interpretation/hermeneuticsINTERPRETATION/HERMENEUTICS
The technical term for interpretation is hermeneutics, which originates
with the Greek term hermēneuein (to interpret). The term is also associ-
ated with the Greek god Hermes, who is identified as the messenger of
the gods. Within a religious context, interpretation plays an essential role
by making sense of and coming to understand the divine messages in oral
form and those preserved in writing. As time evolves and historical cir-
cumstances change, the art of interpretation becomes a never-ending task
for newer generations of a religious tradition seeking to make sense of
their religious history and texts and those of others.
In the Jewish and Christian traditions, different methods of interpreta-
tion are applied to scriptures. The methods used include allegorical and
grammatical means with the former seeking an external key to unlock
meaning while the latter analyzes the structure of the text for its meaning.
Rabbinic Judaism uses literalist interpretations and exegesis to discern a
text. During the Middle Ages, Christian interpreters develop the fourfold
meaning of a text following inspiration from the apostle Paul’s distinc-
tion between the spiritual and the literal. Medieval interpreters find three
senses in the spiritual: allegorical, anagogical, and tropological. The ana-
gogical is concerned with the relation between the text and faith, whereas
the tropological focuses on the moral meaning of the text. Later Protestant
leaders insist on the literal interpretation of scripture, being convinced
that the text interprets itself.
Hermeneutics changes dramatically with F. D. E. Schleiermacher
(1768–1814), a German theologian, and Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911),
a German philosopher. For Schleiermacher, interpretation is associated
with the art of understanding that is both objective and subjective. The
former dimension is grammatical, whereas the latter aspect involves a
type of divination, a psychological feature of interpretation, which invites
an interpreter to enter the subjectivity of an author. The grammatical and
psychological aspects of interpretation both use a comparative method,
but the psychological adds an intuitive divinatory aspect. From
Schleiermacher’s perspective, understanding reflects a dialogical rela-
tionship because there is a speaker and a hearer who hears the words and
divines their meaning, which makes interpretation the art of hearing what
the other is trying to say.
Dilthey makes interpretation a method for grasping artifacts of cul-
ture. He distinguishes between the human sciences and the natural sci-
ences on the basis of their different objects of interest. If the natural
sciences are focused on the external world, the human sciences are