ABSTRACT
Ethnography has as its goal a holistic vision of a culture. Although the goal is almost certainly impossible to achieve, it remains important both for moral and intellectual reasons. There is a long and honourable tradition of hermeneutics in the study of religion, through Vico, Schleiermacher and Dilthey to Gadamer, Ricoeur and Geertz - all of whom have played a prominent role in promoting and developing that tradition. Hermeneutics was once entirely a matter of biblical interpretation. In recent years hermeneutics has come to be applied to a far wider range of context. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers an unusually wide range of contexts in which religious texts are brought into focus. It tries to make clear the analytical value added resulting from a reading of religious texts, where that term is taken in its broadest possible sense.
