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According to Bultmann, among other ways in which "the objective of interpretation" can be given is "by an interest in history as the sphere of life in which human existence takes place, in which we acquire and develop our possibilities, and in which, by reflecting on these possibilities, we each come to an understanding of ourselves and our own possibilities. In other words, the objective [sc. of interpretation] can be given by the question about human existence as one's own existence." A few pages later in the same essay, it is evidently to just such an interpretation that Bultmann refers when he speaks of "the kind of understanding to which Schleiermacher and Dilthey orient their hermeneutical theory and which can be said to be understanding of historical phenomena in the ultimate and highest sense, namely, the interpretation that questions texts about the possibilities of human existence as one's own" (New Testament and Mythology: 83, 85 f.).

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