To Exegete or Not
I’ve noticed a trend in contemporary writing about theology. It seems that when people write about exegesis, a noun referring to the interpretation of Scripture, or use its cousin exegete, a noun referring to one who interprets Scripture, they often try to convert these nouns into verb forms. The most common offense seems to be tacking an –ing suffix to exegete, yielding exegeting, a new verb form not found in my dictionary. It’s not uncommon to find references to exegeting a text.Another conversion to a verb form occurs when people try to attach an –ize suffix to exegete. The result is another word not found in my dictionary: exegetize. More often this word is contracted to exegize, which isn’t in my dictionary either.
A curious mutation occurs when you place the word to in front of a verb — you get an infinitive. Infinitives, as I recall, function as noun forms. So, you take a good noun, exegete, then pretend it’s really a verb, slap a to in front of it, and, Voila! You’ve managed to turn a noun into a noun form. But something gets lost in translation; as to exegete a text is a pretty clumsy substitute for exegesis of a text.
Permit me the following analogy: an exegete is to exegesis as a surgeon is to surgery. No one with a decent command of English would speak of surgeoning or surgeonizing a patient. Nor would they use to surgeon a patient instead of surgery on a patient.
Just as a surgeon performs surgery on a patient, an exegete performs exegesis on a text. Performing exegesis is a far superior way of expressing what is meant by exegeting, exegetizing, and exegizing.
I know, it’s not an earth shattering issue, but this former English teacher still reaches for a red pen whenever he encounters this misuse of our language.
posted by dave @ Tuesday, September 27, 2005
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