The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

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reinterpretation. The role of tradition, too, has been discovered to be anything but simple. In 1983 Hobsbawm and Ranger edited a remarkable book showing that so many ‘timehonoured’ and ‘immemorial’ traditions have been rather recently invented. They describe the overmastering impulse, beginning about 1870 and peaking around 1900 and spreading right across the world, to invent traditions in every aspect of national life – in politics, education, recreation as well as religion (again we meet a phenomenon broadly cultural rather than narrowly religious). National festivals, stamps and statues, anthems and flags, uniforms, military parades, monuments and jubilees are all quite modern. The creation of national symbolism where none before existed was not unconnected with the changing context. In the West there arose an urgent need to popularise traditional institutions as politics became mass politics. (The ritualism of the British monarchy increased in inverse proportion to the political power of the sovereign.) ‘Traditions’ were taking hold quite widely; around that time the British began to invent native ‘African traditions’ such as tribal divisions and customary law. Hobsbawm and Ranger’s book focused on a particular period and Britain primarily, but it made a serious point of wide application; so often, in claims about the past, far more is going on than meets the eye. Very often the claim ‘this is our tradition’ is not a statement about the past at all (just as the claim ‘our scripture says’ is not necessarily a statement in any strict sense about the meaning of a document); it is a statement about the present – most often a statement of what the present might, or even should, be.

Charisma

I have spoken above of the living community, without specifying how a community operates. Here, obviously, due allowance must be made for the influence of the gifted individuals within a community, and we naturally move to our third focus of religious authority, charisma (from the Greek charis, ‘grace’ or ‘favour’, although the word is not widely found in profane Greek, the roots of our concept being in St Paul). The currency of the concept in contemporary study of religion comes from Weber, who treated the phenomenon at length (Weber 1978). Weber’s concern was to distinguish types of leader: traditional, rational-legal and charismatic. The third type is based upon the perception of followers that an individual is endowed with exceptional (even divine) qualities. (Thus the concept of ‘charisma’ is just as much a relational term as ‘scripture’.) Weber’s ideal-type charismatic leader possesses authority based on his own qualities rather than on tradition or rational considerations. He offers a new revelation and way of life, demands obedience to his mission, and imposes new obligations. Charismatic leadership is unpredictable, personal and unstable, and hence normally must become ‘routinised’ if the mission of the originator is to persist.

This kind of authority is found most purely in shamanism or primal religions generally. In many religions of Africa, the most obvious religious figures are the healer-diviner, the witch and the medium. Some healer-diviners may be considered to have come by their skills through learning from their predecessors, but usually all three are considered to derive their exceptional gifts from the spirits. Some, particularly the spirit mediums, can even be taken over by their indwelling spirits in ecstatic trances. It is this possession that gives the charismatic religious figure his or her authority. Although charismatic authority is regarded with some suspicion in the increasingly bureaucratised West, it should not be thought that charisma is restricted to ‘primal’ religions. For one thing, for many scholars of religion it is the founders of the world religions that are the classic examples of this phenomenon. In Jewish tradition, Moses has been considered to have been endowed with the prophetic

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gifts to such a degree that he was ‘the greatest of the prophets’. Jesus taught ‘as one having authority, and not as the scribes’ (Mk 1,22). Muhammad is understood to have possessed more barakah (blessing) than any other man. (‘Barakah’ is an important Islamic concept generally.) The Buddha was said to have had an aura surrounding his body, bringing all he met into submission. For another thing, it is the charismatic leaders of New Religious Movements (NRMs) who constitute a key focus of contemporary religious research.

