Hermeneutics

by Thiselton, Anthony C.

• ISBN13: 9780802864109
• ISBN10: 0802864104
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-10-09
• Publisher: Eerdmans Pub Co

Summary

Anthony Thiselton here brings together his encyclopedic knowledge of hermeneutics and his nearly four decades of teaching on the subject to provide a splendid interdisciplinary textbook. After a thorough historical overview of hermeneutics, Thiselton moves into modern times with extensive analysis of scholarship from the mid-twentieth century, including liberation and feminist theologies, reader-response and reception theory, and postmodernism. No other text on hermeneutics covers the range of writers and subjects discussed in Thiselton's Hermeneutics. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Anthony C. Thiselton is professor of Christian theology at the University of Nottingham. His other books include The Two Horizons, two commentaries on 1 Corinthians, and The Hermeneutics of Doctrine (all Eerdmans).

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xiii
The Aims and Scope of Hermeneutics	p. 1
Toward a Definition of Hermeneutics	p. 1
What Should We Hope to Gain from a Study of Hermeneutics?	p. 5
Differences between "Philosophical Hermeneutics" and More Traditional Philosophical Thought, and Their Relation to Explanation and Understanding	p. 7
Preliminary and Provisional Understanding (Pre-understanding) and the Hermeneutical Circle	p. 13
Recommended Initial Reading	p. 16
Hermeneutics in the Contexts of Philosophy, Biblical Studies, Literary Theory, and the Social Self	p. 17
Further Differences from More Traditional Philosophical Thought: Community and Tradition; Wisdom or Knowledge?	p. 17
Approaches in Traditional Biblical Studies: The Rootedness of Texts Located in Time and Place	p. 20
The Impact of Literary Theory on Hermeneutics and Biblical Interpretation: The New Criticism	p. 24
The Impact of Literacy Theory: Reader-Response Theories	p. 29
Wider Dimensions of Hermeneutics: Interest, Social Sciences, Critical Theory, Historical Reason, and Theology	p. 31
Recommended Initial Reading	p. 34
An Example of Hermeneutical Methods: The Parables of Jesus	p. 35
The Definition of a Parable and Its Relation to Allegory	p. 35
The Plots of Parables and Their Existential Interpretation	p. 39
The Strictly Historical Approach: Jülicher, Dodd, Jeremias	p. 43
The Limits of the Historical Approach: A Retrospective View?	p. 48
The Rhetorical Approach and Literary Criticism	p. 52
Other Approaches: The New Hermeneutic, Narrative Worlds, Postmodernity, Reader Response, and Allegory	p. 56
Recommended Initial Reading	p. 59
A Legacy of Perennial Questions from the Ancient World: Judaism and the Ancient Greeks	p. 60
The Christian Inheritance: The Hermeneutics of Rabbinic Judaism	p. 60
The Literature of Greek-Speaking Judaism	p. 65
Jewish Apocalyptic Literature around the Time of Christ	p. 70
The Greek Roots of Interpretation: The Stoics	p. 72
Recommended Initial Reading	p. 74
The New Testament and the Second Century	p. 76
The Old Testament as a Frame of Reference or Pre-understanding: Paul and the Gospels	p. 76
Hebrews, 1 Peter, and Revelation: The Old Testament as Pre-understanding	p. 80
Does the New Testament Employ Allegorical Interpretation or Typology?	p. 83
Passages in Paul That Might Be "Difficult": Septuagint or Hebrew?	p. 87
Old Testament Quotations in the Gospels, 1 Peter, and the Epistle to the Hebrews	p. 89
Second-Century Interpretation and Hermeneutics	p. 94
Recommended Initial Reading	p. 99
From the Third to the Thirteenth Centuries	p. 100
The Latin West: Hippolytus, Tertullian, Ambrose, Jerome	p. 100
Alexandrian Traditions: Origen; with Athanasius, Didymus and Cyril	p. 104
The Antiochene School: Diodore, Theodore, John Chrysostom, and Theodoret	p. 109
The Bridge to the Middle Ages: Augustine and Gregory the Great	p. 114
The Middle Ages: Nine Figures from Bede to Nicholas of Lyra	p. 117
Recommended Initial Reading	p. 123
Reform, the Enlightenment, and the Rise of Biblical Criticism	p. 124
Reform: Wycliffe, Luther, Melanchthon	p. 125
Further Reform: William Tyndale and John Calvin	p. 130
Protestant Orthodoxy, Pietism, and the Enlightenment	p. 133
The Rise of Biblical Criticism in the Eighteenth Century	p. 138
Ten Leaders of Biblical Criticism in the Nineteenth Century	p. 143
Recommended Initial Reading	p. 147
Schleiermacher and Dilthey	p. 148
Influences, Career, and Major Works	p. 149
Schleiermacher's New Conception of Hermeneutics	p. 153
