There has been discussion about changing the hermeneutical-approaches tag here and some weakness of the tag name noted here (also some confusion on what exactly "hermeneutical approaches" means as an on topic point).
I agree with the answers in both the first two posts that hermeneutics should be avoided, as it likely would end up in too many of the wrong places.
However, I also see validity in the second post's point that certain "procedures" may be shared across different hermeneutics. In fact, when I read the hermeneutical-approaches info, I see some issues with it, specifically the following two paragraphs:
Hermeneutics is the overarching term given to theories and methods of interpreting linguistic communication. Questions here regarding hermeneutical approaches ask about these methods or theories as applied to the Bible (and cognate literature).
Some hermeneutical approaches include lexical-syntactical analysis, historical/cultural analysis, contextual analysis, theological analysis, and special literary analysis. Other principles exists such as the principles of inerrancy, reverence, and historical-grammatical interpretation.
The issues I see:
- 1st paragraph: "ask about these methods or theories" is too vague.
- 2nd paragraph: the listing of types of "analysis" are really not differing hermeneutical approaches, but rather building blocks used by differing hermeneutical approaches for their flavor of interpretation (which is the point post #2 linked above was making). The weight of importance (if used at all), order of consideration, etc., for the varying types of analysis are essentially the "rules" by which a particular hermeneutical approach tends to operate.
So the question is:
Should we add a tag, perhaps labeled methodology, that allows for discussing the granular types of analysis that may be important to various hermeneutical-approaches, and reformulate the latter tag to be discussions about a "set" of methods (i.e. Grammatical-Historical, Sensus Plenoir, Literal, Spiritual, Allegorical, Pardes, etc.)?