Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

474 Chapter 17
ple, one of the rules was that ‘‘the meaning of a passage can be derived either
from its context or from a statement later on in the same passage.’’ Another
was that ‘‘when two verses appear to contradict one another, a third verse can
be discovered which reconciles them.’’
The 13 rules for interpreting scripture remains to this day part of the morning
service among Orthodox Jews. In the 18th and 19th centuries, New Testament
scholars used hermeneutic reasoning to solve what was called the ‘‘synoptic
problem’’—that is, to determine the order in which the four Gospels
were written. (See Farmer [1976] and Stein [1987] for detailed histories of the
problem.)
The method of close interpretation of text has been extended from biblical
studies to other areas. Constitutional law in the United States is a form of hermeneutics.
Jurists take it as their task to consider what the writers of each
phrase in the U.S. Constitution meant at the time and to interpret that meaning
in light of current circumstances. It is exegesis on the U.S. Constitution that
has produced different interpretations across time about the legality of slavery,
abortion, women’s right to vote, the government’s ability to tax income, and
so on.
Extending Hermeneutics to All Kinds of Texts
The hermeneutic method has been extended to the study of all kinds of
texts, including images, conversations, and even song lyrics. Michael Herzfeld
(1977) studied renditions of the khelidonisma, or swallow song, sung in modern
Greece as part of the welcoming of spring. Herzfeld collected texts of the
song from ancient, medieval, and modern historical sources and recorded texts
of current-day renditions in several locations across Greece. His purpose was
to show that inconsistencies in the texts come not from ‘‘some putative irrationality
in the processes of oral tradition’’ but are, in fact, reflections of structural
principles that underlie the rite of passage for welcoming spring in rural
Greece.
To make his point, Herzfeld looked for anomalies across renditions—like
‘‘March, my good March’’ in one song compared to ‘‘March, terrible March’’
in another. Herzfeld claims that the word ‘‘good’’ is used ironically in Greek
where the referent is a source of anxiety.
Is March a subject of symbolic anxiety for Greek villagers? Yes, says, Herzfeld,
it is, and we can tell that it is because of widely observed practices like
avoidance of certain activities during the drimata (the first 3 days of March).
Herzfeld supports his analysis by referring to the drimes, a word that denotes
the first 3 days of August, which are associated with malevolent spirits. Since
March is the transition from winter to summer and August is the transition