Beware the Self-Sustaining Hermeneutical Discourse

A good (if overworked) caution:

Anyone abreast of the mass of hermeneutical discussion operating across the theological subdisciplines at the beginning of the twenty-first century will be aware of an odd feature of that discussion: it is easy to allow the hermeneutical discussion to become a self-sustaining discourse increasingly distanced from the actual tasks and practices of reading the particular texts that go to make up the Christian Bible.

–Richard Briggs, The Virtuous Reader, 35.