Let’s Exegete Not Eisegete the Bible

Caution:  This Interruption could be offensive to some readers, so please read all of this Interruption. 

All readers of the Bible should exegete, or allow the Bible to tell them what it means, and we should not eisegete or shove our desires or thoughts onto our biblical interpretations.

Let’s examine 1 Timothy 2:12 as a perfect example of eisegesis, even among believers who don’t intend to or even think they are eisegeting Scripture, but they are … 

I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man (ESV).

I have heard Bible-believing and faithful followers of Jesus say, “I don’t believe women should be elders in the local church because it says in the Bible that women should not have ‘authority’ over a man.”

Case closed. Followers can rest in being faithful to God’s Word. Yet, they don’t realize that the above statement eisegetes (bad), not exegetes (good) God’s Word — they do this not realizing what they have done!

A few points below (please don’t tie me to a heretical stake before you read carefully):

• Words and phrases are determined by usage. Culture defines words, which is why the Oxford Dictionary has recently added the words “skibidi” and “broligarchy.” I confess that I don’t know what they mean.
• The definition of New Testament words originally written in Koine Greek must be defined by how those words were used in the times of the New Testament and not in the manner in which these words are used today.
• Allowing Greek words to tell us about their meaning through a first-century cultural definition is good exegesis (good), and putting our viewpoints or how the word is used today, as a definition back onto a Biblical word, is eisegesis (bad).

Now back to 1 Timothy 2:12 and to those faithful believers who think they are exegeting when they are actually eisegeting. The Greek word for “authority” is “authenteo,” from which we derive our English word “authority.” We then define “authority” as “one in charge,” and that’s the meaning we use when reading  “exercise authority over a man.”

Makes sense that women shouldn’t be significant leaders or elders in a local church — that’s what the Bible says. Or is it what we are saying about a New Testament word?

Further points to note:

• The Greek word “authentein” is used only once in the New Testament and is rarely found in Greek literature outside the New Testament. 
• Using the principle that current culture defines words, it’s impossible to know precisely what the Greek word “authentein” means because we don’t have examples of the word’s usage from ancient Greek manuscripts and (outside 1 Timothy 2:12) we don’t find the word used in the rest of the New Testament for comparison.

So, if we think that women shouldn’t have authority over men and base our opinion upon 1 Timothy 2:12, we don’t know what we are talking about. To be honest, no one knows what they are talking about, since the word is basically untranslatable.

Please note that I’m not teaching in this Interruption that women should or should not be leaders in a local church; I’m just explaining the difference between exegesis and eisegesis.

Considering that women are at least 50 percent of the population of current Christians, if we do exclude them from significant roles of leadership, we should not base our argument upon a word that, as soon as you use it in this manner, is eisegesis.

Remember: exegesis (good); eisegesis (bad). Let’s believe in God’s Word and interpret it with thoughtful care.