ABSTRACT
Walter Wink criticizes New Testament scholars for failing to interpret the New Testament in accordance with its own purpose, namely "so to interpret the scriptures that becomes alive and illumines with new possibilities for personal and social transformation". Gerhard Ebeling insists that hermeneutics "only consist in removing hindrances in order to let the word perform its own hermeneutic function". The work of Schleiermacher constitutes a turning point in the history of hermeneutics. Hermeneutics was supposed to support, secure, and clarify an already accepted understanding. The notion of the hermeneutical circle is not, then, a sell-out to human-centred relativism, but a way of describing the process of understanding in the interpretation of a text. The hermeneutical task is a genuine and valid one. The main contribution of the new hermeneutic, however, concerns the parables of Jesus, and although many criticisms about exegetical details could be made, the suggestiveness and value of the general approach is clear.
