ABSTRACT
Positivism and certain pragmatism are a part of all text-centred methods. New Literary Criticism was mainly developed in the USA, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Israel. This view of the Bible as literature has produced several books with very similar sounding titles, differing from each other in several methodological details. In Germany, through scholars such as F. L. Hossfeld, K. Koenen, N. Lohfink, O. H. Steck, and E. Zenger, to name but a few, canonical interpretation is especially understood as the highest level of redaction criticism and form criticism. Canonical interpretation in all its forms makes important contributions to the enterprise of understanding biblical texts. Language is understood in completely different terms than in the organon model of K. Buhler. According to this view, language is a tool that can accomplish three basic functions: presentation of the outside world, expression of the inside world, and exhortation.
