Interdisciplinary Approaches to Biblical Hermeneutics - Reimagining Texts, Authors, and Readers

This interdisciplinary seminar examines a variety of hermeneutical and critical theories spanning Ranke's historical realism to Dilthey's crisis of historicism in the nineteenth century, culminating in the existential phenomenology of Heidegger. The course then turns to the classical hermeneutic debate between Gadamer, Habermas and Ricoeur, and then explores the extended debate over what is an 'author' (Schleiermacher, Barthes, Foucault); the course then turns to Levinas's ethics of alterity, Derrida's differance and deconstruction, ending with Deleuze's 'rhizomatic' philosophy. Each of these theorists construct the relations between history, texts, authors and readers in different ways. This course stresses self-reflexivity and ability to discuss how theory always shapes biblical interpretation.