I don't like the title Biblical Hermeneutics

Question

It is not clear to me but this site welcomes Judaism too right?

I 2nd the notion that the title Biblical Hermeneutics sounds like Xtian Hermeneutics.

To me, Bible = Xtianity

I think Judaism call it Talmudical hermeneutics.

How about just plain Hermeneutics -- a site for Christianity and Judaism.

This has been hashed over many times. Did your review the previous meta discussions of this issue? — Caleb, Commented Feb 14, 2014 at 19:49
Not just for Christianity or Judaism, but for Atheism (such as me) — user3376, Commented Feb 15, 2014 at 1:08
@AaronKom-This is a place where we take seriously the study and interpretation of Biblical texts. The fact that there are many Christians who do this shouldn't demean your efforts as a Jewish person from doing so-in fact there are many points of agreement w/Christians regarding the same Biblical texts. The truth is BOTH traditions take the Bible seriously; most other 'traditions' do not, and therefore we don't see as much representation from those 'other' traditions. — Tau, Commented Feb 16, 2014 at 8:49

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-16 15:49:15Z

How about just plain Hermeneutics -- a site for Christianity and Judaism.

Because technically the field of hermeneutics could apply to any text, and we are not a place to study the Qur'an or Homer or anything else. That would be a very different set of experts than we are attempting to cater too.
Hermeneutics already is our shout name that we go by in URL's, etc.
We aren't just looking for Christians or Jews, we're looking for people that take a certain set of documents seriously. We've had a number of folks contribute that are not part of either of the above two faith communities. What brings us together here is NOT either faith, it is interest in a specific set of texts. As such I think it's appropriate to have something referencing those texts in our name. Short of putting a bunch of terms together with slashes, "Biblical" is the most logical. Jews have other names for it, but even they use "Hebrew Bible", so in a sense "Biblical" is neatly ambiguous in just the right way to cover all the bases.
It's very very difficult to change. There are a few SE communities that have undergone rename operations and, while sometimes justified, there has to be a lot more than a hankering to make it worth while.

That being said, the term does create some ambiguity, but no alternatives have stood up to scrutiny as being clearly better.

1 Answer 1