ing, and this meaning will continue to find a contemporary application, so that the modern interpreter will discover a challenge to his or her subjective existence by the historical context of Scripture.
This balanced approach will neither become a discipline of studying historical context or one of subjective understanding. Rather, as Fair writes, "the objectivity of the text and the subjectivity of the interpreter are both preserved, [and] can be maintained only when the direction of interpretation is from the historical interpretation of the text toward the subjective context of the interpreter." To this extent, then, Fair divides the task of the interpreter into a search for (historical) meaning--exegesis--and, subsequently, for significance--hermeneutics.
Exegesis is described as the critical examination of the text with the intent to "penetrate behind a text to the original meaning of the original author as he addressed his original constituency." Such an examination begins with a quest for the original language, its (historical) cont
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