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I have long found it somewhat strange and forced to speak, as Bultmann does, of "presupposing" the hermeneutical rules or the method(s) of historical-critical research. Rules and methods as such are not what is presupposed; rather, rules are followed or methods are employed, given something else that is presupposed -- namely, (1) that being precisely a text, the text has to be interpreted as such, whatever one's aim or objective in interpreting it; and (2) that the appropriate aim or objective in interpreting this text is this aim or objective rather than that, or that aim or objective rather than some other.

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