Frequently charisma links with the other sources of authority considered above. As noted earlier, charisma must become routinised into standardised procedures and structures if the group is to persist beyond the life of the figure who triggered it, but in themselves charisma and tradition tend to tug in different directions. So charisma and tradition inevitably enjoy a somewhat conflictual relationship. With scripture, however, charisma often has an almost symbiotic relationship. Many charismatic leaders of NRMs ground their authority in texts. Someone like David Koresh of the 1993 Waco tragedy, in which 86 people died in a stand-off with US law enforcement agencies, possessed authority not just because of personal qualities, but because he was able to convince others that he was part of the end-time events supposedly predicted in scriptures. (His Branch Davidians were an offshoot of the millenarian Seventh Day Adventists.) American televangelists, the focus of so many studies of charisma, depend upon their own gifts but at the same time take care to anchor their authority in scripture. Scripture actually functions to reinforce their personal charismatic authority. Gurus of many religions win and hold their following to the extent that they are seen to reveal the ‘real’ meaning of scripture.

An example

As a concluding illustration of several of the foregoing points, consider Sikhism. The founder of Sikhism was Guru Nanak (1469–1539 ce), who was succeeded by nine other Gurus. The tenth Guru, Gobind Singh (1675–1708 ce) decreed that the line of Gurus would stop with him, ultimate authority being shared thereafter by both the Panth (community) and the Adi Granth (also known as the Guru Granth Sahib, the collection of writings of the Gurus – and some precursors – assembled essentially by the fifth Guru but given final form by the tenth).

Historical criticism shows that Guru Nanak, the undisputed founder of the religion, discounted outward observance, teaching that true religion is interior, and liberation is achieved through inward meditation directed to Akal Purakh (the ‘Timeless Being’) who reveals himself in the nam or divine name, and brings liberating karma, when transmigration comes to an end. This is achieved through nam simaran, a regular Âdiscipline of inner meditation that focuses on the omnipresence of the divine name. Such teaching was current among the Sants of North India at the time, thus ‘effectively destroying any claims to significant originality’ (McLeod 1989: 23). However, over time circumstances transformed Sikhism. The tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, institutionalised the community in the Khalsa in 1699, and began the formation of its special code of conduct (Rahit), which evolved throughout the eighteenth century. Over this time what had been a religion of interiority assumed an ever more exterior identity, marked particularly by uncut hair and the bearing of arms (militancy had first developed under the fifth, ninth and tenth Gurus especially). Under British occupation, a reform movement begun in the late nineteenth century attempted for the first time to distinguish Sikhs from Hindus. The self-understanding and marks of identity established over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are still determinative today.

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The Sikh scripture, the Adi Granth, is given enormous respect. Its mere presence constitutes any room or building a gurdwara (temple). No one may sit on a level higher than the lectern on which it is placed. Sikhs marry by circling it four times. Daily prayers are derived from it. Yet paradoxically, ‘Within the Panth itself knowledge of the actual contents of the Adi Granth is very limited’ (ibid.: 88). A second work, the Dasam Granth, had in the eighteenth century almost the same respect as the Adi Granth; now ‘the Dasam Granth as a whole is seldom invoked and little understood’ – probably because ‘the material which dominates the narrative and anecdotal portion … is scarcely consonant with the preferred interpretation of the Sikh tradition’ (ibid.: 90–1). On yet a third level of scripture are works by two distinguished Sikhs of the Guru period, Bhai Gurdas and Bhai Nand Lal. Both ‘are explicitly approved for recitation in gurdwaras and as such they constitute a part of what we may regard as an authorized Sikh canon’ (ibid.: 92). In practice, however, both are ‘seldom read or heard’ (ibid.: 94), probably because their spirit and content are so different from what the Khalsa came to be. A further class of scripture comprises the Janam-sakhis, cycles of narratives of the first Guru, very hagiographical, often miraculous. ‘Although they have never been accepted as sacred scripture, their immense popularity has conferred on them a major role in the sustaining and transmission’ of the Nanak tradition (ibid.: 97–8) – in our sense, made them enormously authoritative. Still another set of works, known as the Gurbalas, concentrates on tales of the two warrior Gurus, the sixth, Hargobind, and particularly the tenth, Gobind Singh, whose ideals inspired the eighteenth-century Khalsa. There is yet other literature, notably of the Singh Sabha or nineteenth-century reform movement, that offer the traditions reinterpreted in the light of Western ideals, but there is no space to elaborate on them here. I have merely outlined this history and this range of texts to illustrate the complex ways in which the community has regulated itself and (something slightly different) claimed it was regulating itself. The community has transformed itself over time. The ‘traditional’ practices and self-understanding have evolved in accordance with changing conditions. Revered and theoretically decisive scriptures are unstudied and neglected, because of their lack of harmony with later tradition; other books, not part of any canon, are far more influential or authoritative in determining the life of the community, because so compatible with later tradition.

