Is there a meaning in this text? : the Bible, the reader, and the morality of literary knowledge / Kevin J. Vanhoozer ; foreword by Craig L. Blomberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Vanhoozer, Kevin J.

Series:

Landmarks in Christian scholarship.

Landmarks in Christian scholarship

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bible--Hermeneutics.

Bible.

Hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics--Religious aspects--Christianity.

Physical Description:

xv, 496 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Grand Rapids, Mich. : Zondervan, [2009]

Summary:

Is There a Meaning in This Text? is a comprehensive and creative analysis of debates over biblical hermeneutics that draws on interdisciplinary resources, all coordinated by Christian theology. It revitalizes and enlarges the concept of author-oriented interpretation and restores confidence that readers of the Bible can reach understanding. The result is a major challenge to the central assumptions of postmodern biblical scholarship and a constructive alternative proposal-an Augustinian hermeneutic-that reinvigorates the notion of biblical authority and finds a new exegetical practice that recognizes the importance of both the reader's situation and the literal sense.

Kevin Vanhoozer's Is There a Meaning in This Text? has established itself as the premier treatment of biblical hermeneutics, a significant contribution that will be of interest to readers in a number of fields. This tenth anniversary edition includes a new preface by Vanhoozer and a foreword by Craig L. Blomberg.

Contents:

1 Faith Seeking Textual Understanding 15

Three parables on reading and reflection

Philosophy and literary theory: from Plato to postmodernity

Meaning and interpretation: the morality of literary knowledge

The three ages of criticism: the plan of the book

Augustinian hermeneutics

Undoing Interpretation: Authority, Allegory, Anarchy 37

2 Undoing the Author: Authority and Intentionality 43

Authorship and authority: the birth of the "author"

Undoing the author's authority

Undoing the author's intention

Has the Bible lost its voice?

3 Undoing the Book: Textuality and Indeterminacy 98

Demeaning meaning?

What is a text?

Meaning in Antioch and Alexandria

Textual indeterminacy: the rule of metaphor

Interpretive agnosticism?

4 Undoing the Reader: Contextuality and Ideology 148

The birth of the reader

The aims of reading: literary knowledge and human interests

Interpretive violence

Power reading and the politics of canon

Undoing biblical ideology

The ethics of undoing: the "new morality" of knowledge

Redoing Interpretation: Agency, Action, Affect 197

5 Resurrecting the Author: Meaning As Communicative Action 201

The physics of promising: from codes to communion

Dissenting voices: speech rehabilitation

The "what" of meaning: texts as communicative acts

The "who" of meaning: authors as communicative agents

Communicative action and the author's intention

Meaning and significance redivivus

6 Redeeming the Text: The Rationality of Literary Acts 281

Belief in meaning as properly basic: the nature of literary knowledge

The conflict of interpretations: the problem of literary knowledge

How to describe communicative acts: the norm of literary knowledge

Genre and communicative rationality: the method of literary knowledge

7 Reforming the Reader: Interpretive Virtue, Spirituality, and Communicative Efficacy 367

The reader as user, critic, and follower

Is exegesis without ideology possible?

Reader response and reader responsibility

Understanding and overstanding

The Spirit of understanding: discerning and doing the Word

The vocation of the reader: interpretation as discipleship

Conclusion: A Hermeneutics of the Cross 453

8 A Hermeneutics of Humility and Conviction 455

Trinitarian hermeneutics

The verbal icon and the authorial face

Hermeneutic humility and literary knowledge.

Notes:

Originally published: 1998. With new foreword and pref.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

9780310324690

0310324696

OCLC:

367420160

Publisher Number:

99938006640