Dead scientist trains us for exegesis

How do you start sermon preparation or your exegetical assignments? With the Biblical text, I hope and pray. But how soon do you turn to commentaries and other exegetical aids? 

Louis Agassiz (d. 1873) was famous for his work in biology and geology, and apparently specialised in fish and glaciers. These days he is ‘on the nose’ for his view that the human races are different species. (So much for us all being in the image of God, and certainly no historical Adam there.) 

One of his graduate students was a man named Samuel Scudder; about 15 years after Agassiz first trained him, Scudder wrote about his training. It’s an interesting and brief read. And at first, I thought it ended there – interesting, but no more. 

In the weeks and months since then, though, it has anchored itself in my mind and refused to go away.  “What a brilliant model,” I now realise, “for biblical exegesis.”  

It turns out that I’m not original. Here is an article from Justin Taylor at the Gospel Coalition (USA) condensing Scudder’s original 4-page recount to our attention spans. It is worth a read and a ponder: 

(1400 words, so maybe a 7-minute read.) 

Scudder went on to became one of the greatest entomologists (insect scientists) of his day. He credited his success to staring at and studying that single dead fish for three long, dull days before being allowed to compare it to a second specimen. This spun out to eight months of looking at these fish under Agassiz. He found it painful at first, but Scudder benefited from it greatly the rest of his career

So, Agassiz’s Look at the fish! Look at the fish! Look at the fish!  

becomes for us 

Look at the text! Look at the text! Look at the text! 

Now go and start sharpening your powers of observation on the living text, and not just a dead fish.

PS

Here is Scudder’s more interesting and slightly longer original. It is a bit under 1600 words, so give maybe eight minutes for this fascinating read. 

And if you want an animated version, here is John Piper narrating a 2:55 animated video about this story and applying it to Bible reading in general. Truncated, but he gives the basic idea.