Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology of interpretation. The tradition of Western hermeneutics starts in the writings of Aristotle and continues to the modern era.

This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. (August 2022)

In De Interpretatione, Aristotle offers a theory which lays the groundwork for many later theories of interpretation and semiotics:

Equally important to later developments are some ancient texts on poetry, rhetoric, and sophistry:

• Aristotle's Poetics, Rhetoric, and On Sophistical Refutations
• Plato's dialogues, Cratylus, Ion, Gorgias, Lesser Hippias, and The Republic

However, these texts deal with the presentation and refutation of arguments, speeches, and poems rather than with the understanding of texts per se. As Ramberg and Gjesdal note, "Only with the Stoics, and their reflections on the interpretation of myth, do we encounter something like a methodological awareness of the problems of textual understanding."^[1]

In The Republic, Socrates denies poets entry into his "just city set up in speech" until they can prove their value. In Ion, Plato famously portrays poets as possessed. Poetry thus becomes open to ridicule. Whatever hints of truth it may have, this truth is covered up by madness. However, another line of thinking arose with Theagenes of Rhegium, who suggested that, instead of taking poetry literally, it ought to be taken as allegories of nature. Stoic philosophers further developed this idea, reading into poetry both allegories of nature and allegories of ethical behavior.

Words spoken are symbols or signs (symbola) of affections or impressions (pathemata) of the soul (psyche); written words are the signs of words spoken.

As writing, so also is speech not the same for all races of men.

But the mental affections themselves, of which these words are primarily signs (semeia), are the same for the whole of mankind, as are also the objects (pragmata) of which those affections are representations or likenesses, images, copies (homoiomata).  [De Interpretatione, 1.16^a4]

You know, none of the epic poets, if they're good, are masters of their subject; they are inspired, possessed, and that is how they utter all those beautiful poems. The same goes for lyric poets if they're good: just as the Corybantes are not in their right minds when they dance, lyric poets, too, are not in their right minds when they make those beautiful lyrics, but as soon as they sail into harmony and rhythm they are possessed by Bacchic frenzy.  [Plato, Ion, 533e–534a]

Aristotle differed with his teacher, Plato, about the worth of poetry. Both saw art as an act of mimesis, but where Plato at times saw a pale, essentially false imitation of reality, Aristotle saw the possibility of truth in imitation. As critic David Richter points out, "For Aristotle, artists must disregard incidental facts to search for deeper universal truths." Thus, instead of being essentially false, poetry may be universally true.^[2]

Two divergent schools of thought emerged during this period, which extends from 200 A.D. to the medieval period. Historians divide this period into the Ante-Nicene Period and the First seven Ecumenical Councils.

Medieval Christian biblical interpretations of text incorporated exegesis into a fourfold mode which emphasized the distinction between the letter and the spirit of the text. This schema was based on the various ways of interpreting text that were utilized by the patristic writers.

• The literal sense (sensus historicus) of scripture denotes what the text states or reports directly.
• The allegorical sense (sensus allegoricus) explains text in the light of the doctrinal content of church dogma, so that each literal element has a symbolic meaning (see also Typology (theology)).
• The moral application of a text to the individual reader or hearer is the third sense (the sensus tropologicus or sensus moralis).
• The fourth sense (sensus anagogicus) draws out of the text the implicit allusions it contains to secret metaphysical and eschatological knowledge, called gnosis.

Biblical hermeneutics in the Middle Ages witnessed the proliferation of nonliteral interpretations of the Bible. Christian commentators could read Old Testament narratives simultaneously:

• as prefigurations of analogous New Testament episodes,
• as symbolic lessons about church institutions and current teachings,
• and as personally applicable allegories of the Spirit.

In each case, the meaning of the narrative was constrained by imputing a particular intention to the Bible, such as teaching morality. But these interpretive bases were posited by the religious tradition rather than suggested by a preliminary reading of the text.

A similar fourfold mode is found in rabbinic writings. The four categories are:

• Peshat (simple interpretation)
• Remez (allusion)
• Derash (interpretive)
• Sod (secret or mystical)

It is uncertain whether the rabbinic categories of interpretation predate those of the patristic version. The medieval period saw the growth of many new categories of rabbinic interpretation and of exegesis of the Torah. Among these were the emergence of Kabbalah and the writings of Maimonides.

The hermeneutical terminology used here is in part arbitrary. For almost all three interpretations which go beyond the literal explanations are in a general sense "allegorical". The practical application of these three aspects of spiritual interpretation varied considerably. Most of the time, the fourfold sense of the Scriptures was used only partially, dependent upon the content of the text and the idea of the exegete.... We can easily notice that the basic structure is in fact a twofold sense of the Scriptures, that is, the distinction between the sensus literalis and the sensus spiritualis or mysticus, and that the number four was derived from a restrictive systematization of the numerous possibilities which existed for the sensus spiritualis into three interpretive dimensions.^[6]

The customary medieval exegetical technique commented on the text in glossae or annotations that were written between the lines or at the side of the text (which was left with wide margins for this purpose). The text might be further commented on in scholia, which are long, exegetical passages, often on a separate page.