Christian bible scholars of recent times have been applying techniques of textual analysis to their holy book, the bible, in an effort to tease out meaning from the text. They claim that the ordinary obvious meaning are not sufficient to derive a full understanding of the text. Thus techniques such as exegesis and hermeneutic are being increasing used by some to derive "meaning" from the plain text.

Now, the question is - what meaning would these text have had to their immediate audience when they were first penned? Would the writers of these document have felt an overwhelming need to couch their compositions in obscure and incomprehensible language decipherable only to those with skills in textual analysis?

How would a 100 BCE man have understood Genesis, Daniel or Leviticus. Would he have need skills biblical exegesis?

Most of what is called the bible was not compile into one book until hundreds of years after the composition of the individual books. The Septuagint, essentially the Old Testament, was the first to be compile. Before such compilation, a reader of Nehemiah would not necessarily have had a copy of Daniel or Genesis as well. These books were produced in different times, spaning hundreds of years, by different people, in different socio-cultural and political environment.

To turn to the new testament, the earliest documents were produced by Paul, in the mid to late 50s CE. None of the direct cohorts of Jesus produced a surviving book, although some of the books of the NT are named after them. The earliest gospel was written about 70 CE and the latest is datable to about 120 CE, many decades after the events they describe.

Book publication technology was nothing like it is today and book production was expensive. Thus very few copies of these documents existed in the first few decades of the Jesus movement. Such was the paucity of books and knowledge that in the first and second century, there were many leading Christian Bishops who had never heard of the prime events in Jesus life, such as his virgin birth, crucifixion, ressurection, etc. To these Bishops, Jesus was a mythical figure not dissimilar to the plethera of gods in the paga cults.

The apostle Paul wrote letters and epistles to the various Christian communities in the Roman empire, communities he may have help found. These range from cities as Galatia, Thessolonia, Corinthia, Rome, etc, etc. These documents were dispatched to these cities as a means of informing them about the central tenets of the nascent Christian movement. Incidentally, these letters were soon regarded by their followers as containing key doctrinal information, given that there were no standard text, code into which were enshire the fundamental precepts of Christianity. These early readers of Paul's documents did NOT have copies of the gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke and John) to cross-reference. These gospels would not be written for another 20 - 70 years. Further, given that documents production was a difficult and expensive affair, these letters would not have been copied and distributed until many years after they were first penned.

Thus it can be savely assumed that the first readers of the letters to the Galatians would not have known, much less read the letters to the Corinthians or Thessolonians. Would they have missed out on key doctrinal information, requisite for their salvation? You bet. Basically, different doctrinal issues were addressed to different audiences at different times.

These books, letters, epistles remained as single stand-alone and isolated documents for nearly three hundred years, until Constantine urge the Christian leaders to produce a definitive book for the movement in the early 4th century. None of these documents were intended to be compiled into a book. There is no evidence that Paul himself had a record or compilation of all his letters.

Now, why is the foregoing important in view of biblical exegesis? Is is important in the following way;

1) How would the early readers of these documents have understood them? Would they have required modern-day exegetical techniques?

2) If you were a scholar or Christian in Rome or Galatia around 100CE, with ONLY copies of Romans and Galatians available to you, what understand of the grand-scheme would you have arrived in the absence of the other documents? What would have been your understanding of Paul's position with regards to the question of sex and marriage discussed in Corinthians?

Given that these documents were not intended to be read as we currently do today, any for of exegetical analysis that treats them as a single coherent text is badly wrong-headed.

Where are our exegesis experts to shed some light on this very vexed subject?