Meaning Of Revelation Research Articles

Strengthening Human Resource and Regeneration in The Process of Integrating Knowledge In Economics At PCIM Spain

Abstract. Integration of knowledge as Islamic methodology and intellectual heritage were never obstacles to human development, but what stands as obstacles to human progress are the weak political leadership, poor investments on human capital, as well as the wrong interpretations of the Islamic messages by those who claim to speak for Islam. Indeed, integration of knowledge is a gateway to bring in again the glory of the noble Islamic civilization which never denied the great position of man, his leadership and intellectual capabilities to carry on the message of Khilafah and attain Falah both in this world and the Hereafter by both means of revelation (wahy) and reason (‘aql). This study aims to strengthen the human resource as well as to conduct regeneration in the process of integrating knowledge in Economics at PCIM Spain. To achieve the objective, this study conducts six (6) series of seminars and workshops on Integration of Knowledge particularly in Economics field. The results show that, to strengthen the human resource especially for lecturers who teach Economics or other disciplines, they should master several traditional sciences. Herewith the order of priority mastery of traditional sciences: [1] Arabic; [2] General historical insights about Islamic civilization; [3] Ushul Fiqh; [4] Their respective scientific disciplines (all of which have a turats basis); [5] Ushul Tafsir; [6] Ushul Hadith. In conclusion, the outputs of this Community Service Program are, [1] Six (6) series of seminars and workshops on Integration of Knowledge particularly in Economics field which is held by UMY in collaboration with PCIM Spain; [2] Integration of knowledge book, that contain the summary of Integration of Knowledge Studies from many scholars’ perspectives; [3] Publication of article from this Community Service Program (Pengabdian kepada Masyarakat - PkM); [4] Publication of mass media about the program (Kajian Ber-seri Integrasi Ilmu Pengetahuan Kerja Sama UMY dan PCIM Spain).

“Conjoint Communicated Experience”: Art as an Instrument of Democracy

“Conjoint Communicated Experience”: Art as an Instrument of Democracy

خطاب الجنون في رواية العصفورية لغازي القصيبي -مقاربة في الحجاج-)

الحجاج موضوع مهم يحضر في مقاربات لخطابات متنوعة علمية وإنسانية وثقافية؛ لاستناده على العقل، واعتماده مبادئ الحوار والتواصل والإقناع والتأثير. وعلاقة السرد بالحجاج علاقة وثيقة؛ إذ لا تکاد تخلو النصوص السردية سواء کانت روايات أو قصصا أو حکايات من الأسلوب الحجاجي الذي يبدو ظاهرا بوضوح بوصفه وسيلة تستخدمها الشخصيات للدفاع عن قضيتها، أو تبرير سلوکها، أو لغرض الإقناع أو غير ذلک. ومن هنا، کان الاهتمام بالبحث عن وسائل إقناعية وتقنيات حجاجية في الخطابات التي تصدر عن الأدباء في أعمالهم الأدبية، ومن بين هؤلاء الأدباء الأديب السعودي غازي القصيبي. يرکز البحث على دراسة واحدة من الآليات التي اعتمدها الکاتب في البنية الحکائية لرواية (العصفورية) التي يمکن أن تحقق هذا الهدف، وهي(الجنون) إذ يتناول حجاجية خطاب الجنون في الرواية، وأثره في البنية الحکائية ومضمونها، لتضمنه عناصر حجاجية متنوعة؛ مما يخرجه من مفهوم الجنون بدلالاته التقليدية إلى أن يکون خطاب العقل، ووسيلة للبوح وحرية الرأي. ومن هنا، ينطلق البحث للإجابة عن سؤال مرکزي: کيف يمکن أن يکون خطاب الجنون خطابا عقليا بالاستناد على بنيته الحجاجية؟ Abstract This research aims to show the influence of Latin literature on English Argumentation is an important subject that is present in various approaches to scientific, humanitarian and cultural discourses. This is not only because it relies on reason, but also since it adopts the principles of dialogue, communication, persuasion and influence. There is a close relationship between narratives and argumentation. Narrative texts, whether they are novels, stories or tales, are hardly devoid of argumentative methods, which appears clearly as a means used by the characters to defend their cause, justify their behavior, or for the purpose of persuasion or otherwise. Hence, the interest in researching persuasive means and argumentative techniques in the discourses produced by writers in their literary works, and among them is the Saudi writer Ghazi Al-Qusaibi. This research focuses on studying one of the mechanisms adopted by the author in the narrative structure of his novel (Al-Asfooria), namely madness, which may achieve this goal. It tackles the argumentation of the discourse of madness in the novel, and its effect on the narrative structure and its content, since it includes various argumentative elements. Which distance it frim the concept of madness in the traditional sense, to be a discourse of reason, and a means of revelation and freedom of opinion. Hence, the research commence to answer a central question: How can the discourse of madness be a rational discourse based on its argumentative structure?

