196 Jonathan Cohen
are incorrigibly aff ected by the contemporary perspectives of historicism
and cultural relativism. Th ey live under the myth that no truth claim can
ever be simply right or just. Th ey see all claims as right only from a point of
view that is determined by historical and cultural circumstances. Th is per-
spective eff ectively neutralizes and delegitimizes the truth question. Strauss
and his followers see the abandonment of the search for the truth not as an
advance but as a retreat from the activity that is most characteristically hu-
man. Th e Bible and other great texts, on the other hand, are preoccupied
by the truth question and seek to respond to it by articulating what they
regard as a true account of the human condition and the good life. Most
contemporary readers, then, are constitutionally incapable of understand-
ing the Bible on its own terms since that very question is out of bounds
for them. According to this approach, the voice of the present-day reader
must be muted, at least temporarily, in order that the Bible may speak with
its own voice. Moderns must distance themselves from their modernity in
order even to qualify as adequate readers.
A genuinely dialogical hermeneutic, such as the one promulgated by
Buber and Rosenzweig, could not one-sidedly privilege either the reader
or the text in the interpretive exchange. A dialogical exchange between
human beings in general, and between a reader and a text in particular,
implies a certain ethic of interpretation. Both voices — that of the reader
and that of the text — must be given equal opportunity both to listen and
to speak. Dialogue between the reader and the text must be holistic (each
voice must be regarded as whole and integral — as greater than the sum of
its parts), charitable, and reciprocal. Neither side should set about “using”
the other side for its own purposes. Th e reader should not regard the text
as a mere illustration of his or her own theories of human development.
Neither should the reader regard him- or herself as merely a potential stu-
dent or emissary of the magisterial truth of the text. Each party must bring
his or her entire life situation or “horizon” — in all its concreteness and fi ni-
tude — to the encounter, and both of these perspectives will fi gure in the
“fusion of horizons” that will inform the interpretation.40
From the standpoint of a theology of dialogue, God can be heard and
glimpsed in and through events, human deeds, and human speech and
especially through that humanly spoken, written, and compiled “speech”
known as the Bible — the text that brought, and continues to bring, the gos-
pel of dialogicality to the world. Nonetheless, biblical voices, and the bibli-
cal voice as a whole, are historically and culturally situated, just as the con-
temporary reader is so situated. For this reason, dialogue, in the words of