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    What the Text Says: Perspectives on Hermeneutics and the Interpretation of Texts
    What the Text Says: Perspectives on Hermeneutics and the Interpretation of Texts
    What the Text Says: Perspectives on Hermeneutics and the Interpretation of Texts
    Ebook48 pages39 minutes

    What the Text Says: Perspectives on Hermeneutics and the Interpretation of Texts

    By Brian Wright

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    About this ebook

    All human experience is not merely subject to interpretation, but is itself interpretation.  Moment by moment we evaluate the stimuli and information that our senses provide to our consciousness and make value judgments upon it that direct our subsequent thoughts, words, and actions.  From this we see that hermeneutics does not simply relate to the interpretation of texts and literature, but to existence itself.  Language, however, both spoken and written, is the chief medium by which man articulates his existence, and thus is the primary focus of hermeneutics.
    Taking this thought further, language is also the medium, both spoken and written, through which God chose to reveal and communicate Himself to man.  Hermeneutics then, are an essential tool as we interpret the language of God’s communication with man across the ages as recorded in the Scriptures.  The miles and millennia between the creation of the biblical record and our present existence today underscore our reliance on good hermeneutical method to discern from these ancient texts meaning for man today.  With this in mind, this book seeks to examine several elements that are essential for a full and right understanding and approach to hermeneutics.  
     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCalvert Biblical Institute for Study of Religion & Society
    Release dateDec 12, 2016
    ISBN9781540181572
    What the Text Says: Perspectives on Hermeneutics and the Interpretation of Texts
    Author

    Brian Wright

    ABOUT BRIAN S. WRIGHT, Ph.D(c) Founder and Executive Director of Calvert Biblical Institute ​      Brian Wright is a biblical scholar and author, having spent most of the last seventeen years of his studies investigating the Ancient Near Eastern languages, cultures, and history that birthed Judaism and Christianity. He holds a Master of Religious Education in Middle Eastern Studies from The American Institute of Holy Land Studies, has studied sociology and religion at Oxford Graduate School, and is completing a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies at Trinity Theological Seminary.  Following this, he intends further post-graduate and doctoral study in Semitic languages, biblical interpretation, and sociology of religion.  His latest book, The Great Yet Completely Misunderstood Commission of Jesus was published in February of 2011.  His other works include Blood & Seed:What Is The Eden Story Really Telling Us? released in October of 2010, its sequel, The GodBlood, due in 2017, and What the Biblical Text Actually Says About Speaking in Tongues, due in late 2016.

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    • 5/5
      Very good introduction into hermeneutics it opens up the appetite to read more on the subject and from theauhor as well.

    Book preview

    What the Text Says - Brian Wright

    Foreword

    Though it may seem strange for a book written on how texts are interpreted to be such a slim and concise volume, it is completely by design.  This text in not intended to be an exhaustive treatise on hermeneutics and interpretation.  Rather, it is presented as a very brief primer; a collection of articles that collectively present an initial introduction to the concepts of what interpretation is, its terms and schools of thought, how it is applied to texts, and finally a short, initial consideration of how the science of hermeneutics is applied to the biblical texts.

    The purpose here is to simply get the foundational concepts and terms of hermeneutics into the thought processes of the reader.  From there, we provide a detailed list of additional resource on hermeneutics and interpretation.

    It is our hope that this text will contribute to our stated mission to correct the lack of scholarship in the pews and in the people, and above all else, to establish a more historically and textually accurate understanding of biblical texts, faith, and praxis.

    Brian S. Wright Ph.D(c)

    Calvert Biblical Institute

    for the Study of Religion and Society

    www.faiththink.org

    Essentials of Hermeneutics

    All human experience is not merely subject to interpretation, but is itself interpretation (Gadamer, 1988).  Moment by moment we evaluate the stimuli and information that our senses provide to our consciousness and make value judgments upon it that direct our subsequent thoughts, words, and actions.  From this we see that hermeneutics does not simply relate to the interpretation of texts and literature, but to existence itself.  Language, however, both spoken and written, is the chief medium by which man articulates his existence, and thus is the primary focus of hermeneutics.

    Taking this thought further, language is also the medium, both spoken and written, through which God chose to reveal and communicate Himself to man.  Hermeneutics then, are an essential tool as we interpret the language of God’s communication with man across the ages as recorded in the Scriptures.  The miles and millennia between the creation of the biblical record and our present existence today underscore our reliance on good hermeneutical method to discern from these ancient texts meaning for man today.  With this in mind, this book seeks to examine several elements that are essential for a full and right understanding and approach to hermeneutics. 

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