Just as our scholarly use of new methods can open vistas of interpretation for scholars, my students were awakening to ways of studying the Bible that were wholly new to them. Even more delightful was when students employing a method that had never been applied to the text they were studying. In those cases, they are on the cutting edge of biblical scholarship—not just in doctoral courses but also in college electives and seminary classes, even survey courses….

When I taught at seminary, we had a required course that actually focused on method. The course was called “New Testament Interpretation.” It was a methods course that focused on the ways we go about constructing potential meanings of a text in its first century context. Ironically, all the students assumed from the title that we were going to interpret the New Testament for them by telling them what it meant. They were disappointed in the class….