Sikhism is a religion that is quite specific where authority lies: it is virtually undisputed that the mystically present Guru persists equally in the Panth and the Adi Granth. This theoretically precise doctrine, however, leaves much unresolved. Radical ambiguity persists in the translating of mystical authority into actual decisions. The Adi Granth provides ‘little specific guidance on issues relating to the Rahit, and differences of opinion quickly emerge whenever the attempt is made to apply its general principles to particular cases’ (ibid.: 75). However, in practice, the Panth has learnt to live with ‘a radically uncertain theory of ultimate authority’ (ibid.: 77). Undoubtedly there are stresses and strains, and certain issues continue to trouble the Panth, but the evolving tradition in most cases offers sufficient guidance to preserve an ongoing identity. We might complete our illustration by noting that it is the historical approach that enables scholars to establish the community’s development (we have here followed McLeod, but our point about authority within a community is not narrowly dependent on his reconstruction), and to understand individual books in the light of particular contexts; yet Sikhism itself tends to reject this approach. However, the young Sikhs of the Western diaspora increasingly find such a historical approach unavoidable.

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Conclusion

Religious authority, in practice, is thus a very complex reality. Understanding its various forms is rendered more difficult because so often the accepted theory does not so much reveal as obscure what is going on. We have drawn attention to three aspects or elements: scripture, or sacred books; tradition, or the living community itself as it survives through time; charisma, or exceptionally gifted individuals. Although it is legitimate to consider these separately, we have discovered so often an extremely complex interplay, not made less complex because so often the religion itself claims that there is in question a simple and transparent process. Here, as frequently elsewhere, theory can be one thing, practice another.

Summary

All human groups need some generally accepted means of resolving major questions, and for religious groups scriptures or authoritative texts, tradition or accepted precedents, and charismatic or gifted individuals have generally performed precisely these functions. These elements operate in very complex ways, often working together. They often function at considerable variance from the ways in which a religion claims they operate. The rise of historical consciousness over the last few centuries has revealed both the complexity and the variance. This chapter outlines the complicated and interrelated workings of scripture, tradition, charisma, with some examples from major religious traditions.

Bibliography

Barton, John, 1997, People of the Book, London: SPCK.

Farley, Edward and Hodgson, Peter C., 1985, ‘Scripture and Tradition’, in Peter C. Hodgson and Robert King (eds), Christian Theology: an Introduction to its Tradition and Tasks, Philadelphia PA: Fortress Press.

Graham, W.A., 1987, ‘Scripture’, in M. Eliade (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion, New York: Macmillan; and London: Collier Macmillan.

Hastings, A., 1979, A History of African Christianity, 1950–75, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence (eds), 1983, The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

McLeod, W.H., 1989, The Sikhs: History, Religion and Society, New York and Guildford: Columbia University Press.

Mayr-Harting, Henry, 1990, ‘The West: The Age of Coversion (700–1050)’, in John McManners (ed.),

The Oxford History of Christianity, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Müller, Max, 1879–94, The Sacred Books of the East, 50 vols, New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Nineham, Dennis, 1976, The Use and Abuse of the Bible: A Study of the Bible in an Age of Rapid Cultural

Change, London: Macmillan.

Paine, Thomas, 1798, Rights of Man, London: Wordsworth Classics.

Plato, 360 bce, Philebus. Trans. Robin Waterfield, 1982, London: Penguin Books. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, 1993, What is Scripture? Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

Weber, Max, 1978, Economy and Society, Berkeley: University of California Press, especially I, 241–5; II, 1111–56.

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Suggested reading

Barton, John, 1997, People of the Book, London: SPCK.

A brief treatment of many of the issues, focusing on the Christian tradition.

