Conservatives usually learned to read the Bible from hermeneutics books, not from the examples God gave us in the biblical authors themselves. This is a serious mistake, and despite the fact that most modern conservatives make it, Our People have not always been so willfully thick.
For a brief and helpful look at medieval hermeneutics, see Peter Leithart’s brief article on the Quadriga. If you want to go deeper into Leithart’s approach, he has an excellent book, Deep Exegesis.
My most detailed take on this can be found in a course called Living the Living Word. I’d teach it differently — and probably a lot more simply — now, but the basic strategy is the same: study the biblical authors as they read the text. Follow their example.
Go practice.
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