Hermeneuitics of the Letter

Christian Alexander

In 2009, Peter Leithart published Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture (Baylor University Press).

First, this book advocates a hermeneutic of the letter. That is to say, reading Scripture has to do with attending to the specific contours—the author's word choice, structural organization, tropes and allusions, and intertextual quotations.

I have a question. Did Leithart invent this term?

MJ. Smith

Schleiermacher distinguished between two primary approaches to interpreting texts: the "hermeneutics of the letter" (Grammatik) and the "hermeneutics of the spirit" (Hermeneutik).

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