A diptych reading of Christ’s transfiguration: trans and intersex aesthetics reveal baptismal identity

ABSTRACTThe synoptic Gospels describe Jesus Christ’s transfiguration not as a mode of ontological change, but rather as a means of revelation – that he is the second person of the Trinity. Through a diptych reading of Christ’s transfiguration and crucifixion, I argue that those who experience hate crimes share in Christ’s misrecognition in the midst of revealing truth, which can result in violence and death. Additionally, I offer a constructive, biblical theology of trans and intersex aesthetics that runs counter to neoliberal identity politics by illuminating how the bodily presentation of trans and intersex persons of faith reveal a baptismal truth – that through Christ humanity is adopted as co-heirs with him.

Narrative Theology, Revelation, and the Road towards a Theological Media Theory

This article opens the road towards a theological media theory by discussing developments in narrative theology. Human stories are messages encoded in the medium of language, and narrative theology has rediscovered their importance for theology, especially in connection with the meaning of revelation. Understanding revelation as symbolic communication, mediation and “resonance” helps us to see how narrative and revelation merge within a concept of auto/Theo-biography. Before people are able to reflect upon revelation, they are already a part of it. Auto/Theo-biography suggests that theology is animated communication, growing from the interplay between participation and mediation. This calls for study of the medium and of mediation from a theological perspective, which may be a first step towards a theological media theory.

The literal sense and the spiritual understanding of Scripture according to St. Thomas Aquinas

In contemporary Biblical hermeneutics, there is a confusion about what the literal and spiritual senses are. From this confusión, it follows that the interpreter does not know the sense to be reached and that there is a considerable distance between what the Bible meant when it was written and what it now means in the Church. St. Thomas has a clear doctrine about what is the literal sense and what the spiritual sense, which can clarify this confusion and avoid the negative consequences it has for exegesis. From this doctrine, there are two essential contributions that can serve this purpose: the literal sense is mainly the sense intended by the divine author, and the spiritual understanding is what allows the interpreter to reach the literal sense of the New Testament, the key that opens up the meaning of revelation and of Scripture.

Alexander Pope: Unlocking the Key

This article discusses the image and function of the key in Alexander Pope’s works, and its involvement in various attempts to understand and explain him. As a device for encrypting or decrypting a code, a ‘key’ permits either the further concealment or revelation of meaning, and sometimes both: a sense which enters the language with Francis Bacon in 1605, but which is not fully realized as a satirical opportunity until the early eighteenth century. The subgenre of the ‘key’ may be a small part of the unwholesome trade of deciphering, but it raises vital questions about originality, authority, cooperation, competition, and group identity. Keys to Pope’s, Swift’s, and Gay’s works suggest some fruitful ways in which to track rival theories about their own writing and its reception; at its ornate Scriblerian best, the key is a riddling device, furthering the obscurity rather than breaching the mysterious specificity of the original.

Myth as Revelation

This essay explores how myth functions as a means of revelation in Scripture. It first clarifies a definition of myth, and then discusses the appearance of myth in the Old Testament. Not only is myth found in the Bible, but its presence is of great importance. Considering the various functions of myths in general, it becomes indispensable that myth form a part of the inspired canon. Revelatory myth is essential, especially today. Finally, this essay considers how one might recapture an appreciative reception of biblical myths.

Outros Sísifos

The attachment of Vergilio Ferreira to a «problem-novel» with a philosophical theme, focusing on the existential question, finds in Albert Camus a natural referent. Under the sign of the Hegelian unhappy consciousness, a problematic is developed according to which the human being senses through flashes, the pathetic discrepancy between the actual plane where he moves and that other, the ideal plane, that is projected in his various experiences of the world. The problematic of how to be in his being, in its form, heideggerian, a being-towards-death, routes the difficult clarification between a poetics of hope in the revelation of meaning and the encounter of man with himself, a march from the real plane to the ideal plane that mobilizes him, and the absolute assurance of its failure pointing directly to his heart in a maelstrom of nothingness. Both works reveal the paradoxical dimension of the subject that envelop him as a momentum for anguish.

