Biblical Interpretation: Paradigm Shifts Biblical Interpretation: Paradigm Shifts and Historical and Sociological Perspectives INTRODUCTION This essay falls into three parts, the first of which deals with the major shifts or switches that have occurred in the history of biblical hermeneutics. While the most recent shift is away from the diachronic historical method as the touchstone of criticism, its usefulness in partnership with synchronic methods like sociological exegesis is widely recognised. It is this method which we will discuss in the second part. In the third part, our attention will be focused on the sociological approach, which is a more than useful complement to historical criticism. PART I: PARADIGM SHIFTS IN BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS What Is a Paradigm Shift? Ferdinand Deist defines a paradigm as “the complex of convictions, values, and world view shared by a scientific community which provides its philosophical framework for valid academic inquiry.” 1 A paradigm guides scientific activity only until a growing list of anomalies and ad hoc modifications within it produces a sense of crisis. 2 Then the scientific community seeks a new paradigm which will accommodate these anomalies and allow old data to be reinterpreted in a new way. We have what Thomas Kuhn calls a scientific revolution 3 , or a paradigm shift, which transforms the world within which the scientific work was done, and leads the profession to a new set of commitments. The inadequacy and, therefore the failure of the old approach to ask relevant questions and/or suggest valid solutions to problems is acknowledged, and a more relevant and promising approach replaces it. A paradigm shift is never an overnight process as it does not merely mean making increments to what is already known. Rather it requires a breaking down of prior theory and a reconstruction that is rarely completed by a single person. It is no wonder that historians have difficulty dating a paradigm shift with any great accuracy. Paradigm Shifts in Biblical Hermeneutics Do the concepts of ‘paradigm’ and ‘paradigm shift’ help elucidate the history of biblical hermeneutics specifically? Since paradigm shifts involve a change of world view, they affect in some way every mental activity. Hermeneutics, as a theoretical reflection on the processes of communication, interpretation and comprehension of written texts will thus experience change in its own field in the direction of the prevalent shift. 1 Ferdinand Deist. 1990. A Concise Dictionary of Theological and Related Terms. Pretoria: Van Schaik, p 185 2 See Ian Barbour. 1998. Religion and Science. London; SCM Press, p 125 3 Thomas Kuhn. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: Chicago University Press.