Commonalities between Research Methods for Consumer Science and Biblical Scholarship
Marketing Theory, 2001 Volume 1(1): 109-133
25 Pages Posted: 21 Nov 2015 Last revised: 19 Feb 2016
Date Written: 2001
Abstract
This article focuses on the consumption/interpretation of the Bible, which is viewed as a complex, qualitative databank, requiring rigorous methodological tools to attempt the herrneneutical interpretive task. A positivist philosophical approach to Bible study is taken, posing questions like 'What did the original writer intend the audience to understand?' as a precursor to the question 'How do we impart that message today?'. Biblical scholarship is extremely sophisticated, and this article delves into many layers of techniques and rigorous analysis, including word studies, studies of phrases and paragraph structures, and sociological hypotheses about political agendas. It draws on critical textual, historical, and narrative schools of thought in biblical research. These different methods are presented both as an end in themselves (as tools of literary analysis) and also as means to study the content of the sacred as transcendent experiences of extraordinary consumption in consumer research.
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