Graham, W.A., 1987, ‘Scripture’, in M. Eliade (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion, New York: Macmillan; and London: Collier Macmillan.

Succinct summary of the issues.

Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence (eds), 1983, The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Shows the problematic nature of ‘tradition’.

Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, 1993, What is Scripture? Minneapolis MN: Fortress Press. A magisterial treatment of all the issues involved, covering all traditions.

Weber, Max, 1978, Economy and Society, Berkeley: University of California Press, especially I, 241–5; II, 1111–56.

The classic treatment of charismatic leadership.

Chapter 24

Hermeneutics

Garrett Green

For provisional purposes, one can define hermeneutics quite simply as the theory of interpretation. Although this straightforward definition may do as a point of entry into a subject notable for its complexity, controversy, and jargon-ridden discourse, it will need to be qualified in a number of ways before it can do justice to the field of hermeneutics as it impinges on the scholarly study of religion today.

Our provisional definition can be expanded, first of all, by identifying hermeneutics as theoretical reflection on the principles and rules of interpretation and understanding. Implicit in this still basic definition is a duality that reflects the disparate origins of modern hermeneutics and helps to account for its complexity. On the one hand are those who would think of hermeneutics primarily in terms of method and practice. Here the emphasis lies on the actual interpretation of texts by scholars, exegetes, or religious teachers. Hermeneutics in this sense articulates and codifies the principles and rules of textual interpretation – an activity that has enjoyed a long history under a variety of names and plays an important role in virtually all of the world’s religions. On the other hand are those for whom the object of hermeneutics is not in the first instance the texts being interpreted so much as the human act of understanding that every interpretation presupposes and instantiates. Hermeneutics in this sense is more like a philosophy than a methodology. Indeed, in the influential modern tradition of hermeneutical speculation reaching from Schleiermacher to Gadamer, hermeneutics becomes the name for a comprehensive philosophy of understanding. When one thinks of hermeneutics as something to be ‘applied,’ one is using the term in the former (methodological) sense; when one uses it to describe a mode of reflection on the nature of human understanding, one is employing it in the latter (philosophical) sense. To make matters more complex, thinkers rarely adopt one or the other of these two types in its ‘pure’ form, so that the polarity represents not two kinds of hermeneutics but rather two tendencies or emphases within the modern hermeneutical discussion – tendencies that can take on endless variations and can be combined in myriads of ways.

Further clarification of hermeneutics requires that we look at the actual historical traditions that have led to our contemporary situation. The reason for this procedure should be plain from what has already been said: we cannot first establish the meaning of the term and then go on to describe the various ways of doing it, because every attempt at a formal definition already involves us in the controversial issues of the content of hermeneutical theory. The shape of the field today results not from the systematic unfolding of its conceptual meaning but rather from the interplay of concrete human personalities, cultures, and religious and philosophical traditions.

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Origins and etymology

No one knows for certain the origins of the Greek verb hermēneuein (‘to interpret’), from which our modern word derives, but most of the tendencies and controversies of later hermeneutical theory are foreshadowed in the ancient conversation about this term and its cognate noun hermēneia, which became a technical term and often appeared in titles

–preeminently in Aristotle’s treatise On Interpretation (Peri Hermēneias). Though the etymological connection is obscure, the most illuminating feature of ancient hermeneutics is its association with Hermes, the messenger of the gods. This connection underscores the fact that hermeneutics, while not a religious term per se, has always had an intrinsic relationship to religion. The archetypal problem of interpretation, one could say, is embodied in the mystery of the divine word that must first be translated (one of the root meanings of hermēneuein) into understandable human terms before it can be heard, obeyed, and appropriated. The most important texts calling forth the art of interpretation have long been religious texts, so that scriptural interpretation is not simply one category in a series of hermeneutical tasks but rather the source or model for all the others. Even in the highly secularized world of the modern academy one can find traces of this heritage in the continuing fascination and controversy aroused by issues of canon: how authoritative texts – pre-eminently the Bible in Western civilization – are to be interpreted.

