Writing with the pastor and pupil in brain, Walter Brueggemann offers counsel for examining outdated testomony texts. He bargains either suggestion for the interpreter in addition to examples of operating with different types of passages: from narratives, prophecies, and Psalms. He additionally demonstrates how one can paintings thematically, drawing jointly threads from diverse traditions. His aim is to paintings throughout the rhetoric of those passages to arrive towards theological interpretation. those investigations point out Brueggemann's conviction that the method of relocating from textual content to interpretive final result is an inventive company that may be realized and practiced.

"One of the simplest and such a lot esteemed interpreters of Scripture indicates the following how he does it. A 'how-to' ebook with terrific examples, it truly is classic Brueggemann: incisive, penetrating, provocative, and consistently trying to discover the innovative of the textual content. He cares as a lot approximately pastoral accountability as interpretive procedure. in reality, he does not imagine you could separate them-one of the numerous presents of this compelling and functional book."

-Patrick D. Miller, writer of the faith of historic Israel

"We became conversant in the insightful reflections and the serious theological contemplating many modern biblical students. although, seldom has an writer taken us step by step throughout the genuine development of that suggestion. this can be accurately what Walter Brueggemann does during this ebook. Insisting that every one believers, no longer in simple terms students, can be capable of significantly learn the Bible, he bargains a converted, although nonetheless serious interpretive method, that exhibits us how we'd do it ourselves."

-Dianne Bergant, CSA writer of Scripture: background and Interpretation

"This is the e-book that these folks who've studied with Walter Brueggemann were awaiting. here's the trainer we've got identified in school: telling us how he has come to learn scripture as he does and exhibiting us how he does it. i've been utilizing this system of examining scripture with my congregation for the prior decade. jointly now we have came across that Brueggemann's three-step interpretive procedure opens us as much as the biblical texts so they converse to us in strong new methods. What an excellent present this e-book is to the church."

-Edwin Searcy, collage Hill Congregation, Vancouver, BC

Walter Brueggemann is William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of previous testomony Emeritus at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia. he's the writer of various works, together with Praying the Psalms (2nd ed., Cascade Books, 2007), Theology of the previous testomony, and Prophetic Imagination.