The problem of a theological hermeneutics1

Abstract

Hermeneutics, a practice which makes efforts in doing understandable a text of the past into a new context and to new readers, is something that we found already in the inside the Old Testament. In the former book past texts are read again and interpreted in order that they could be understandable and meaningful to new readers, who view the text as something odd, due to the distance between text and its context, and nowadays reader and its context. This way of updating a text by making it meaningful and understandable at present is done thorugh some changes to the interior or through glosses tan become part of the text or through comments to it, which in general terms is known as Midrash. We find this same hermeneutical activity in Greek literay texts, where texts of the past are made comprehensible to the conditions of the new reader and its new situation.