Patočka’s Interpretations of Hegel’s Thesis on the Past Character of Art

In his article ‘Art and Time’ (1966) Patocka argues that Hegel rightly recognized a fundamental difference between classical and contemporary art. In developing Hegel’s insight he offers a conception of two eras of art, the ‘artistic’ era and the era of ‘aesthetic culture’. Patocka supposes that artworks of both the artistic era and the aesthetic era always open up a certain ‘meaning’ that gives human existence its fundamental points of reference. The status of this world, however, radically changed from one era to the next. The art of the artistic era offered objective and binding meaning, whereas aesthetic art offers personal or individual meaning. The current article points to an important discrepancy in Patocka’s treatment of the relation between the two eras, and presents Patocka’s later reading of Hegel’s notion of the past character of art. From the perspective of this interpretation, art reveals temporality as such, that is, as the ontological basis of the revelation of meaning. The article emphasizes that such an interpretation demonstrates the ontological relevance of the artwork in greater detail. Yet Patocka continued to use the concepts of the artistic era and the aesthetic era, without sufficiently clarifying the relationship between the two eras. Finally, the author argues that the discrepancy in the concept can be resolved with the help of Patocka’s later reflections on the ‘problematic nature’ of meaning. The article argues that in classical art such a nature is concealed, whereas in modern art it is revealed again. The article includes an English translation of Patocka´s ‘Art and Time’.

“As a Human to Humans”: The Second Vatican Council’s Understanding of “Self-Revelation” in Context

1. How Speak About Revelation? The basic meaning of the term is to take away a veil, or even more precisely, to retrieve a veil. In other words: something which has not been evident before, because it was covered, becomes visible through a certain action--it is revealed. This point of view departs from a potential object of cognition that is hidden from the eyes of an observer; the reason why the observer cannot see the object is grounded in the object itself, in its concealment, its Verborgenheit (1) or even Verdrehung, as the late Martin Heidegger would say. The American political philosopher John Rawls casts--probably unintentionally--a different light on the concept of revelation: in work A Theory of Justice, first published in 1971, he introduces the idea of a of ignorance, an imaginative state of origin that disables the subject from knowing his place in society, class position or social status, nor does anyone know fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, intelligence, strength, and the like. (2) Behind this of ignorance, people are able choose and determine principles of justice in a way that is not influenced by personal interests, because they do not know about their position in the society and judge therefore in a fair way. For the context of a reflection on the concept of revelation, it is interesting that Rawls in understanding of a of ignorance does not attribute the concealment an object, but the subject of cognition; it is not that the object is unknowable, but that the subject is not knowledgeable. What sounds trivial at first glance offers an interesting perspective on the sense of revelation: revelation does not only mean that a veil is removed from a concealed object, but it also could signify that a veil is withdrawn from the eyes of a subject enable the person see what was already unconcealed in itself, but is still invisible for the subject with the veil in front of eyes. This provides an interesting understanding of revelation which will serve as a preliminary definition for the reflections come: revelation is not primarily a supernatural appearance or a visitation of things, but an empowerment of human beings recognize seemingly ordinary and contingent occurrences as meaningful and disclosing of the question of who God, oneself, and the world is. 2. Revelation in its Conceptual Diversity: The Intellectual Background of Vatican II Christian manifests itself in a visible, concrete, and positive form as a phenomenon. (3) Cultural phenomena can always be considered from different perspectives: one and the same medieval text, for instance, can be interesting for theologians or philosophers, for historians or sociologists, for law scholars, librarians, or scientists who try determine its exact age. A similar observation could be made with regard revelation. One could choose several perspectives: the Existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers asks, for example, whether a revelation destroys what he calls the philosophical faith (4) in God, which has simple assumptions and which, so Jaspers claims, bases itself on reason alone. Together with the Idealistic philosopher Schelling, one could consider whether there are other forms of revelation outside religion, like art or philosophy. (5) Referring the enlightenment thinker Lessing, one could investigate the practical consequences of revelation in the form of the education of mankind, as he called it. (6) All these are possible approaches, but they do not fulfil the Council's primary perspective. On November 18, 1965, the Fathers of the Council voted accept a so-called dogmatic constitution on the meaning of revelation with a majority of 2,344 affirmative votes, and only 4 votes opposed. (7) The initial words of the document already offer a vision and gave the name the entire text, Dei Verbum: Hearing the word of God with reverence and proclaiming it with faith. …

