HERMENEUTICS (Gr. llermeneutes, an interpreter), the science of interpretation, especially as applied to the Holy Scriptures. It forms a branch of the same general study with exegesis (q.v.), and indeed is often confounded with that science; hut the distinction between the two branches is very marked, and is perhaps sufficiently indi cated by the etymology of the names themselves. To hermeneutics properly belongs the " intepretation" of the text—that is, the discovery of its true meaning; the province of exegesis is the "exposition" of the meaning so discovered, and the practical office of making it intelligible to others in its various bearings, scientific, literal, doctrinal, and moral. Hence. although, as will be seen by reference to the article EXEGESIS, the laws of interpretation have many things in common with those of exposition, it may be laid down that to the especial province of hermeneutics belongs all that regards the text and interpretation of the Holy Scripture; the signification of words, the force and signifi cance of idioms, the modification of the sense by the context, and the other details of philological and grammatical inquiry; the consideration of the character of the writer or the persons whom he addressed; of the circumstances in which he wrote, and the object to which his work was directed; the comparison of parallel passages; and other similar considerations. All these inquiries, although seemingly purely literary, are modified by the views entertained as to the text of Holy Scripture, and especially on the question of its inspiration, and the nature and degree of such inspiration.
So far, there is hut little difference between Roman Catholic hermeneutists and the more strict school of Protestant critics. It is at this point that the fundamental distinction between Catholics on the one side, an,d Protestants of every shade on the other, may be said to begin. With the latter, the sense of the Scripture once truly ascertained from the Scripture itself, interpreted by the rules explained above. is regarded as final, and is
accepted by the interpreter as the revelation intended by God. With the former, the individual judgment which is formed upon these rules, and which, as to the actual meaning of the particular passage, may possibly coincide with that of the Protestant, is still controlled, and, it may be, overruled by the authoritative interpretation of the church, as conveyed in the decrees of councils, or the dogmatical definitions of pon tiffs accepted by the universal church. From this circumstance it is often inferred that in the Roman Catholic church the science of hermeneutics is a nullity, and that no free dom of interpretation is practically permitted. The Roman Catholic critic, however, maintains that he exercises, and is free to exercise, on the text of Scripture the some liberty of interpretation which the Protestant may claim; and that it is quite possible that he may arrive at precisely the same conclusions with the Protestant as to the mean Mg of the scriptural text considered in itself alone. But he differs from the Protestant in believing that the Scripture does not contain the whole of God's revelation, and, there fore, that. as one passage of scripture is modified by another, so the scriptural revels tion itself may he modified by other revelations of God conveyed to us through other mediums; as, for example, that of tradition. See TRADITION. As regards the litera ture of hermeneutics, most of the writers named in the article EXEGESIS have dealt with both branches of the science. They are for the most part Protestant, The most remarkable modern Catholic hermeneutieal writers are Hermann Goldhagen (Mainz, 1703); Seemilller's Hermeneutica Sacra (1779) ;• Mayr's institutio Juaup. (1789) , Jahn's Eneldridion Mermen. (Vienna, 1819); Arigier's Hermeneutica Generedis (Vienna, 1813) ; Unterkireher's Ilernreneutiea Biblica (1831) ; Ronolder, llerrrr. Dibl Prineirda Rationales (Ella Kircher, 1838); Schnittler, GrandUnien der Hermeneutik(1844); Glaire's liermeneutica Sacra (1840).