EDITORIAL

Abstract

Hermeneutics is becoming more and more a living and challenging issue in religious discussions. It is a truism to say that religions can survive and flourish only through a meaningful hermeneutics, only through the relevant interpretation of their Scriptures. On the one hand, the origin of religions life in the distant past and most of their sacred books are now in dead languages. On the other hand we can come into contact with these religions and their sacred books through
their interpretation. Thus the sacred books are at once ancient and contemporary; incarnate in a particular form, they claim to speak to all generations; circumscribed in language and cultural perspective, they lay claim to universality. The dynamics of this tension between the past and the present, between particularism and universalism constitute the task of hermeneutics today, and it is becoming more and more a difficult area in the study of religion.