Hermeneutics: An Introduction

by Anthony Thiselton

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 2009

Overview

Anthony C. Thiselton here brings together his encyclopedic knowledge of hermeneutics and his nearly four decades of teaching on the subject to provide a splendid interdisciplinary textbook. After a thorough historical overview of hermeneutics, Thiselton moves into modern times with extensive analysis of scholarship from the mid-twentieth century, including liberation and feminist theologies, reader-response and reception theory, and postmodernism. No other text on hermeneutics covers the range of writers and subjects discussed in Thiselton’s Hermeneutics.

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Key Features

• Surveys the history of biblical hermeneutics
• Analyzes the development of hermeneutics in the twentieth century
• Evaluates the contributions of feminist, liberation, and postmodern theology to hermeneutics

Contents

• The Aims and Scope of Hermeneutics
• Hermeneutics in the Context of Philosophy, Biblical Studies, Literary Theory, and the Social Self
• An Example of Hermeneutical Methods: The Parables of Jesus
• A Legacy of Perennial Questions from the Ancient World: Judaism and the Ancient Greeks
• The New Testament and the Second Century
• From the Third to the Thirteenth Centuries
• Reform, the Enlightenment, and the Rise of Biblical Criticism
• Schleiermacher and Dilthey
• Rudolf Bultmann and Demythologizing the New Testament
• Some Mid-Twentieth-Century Approaches: Barth, the New Hermeneutics, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, and Barr’s Semantics
• Hans-George Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: The Second Turning Point
• The Hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur
• The Hermeneutics of Liberation Theologies and Postcolonial Hermeneutics
• Feminist and Womanist Hermeneutics
• Reader-Response and Reception Theory
• Postmodernism and Hermeneutics
• Some Concluding Comments

Top Highlights

“Finally, whereas exegesis and interpretation denote the actual processes of interpreting texts, hermeneutics also includes the second-order discipline of asking critically what exactly we are doing when we read, understand, or apply texts. Hermeneutics explores the conditions and criteria that operate to try to ensure responsible, valid, fruitful, or appropriate interpretation.” (Page 4)

“Hence many writers on hermeneutics distinguish between the two valid dimensions of explanation and understanding. The axis of explanation is more akin to the traditional flow of knowing; understanding entails a more personal, intuitive, or suprarational dimension.” (Page 9)

“Understanding in the fullest sense demands engagement and self-involvement.” (Page 8)

“An allegory therefore presupposes shared understanding; a parable creates shared understanding. There are two further differences. An allegory addresses insiders who are in the know; a parable attacks, or seeks to win over, outsiders. Further, it is crucial that on the whole a parable presents an entirely coherent narrative world; an allegory can contain a string of independent applications.” (Page 38)

“The Parables of the Kingdom he wrote, ‘At its simplest the parable is a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to provoke it into active thought.” (Page 35)

Praise for the Print Edition

Hermeneutics, although now recognized to be indispensable to biblical and theological study, has hitherto lacked an introductory textbook that is simultaneously lucid, comprehensive, and authoritative. This, at last, is it.

—Walter Moberly, professor of theology and religion, Durham University

This is that rare book that is simply a pleasure to read. An ideal textbook, it is provocative, wise, astonishingly informed, and scrupulously evenhanded in its handling of material. Elephants may swim here and children may safely paddle. It is truly Tony Thiselton’s legacy and the uncluttered distillation of a lifetime’s study of hermeneutics. I cannot praise this book sufficiently highly.

—Iain Torrance, president, Princeton Theological Seminary

Product Details

• Title: Hermeneutics: An Introduction
• Author: Anthony Thiselton
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Print Publication Date: 2009
• Logos Release Date: 2016
• Pages: 423
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subject: Bible › Hermeneutics
• ISBNs: 9780802864109, 0802864104
• Resource ID: LLS:HRMNTCSNNTRDCTN
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:36:25Z

About Anthony Thiselton

Anthony C. Thiselton was professor of Christian Theology at the University of Nottingham. He held three doctorates (Ph.D, D.D., D.D) and published important works on 1 Corinthians, hermeneutics, and did research on modern theology, philosophy of religion, and the application of philosophy of language to biblical studies.

Sample Pages from Hermeneutics: An Introduction