Challenged myself to read “an advanced textbook on “hermeneutics” (the art of interpretation). Like a medium rare big piece of steak, I’m taking one bite at a time. Anthony C. Thiselton’s “New Horizons in Hermeneutics” fits that catergory! Two excerpts here that really encouraged me to keep on encouraging the LiFe Groups to let the Spirit “do something” in our lives as we submit ourselves to the Scriptural /Biblical text!
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… text may enlarge the horizons of readers. When this occurs, horizons move and become new horizons. Reading may also produce transforming effects. In this sense, reading biblical texts can become eventful as transforming biblical reading.
… Texts, first we argue, open new horizons for readers. Because of their capacity to bring about change, texts and especially biblical texts engage with readers in ways which can productively transform horizons, attitudes, criteria of relevance, or even communites and inter-personal situations. In this sense we may speak of transforming biblical reading. The very process of reading may lead to a re-ranking of expectations, assumptions, and goals which readers initially bring to texts.
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Hi Sivin, wow i didn’t you were diggin into *this* one, too! 🙂
Dr. Thiselton’s book is vast, complex and CERTAINLY not for the ‘beginner’! I sota short-circuited two previous attempts at finishing it, and even now have ‘stalled’ at the chapter on Ricoeur (grin).
A very salient feature of the book is how objective and non-rhetorical Thiselton is in commenting on even the fiercest hermeneutical opponents of the Christian faith (see his laudatory remarks about JD Crossan).
I perfectly agree with Wright when he states behind that the book inspires in one the ‘eagerness for exploration’.
Enjoy!
Al