A few days ago, I wrote a post called Context is Everything.

I was thinking further along those lines, that part of "everything" is perspective.

I have no idea why, but earlier today I was recalling what was perhaps one of the most embarrassing moments in my life (to date). It happened right before I was graduated from high school. It was before the commencement ceremony, and our principal was giving his by now standard speech to the assembled graduates before the big ceremony began.

He asked us if anyone knew what it meant "to commence". Eager and somewhat proud, I fell into his trap. Hey, I was smart and I knew it. But I honestly didn't know the formal definition of the word. I deduced it from context.

"Mr. Parker, it means 'to end', right?"

I was so embarrased when I found out it meant the exact opposite. But from my own perspective, the commencement ceremony was all about ending. I'd given twelve good years of service to the Oak Harbor School District, my time was up. I was getting out. It was over. Time to move on.

And I dare say anyone attempting to derive the meaning of the word "commencement" or "commence" based on studies of these assemblies across the country — otherwise uniformed about the meaning of the word — might end up making the same mistake I did. They could have all of the data in the world. Fragments of programs saved from time capsules at high schools across the country. Oral histories from five generations removed telling the story of how school ended with "commencement" day.

But none of this changes the fact that "to commence" means to begin or to start.

I wonder how many times I make the same mistake in exegesis, deducing an obvious-but-wrong meaning of a word, or similarly erroneous intent of a phrase. It makes me realize that I need to be a bit more diligent about understanding the background and setting of the specific books of the Bible. That I need to know more about theories of authorship and circumstances of writing. And, most importantly, I need to be better about tracking who is saying what to whom in epistles, narrative and dialogue. And the relationships between those people. This sort of knowledge helps keep perspective in mind, and this will assist in proper exegesis of the Bible.

And that's the goal, isn't it?

Update (2005-09-01): Cheers to Mike Sangrey at Exegetitor for picking up this thread and working it out in more detail. Regarding what Mike says about what I called theories of authorship above, in my defense I confess to myopia. I'm stuck in the Pastoral Epistles where one's theory of authorship, I'd argue, has at least some effect on how the text is understood.