The link between ancient Greek hermēneia and modern hermeneutical theory is found in the history of interpretation in the Jewish and Christian communities that were the successors to classical Greek and Roman culture and the forerunners of modern European and global culture. The shape of that history is largely determined by the texts whose interpretation was crucial for those communities. In classical culture the need to interpret Homer was the driving force behind hermeneutical thought, since the Iliad and the Odyssey functioned as foundational texts in those societies. The two main alternatives that developed were grammatical interpretation, which sought meaning in the structure and shape of the language in which the stories were told, and allegorical interpretation, in which the meaning of the text was sought in an external symbolic key. The grammatical interpreter looked at the way the text itself is put together, believing that the key to its meaning will be found within the structure of the text itself. Allegorical interpreters, on the other hand, believed that the meaning hidden in the text could only be deciphered with the help of an external key that would unlock its symbolism. First Jewish and then early Christian interpreters adapted and extended these methods for their own use in interpreting the Bible. The most important bridge figure is Philo of Alexandria (roughly a contemporary of Jesus, though the two were surely unaware of one another’s existence), a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who applied allegorical interpretation to the anthropomorphic narratives of the Torah, and whose ideas influenced the Christian thinkers who subsequently flourished in Alexandria. Rabbinic Judaism generally followed a different direction, which included several approaches to scripture, including literalist interpretations, midrashic exegesis, which tried to find meaning beyond the literal sense of the text, and others. Their overarching concern was to fit scripture into a theologically meaningful framework without succumbing to a dead literalism on the one hand or opening the floodgates to spiritualizing excesses on the other

–interpretations which, by encouraging subjective or mystical readings, might endanger the identity and integrity of the community.

The Christian church fathers faced similar issues, compounded by the need to integrate the proclamation of Jesus with the Jewish scriptures. In addition to the kinds of interpretation already mentioned, the Christian fathers advocated the use of typological or figural

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interpretation, an approach often confused with allegory but in fact quite distinct from it. In this kind of interpretation, an earlier event (typically from the Old Testament) is taken as a figure or type for a later (New Testament) event. Unlike allegory, both figures, type and antitype, are real historical persons and events (e.g. Moses as figura of Jesus), whose meaning is found in the transcendent link between them. Figural interpretation has recently become the subject of renewed hermeneutical interest through the work of Erich Auerbach, whose book Mimesis (1953) describes the ancient practice, and through Hans W. Frei’s book The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (1974), which applies it to the modern history of theological hermeneutics.

The most important link between the hermeneutics of the early Christian church and the medieval period in Europe is the thought of Augustine of Hippo (354–430), whose importance for virtually every aspect of later Western thought can scarcely be exaggerated. Inheriting from the earlier church fathers the polarity between ‘literal’ and ‘spiritual’ senses of the scriptural text, he attempts to synthesize the legitimate concerns of both methods by investigating the role of signs (thereby becoming the precursor of the modern theory of signs, or semiotics). He sees the scriptures not as identical with the things to which they refer but rather as signifiers pointing to God. The upshot of this approach is a new stress on praxis – the living faith that is the goal of Christian teaching – as the proper context for interpretation of scripture. No mere theory can provide the conditions for right interpretation but only the faithful practice of reading the Bible in the context of the ongoing Christian community. In this way, scripture and tradition are linked in a dialectical relationship.

Of the many thinkers and schools of interpretation that might be mentioned in the long history of medieval interpretation of scripture, perhaps the most important for the later development of hermeneutics is the doctrine of the fourfold meaning of scripture. Earlier thinkers – following St Paul’s admonition that ‘the letter kills but the spirit gives life’ (2 Cor. 3: 6) – had distinguished between two senses of the text, the literal and the spiritual. In medieval hermeneutics the spiritual came to be distinguished into three distinct senses: the allegorical, seen as the key to the content of faith; the tropological, which concerned the moral significance of the text; and the anagogical, which dealt with the relation between the text and the future hope of believers. The effect of this doctrine of the fourfold meaning of scripture was increasingly to separate the various theological disciplines – biblical studies, moral theology, eschatology, etc. – both from one another and from the practical life of faith. A shift in hermeneutical emphasis occurred after the rediscovery of Aristotle in the twelfth century and the founding of the first universities. In the Scholasticism that followed, theology became an academic discipline, and theologians took pains to give their speculations a scientific basis. The greatest of the medieval thinkers, Thomas Aquinas, formally retained the theory of the fourfold meaning of scripture while in fact de-emphasizing allegorical interpretation in favor of increased attention to the literal meaning of the text. The upshot of these developments was that theology (what Thomas called sacred doctrine) became an academic enterprise that concentrated on the literal text, while the spiritual meaning of the text became by default largely the concern of popular piety and spirituality.

