The Hermeneutics Compendium:
A Projected Historical Anthology in Six Volumes
Note: The Hermeneutics Compendium is a proposed six-volume
collection of historically important essays in hermeneutics. It was developed
on an NEH summer stipend at Yale University in 1978 and the table of contents
published in 1980 at the end of an article, "Allegorical, Philological and
Philosophical Hermeneutics: Three Modes in a Complex Heritage." (See
Articles for publication data.) The texts of the projected articles were
xeroxed, when scarce, from volumes in Sterling Library, and they presently
occupy two file cabinet drawers in my office. Each volume would require about
600 pages for a total of about 3,600 pages. Several other projects have taken
priority over it, and it is now unlikely that I will have to time to commit to
preparing such a large project for publication.
This
prospectus is by no means definitive but the result of a two-month intensive
research effort in a major library. It is suggestive rather than comprehensive.
While some essays could be offered complete, other selections would take only
the hermeneutically relevant portion of a larger work. The
proposed volumes from the most recent period are the least complete and were
not the main focus of the research, which was on premodern times. The purpose
of publishing this list was to give a picture of the historical scope of
hermeneutics, when it is understood as the collected body of doctrines and
theories of text interpretation. This is also the purpose of publishing it here
on the Internet.
Richard
E. Palmer
Volumes I and II: Premodern Hermeneutics
Volume 1
Premodern Allegorical and Esoteric Hermeneutics:
An Historical Anthology on the Exegesis
of Dreams and Oracles, Sacred Texts, and Homer
Section I: Dreams and Oracles
The Egyptian Dreambook (2000BCE); Greek oracles;
Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dream; Philo, On Dreams ; Artemidorus, Oneirocritica
; Macrobius, On the Dream of Scipio ; St. Synesios, On Dreams ; Talmud:
Berakoth IX ; Cicero, On Dreams.
Section II: The Rise of
Allegorical Interpretation in Greece
Pépin, Mythe et Allégorie (excerpt, translated);
Diels, Fragmenten ; Arnim, Stoicorum veterum Fragmenta ; Leveque,
Aurena Catena Homeri ; Diogenes Laertius und Sextus Empiricus; Cornutus,
Theologiae Graecae Comp. ; Heraclitus, Allégories d’Homère ;
pseudo Plutarch, De vita et poesi Homeri ; Cicero, De natura deorum
; Hersman, Studies in Greek Allegorical Interpretation ; Tate article in
Classical Quarterly ; Geffken, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics
article.
Section III: Allegorical
and Mystical Interpretation in Philo of Alexandria, plus the Letter of
Aristobulus and Letter of Aristeas
Selections from Philo; from Wolfson, "What’s New in
Philo?"; Die Technik der allegorische Auslegungsweise bei Philon ;
Kelly, "Techniques of Composition in Philo"; Stokes, selections from
an unpublished Yale dissertation on "Schools of Allegorical Interpretation
in Hellenistic Judaism."
Section IV: Gnostic
Exegesis
Selection from Jonas, The Gnostic Religion ; The
Nag Hammadi Library (selections); Corpus Hermeticum, I: Heracleon (from
Origen, Commentary on John ); Pagels, The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic
Exegesis ; selections from the International Conference on Gnosticism,
Yale, 1978.
Section V: NeoPlatonism
Plotinus,
Enneads ; Porphyry, De Antro Nympharum ; Porphyry, The Life of
Pythagoras ; Iamblichus, In Timaeum ; Ficino, Commentary on the
Philebus.
Section VI: Hermeneutics
of the Kabbalah
Scholem, The Kabbalah and its Symbolism (excerpt),
and his Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism ; The Zohar (selections);
Cordovero, The Palm Tree of Deborah ; Suarès, The Cipher of Genesis
and The Song of Songs ; Jacobs, selections from Jewish Mystical
Testimonies and his Jewish Biblical Exegesis ; Wiener, "How to
Read a Hasidic Text" from 9 1/2 Mystics.
Section VII: Esoteric
Exegesis in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
(See volume II below for Biblical exegesis, including
mystical interpretation.)
Corbin, Creative
Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi ; Burckhardt, Alchemy ; Bibliothèque
des philosophes chimiques ; F. Yates, selections from two articles in JCWI
; Pico della Mirandola, Conclusiones ; Blau or Allen on Christian
Kabbalah.
