Commonalities between Researchmethods for Consumer Science and biblical Scholarship

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 hermeneutical 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 thatmessage 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 politicalagendas. 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 sacredas transcendent experiences of extraordinary consumption in consumer research.