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  • Author or Editor: Christoph Auffarth x
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If religion is to be a vital institution in society, buildings are needed: from a walled approach or entranceway to a cave, to pieces of architecture reserved exclusively for religious use. Buildings for worship are places where gods are thought of as dwelling, where their images are displayed, and where persons show their reverence through gifts. The altar is not always the central point. The Greek temple is rather a treasure house for votive gifts, while the sacrifice is offered on the altar in front of the house of God. The construction is altogether different in Judaism and Islam, where it is conceived as a space in which the community gathers for the reading of Scripture, for its explanation, for prayers, and for songs. Synagogues or mosques must always face the holy city or the direction of the sunrise ( Orientation), but they are not sacred themselves. In Catholic Christianity, alongside its main function as a place where the community comes together, there also is the sacred character of the altar, enhanced by relics, which makes holiness transportable all over the world.

Exegesis (Gk., ‘explanation’; etym., ‘out-leading,’ ‘ex-position’) denotes the interpretation or explanation of a text or a passage of a text, especially one from the Bible, and especially at the hands of an expert. In Greek sanctuaries, exegetes stood ready to ‘translate’ oracles of the god into human speech, or to explain to strangers the meaning of the chunks of boulder, or the tree, in the sanctuary, having to find an answer for everything. In theology, professionals concern themselves with the translation of the old, sacred texts into the world and life of the audience. They stand in a long tradition of ‘exposition,’ but are always confronted with new questions. Here they are always astraddle what they hope is the meaning of the text (pejoratively called ‘eisegesis,’ i.e. ‘in-leading,’ ‘in-putting’ of alien meanings of their own or others), and the historical text, which often contradicts their interpretation. The method of historical criticism has trenchantly elucidated the contrast between source texts and products of exigesis.

The expression “hermeneutics” (from Gk., hermeneuein, ‘to translate,’ ‘to interpret’) denotes the methods of interpretation of a text (→ Text/Textual Criticism) when seen as part of its exposition. Hermeneutics is of key importance especially for religion, when the latter is no longer temporally and locally embedded in the context in which a proposition or relation has found its Sitz im Leben. One way of ‘translating’ such a text into the present consists in expounding its ‘deeper’ sense, its meaning for times and places other than those of its original ‘context.’ With the sacred texts of the religions, this will typically mean their interpretation in a sense that will maintain their correctness throughout the ages. “Something can mean something different from that which it expresses literally” (allegory). By way of instrumental complementarity, historical-critical hermeneutics seeks to elucidate what the literal meaning of a text has been originally, for its own place and time. Only after this question has been answered can the text in question be ‘trans-lated’ to other temporal and local contexts.