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In an article in Theology Today <\/em> (1980), David Steinmetz quotes Benjamin\u2019s Jowett\u2019s essay on the interpretation of Scripture (1859), which insists on a single meaning in a text \u2013 the meaning intended by the author and understood by the original audience. Steinmetz admits that critical scholarship has moved on since 1859, but says \u201cBiblical scholarship still hopes to recover the original intention of the author of a biblical text and still regards the pre-critical exegetical tradition as an obstacle to the proper understanding of the true meaning of that text. The most primitive meaning of the text is its only valid meaning, and the historical-critical method is the only key which can unlock it.\u201d <\/p>\n Jowett expresses what might be called a \u201ctragic\u201d hermeneutics. Way off in the distant past there was an \u201cedenic\u201d moment of communication, when the author first communicated with his audience. Everything since then has been so much decline, but the interpreter\u2019s hope is that he can recover this lost paradise. Steinmetz is, I think, right to say that \u201cMedieval theologians defended the proposition, so alien to modern biblical studies, that the meaning of Scripture in the mind of the prophet who first uttered it is only one of its possible meanings and may not, in certain circumstances, even by its primary or most important meaning.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In an article in Theology Today (1980), David Steinmetz quotes Benjamin\u2019s Jowett\u2019s essay on the interpretation of Scripture (1859), which insists on a single meaning in a text \u2013 the meaning intended by the author and understood by the original audience. Steinmetz admits that critical scholarship has moved on since 1859, but says \u201cBiblical scholarship […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hermeneutics"],"yoast_head":"\n
Steinmetz claims that this view is \u201cdemonstrably false\u201d and \u201ca fantastic idea,\u201d and says that pre-critical interpretation is, at least on this point if not others, superior. <\/p>\n