Volume 2
Premodern Hermeneutics in the Jewish and Christian Tradition: Major Hermeneutical Statements and Types of Exegesis
Section I: Introduction
to Talmud and Midrash
To begin with the introduction by Goldin to his The
Living Talmud ; then Berakoth I ; the Goldin translation of Pirké
Abot and Abot Rabbi Nathan ; Babylonian Hagigah 3a-b
"The Words of the Torah Grow and Increase"; an example of Gemara, Berakoth
IX, 31a-32b; example of Aggadic Midrash from Blau, Judaism ; an example
from Mishnah, Nezikim, Sanhedrin 4:5; Midrashim in poetic translation by
Glatzer, in Hammer on the Rock, ch. 2; Uffenheimer, "The
Consecration of Isaiah in Rabbinic Exegesis" (Targum, Aggadic Midrash, and
mystical exegesis); Goldin, The Shirta, chs. 3 and 6; and Spiegel, The
Last Trial.
Section II: Jewish
Hermeneutics Proper: The Rules of Exegesis
The Seven Rules of Hillel ; The 13 Rules of Ishmael (from a Sifra to Leviticus
); The Baraita of 32 Rules ; Jacobs, selections from Jewish Biblical
Exegesis ; Bacher, Die Aggada der Tanaiten, vol 2, ch. 8; Lieberman, Hellenism
in Jewish Palestine ; Mielziner, Introduction to the Talmud; Rosenblatt, The
Interpretation of the Bible in the Mishnah; Strack, egs. from his book on
OT exegesis; Bonsirvin, Exégèse Rabbinique et Exégèse Paulinienne.
Section III: The Dead
Sea Scrolls — Three Forms of Exegesis
Vermes,
The Dead Sea Scrolls; Dupont-Sommer, "The Habbakuk
Commentary"(?); Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic
; Brownlee, "Biblical Interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls."
Section IV: Maimonides —
Philosophical Exegete in the Middle Ages
Guide to the Perplexed ; Introduction to the Talmud ; Letter to Samuel Ibn
Tibbon on translation.
— The Christian Tradition —
Section V: Modes of
Scriptural Exegesis within the New Testament
Jesus interprets himself to his disciples; the use of
typological exegesis of OT; the use of parables; references to riddles and
secret meaning in John ; Rabbinical methods of exegesis in the NT;
allegorical interpretation in the NT (other than typological); Doeve, Jewish
Hermeneutics in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts ; Longenecker, Biblical
Exegesis in the Apostolic Period ; G von Rad on typological interpretation
of the OT; Pagels, Gnostic Exegesis in the Johannine Gospel.
Section VI: Early
Patristic Biblical Exegesis [up to Gregory]
The Epistle of Barnabas; The Apology of Aristides ;
Justin Martyr, Apology ; Irenaeus, Against Heresies ; Clement of
Alexandria, Stromata ; Origin, De principiis and Contra Celsum
; Eusebius, Preparatio Evangelica ; perhaps some of Tertullian and
Theodore of Mopsuestia; Eustathius, Engastrimythos contra Originem ;
Cassian, Conf. of Abbot Nesteros ; St. Jerome on Job; St. Basil,
"Address to Young Men on Greek Literature"; Augustine, De doctrina
Christiana, III; translation of "Exegese" from the Realenencyclopadie
der Antika und Christentum, 1975 edition, dealing with "NT und alte
Kirche" ; "Allégorisme grec et Chrétien" from Mythe et
Allégorie ; James Barr, "Typology and Allegory," in Old and
New in Interpretation ; Hanson, The Spirit and the Letter (on
Origen); Gruber, Die pneumatische Exegese bei den Alexandrinen.
Section VII: Exegesis in
the Middle Ages
Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalion ; Richard of St.
Victor; Rabani Mauri, Allegoriae in Universam Sacram Scripturam ;
Aquinas, Summa I,i,19,10; Nicholas of Lyra; deLubac, Exégèse
médiévale (analytic table of contents only); Dobschütz, "Vom
vierfachen Schriftsinns"; Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle
Ages ; Leclercq, "From Gregory the Great to St. Bernard."
