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Document Details : Title: ‘Begrijpt ge wat ge leest?’ (Hand 8,30) Subtitle: Over de plaats en rol van de Bijbelwetenschap Author(s): VAN HECKE, Pierre Journal: Tijdschrift voor Theologie Volume: 51 Issue: 1 Date: 2011 Pages: 7-19 DOI: 10.2143/TVT.51.1.3203367 Abstract : One characteristic of contemporary exegesis is a great diversity in methods and approaches. Yet developing these methods is not its only or even its main challenge; rather its challenge is to reset its position and hone its objectives. That is why this article considers the place and role of exegesis from the perspective of a fundamental reflection on the object of this discipline, the Bible. On the one hand, the Bible is the text of a faith community, and not only in its genesis and long transmission history. Also today the Bible’s primary locus is the liturgical community, which reads it as God’s Word. On the other hand, the Bible is a text, and thus intends to communicate meaning. Exegesis must ceaselessly pose the hermeneutical question of how its own operation and methods relate to the meaning of the text and its significance for its readers. This article seeks to answer this question by arguing that every hermeneutical process must be regarded as a type of translation and metaphorisation. Cognitive linguistics has shown that metaphors consist in understanding one domain of knowledge (target) in terms of another (source). The same applies to interpreting: readers understand their own being in the world in terms of what they read in the text. Exegesis must explicitly understand its own operation in terms of this process of metaphorisation in which the text first establishes itself as text. The role of exegesis is to ensure that the hermeneutical process does justice to the text. Even though significance arises in interaction with the reader, and even though the text offers its readers a potential of significance, each text also resists its readers. Significant interpretations are only valid when they respect the text’s meaning and structure. Exegesis thus has a two-fold (constructive and critical) function in the hermeneutical process. First, it studies the text in such a way that it can serve as source domain in this process; secondly, it guards the hermeneutical process to ensure that the distinctiveness and meaning of the source domain, the text, are respected. It is, however, not up to Biblical studies alone to decide what constitutes a relevant, life giving and transformative interpretation. That is the role of the communities as a whole. |
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