PART 1The Search for Meaning: Initial DirectionsThe very use of the term hermeneutics raises an important question: Why should Bible readers be expected to study principles of interpretation? In spite of what our day-to-day experience may suggest, the process involved in understanding a text is quite complicated. The difficulties surface especially when we try to read a book produced in a different culture or time, as some examples from Shakespeare can make clear. In the case of ancient documents written in other languages, we need to make a special effort to take into account their original setting through a method known as grammatico-historical exegesis. As a whole, the Bible is a fairly clear book to read, and it is helpful to specify in what areas the difficulties arise: language? literary style? application? Moreover, the divine character of Scripture suggests that we need to adopt some special principles that would not be relevant to the study of other writings.CHAPTER 1Who Needs Hermeneutics Anyway?The term hermeneutics (as well as its more ambiguous and even mysterious cousin, hermeneutic) has become increasingly popular in recent decades. As a result, it has been pulled and stretched every which way. With so many writers using the word, it seems to behave as a moving target, and some readers have been known to suffer attacks of anxiety as they seek, in vain, to pin it down and figure out what it means.Its traditional meaning is relatively simple: the discipline that deals with principles of interpretation.

Some writers like to call it the science of interpretation; others prefer to speak of the art of interpretation (perhaps with the implication, "Either you''ve got it or you don''t!"). Apart from such differences of perspective, the basic concern of hermeneutics is plain enough. It remains to be added, however, that when writers use the word, most frequently what they have in mind is biblical interpretation. Even when some other text is being discussed, the Bible likely lurks in the background.This last observation raises an interesting question. Why should such a discipline be needed at all? We never had to take a class on "How to Interpret the Newspaper." No high school offers a course on "The Hermeneutics of Conversation." For that matter, even with regard to courses on Shakespeare or Homer, which certainly deal with the interpretation of literature, no hermeneutics prerequisite is ever listed.

Why then are we told, all of a sudden in our academic training, that we need to become proficient in an exotic-sounding science if we want to understand the Bible?One possible answer that may occur to us is that the Bible is a divine book, and so we require special training to understand it. But this solution simply will not work. As a Roman Catholic scholar has expressed it: "If anyone is able to speak in an absolutely unambiguous fashion and to make himself understood with irresistible efficacy, such a one is God; therefore, if there is any word that might not require a hermeneutics, it would be the divine word." Protestants, for that matter, have always emphasized the doctrine of the perspicuity or clarity of the Scriptures. The Bible itself tells us that the essential prerequisite for understanding the things of God is having the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2:11), and that the Christian, having received the anointing of the Spirit, does not even need a teacher (1 John 2:27).It turns out, in fact, that we need hermeneutics not precisely because the Bible is a divine book but because, in addition to being divine, it is a human book. Strange though that may sound, such a way of looking at our problem can put us on the right track.

Human language, by its very nature, is largely equivocal, that is, capable of being understood in more than one way. If it were not so, we would never doubt what people mean when they speak; if utterances could signify only one thing, we would hardly ever hear disputes about whether Johnny said this or t.