“The Law and the Prophets” in MT Daniel 9:3–19

Many see Dan 9:3–19 as a late Deuteronomistic redaction that sets confession within a frame of determinism. Others see the insertion as a means of revelation meant to disclose future events (9:24–27). In either case, the prayer is secondary and instrumental. Moreover, the impetus for the prayer, according to these lines of interpretation, tends to be little more than a response to the Seleucid oppression (175–164 B.C.). This essay argues for a different impetus—the dual authority of the Law and the Prophets. Based on this reading, we can see how Daniel shifts the moorings of the prayer from the simple tag of revelation or confession and resets it within his own interpretive logic. “The Law and the Prophets” is a theological grammar informing the author’s method of tracing earlier biblical traditions (Sabbath violation, land restoration, and so on). These traditions run through Lev 25–26 and Jer 25:11–14, 29:10, 32 and rematerialize into the author’s own conclusions in Dan 9:24–27. What are these conclusions? Full “rest” (cf. Lev 26:35–40) will come to those in exile (cf. Jer 25:11–12; 29:10–11) and their land will be restored.

Responsibility Ethics and Postliberalism: Rereading H. Richard Niebuhr's The Meaning of Revelation

Postliberals have hailed H. Richard Niebuhr's The Meaning of Revelation as a harbinger of narrative theology. A careful reading of Niebuhr's argument, however, suggests a theological ethic that is at once attentive to the narrative formation of agency and yet distinct from postliberalism because of its attention to the divine object of Christians' stories. Niebuhr's theocentrism yields a view of narrative as opened from the inside because it requires appropriation of what he calls "external" narratives in order to do justice to the sovereignty of God. The result is a theological ethic which is sharply critical of modern conceptions of agency and yet continually sifted by contemporary insights and experience.

Theology, Science, and Human Uniqueness: A Response to Wentzel van Huyssteen

Abstract: In challenging Wentzel van Huyssteen's theology of human uniqueness, it is argued first that theology is reflection on the meaning of revelation, which is the fundamental datum of a religion to which a theologian is personally committed. Whereas one's theology is a human construct, one's religion is not. Concerning the relation of theology and natural science, it is argued that each discipline can learn from the other without having to justify itself by the principles of the other, especially theology not having to justify itself by naturalist criteria (the error of “natural theology”). Concerning human uniqueness, it is argued that only a biblically based theology, with its doctrine of the imago Dei, can constitute a theory of human uniqueness that takes humans to be different from the rest of creation, yet not in opposition to it. Concerning the relation of Judaism and Christianity, it is argued that Jewish “traditionalism” or “particularism” is not a detriment Christianity has superseded, but a manifestation of the essential embodiment (both physical and political) of human being.

Acting and actio in the sermons of Lancelot Andrewes

AbstractThis paper considers the interaction between performance and interpretation in the sermons of Lancelot Andrewes, and presents his pulpit oratory as a drama whose choreographed movements served the protean demands of impersonation as well as the revelation of meaning. Several recent studies have pointed to the shared cultural and religious functions of the pulpit and stage in Renaissance England, but this article focuses on their shared actions. The physical skills in delivery, or actio, so crucial to persuasion were first taught to Andrewes through academic drama, and I find this fusion of acting and learning reproduced in his sermons. So, in the concluding analysis of a 1602 sermon, an attempt is made to describe how an Andrewes performance might have looked, the speculation for which relies on the relationship between gesture and emotion that informs the craft of both actors and orators. It is suggested that the preacher's movements are inseparable not only from exegetical strategies, but also from the process of emotional discovery that guides and inspires belief.

