Talk:Hermeneutics

comment

The first paragraph includes a reference to "all three of the monotheistic faiths". Those are Judaism, Christianity and Islam, I presume. If so, it would be more accurate to say "Abrahamic religions" and provide a wikilink. If not, it should be stated which faiths are being discussed. --Joe Quick 08:30, 16 July 2008 (CDT)

Abrahamic religions does sound better. Within those religions, would the following be comsidered techniques of hermeneutics?

• Judaism: Talmudic pilpul (maybe subschools), interpretation by a Hasidic rebbe, Kabala?
• Christianity: not quite where to start, and there's the literalism argument with guaranteed accurate translation. Still, do the existence of the Douay and King James bibles count?
• Islam: A lot of interesting issues here. I don't think the Sunni-Shi'a split has much to do with text, but two or three areas need to be considered, I think: Ijtihad, both individual and by trained scholars; the Hadithic schools, and a blurry line between fatwa and new territory. For example, Hassan al-Turabi in Sudan has held that participating in lesser jihad is an adequate substitute for the Hajj. Howard C. Berkowitz 11:15, 16 July 2008 (CDT)

Yep, substituting "Abrahamic" seems appropriate, although it'd be interesting to know what in the way of non-Abrahamic hermeneutic strategies (etc.) there are. --Tom Morris 13:13, 16 July 2008 (CDT)

I agree that a broader perspective would be interesting. In fact, I hope to get around to starting an article on the Popul Vuh someday, which will necessarily include a section on the study of the text for the purposes of divination. The purpose of my comment above was simply to point out that there probably aren't a whole lot of people who could guess the "three monotheistic faiths" and there are some people who could name more than three. :-) --Joe Quick 14:10, 16 July 2008 (CDT)