Psychological and Grammatical Interpretation: The Comparative and the Divinatory; The Hermeneutical Circle	p. 155
Further Themes and an Assessment of Schleiermacher	p. 158
The Hermeneutics of Wilhelm Dilthey	p. 161
Recommended Initial Reading	p. 164
Rudolf Bultmann and Demythologizing the New Testament	p. 166
Influences and Earlier Concerns	p. 166
Bultmann's Notions of "Myth"	p. 170
Existential Interpretation and Demythologizing: Specific Examples	p. 173
Criticisms of Bultmann's Program as a Whole	p. 178
The Subsequent Course of the Debate: Left-Wing and Right-Wing Critics	p. 180
Recommended Initial Reading	p. 184
Some Mid-Twentieth-Century Approaches: Barth, the New Hermeneutic, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, and Barr's Semantics	p. 185
Karl Barth's Earlier and Later Hermeneutics	p. 185
The So-Called New Hermeneutic of Fuchs and Ebeling	p. 190
Structuralism and Its Application to Biblical Studies	p. 195
Post-Structuralism and Semantics as Applied to the Bible	p. 201
Recommended Initial Reading	p. 204
Hans-Georg Gadamer's Hermeneutics: The Second Turning Point	p. 206
Background, Influences, and Early Life	p. 206
Truth and Method Part I: Critique of "Method" and the "World" of Art and Play	p. 211
Truth and Method Part II: Truth and Understanding in the Human Sciences	p. 215
Truth and Method Part III: Ontological Hermeneutics and Language, with Assessments	p. 222
Further Assessments of the Three Parts of Truth and Method	p. 225
Recommended Initial Reading	p. 227
The Hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur	p. 228
Background: Early Life, Influences, and Significance	p. 228
The Middle Period: The Interpretation of Freud, The Conflict of Interpretations, and Metaphor	p. 232
The Later Period: Time and Narrative	p. 236
Oneself as Another: The Identity of the Self, "Otherness," and Narrative	p. 242
Oneself as Another: Implications for Ethics; Other Later Works	p. 244
Five Assessments: Text, Author's Intention, and Creativity	p. 248
Recommended Initial Reading	p. 254
The Hermeneutics of Liberation Theologies and Postcolonial Hermeneutics	p. 255
Definition, Origins, Development, and Biblical Themes	p. 255
Gustavo Gutiérrez and the Birth of Liberation Theology	p. 260
The Second Stage: "Base Communities" and José Porfirio Miranda in the 1970s	p. 263
The Second Stage Continued: Juan Luis Segundo, J. Severino Croatto, Leonardo Boff, and Others	p. 267
The Third Stage: Postcolonial Hermeneutics from the 1980s to the Present	p. 271
A Further Assessment and Evaluation	p. 276
Recommended Initial Reading	p. 277
Feminist and Womanist Hermeneutics	p. 279
The Public Visibility and Ministry of Women from Earliest Times	p. 280
First- and Second-Wave Feminism and Feminist Hermeneutics	p. 283
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza's In Memory of Her: The Argument	p. 287
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza's In Memory of Her: An Evaluation	p. 291
The Fragmentation of the Second Wave	p. 294
Womanist Hermeneutics	p. 295
A Provisional Assessment of Feminist Hermeneutics	p. 301
Recommended Initial Reading	p. 305
Reader-Response and Reception Theory	p. 306
Reader-Response Theory: Its Origins and Diversity	p. 306
An Evaluation and the Application of the Theory to Biblical Studies	p. 311
Is Allegorical Interpretation a Subcategory of Reader-Response Theory? A Suggestion	p. 314
The Recent Turn to Reception Theory and Hans Robert Jauss	p. 316
Reception Theory and Specific Biblical Passages	p. 320
Recommended Initial Reading	p. 325
Postmodernism and Hermeneutics	p. 327
Is Postmodernity Compatible with Christian Faith? Three Possible Answers	p. 327
European Postmodernism: Jacques Derrida (with the later Barthes)	p. 331
European Postmodernism: Jean-François Lyotard (with Jean Baudrillard)	p. 336
European Postmodernism: Michel Foucault; Knowledge and Power	p. 341
American Postmodernism: Richard Rorty (with the Later Stanley Fish)	p. 344
Recommended Initial Reading	p. 348
Some Concluding Comments	p. 349
Divine Agency and the Authority of Scripture	p. 349
Advances in Linguistics and Pragmatics: Politeness Theory	p. 350
Brevard Childs and the Canonical Approach	p. 353
Fuller Meaning, Typology, and Allegorical Interpretation	p. 354
Catholic Biblical Scholarship and the Two Great Turning Points	p. 354
Selective Bibliography	p. 356
Index of Names	p. 381
Index of Subjects	p. 390
Index of Scripture References and Other Ancient Sources	p. 400
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.