Studies On Paul Ricoeur's Biblical Hermeneutical Thoughts

Paul Ricoeur is a famous comtemporary French thinker.His research fields includes general hermeneutics,biblical hermeneutics,narrative theory,theology,history,law,political theory and so on.Among these disciplines,biblical hermeneutics is a very important one,which occupies the central part of his thoughts.However,the Chinese academia mainly focuses on his general hermeneutics and narrtive theory,there are only a few monographs and treatises which have studied on his biblical hermeneutics.The aim of this dissertation is to study Ricoeur's biblical hermeneutics and to move forward the studies on the hermeneutical thoughts of Ricoeur.This dissertation has five parts.The main body is from the second part to the fourth part.The first part is the introducion.This section first provides some information about Ricoeur's life and academic career,then introduces the current state of the research on Ricoeur's thoughts among the oversea and Chinese academic circles,and then illuminates the research values and the study approaches of this dissertation.Chapter one examines Ricoeur's general hermeneutics.Ricoeur thinks that biblical hermeneutics is a part of general hermeneutics.This chapter introduces his theories of text,metaphor,symbol,and analyses his narrtive theory from the perspective of hermeneutics.On the basis of grasping his thoughts on general hermeneutics precisely,this chapter makes further exploration of the theoretical trait of his general hermeneutics.Chapter two mainly analyses the basic ideas and characteristics of Ricoeur's biblical hermeneutics.He maintains that faith is an act which cannot be reduced to linguistic treatment,but it needs to be articulated within a language.We should both treat with the objective meanings of biblical texts and also expound the existential meaning from the texts.Also,on the basis of the tremendous achievements in the field of contemporary narratology,Ricoeur conceives the project of narrative theology,and tries to distinguish it from a theology of history that is a subject to the history of salvation.Besides,the interweaving of history and fiction,which put forward by Paul Ricoeur in his three-volume work Time and Narrative,is very illuminating to biblical hermeneutics.He claims that historical narrative and fictional narrative are not completely opposing,but interweaving,each other.Although Ricoeur does not apply this viewpoint to his study on biblical hermeneutics directly,we could adopt this viewpoint to biblical hermeneutics so that we can regard biblical narrative as the mixture of history and fiction to mitigate the opposition between history and fiction in modern and contemporary biblical studies.Chapter three discusses Ricoeur's analysis on biblical texts.The main discussions on this issue are as follows:He interprets some biblical texts by using various methods such as narrative criticism,historical criticism,structural analysis and so on.By analysing the passion narrative in the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of narrative criticism,he claims that the Gospel of Mark shows the Christology of the suffering Son of Man by the narrative style of obscurity.Besides,he selects narrtive-parables to demonstrate the relation between the Bible and the imagination.Moreover,he combines historical criticism and structural analysis,which seem to oppose each other,as he analyses Genesis 1:1-2:4a and Psalms 22.This chapter also chooses his interpretation of Song of Songs as a case study to illuminate his thoughts on allegorical interpretation.Chapter four discusses the final intention of Ricoeur's biblical hermeneutics.He studies on the idea of testimony of the Bible,and then analyses how readers make the testimony of the Bible into their own testimonies,that is,how readers appropriate the Bible on the existential levels.He maintains that by reading the Bible,the self can be summoned by the vocation,and then responds to the vocation,and finally makes itself better.The last part of this dissertation is the conclusion.Ricoeur interprets the biblical texts by using various methods.What is more,he governs these methods from the perspective of hermeneutics.That is to say,no matter what methods Ricoeur adopts,the final aim of his biblical interpretation is to expound the existential meanings from the biblical texts.