Metaphor and Image in Borges’s “El Zahir”

One of the most frequently cited lines from the work of Jorge Luis Borges comes from the conclusion of the 1951 essay Fearful Sphere of Pascal: may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors (Labyrinths 192). Over the years a good deal of critical attention has been paid to the importance of metaphor in Borges's writing. Critics have pointed to his use of figural language to suture the rift between being and thought, lived experience and recollection. Literary metaphor exemplifies what one critic describes as Borges's efforts to enumerate sharply diverse yet somehow harmonizing parts. Bringing likeness and unity into view where we ordinary see only difference and fragmentation, Borges's writing gestures to larger, static whole unnamable by any unilateral means (Irby, Introduction to Other Inquisitions, x). While Borges is famous for his association of metaphor with universality, I will propose that his writing also initiates a confrontation with the limits of metaphor as it has been defined in the Western tradition. In the text I will be discussing, the short story El Zahir, this limit is approached through a literary treatment of the image. (1) The literary does not allow itself to be transcribed into a language of equivalence. It names a mode of appearing--or it may be the secret origin of any and all appearances--that is irreducible to hermeneutic models of reading, or to any view of literature as containing a hidden meaning waiting to be interpreted or revealed. In the first part of this paper, I discuss Borges's engagement with the problem of metaphor in El Zahir. The presence of metaphor as a literary topos initiates two related considerations in this story. First, the text is a reflection on what could be called the economic determination of metaphor, or metaphor defined as exchange, substitution or transfer. Under this general definition, the passage which occurs in metaphor has been predetermined as an expenditure that will eventually be recuperated as value or meaning. In other words, the difference between words is conceived as a negation (of appearances) that will ultimately negate itself (as the revelation of meaning). Borges's text alludes to the central role that metaphor plays in the Western tradition. At the same time, the story is an anticipation of the end of universal history, at least insofar as it has been determined as a totality comprised of the differential intonations of a few metaphors. It foresees--and attempts to forestall--the nightmare of a world that has fallen entirely under the sway of the One. The second half of my analysis looks at Borges's treatment of the literary image. I use the term image with some trepidation, as it is often associated with the most traditional of metaphysical distinctions: the as the other of truth, original, or and thus as a name for what is deficient in being. For Borges, the tells a different story: it challenges the old association of truth with what is hidden beneath the surface (depth, essence). Beginning with Aristotle, theories of metaphor always come back to a hermeneutic presupposition: the idea that the metaphoric passage sheds light on a hidden meaning waiting to be revealed or interpreted. The image, on the other hand, suspends the distinction between appearances and depth, and thereby compels us to re-examine the basic assumptions of our reading strategies. Can an be interpreted? Can we decipher what it says and what it does not say? To what extent is the literary readable in the sense that hermeneutics understands the term? I will not attempt to answer these questions here, and will only concern myself with establishing that they represent an important concern for El Zahir and perhaps for Borges's writing in general. Borges approaches the relation between metaphor and in El Zahir by engaging with the age-old philosophical distinction between truth and appearance. …

Contrast or Continuity in Hebrews 1.1–2?

Interpretation of the opening of Hebrews is vital to understanding the rest of the author's argument predicated upon his principal declaration. Commentators disagree about whether the introductory proposition of 1.1–2a contrasts revelation through the son with an assumed inferiority of earlier means of revelation, or merely compares them. The complete absence, however, of comparison language here makes sustaining either of those models difficult. A more natural reading is that the earlier stages of revelation referred to in 1.1 lead directly into the revelation in the son (1.2). In Hebrews, both of these forms of divine communication are affirmed.

