Introduction: Recommended reading
1. Texts and readers: Reading and writing: Introduction
Faith and suspicion, texts and readers
The hermeneutic circle. 2. Midrash, the Bible, and the early church: Midrash and rabbinic interpretation
Hermeneutics in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament
The establishment of the Christian canon and the argument from tradition
The school of Alexandria and the school of Antioch
Augustine, bishop of Hippo (354-430). 3. From scholasticism to the age of enlightenment: medieval hermeneutics: Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225-74)
The medieval minds: Meister Eckhart and Thomas à Kempis
Christian humanism: Desiderius Erasmus (1466/9-1536)
Martin Luther (1483-1536) and John Calvin (1509-64)
The age of reason. 4. Friedrich Schleiermacher and the age of romanticism: The Bible and history
Johann Salomo Semler (1725-91) and the canon of scripture
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and the romantic spirit
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 'Confessions of an inquiring spirit', 1840
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) and the "handwritten manuscripts". 5. The Nineteenth Century: The critical spirit and the will to believe
David Friedrich Strauss, 'Das Leben Jesu' (1835-36)
The quest for the historical Jesus
Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911)
Science and religion. 6. The Twentieth Century: Introduction
Karl Barth (1886-1986) and Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976)
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002)
Toward the Postmodern: Jacques Derrida (1930- ). 7. Varieties of postmodern hermeneutics: The Bible as literature/the Bible in literature
Liberation and responsibility
Politics and postcolonialism
From intertextuality to film, art, ad the body. Conclusion: The sacred text and the future of writing
