More Thinking Biblically

How can an exegete work philosophically? By incorporating concern for the "foreground" of the text into the method of historical-criticism. Attention to the "foreground" involves three disciplines for the exegete:

1. Understanding that reading is a response to writing. The first effect of reading is to give a life to the text that is autonomous. This opens the text up for further development and enrichment that affects the meaning of the text. The autonomy of the text is the abandonment of the idea of the recovering the original intent of the author in order to impose these "intentions" as the guide to all interpretation.
   
2. Awareness of the "trajectory" of the text i.e. the journey the text has taken through its traditional readings that has left an imprint on the text. This trajectory has its origin in the text itself not in the author's intent.
3. Taking into consideration the connection between the text and a living community.

In other words, if we take the relation to its author as the background of a text, the relation to the reader or readers constitutes the foreground. We must therefore say emphatically that the foreground outruns the background (p. xiii).

LaCocque, A., & Ricoeur, P. (1998). Thinking biblically: Exegetical and hermeneutical studies (D. Pellauer, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.