Heremeneutics asks a simple question: how do I properly understand? Hans George Gadamer (1900-2002), the most influential hermeneutician of the 20th century, answered the question this way: “Hermeneutics is above all a practice, the art of understanding…In it what one has to exercise most is the ear” (as quoted in Thiselton. Hermeneutics, Eerdmans: 2009).
Though certainly an “art”, hermeneutics is also an increasingly technical and highly specialized field of academic inquiry–and a field with which all other fields must make their peace. While the primary questions hermeneutics concerns–how do I understand responsibly? Communicate effectively? Respond adequately?–reach far back into antiquity, modern questions were framed by the intersection of theology and philosophy in the 19th Century. Pastor and theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) stood at the center of this intersection and in his attempt to bind together rationalism, romanticism, and the Christian faith he became the ‘father of modern hermeneutics’.
Following Schleiermacher, Gadamer developed questions about hermeneutical method extensively and provided the conceptual structures which now guide the discipline’s methodological discussion. By the time of Gadamer’s death, late modernity, and its almost pathological discomfort with certainty, had metastasized throughout western society and provided a vibrant context for Gadamer’s ideas to flourish and for Hermeneutics to take its place as one of philosophy’s most critical fields.
Yet, the field remains unsettled. What is Hermeneutics? Where is it going? Where has it come from? Despite the very brief, if not oversimplified sketch above, these basic questions remain relevant and challenging. Many books in recent years have attempted to address the complexity of interpretation in relation to specific fields such as literary theory, biblical studies, and religion. We might call this “applied hermeneutics”. But direct work on hermeneutics, publications that treat the subject solely, has been–for the most part–sparse. However, two recent books by Eerdmans have filled major gaps in the literature. These include Anthony Thiselton’s Hermeneutics: An Introduction (2009), and Hermeneutics: An Introduction to Interpretive Theory by Stanley Porter and Jason Robinson (2011).
The titles to these books seem to imply a great deal of overlap. But this is unavoidable with introductory books.
Thiselton’s book is very much a historical introduction. Thiselton traces the discipline as it developed alongside Western Civilization beginning in nascent form with the Greeks and ancient Judaism–the latter which he specifically identifies as the progenitor of Christian interpretation. This continues down to the modern and postmodern period where Thiselton identifies the work of Schleiermacher and Gadamer as the ”two great turning points” in the discipline while acknowledging Barth and Ricoeur as significant but secondary turning points. By contrast, Porter and Robinson are exclusively concerned with Hermeneutics in the modern/postmodern period, and especially those movements and individuals whose work has affected biblical and theological study. This work is therefore more selective historically and theoretically.
But Porter and Robinson’s book also differs in emphasis. They do not develop a comprehensive historical picture as Thiselton does. Rather, they provide biographical vignettes on
the major figures that spawned the most important schools of thought. Moreover, these vignettes serve only a support role for the main purpose of Porter and Robinson: an analysis of interpretive theory. They explore conceptually, and evaluate philosophically where Thiselton documents historically and traces developmentally. Thiselton, will explore theories but his goal is not primarily to evaluate their coherence or viability, but rather to show how the ideas have developed and changed over time.
Therefore, what emerges is two works that are very much related, but approach the subject of Hermeneutics from sharply different angles. Thiselton provides an intellectual history which provides a firm basis upon which students may then read Porter and Robinson for the purpose of digging into various hermeneutical theories at a deeper theoretical level. So, as we might expect from the titles there is overlap–but the overlap serves only to augment the different ways the book approach the subject. As such, it seems to me that these two book make a perfect pairing for the classroom. Thiselton, though no simple read will usher students into the world of hermeneutics while providing the tools for their first steps of philosophical analysis. Porter and Robinson will then take this background material and use it to help students critically engage theory.
