newbie question about an executable shell script

[GoogleGrps]

I'm using bash 2.03 on a Red Hat Linux box. According to 
http://www.gnu.org/manual/bash/html_chapter/bashref_3.html#SEC52 
"In other words, executing 

filename arguments 

is equivalent to 

executing bash filename arguments 

if filename is an executable shell script."

I wrote a simple test script and chmod 777 test
#!/bin/bash

echo hi


When I try to run the script I get the following results

#./test
bash: ./test: Permission denied

#bash test
hi

My question is why do I get Permission denied with ./test but not with bash 
test?

-AC