In Greek = ‘interpretation’: hence, the theory of interpreting
and understanding biblical texts, including their historical
context. The word is also used in a wider sense, to mean the
interpretation of a text and its application to the reader after
the historical examination has been done; the work of discerning
how a NT text written in the cultural context of the 1st cent.
CE can be understood in a modern cultural context. It is a
movement from ‘what it meant then’ to ‘what it means’, taking
into account empirical evidence of today. For some NT scholars
this has involved detaching the essential message of the gospel
from the mythological frame in which it has been enclosed.
Bultmann's hermeneutical vehicle for this reinterpretation was
that of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Although the term
‘hermeneutics’ originated in the 17th cent., it is held that it
began in the NT itself, when Paul used contemporary Jewish
methods of interpreting the OT for preaching the significance of
Jesus. In subsequent ages,