Section VIII: Mystical
Exegesis in the Christian Tradition
(See discussions of Gnosticism above in vol.1, and see
sections V-VII above.) In this section: Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names
and Mystical Theology ; Richard of St. Victor, Benjamin major ;
St. Anselm, Meditations ; Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Love of God
; St. Bonaventura, Théologie Séraphique ; Ramon Lull, The Art of
Contemplation ; Meister Eckhardt, Sermons ; Ruysboeckh, The Adornment
of Spiritual Marriage ; Gerson, De mystica theologica speculativa ;
Julian of Norwich, The Schewings of Divine Love ; Theologia Germania
(1350); Jakob Boehme, selections; Loyola, Spiritual Exercises ;
Underhill, "Historical Sketch of European Mysticism from the Beginning of
the Christian Era to the Death of Blake" (actually only to Boehme);
Besant, Esoteric Christianity ; Osment, the introduction to his Mysticism
& Dissent.
Vols. 3 & 4: Philological and Theological Hermeneutics
Volume 3
The Rise of Modern Philological and Theological
Hermeneutics:
A Reader of Major Texts from Erasmus to Schleiermacher,
plus Certain Forerunner Texts from Antiquity
Section I: Forerunners in Antiquity
Dionysius Thrax, Grammatiké technê ; Aristarchus, Scholia
on Homer ; Gellius, 1, 17, exegesis of a sentence of Varro; Mette, Parateresis
(on Crates of Pergamon); Gudeman, Grundriss der Geschichte der klassischen
Philologie (selections); Müller, "Galen als Philologe," Verhandlungen
der 41. Versammlung deutscher Philologen und Schulmeistern ; Plato, Kratylos,
Protagoras ; Aristotle, Poetics 1460-, 6-13, 1461a, 9-16; Longinus, On
the Sublime (on rules); Horace, Ars Poetica (on rules); Plotinus, Enneads
; Porphyry, Commentary on the Timaeus ; Jewish Targum, Pesher, Karaite
interpretation; Dobschütz, Die einfache Bibelexegese der Tannaiten ;
Theodore of Mopsuestia (against allegorical interpretation); Tertullian; Origen
(re: his Hexapla and Scholia ; Dio Chrysostom, Homily on
Ps. 64; selection by St. Jerome.
Section II: Erasmus,
Luther, Calvin, and Flacius
Valla, Adnotationes ; Erasmus, Ration seu
methodus compendio ; Erasmus, Apologia to In Novum Testamentum
Prefationes ; Aldridge, The Hermeneutic of Erasmus, selections from
Luther in Ebeling’s Evangelische Evangelienauslegung ; Holl,
"Luthers Bedeutung für den Fortschritt der Auslegungskunst," Gesammelte
Aufsätze ; Ebeling, Luther, ch. 6; Ebeling, comparison of Luther
with early Fathers in Evangelische Evangelienauslegung ; Calvin, Institutes,
chs. X and XI in Book I; Calvin Commentaries; Kraus, "Calvin’s Exegetical
Principles"; Flacius, secs. 1-4 of Clavis Scripturae I ;Schwartz, Die
theologische Hermeneutik des Matt. Flacius Illyricus (1933); Preger, Flacius,
vol. 2, final chapter: "Die hermeneutischen und exegetischen Arbeiten von
Flacius."
Section III:
Spinoza and the Rise of
Rationalist and Critical-Historical Exegesis
Spinoza,
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, VII; Wolfson, "Spinoza";
Wolle, Regulae XXX hermeneuticae (1722); Rambach, Institutiones
hermeneuticae sacrae (1723), and "Erläuterung über seine IHS";
Baumbarten, Biblische Hermeneutik ; Semler, Vorbereitung zur
theologischen Hermeneutik (or Abhandlungen von freier Untersuchung des
Kanon, 4vols.); Ernesti, Principles of Interpretation (1762);
Herder, Theologische Werke ; Morus, On Translating the
Scriptures ; Beck, Rules of Higher and Lower Criticism, Keil,
Elementa Hermeneutica.
Section IV:
18th Century
Philological Hermeneutics: Forerunners of Schleiermacher
Winkelmann, sels.; Herder, Kritische Wälder ; Schlegel,
Lessings Geist and Charakteristik Wilhelm Meisters ; Wolf,
Vorlesungen über die Enzyklopädie der Altertumswissenschaften; Ast, Grundlinien
der Grammatik, Hermeneutik und Kritik ; Szondi on Ast in his Einführung
in die literarische Hermeneutik ; also Dilthey on the forerunners of
Schleiermacher in his Leben Schleiermachers. [See also Mueller-Vollmer’s
"Introduction: Language, Mind, and Artifact: An Outline of Hermeneutic
Theory since the Enlightenment" in The Hermeneutics Reader (1985)].
