At this point, I am still persuaded that history and grammar cannot be totally laid aside in favor of one’s own imagination. What do we mean by Historical-Grammatical? It is the study of history and grammar surrounding the biblical account/Story. Each biblical document must be studied in its own context that includes language, types of literature, historical background, geographical conditions, and the life setting of the people, in order to discover that meaning.

It is my opinion that there is an interaction between the Old Testament and its ancientness, the New Testament and its first centuriness, and the church and me in all its twenty-first centuriness, when I hear its stories. How do I understand the story? By using all the tools of historical exegesis to enable me to hear the words of the Old and New Testaments’ writers and writings as their first readers and hearers might have read and heard them, catching the full meaning intended by the writers, but always with an ear open for the unexpected word of God through the writers of the Old and New Testaments, challenging my own twenty-first centuriness and all its presuppositions and perceptions. William Lane captures this idea well in the introduction to his commentary on Mark. , xii).

“Only gradually did I come to understand that my primary task as a commentator was to listen to the text, and to the discussion it has prompted over the course of the centuries, as a child who needed to be made wise. The responsibility to discern truth from error has been onerous at times. When a critical or theological decision has been demanded by the text before I was prepared to commit myself, I have adopted the practice of the Puritan commentators in laying the material before the Lord and asking for his guidance. This had made the preparation of the commentary a spiritual as well as an intellectual pilgrimage through the text of the Gospel. In learning to be sensitive to all that the evangelist was pleased to share with me, I have been immeasurably enriched by the disciple of responsible listening.”