In this newly revised and expanded edition, Grant Osborne provides seminary students and working pastors with the full set of tools they need to move from sound exegesis to the development of biblical and systematic theologies and to the preparation of sound, biblical sermons.
Osborne contends that hermeneutics is a spiral from text to context a movement between the horizon of the text and the horizon of the reader that spirals nearer and nearer toward the intended meaning of the text and its significance for today.
Well-established as the standard evangelical work in the field since its first publication in 1991, The Hermeneutical Spiral has been updated to meet the needs of a new generation of students and pastors. Thorough revisions have been made throughout, new chapters have been added on Old Testament law and the use of the Old Testament in the New, and the bibliography has been thoroughly updated.
A basic thesis he mentions a number of times throughout the book is that the goal of hermeneutics is not the commentary but the sermon. This textbook is very detailed and yet practical: almost everything he writes is aimed at how to write a relevant sermon for a congregation today.
Part one deals with General Hermeneutics. Here he addresses matters of context, grammar, semantics, syntax, and historical and cultural backgrounds.
In part two Osborne discusses extensively the different genre of the Bible which he divides as narrative, poetry, wisdom, prophecy, apocalyptic, parable, and epistle. A preacher will do well to consult the different chapters when preaching on a text of a particular genre.
In Part 3, the author deals with Applied Hermeneutics. He writes about the place of Biblical Theology and Systematic Theology in the interpretation of Scripture. The second to last chapter is about contextualization-showing a congregation today how the text is relevant for them. The book comes together in the last chapter, "The Sermon," in which Osborne gives both theoretical and practical instruction in preparing the sermon and preaching.
Osborne promotes what is often called the textual-thematic (also known as textual- reconstructive or expository) sermon. He does not, however, totally reject the topical sermon.
This is a very good book. It would serve well as a textbook for a seminary course on hermeneutics. Considering its size (500 pages of dense type), a minister in a busy pastorate might be a bit intimidated to take it on. But then, that's what sabbaticals are for!
