Biblical Hermeneutics

PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL HERMENETICS ; M. M. NINAN
PRINCIPLE #3:
LEXICAL-SYNTACTICAL PRINCIPLE
“No man has a right to say, as some are in the habit of saying, ‘The Spirit tells me that such
or such is the meaning of a passage.’ How is he assured that it is the Holy Spirit, and not a
spirit of delusion, except from the evidence that the interpretation is the legitimate meaning
of the words?’ (Alexander Carson, Examination of the Principles of Biblical Interpretation.
Cited in Ramm, Protestant Biblical Interpretation)
This step looks at the words used and the way the words are used. Different order of the
sentence, the punctuation, the tense of the verse are all aspects that are looked at in the
lexical syntactical method. How is the text arranged? Try to distinguish what parts of the text
are: narratives, parables, metaphors, dialogue, poetry, etc... Then we need to look at the
gramatical structure of the sentences.
Having primarily dealt with the gramatical structure the next important step is the study of the
words that convey the concepts involved. In this a Bible dictionary to get the basic lexical
meaning of the word and a concordance to study how the same word is used elsewhere in the
Bible by various authors at various occasions will help. These help to get the real meaning of the
words.
Hermeneutics: Principles and Processes of Biblical Interpretation
By Henry A. Virkler
Steps in Lexical-Syntactical Analysis
Lexical-syntactical anahsis is sometimes difficult, but it often yields exciting and meaningful
results. This complex process is somewhat easier to understand if organized into a sevenstep
procedure:
1. identify the genera! literary form. The literary form an author uses (prose, poetry, etc.)
influences the way he intends his words to be ii ndcrstood.
2. Trace the development of the author's theme and show how the passage under
consideration fits into the context. This step, already begun as part of contextual analysis,
provides a necessary perspective for determining the meaning of words and syntax.
3. Identify the natural divisions of the text. The main conceptual units and transitional
statements reveal the author’s thought process and therefore help clarify his meaning.
4. Identify the connecting words within the paragraphs and sentences. Connecting words
(conjunctions, prepositions, relative pronouns) show the logical relationship between two or
more thoughts.
5. Determine what the individual words mean. Any word that survives long in a language
begins to take on a variety of meanings. Thus it is necessary to identify the various possible
meanings of ancient words at the time the biblical author used them and then to determine
which of the several possible meanings is the one the author intended to convey in a specific
context.
6. Analyze tile syntax. The relationship of words to one another is expressed through their
grammatical forms and arrangement.
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