Food for Life: The Spirituality and Ethics of Eating

Reviewed by: Food for Life: The Spirituality and Ethics of Eating Colleen Carpenter Cullinan (bio) Food for Life: The Spirituality and Ethics of Eating. By L. Shannon Jung. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004. 167pp. $15.00. Those of us who live in rural America—and city dwellers, too, who are lucky enough to be members of a CSA farm (community-supported agriculture: buy a share in the spring, get a box of fresh vegetables once a week all summer long)—are blessed with the unusual opportunity to get to know the people who raise our food. This is not something I had ever thought about until I moved to western Minnesota. Industrial agriculture is the norm here, but small organic farms dot the landscape, islands of hand-tended diversity in a sea of chemically-overdosed, machine-oriented monocultures. Knowing where your food comes from is the first step in realizing, with Kentucky farmer and philosopher Wendell Berry, that turning water into wine is a relatively small miracle compared to turning water (and soil, and sunlight) into grapes. Coming to appreciate this humble, everyday miracle leads to ever-more surprising—and theologically intriguing—realizations about food and [End Page 122] food practices in our lives. In a world where the low cost and easy availability of food has made obesity an epidemic here, yet the expense and scarcity of food leaves ten million people a year to die of starvation and malnutrition, we desperately need a theology and ethics of eating. L. Shannon Jung offers us that—and more. "This book will help people learn to enjoy their lives more—perhaps much more," promises L. Shannon Jung in the opening line of Food for Life (xi). While such a bold claim might be perfectly at home in one of the many pop-spirituality, "name-it-claim-it" books no serious Christian would touch, it is an unusual, even shocking, opening for a theologically rigorous reflection on ethics and Christian spirituality authored by a full professor at a respected Lutheran seminary. Yet Jung's promise, rooted in honest joy, bright-eyed delight, and a deep gratitude for the gifts of God's creation, rings with truth. He insists that we were created to enjoy life (xii), and argues that delight and sharing are two basic human experiences that reveal the presence of God (xiii)—yet he does not shy away from difficult discussions of sin, hunger, gluttony, and justice. The everyday act of eating is morally and theologically complex, in ways many of us have never considered; simply opening our eyes and hearts to this fact is a key accomplishment of Jung's book. He locates our experiences of preparing, sharing, and consuming food in the spiritual as well as material realm, forcing us to rethink both the pleasures and perils of every meal. Jung's thoughtful and enlightening consideration of hunger, food, eating, sharing, and the current global food production and distribution system offers the hungry Christian a feast of ideas and practical suggestions for working towards the ideal of eating "to the glory of God" (19). Jung's book is divided into three parts: "God's Purposes for Eating," "Eating and Food System Disorders," and "Eating for Life." In the first part, he examines the biblical witness surrounding food and God, and concludes that the myriad themes organize themselves around the two broad topics of "delighting" and "sharing" (31). "Delighting" indicates the goodness of food, the goodness of God's providence in providing it for us, and the fact that we enjoy it; "sharing" points to hospitality, justice, inclusion, and outreach (or mission). In this opening section, Jung also discusses hunger and desire, noting how both are distorted in our Western consumer society. Finally, he considers why the idea of "a theology of eating" seems so strange to us, and briefly traces the history of how and why we fail to think of God and food as things that belong together. Jung argues that "food is itself a means of revelation. Through eating together we taste the goodness of God" (43), a claim he grounds primarily in the Antiochene understanding that God is fully present in all of life, penetrating and...

The Kingdom of God and those who have not heard the contents of Scripture

Article 2 of the Belgic Confession deals with the following issue: By what means does God make Himself known to us? The first part of Article 2 that echoes the teaching of Calvin via the Gallic Confession reads as follows: “We know Him [God] by two means: First by the creation, preservation and government of the universe, which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are characters (read: letters – MAK) leading us to see clearly the invisible things of God, even his everlasting power and divinity, as the apostle Paul says (Rom. 1:20). All which things are sufficient to convince men and leave them without excuse.” This article of 1561 agrees with Calvin’s Institutes of 1559 (1, V, 1) and the early Reformed Confessions before the Canons of Dordt (1618-1619). It seems as though, after Calvin, a doctrine of insufficiency regarding this first means of revelation gradually developed. In the Westminster Confession of 1647 this means of understanding God’s revelation (i.e by receiving God’s communication through the creation, preservation and government of the universe) was explicitly interpreted as insufficient. Man’s inherent ability to know God by means of his own mental capacity, the so-called light of nature, that remained after the Fall, was also regarded as insufficient. The issue of whether the interpretation of Article 2A had not been changed in the first century after Calvin should therefore be seriously considered by Reformed churches. Furthermore, the church of today, situated in a world that experiences such phenomenal scientific and technological changes, should ask what relevance Article 2A of the the Belgic Confession has for the church and the world.

Interpretation as a Spiritual Practice: Buddhism and Cross-Cultural Hermeneutics

The article deals with a problem of relation between textual interpretation and methodology of enlightenment in the Buddhist tradition. According to traditional exegesis, works of Buddhist philosophy are something like a samādhi, a sustained and penetrating contemplation of certain pathways of thought and insight. The author reveals that the Buddhist hermeneutical tradition is a tradition of realization, and devoid of any dichotomy between intellect and experience, the rational and the mystical. A principal role of the tradition is to supply the intertextual context of prejudices that makes the reading and talking possible and the background in which the revelation of meaning and the composition of a meaningful text become possible. Finally, it is pointed out that it is impossible to separate the study of Buddhist hermeneutics from the question of hermeneutics of the modern scholar who having his prejudices and preunderstandings determined by time and culture interpretes traditional Buddhist texts.