Questions about the single or multiple meanings of texts, and about the relationships among the different senses, came to a head in the Protestant Reformation, with its insistence on the sole authority of scripture. It is no accident that the one who first galvanized the discontent of sixteenth-century Christians into the movement we know as the Protestant Reformation – Martin Luther (1483–1546) – was a professor of Bible, whose new theological

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of modern culture, and its most distinctive and influential line of development has taken place in the context of Continental European philosophy over the past two centuries.

The thinker generally credited with being the founder of modern hermeneutical theory

– Dilthey dubbed him the ‘Kant of hermeneutics’ – was the German theologian and Plato scholar F. D. E. Schleiermacher (1768–1834). As a major figure in the early Romantic movement, he articulated a hermeneutics in accordance with the notion of creativity, in which the work is understood as an expression of the creative genius of the author. Rejecting the traditional distinction between sacred and profane interpretation, he insisted that scripture can be understood in the same way as other texts. He argued that what is needed in both cases is a hermeneutics defined as the ‘art of understanding’ (Kunstlehre des Verstehens), thereby shifting attention away from the nature of the text itself to the nature of the understanding by which the text is read and interpreted. By focusing on the concept of understanding, Schleiermacher effectively re-conceives hermeneutics as an independent philosophical enterprise (though he insists upon calling it an ‘art’) rather than the handmaid of theology or literature studies. Though a theologian himself, he sought to minimize the distinction between general rules of textual interpretation and those rules appropriate to scriptural exegesis, insisting that the latter must remain subject to the former. Even the claim that the Bible is divinely inspired, therefore, cannot be invoked on behalf of a special theological hermeneutics. The theologian interprets texts according to the same general principles that apply in all situations of understanding. This move not only has significant consequences for the task of theology but also represents a major step in the direction of a disciplined study of religion distinct from the theology of Christianity or any other of the ‘positive’ religions. This contribution to the emerging field of religious studies is important in the light of another significant step taken by Schleiermacher: he, a Protestant clergyman and professor, was the first thinker in the European tradition to write a book on religion, understood as a phenomenon distinct from Christianity – his 1799 book On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers.

Schleiermacher’s hermeneutical ‘art of understanding’ has a bipolar structure, in which he distinguishes a grammatical (objective) dimension from a psychological or technical (subjective) aspect in the act of understanding. The former task requires that the interpreter be grounded in the linguistic and cultural modes of expression in which the author lived, while the technical-psychological aspect requires the interpreter to grasp the unique subjectivity of the author as expressed through the unified whole of the work. This latter task involves what Schleiermacher calls divination, a term that has provoked considerable controversy and misunderstanding. His intent is not to make understanding into a mysterious means of entry into the mind of the author, but he does believe that interpretation – though it entails an intuitive risk – can lead to understanding the mind of the author better than the author knows himself. The goal, like that of his fellow Romantics, is to grasp the universal in the individual, to do justice both to the uniqueness of particular expressions and to the general spirit of which they are incarnations. Schleiermacher’s influence on his contemporaries was modest, especially in view of the immense influence his ideas eventually came to have on the development of hermeneutical theory. What made the difference was the subsequent discovery of Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics by a man born the year before Schleiermacher’s death.

Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) became the main link between the Romantic hermeneutics of Schleiermacher in the early nineteenth century and the leading figures in the remarkable explosion of philosophical hermeneutics in the twentieth. Unlike Schleiermacher, Dilthey