Section V:
Schleiermacher and the
Uniting of Sacred and Secular Hermeneutics
Aphorisms ;
The Compendienartige Darstellung of 1819 ; Kimmerle, Introduction and
postscript to his edition of Schleiermacher Hermeneutik (1968).
Volume 4
Philological and Theological Hermeneutics since
Schleiermacher: Major Texts
Part 1: Philological Hermeneutics
Section I: The Rise of
Comparative Linguistics in the Romantic Period
Schlegel,
Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Inder ; Bopp on Sanscrit; Humboldt.
Section II: Mid-Nineteenth
Century Altertumswissenschaft and the "Historical School"
Boeckh,
introduction to his Enzyklopädie und Methodologie der philologischen
Wissenschaften ; Blass, Hermeneutik und Kritik ; Steinthal, Die
arten und Formen der Interpretation ; Droysen, Historik.
Section III:
The Flowering of Romance
Philology in the Nineteenth Century
Diez, Gröber, and
Meyer-Lübke, articles on these by Curtius in his Gesammelte Aufsätze.
Section IV: Three Great
20th Century Romance Philologists
E. R. Curtius on his method
of working in "Marcel Proust," Franzosicher Geist im 20.
Jahrhundert and ELLMA;; Spitzer, Linguistics and Literary History
; and Auerbach, on figural interpretation.
Section V Twentieth
Century German Classical Philology
Wilamowitz, Jaeger, and the Marburg school.
Part 2: Theological Hermeneutics
Section VI: The Quest
for the Historical Jesus
Strauss,
The Life of Christ, intro; Renan, Vie de Jesus ; Schweitzer, The
Quest for the Historical Jesus.
Section VII: The History
of Religions School and Dialectical Theology
Kamlah, Troelsch, and Harnak; Barth, Epistle to the
Romans (foreword); Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung ; Bultmann, intro
to Jesus, Jesus Christ and Mythology, and "The Problem of
Hermeneutics"; Buber, "On the Interpretation of the Bible."
Section VIII: The
"New Hermeneutic" and Language-Event Theology
Ebeling, policy statement on taking over the Zeitschrift
für Theologie und Kirche , Fuch, Hermeneutik ; Heidegger,
"Toward a Nonobjectifying Thinking in Theology"; Ebeling, "The
Significance of the Critical Historical Method in Protestantism"
(abridged); Ebeling, "Word of God and Hermeneutics."
Section IX: The New
Quest for the Historical Jesus
James
M. Robinson.
Section X: The Death of
God Theology and Hermeneutics
Selections
from Vahanian, Altizer, and Hamilton.
Section XI: Narrativity
and Hermeneutics
Frei and Ricoeur
Section XII: The
Hermeneutics of Parable
Perrin,
Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus ; Funk, Language, Hermeneutic and
Word of God ; Via, The Parables ; Crossan, In Parables ;
Teselle, Speaking in Parables.
Section XIII:
Hermeneutics and God-Talk
Hart,
Unfinished Man and the Imagination ; Gilkey, Naming the Whirlwind.
Section XIV:
Hermeneutics and Process Theology: The New Metaphysics?
Schubert
Ogden, The Reality of God ; L. Ford, The Lure of God ; Russel
Pregeant, Christology Beyond Dogma ; David Lull, "What is the Task
of Hermeneutics?"
Section XV: Hermeneutics
and Revisionist Theology
Tracy,
Blessed Rage for Order ; "Five Theses" and
"Interpretation Theory"
Section XVI: Theological
Hermeneutics and Rhetoric
Crossan,
Raid on the Articulate ; Via; etc.
(sections and
selections above are tentative, illustrative, and may provoke
dialogue and suggestions. Traditional and
fundamentalist hermeneutics receive
little attention, for instance.)
Vols. 5 and 6: General and Philosophical Hermeneutics
Vol. 5: "General Hermeneutics" from Chladenius to
Apel
Section I: Johann Martin
Chladenius (1710-1759)
Einleitung zur richtigen Auslegung vernünftiger Reden und Schriften (1742); Müller, Johann Martin
Chladenius; Szondi, on Chladenius in Einführung in die
literarische Hermeneutik (1975).
Section II: Georg
Friedrich Meier (1718-1777)
Versuch einer allgemeinen Auslegungskunst (1757); Geldsetzer’s introduction
to it in his 1965 reissue of Meier; Szondi on Meier, chs. 6-7, in the Einführung
in die literarische Hermeneutik (1975).
