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Original Research
Reading the Bible in the 21st century: Some hermeneutical principles: Part 1 Author: Dirk van der Merwe1 Affiliations: 1 Department of Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology, University of South Africa, South Africa Correspondence to: Dirk van der Merwe Email: vdmerdg@unisa.ac.za Postal address: 189 Kotie Avenue, Murrayfield 0184, South Africa Dates: Received: 20 Oct. 2014 Accepted: 31 Mar. 2015 Published: 22 June 2015 How to cite this article: Van der Merwe, D., 2015, ‘Reading the Bible in the 21st century: Some hermeneutical principles: Part 1’, Verbum et Ecclesia 36(1), Art. #1391, 8 pages. http://dx.doi. org/10.4102/ve.v36i1.1391 Note: This article is the first of a two part series based on a paper delivered at the Pan African New Testament Congress on 06–07 March 2014 at the University of Pretoria. Copyright: © 2015. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS OpenJournals. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.
Many books and articles have been published over several decades on ‘biblical hermeneutics’ to capture the epistemology of biblical hermeneutics and the phenomenology of interpretation, communication and language in order to direct the Bible reader how to read the ancient texts, assembled in the Bible, sensibly. The first part of this essay looks briefly into the history of biblical hermeneutics of the past century in order to generate an orientation of how ‘biblical hermeneutics’ was regarded and applied as well as to constitute an environment for the investigation to follow in the rest of this essay and in a succeeding essay. In the second part of this essay, a few hermeneutical approaches are analysed in order to recommend a way forward for the dynamic analysis and interpretation (ἑρμηνεία) of biblical texts. This prepares the stage for the recommendation of two extra textures or aspects to be incorporated in the hermeneutical process, to be investigated in a succeeding essay. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article briefly orientates the reader about the paradigm shifts concerning biblical hermeneutics over the previous half century. It challenges the holistic approach to incorporate spirituality and the embodiment of biblical texts in the hermeneutical process. Disciplines involved are hermeneutics and methodology, theology and spirituality.
Introduction The purpose of the website, Early Christian writings, ‘… is to explain and explore some of the theories offered up by contemporary scholars on the historical Jesus and the origins of the Christian religion’. (Historical Jesus theories n.d.) This website expresses a diversity of historical Jesus theories offered by the authors of the Jesus Seminar: ‘Jesus the myth: heavenly Christ’, ‘Jesus the myth: Man of the indefinite past’, ‘Jesus the Hellenistic hero’, ‘Jesus the revolutionary’, ‘Jesus the wisdom sage’, ‘Jesus the man of the Spirit’, ‘Jesus the prophet of social change’, ‘Jesus the apocalyptic prophet’ and ‘Jesus the saviour’. This is only one example of extreme diversities in biblical interpretation (Craig n.d.). This variety of scholarly interpretations and descriptions of Jesus’ identity underlines the importance for solid biblical hermeneutics. Over the past decades, many books and articles have been published on ‘biblical hermeneutics’1 to capture the epistemology of hermeneutics2 and the phenomenology of interpretation, communication and language in order to direct the Bible reader on how to read and interpret the ancient texts assembled in the Bible. Important advances in hermeneutical theory took place during the past few decades (Tate 2011; Virkler & Ayayo [1981] 2007:13; cf. Hays 2007:10; Osborne 2010:15–16),3 and hermeneutical theory ‘… continues to grow more complex and differentiated’ (Oeming 2006:ix). To understand a text is very complex but also exciting and involves aspects such as the author, the text, the reader, the subject matter in the text and the dialogical process. Each of these aspects is connected to its own discourse and set of rules (ibid:ix). This essay argues for a comprehensive hermeneutical approach in the investigation of biblical texts. The proposal put forward in this essay(s), ‘How to read biblical texts in the 21st century’, is certainly not a new invention. Rather, it is an expansion of biblical hermeneutics. In this regard, the essay will start by painting the environments within which hermeneutics were formulated and which definitely influenced the development of biblical hermeneutics. Then, a few recent publications on hermeneutical approaches will be analysed in order to propose an
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1. For a few recent publications, see Deppe (2011); Hays (2007); Köstenberger (2012); Montague ([1991] 2007); Osborne (2008); Robbins (1996b); Tate (2011) and Virkler and Ayayo ([1981] 2007). Also see the three major publications by Thiselton (1980, 1992, 2009). 2. See the excellent contribution of Porter and Robinson (2011) on hermeneutics. They have a generic approach in which they discuss six distinct hermeneutical trends: romantic, phenomenological and existential, philosophical, critical, structural, and post-structural (deconstruction). 3. See footnotes 9, 13–16.
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doi:10.4102/ve.v36i1.1391