interpreter could know or understand. For Gadamer, all texts are like the
Constitution and the Bible. 8
While it might be debated whether Hirsch understands Gadamer correctly
or not, Hirsch concedes that “for some genres of texts the author submits
to the convention that his willed implications must go far beyond what he
explicitly knows.” 9 Valid interpretation cannot, however, go beyond what
the author intended in any old way. A valid new interpretation must con-
form to “the type of meaning” the author willed. 10 He further posits that
in the case of laws, “the idea of a law contains the idea of mutatis mutandis
[‘necessary changes having been made’].” Therefore, a “generic conven-
tion” is implied in the will of the author so that the principles in the law
still apply in future situations, the specifi cs of which the law’s author could
never have imagined. 11
I. Howard Marshall points out that Paul asked people in the churches
he founded to pray for him in his subsequent ventures, and by analogy
today this should be taken to imply that believers should pray for contem-
porary missionaries. 12 I believe Hirsch would understand this interpreta-
tion to be congruent with the “willed type” Paul intended.
HIRSCH: SIGNIFICANCE
Hirsch is famous for his distinction between “meaning” and “signifi -
cance.” He links meaning with the consciousness of the author and sig-
nifi cance with the consciousness of the reader. What mediates between the
two is interpretation, which involves a re-cognition in the reader’s mind
of what the author intended.
The reason Hirsch considers it imperative to maintain the distinction
between meaning and signifi cance is that while empirical readers (not his
term) come from many different eras and contexts, each empirical author
(again not his term) does not. 13 The signifi cance of a text for one particu-
lar reader/interpreter might well be very different from that text’s signifi -
cance for another interpreter. However, the text’s meaning should be the
same (or at least very similar) for both interpreters, if they are skilled.
This disjuncture between the author and his context on the one hand
and the interpreter and her context on the other hand exhibits the central
problem of Hermeneutics as a discipline. Whether articulated as Gotthold
Lessing’s “broad and ugly ditch,” 14 Krister Stendahl’s distinction between
“what it meant” and “what it means,” 15 or Anthony Thistleton’s “two
ECHOING HIRSCH: DO READERS FIND OR CONSTRUCT MEANING? 87
