Hermeneutics Meaning: What is Biblical Hermeneutics In Simple Terms?
Written by Joshua Schachterle, Ph.D
Date Posted to bartehrman.com: August 31st, 2024
All Text below was extracted from Joshua’s very good article here.
In simple terms, hermeneutics is the study of interpretation.
In this article, I’ll explore hermeneutics’ meaning, tracing its origins from Greek philosophy to its current function in Christian thought. Whether you’re new to biblical hermeneutics or just looking for a clearer understanding of its principles, I’ll introduce it here.
Below is an example he gives citing Paul.
Interestingly, while we are talking about the history of biblical interpretation, some of the biblical authors themselves engaged in biblical hermeneutics as well. For example, take a look at this passage from Galatians 4:22-28:
For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by an enslaved woman and the other by a free woman. One, the child of the enslaved woman, was born according to the flesh; the other, the child of the free woman, was born through the promise. Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One woman, in fact, is Hagar, from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the other woman corresponds to the Jerusalem above; she is free, and she is our mother… Now you, my brothers and sisters, are children of the promise, like Isaac.
Paul interprets this story from Genesis such that each character is a symbol: Hagar’s son Ishmael represents those Paul believes are enslaved by the Jewish law, just as Hagar was Abraham’s slave, while Sarah’s son Isaac is born to Abraham’s free wife and represents those gentiles to whom Paul promises salvation without the law.
In the passage above from Galatians, I noted that Paul did an exegesis on the story of Abraham’s two sons from Genesis. Paul’s hermeneutic included the presupposition that Scripture, in his case the Hebrew Bible, was divinely ordained to give later readers messages about the future and that its stories could, therefore, be read allegorically. Using that hermeneutic, he did an exegesis of the passage.
One of Paul’s presuppositions here is that biblical stories can be interpreted allegorically, not unlike what Origen would later outline, to provide messages for future interpreters.
Paul’s writings are the earliest in the New Testament, but the Gospels are another example of hermeneutics in the Bible. In general, they presuppose that Jesus is the predicted Messiah and then interpret the events of his life as fulfilling prophetic scriptural passages.
Second Example
For example, in Matthew 2:13-15, we find the story of Jesus’ and his family fleeing to Egypt to escape the wrath of King Herod who is slaughtering infants in an effort to kill Jesus. To explain the significance of this, Matthew says it happened to fulfill the prophecy from Hosea 11:1, which he quotes as saying “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” This is interesting and makes clear a couple of Matthew’s presuppositions.
The first is that this brief phrase must refer to Jesus (and that many prophetic verses refer to him as well). However, when you read the verse from Hosea in context, this is what God says:
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
From this, it’s clear that the passage is referring to the whole of Israel as God’s “son,” not one person, and to the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt. However, this brings us to Matthew’s second presupposition, one he shares with those Jewish scholars who employed the Jewish method of interpretation known as midrash: any tiny excerpt of Scripture can be taken and interpreted without referring to its original context or meaning. By doing this, the phrase from Hosea can be interpreted to refer to the infant Jesus’ escape to Egypt.
What is exegesis in simple terms, and is it the same as or different from hermeneutics?
As I said at the beginning, hermeneutics is the field of study concerned with types or methods of interpretation. Exegesis, on the other hand, is the actual act of deriving meaning from a text by using those methods. So, in order to do biblical exegesis, you first decide what hermeneutic you will use to interpret the text.
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