ABSTRACT
The purpose of this contribution is to enrich the current conversation on Christian hermeneutics by situating their hermeneutics within a shared set of reading habits grounded in beliefs about the relation of language to truth and the nature of written language, as well as in a shared commitment to the practice of truth, a common classical education and a common patrimony of authoritative texts. New factors to be noted in late antiquity are the increasing distance between the reader and the original text, disputes between thinking readers and the emergence of particular reading traditions.
