Bible Hermeneutics from 1950 to the Present: Trends and Developments

Abstract

This survey of recent biblical hermeneutics starts with the post-Bultmann school (1). In 1950, Rudolf Bultmann had published an important article on “The Problem of Hermeneutics,” in which he argued that biblical interpretation should work with the same interpretative tools as for other texts from antiquity (form analysis, grammatical analysis, historical context, etc.), and in which he developed the notion of prejudgement (Vorverstandnis), a prior concern with the subject-matter of the text, as indispensable for an adequate understanding of the Bible. The early 1950s were to a large degree dominated by the demythologizing debate incited by Bultmann in the 1940s. Advocates of the so-called New Hermeneutic, mostly former students of Bultmann, stood up for a new approach to Scripture and theology that would acknowledge the strengths of Bultmannian hermeneutics and avoid its pitfalls. In the Bultmann school especially Ernst Kasemann became influential, also outside Germany. In reaction to Bultmann, critical voices argued for alternative (usually more traditional) approaches to biblical hermeneutics: the salvation-historical school, the Biblical Theology Movement, canonical approaches, and (more recently) approaches based on “new perspectives” on Judaism, Paul and Jesus (2). Perhaps the most important event in the post-World War II period for biblical hermeneutics is the publication of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Wahrheit und Methode in 1960 (3). In this epoch-making book, the discovery of historical consciousness, a discovery associated with the work of Wilhelm Dilthey, Heidegger and Bultmann in the pre-World War II period, became the linchpin for a new understanding of hermeneutics. Biblical hermeneutics could no longer be practiced without philosophical hermeneutics and it could do so with a new self-consciousness vis-a-vis the exact sciences. Earlier attempts to develop a general hermeneutics depending on the historical sciences (Chladenius) and connected to psychology and philosophy (Schleiermacher) now could come to full fruition. In general, Gadamer’s work was well-received, but protests were also voiced (4): Emilio Betti and Eric D. Hirsch criticised Gadamer’s alleged lack of method and his rejection of authorial intent as a norm for interpretation. Jurgen Habermas, from the opposite side of the spectrum, argued that Gadamer displayed a naive and uncritical acceptance of tradition and developed a “critical theory” instead. Critical of Gadamer’s “understanding” (empathic) approach were also the advocates of structuralism who argued that language was subjected to universal structures that could be studied scientifically, without the distorting effects of the reading subject and subjective experience (5). Less radical and more pragmatic were the analytic language philosophers and the advocates of speech-act theory in the Anglo-Saxon world (6). With Ludwig Wittgenstein, they focussed first and foremost on the varied uses of language in ordinary speech and studied the way spoken words took effect in the real world. From its very beginning, speech-act principles were applied to biblical interpretation and theological issues. For Paul Ricoeur, interpretation of texts and interpretation of the human self are closely connected. He developed a “hermeneutics of post-critical naivete,” that encapsulated both critical suspicion and trust. Ricoeur focussed his research on symbol, metaphor and discourse, and became instrumental in providing a theoretical basis for biblical narrative criticism (7). Another important development is the discovery of the reader in reader-response hermeneutics (8). Authors such as Hans Robert Jauss, Wolfgang Iser, Umberto Eco and Stanley E. Fish argued that the notion of meaning is meaningless when no account is taken of the constructive role of the reader: the reader is not (or not only) a discoverer of meaning, he is (also) its producer (so Fish), or at least its co-producer (Jauss, Iser, Eco). The rise of poststructuralism (9) is usually associated with the work of three major theorists from France, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jaques Derrida. They challenged basic tenets of modern (Western) hermeneutics. It raises the question of the applicability of postmodern and deconstructionist theory to religion and sacred writings (John D. Caputo). This section is followed by a brief introduction to various examples of contextual hermeneutics (liberation theology, black theology, feminist hermeneutics, postcolonial hermeneutics, and autobiographical biblical criticism) (10). Although most of these movements antedate the rise of postmodern hermeneutics, their concerns received a strong impetus by the typical postmodern discovery of difference. The recent (re)discovery of theological hermeneutics (11) is inspired by postliberal hermeneutics (Hans Wilhelm Frei, George A. Lindbeck). Scholars associated with so-called “theological interpretation of Scripture” or “theological exegesis” are fully aware of the complexities of post-Gadamerian hermeneutics; they try to meet the challenge to read the Bible in a postmodern age from a self-conscious faith perspective. “Scriptural reasoning,” finally, is an attempt to read sacred writings beyond the narrow confines of one’s own religious background and come to mutual understanding (not: common agreement) through a common reading of sacred texts. This brief historical survey ends with some concluding remarks and prospects (12).