The critical study of biblical literature: exegesis and hermeneutics

Nature and significance

Biblical exegesis is the actual interpretation of the sacred book, the bringing out of its meaning; hermeneutics is the study and establishment of the principles by which it is to be interpreted. Where the biblical writings are interpreted on a historical perspective, just as with philological and other ancient documents, there is little call for a special discipline of biblical hermeneutics. But it has been widely held that the factors of divine revelation and inspiration in the Bible—which, according to Jewish and Christian belief, set it apart from other literature—impose their appropriate hermeneutical principles, although there has been divergence of opinion on what these principles are. Again, because of the place that the biblical writings have occupied in synagogue and church, their exploitation for apologetical or polemical ends, their employment as a source for dogma or as a means of grace, fostering individual and community devotion, and the use of certain parts (especially the psalms) in the congregational liturgy, the science of hermeneutics has been studiously cultivated as a theological discipline. To treat the Bible like any other book (even in order to discover that it is not like any other book) has been condemned by believers as an unworthy, not to say impious, attitude.

At times the languages in which the biblical texts were originally composed have for that reason been treated as sacred languages. Hebrew may be to the philologist a Canaanite dialect, not substantially different from Phoenician, or Moabite, or other Semitic languages, but for some people even today this language is invested with an aura of sacredness. As for the language of the New Testament, in the days before its place within the general development of Hellenistic Greek was properly appreciated, it could be called a “language of the Holy Ghost,” as it was by the German Lutheran theologian Richard Rothe (1799–1867). And even scholars who know very well the true character of the biblical languages are tempted at times to make the Old and New Testament vocabularies, down to the very prepositions, bear a greater weight of theological significance than sound linguistic practice permits. Where in other Greek literature the context would be allowed to determine the precise force of this or that synonym, there is a tendency to approach the New Testament with definitions ready made and to impose them on the text: to give one example, of two common Greek words meaning “new,” it is sometimes laid down in advance that kainos denotes new in character and neos new in time (“young”). Often such distinctions are valid, but their validity must be established by the context; where the context discourages such precise differentiations, they must not be forced upon it.

Again, it is a truism in linguistic study that the meaning of a word depends on its usage, not on its derivation. It may be of interest to know that the Hebrew word for “burnt offering” (ʿola) etymologically means “ascending” (cf. the verb ʿala, “ascend”), and to trace the stages by which it attained its biblical meaning, but this knowledge is almost wholly irrelevant to the understanding of the word in the Old Testament ritual vocabulary, and any attempt to link it, say, with the ascension of Jesus in the New Testament, as has been done, can lead only to confusion.

Similarly there has been a tendency to place the history contained in the biblical writings on a different level from “ordinary” history. Here the increasing knowledge of the historical setting of the biblical narrative, especially in the Old Testament, has helped to remove the impression that the persons and peoples portrayed in this narrative are not quite “real”; it has integrated them with contemporary life and promoted a better understanding of what they had in common with their neighbours and what their distinctive qualities were.