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34 HORIZONSTheir reading is no less valid than that of the original audience becausethe text, unlike talk, transcends its originating circumstances. Thistranscendence is, of course, not absolute. The reading of successiveaudiences cannot be completely contradictory to the reading of theoriginal audience and still be valid. But it can be different, richer or moreimpoverished. For example, later readers may be able to relate explicitlyto aspects of the text with which the original audience could not havedealt consciously, e.g., to psychological structures which were not articulateduntil a later time or to sociological processes not visible tothose involved in them. And, as we know, it is frequently the case thatwhat seems most significant to the contemporaries of a work of art is notwhat history proves to be most significant for later readers.Fourthly, once a text is written, its sense, i.e., what it says, is nolonger in a direct one-to-one relation to its reference, i.e., what it isabout. 40 The reference is freed from its situational limits and opens up awhole world of meaning. For example, the play Hamlet says thingsabout a Danish prince and his exploits, i.e., the sense of the text is thestory of Hamlet, a particular character and his particular adventures. Butthe text's reference, what it is really about, far transcends the doings ofthe Danish court. It is about the struggle between good and evil in thecontext of power and vengeance, about what life and death really signify.What the text is about, in other words, transcends what it says and iscontemporaneous with every reader involved in the existential complexitiesof the human situation.What Ricoeur's theory of the text suggests for biblical interpretationis that the ultimate question facing the scholar is not what the authorintended or what the text meant to its original audience or even what thetext factually says, but what the text as it now stands means to thecontemporary reader. Obviously, this is not arbitrary. The meaning iscontrolled by the text, and interpretation, to be valid, must submit to thatcontrol. This is one reason why historical and literary criticism areimportant in establishing the text, clarifying the genre, getting to the realmeaning of the words themselves in their own historical context, and soon. Nevertheless, a plurality of valid interpretations is not only possiblebut actually demanded by every great text 41 precisely because the readeris not a tabula rasa or an empty vessel but a participant with the text in40 Ibid., pp. 34-37.41 This openness to a plurality of interpretations is grounded in what Ricoeur calls "thesurplus of meaning. "Gadamer, in Truth and Method, p. 264, says, "Not occasionally only,but always, the meaning of a text goes beyond its author."An interesting, and convincing, experiment in establishing criteria of validity formultiple interpretations is M. A. Tolbert's Perspectives on the Parables: An Approach toMultiple interpretations (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979). Her work is grounded in that ofN. Perrin, especially in his Jesus and the Language of the Kingdom; Symbol and Metaphorin New Testament Interpretation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976) which is explicitly indebtedto Ricoeur's theory.
Schneiders: From Exegesis to Hermeneutics 35the new event of meaning which reading constitutes. Like the musicianplaying Mozart or the actor playing Hamlet, the interpreter is "performingthe text" and the performance is satisfying, illuminating, and transformingto the extent that it is both faithful to the text and creativelyoriginal in execution. 42The aspect of Gadamer's thought which is most important for ourpresent discussion is his analysis of the act of understanding a text. 43Gadamer, unlike Ricoeur, regards the dialogue as an illuminatinganalogue for interpretation. 44 He maintains that in reading a text, as in areal conversation, the purpose is not simply to understand the other or toagree with the other but to come, with the other, to an understanding ofthe truth about the subject matter under discussion. 45 He critiques classicalnineteenth century historical criticism for refusing to engage thesubject matter of the biblical text at the level of its truth claims. Theromanticist historical critic, says Gadamer, stops short at the question,what does the text say? By isolating the text's content in its own historicalworld which is assumed to be a closed horizon of meaning completelyisolated from the horizon of the contemporary reader, the criticrefuses to really dialogue about the subject matter. 46Such a critic,Gadamer implies, is like the person who says to a conversation partner,"I understand what you are saying and can see why you think and feel asyou do" but who refuses to say whether he or she agrees with the speakeror not. The listener records what the other says but refuses to talk aboutthe subject matter. Thus, neither partner risks his or her position, i.e.,faces the challenge to change.For a real conversation, says Gadamer, and thus for a real interpretationof a text, the partner must indeed make every effort to understandwhat the other is saying but also enter into serious discussion aboutwhether what the other is saying is the truth about the subject matter ornot. This cannot be done without bringing into play what one thinksabout the subject, being unwilling either to simply give it up if itdisagrees with the text's position nor to nullify the text's position be-42This analogy with musical interpretation, which I first explored in "Faith, Hermeneutics,and the Literal Sense of Scripture," Theological Studies 39 (December 1978),719-36, occurred to me as 1 meditated on Gadamer's illuminating analysis of the play asclue to ontological explanation in Truth and Method, pp. 91-118. It has proven useful fordiscussing the tension between fidelity and originality in interpretation.43This is the burden of Part Π, section II of Truth and Method, pp. 235-341.44See Truth and Method, pp. 325-41. This difference between Ricoeur and Gadameron the subject of the dialogue as model for interpretation is not contradictory. Ricoeurregards dialogue from the standpoint of its character as event (which is superceded bywriting) in contrast to its meaning which survives transcription. Gadamer, however, isfocussing on the characteristic of dialogue as genuine engagement of a mutually interestingsubject-matter by two partners (which interpretation implies) as opposed to a purelyphenomenological description or reconstruction of what was said.45Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 262-64.^Ibid., pp. 267-70.
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