can always change words, but it is probably better to stick with the translation you have been using – especially if it is the translation you usually use for preaching. The fluency you will have with a familiar version in your own language will compensate for anything you might want to nuance later.
Ideas for Original Languages
If you have knowledge of the original languages, you are probably knowledgeable enough not to need guidance on these topics. However, some of the following ideas may be new or at least good reminders.
- Research some of your words in the broader corpus. This may provide useful additional perspectives on your words. For example, for NT Greek there is the background of the Septuagint and all the contemporary Hellenistic literature. Depending on what lexicons and commentaries you have been referencing, some of this literature will already have been mentioned. Explore some of those references.
- Expand your resources. If you don’t have the necessary resources to do the above, investigate how to get them and how much they would cost. Do you need to improve your lexicon collection? For example, would it be useful to expand your digital resources on the Apostolic Fathers, Philo, Josephus, to mention some of the most interesting ones?
- Strengthen your immunity against word study fallacies. We have made several mentions of Donald Carson’s book Exegetical Fallacies. If you have not yet read it, and you know something of the original languages – especially Greek – reading the chapter on word study fallacies will serve you well for the rest of your ministry.
Download: Quick Summary Guide: Wednesday-Content