exegesis

Exegesis is critical interpretation or explanation of a text. It constitutively requires language — exegesis operates on linguistic texts, parsing semantic and syntactic structure. Without language, exegesis cannot function. Law 8.

Exegesis is a specific kind of interpretation — a critical explanation or exposition of a text. A competent speaker would say 'exegesis is a form of interpretation.' Pinned sense: interpretation as critical explanation of a text (Law 11d).

Law 7 which-came-first test, from independent historical reasoning. Pinned senses: exegesis per its accepted definition — disciplined interpretation of authoritative texts according to established rules, persisting 'through the transmission of interpretive traditions across generations: commentaries referencing prior commentaries', with its method named as literal, allegorical, moral, anagogical; hermeneutics per its accepted definition — the systematic theory and framework of interpretation (hermeneutic circle, interpretive frameworks) mapping how texts, symbols, and artifacts acquire meaning. The exegetical tradition is the older construct: rabbinic and patristic commentary and scholastic glosses form a continuous institutional practice spanning millennia; the systematic theory of interpretation was abstracted from that practice in the modern period, when the discipline took biblical and legal exegesis as its founding subject matter. Y existed first and fed X: the theory of interpretation derived from the practice of exegesis. The etymological antiquity of the Greek 'hermeneutike' does not decide Law 7 — the question is which construct, as carved, came first, and the board's carve of hermeneutics is the modern theory, not the ancient word.