General Hermeneutics

What’s needed is not a general hermeneutics developed from some philosophy of language or metaphysics. Rather, what’s needed is a general hermeneutics developed from the premise that NT readings of the OT do not represent some bizarre exception to the normal way of reading but provide a model for all reading.

Hence, for instance, the NT readings of the OT raise (and perhaps help to resolve) questions about how meanings change with changed circumstances. Does Genesis 1:1 mean something different (something more?) now that John 1:1 has been written? How does the end of the story affect the meaning of its beginning and middle?

Or, to take another instance, can the logic of Paul’s use of Torah in the changed cultural and redemptive-historical circumstances of the first century provide a model for legal interpretation in general?