The rules of exegesis:
Gordon D. Fee, in his New Testament Exegesis, p 27, states simply, “Exegesis…answers the question, What did the biblical author mean? It has to do both with what he said (the content itself) and why he said it at any given point (the literary context). Furthermore, exegesis is primarily concerned with intentionality: What did the author intend his original readers to understand?”
Before we can determine what a given text might mean for us today, we must establish what it meant for its original audience.
This is the process of exegesis. In this article, we will lay out the fundamental rules, of which there are eight. In future articles, we will elaborate on each one from a nuts & bolts perspective. The rules listed are taken directly from Prof. Fee’s excellent book (p. 32), mentioned in the paragraph above.
Rules of Bible exegesis
Rule No. 1: Survey the historical context in general.
Rule No. 2: Confirm the limits of the passage.
Rule No. 3: Become thoroughly acquainted with your paragraph or pericope
Rule No. 4: Analyze sentence structures and syntactical relationships.
Rule No. 5: Establish the text.
Rule No. 6: Analyze the grammar.
Rule No. 7: Analyze significant words.
Rule No. 8: Research the historical-cultural background.
taken from:
http://www.godward.org/archives/BS%20No ... egesis.htm