1. A close reading of the text cannot be done without a perspective provided by one’s preunderstanding as identified by a “sociology of knowledge” perspective.
2. I must distinguish presupposition from prejudice.
3. We must seek controls that enable us to work with presuppositions (the positive) rather than to be dominated by prejudices (the negative).
a. We must be open to new possibilities.
b. We must understand the dangers of merely assuming our presuppositions.
c. The interpreter must not only address the text but must allow the text to address him or her (the hermeneutical circle).
d. Polyvalent interpretations per se are unnecessary, but a pluralistic or polyvalent attitude is critical.
4. We must all good hermeneutical principles to shape our exegesis and to control our tendency to read our prejudices into the text.
a. Consider the genre or type of literature and interpret each according to the proper rules of their particular language game.
b. The structural development of the passage provides a control against artificial atomistic exegesis.
c. Semantic research further helps the reader to discover the sense and reference of the passage.
d. A judicious use of background information helps us avoid the opposite error, namely, ignoring the historical aspect in favor of the poetic.
e. The implied author and implied reader in the text provide an indispensable perspective for the intended meaning of a text.
f. The question of verification of competing interpretive possibilities is essential for any system. This is a threefold process: inductively, deductively, sociologically.
Grant Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2006), 516-519.
No comments:
Post a Comment