Kannengiesser (ed.), Handbook of Patristic Exegesis, The Bible in Ancient Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 2004), vol. See Brendan Lupton’s Chapter 8 in this volume. While the Platonic trajectory emphasized the relation between theo¯ros’ mental gaze at the forms and the consequent informed praxis,5 the Aristotelian trajectory resolutely severed theo¯ria, the “seeing” of something divine, from praxis and perceived it as a supreme activity of the highest intrinsic value in itself.6 The Stagirite contended that theo¯ria constituted “the only activity that is loved for its own sake: it produces no result beyond the actual act of contemplation ( para to 3 4 5 6 For example, in Moralia in Iob, Gregory the Great employed an Origenist hermeneutical theory for the higher purposes of moral edification and spiritual transformation – for which the text was meant in the first place. In antiquity, there were several theories about theo¯ria. Put differently, any attempt to investigate patristic hermeneutical theory has to face the problem of how to understand the word “theory.” The modern use of this word can indeed have the overtones of something abstract, conceptual, and, depending on one’s view, even impractical. Its interpretation could not be divorced from its use.”4 Therefore, the fundamental symbiosis of theory and practice in patristic biblical interpretation should never be obscured by this modern, convenient distinction between hermeneutics and exegesis. a book which had been read and expounded in the Christian liturgy, used for introduction, edification, and prayer. 1 Downloaded from https:/University of Florida, on at 23:42:55, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https:/ 2 Introduction the interpreter’s spiritual benefit.3 “For Christian interpreters the Bible was. Andrews, Hermeneutics and the Church: In Dialogue with Augustine, Reading the Scriptures (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), 23–5, 143–52. A prime example would be Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana, in which books 2 and 3 discuss a hermeneutical/semiotic theory and book 4 addresses the communication of that which the theory has helped to discover in Scripture. Thiselton, Hermeneutics: An Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 4. Namely, patristic authors never postulated an abstract, full-blown hermeneutical theory that was envisaged in isolation from the actual practice of interpreting the Word of God.2 Neither was patristic biblical exegesis ever a mere procedural affair, some sort of “neutral” application of techniques and theory to scriptural texts, without a simultaneous concern for 1 2 A. However, this fine and, no doubt, at times rather helpful distinction may be somewhat misleading when it is applied to the art of interpretation of Scripture during the first few centuries. There is a modern distinction between hermeneutics, which refers to general principles of the art of interpretation, and exegesis, which refers to the actual application of these principles to particular texts.1 Such compartmentalization of theoretical and practical approaches tends to make sense to most modern persons. After some serious consideration, it seemed wiser to invite a team of international experts to write learned essays on particular figures, rather than to imagine that a single scholar can appraise all authors equally well. C hapter 1 Introduction Tarmo Toom This volume provides an assessment of Latin patristic hermeneutical theories and it consists of chapters on a few selected ancient authors who have explicitly reflected on interpretative matters at least somewhere in their works.
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