Section III: Friedrich
Schleiermacher (1768-1834)
Selections from Schleiermacher, Notes 1805-1811,
ed. H. Kimmerle; Szondi, chs. on Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics in ibid., pp.
155-191.
Section IV: Wilhelm
Dilthey (1833-1911)
"The
Rise of Hermeneutics" (1900); selections from his Preisschrift on
the early development of hermeneutics: Flacius, Wolff, Chladenius, Baumgarten;
portions of his Leben Schleiermacher not in the Preisschrift
early essay; on Michaelis, Semler, Ernesti, Kant, Ast, Schelling, Fichte,
Schlegel, and Schleiermacher.
Section V: "General
Hermeneutics" after Dilthey (except Betti & Hirsch)
Spranger, Zur Theorie des Verstehens und
geisteswissenschaftliche Psychologie ; Bollnow, Zum Begriff der
hermeneutischen Logik, or Das Verstehen ; Rothacker, Logik und
Systematik der Geisteswissenschaften (1927); Bubner, "Transcendentale
Hermeneutik?"; Apel, Das Verstehen: Eine Problemgeschichte als
Begriffgeschichte (1955), and "Scientistics, Hermeneutics, Critique of
Ideology: An Outline of a Theory of Science from an
Epistemological-Anthropological Point of View"(1980), translated in
Mueller-Vollmer’s The Hermeneutics Reader (1985).
Section VI: Emilio Betti
(died ca. 1973)
Allgemeine Auslegungslehre als Methodik der Geisteswissenschaften (1967), a German translation of his
Italian masterwork; Die Hermeneutik als allgemeine Methodik der
Geisteswissenschaften (1962).
Section VII: E. D.
Hirsch, Jr.
Validity in Interpretation (1967) and appendix on Gadamer; The Aims of
Interpretation (1976).
Vol. 6
Philosophical Hermeneutics:
A Collection of Texts from Plato to Derrida
Section I: Twelve Philosophical Contributors from Plato to
Wittgenstein
1. Plato: On
dialectic, words and language, knowing and perceiving, the weakness of writing,
on love and the ascending levels of understanding.
2. Aristotle: On
appropriate exactness in interpretation, practical wisdom, enunciation.
3. Vico: from his De
nostri temporis studiorum ratione.
4. Schleiermacher: On
understanding as reconstruction: on understanding an author better than he
understood himself; on divinatory understanding.
5. Hegel: On
experience, on dialectic, on the speculative sentence, and on desire and
self-consciousness.
6. Kierkegaard: On
indirect communication.
7. Nietzsche: "On
Truth and Lying in the Extramoral Sense"; on scholars and objectivity; on
several themes in The Will to Power. (continued in Foucault, Power/Knowledge.
8. Dilthey: On Geschichtlichkeit;
on the historical character of self-understanding; on life speaking to life in
all the deeper forms of communicating of understanding; on Erlebnis-Ausdrück-Verstehen
; on Verstehen and Erklären
9. Husserl: On the
intentionality of consciousness; overcoming the subject-object dichtomy through
phenomenology; on the life-world.
10. Wittgenstein: On
the nature of language; on language game and family resemblances; on
understanding as "being able to go on."
11. Habermas: Selection
from the appendix of Knowledge and Human Interests ; parts of The
Theory of Communicative Action and Hermeneutics in Ethics and Social
Theory.
12. Apel: Section
from Towards a Transformation in Philosophy.
Section II: Four Major Figures: Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur,
Derrida
1. Heidegger: Selections
from Being and Time ; selections from writings of the later Heidegger,
including the discussion of hermeneutics in "Dialogue with a
Japanese."
2. Gadamer:
Selections from Truth and Method ; "Hermeneutics and
Historicism"; "Replik" in Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik
; "Hermeneutics and Deconstruction" and others.
3. Ricoeur: "The
Hermeneutics of Symbols and Philosophical Reflection"; "Existence and
Hermeneutics"; "Explanation and Understanding"; portions of the
introduction to Freud and Philosophy, portions of his Interpretation
Theory lectures indicating his rejection of Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics;
selections from The Rule of Metaphor and Time and Narrative.
4. Derrida: Selections
from Voice and Phenomenon; On Grammatology; Glas, "White
Mythology," and "Signatures: Deux Questions."
|
|
Dr. Richard Palmer
Box 1085 MacMurray College
447 East College Avenue
Jacksonville, IL 62650
E-mail: richard.palmer@mac.edu
Last update: August 2, 2000