Named for Hermes, the messenger of the gods, hermeneutics began as the interpretation of sacred texts. Schleiermacher and Dilthey made it a general theory of understanding, and Gadamer’s Truth and Method (1960) argued that we always understand from within a tradition. The four senses of scripture are an older Christian hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics
The art and theory of interpretation, first of scripture and then of all texts and understanding.