Newbigin on Community and Hermenuetics

"The Bible is not a collection of documents recently dug up in the sands of Egypt. It is quite "unscientific" to treat it is it were. The Bible comes into our hands as the book of a community, and neither the book nor the community are properly understood except in their reciprocal relationship with each other. Quite clearly, the community as it now exists is being continuously shaped by the attention it gives to the Bible. Equally clearly, the community's reading of the Bible is shaped by a tradition that has been developed through the experience of previous generations of believers seeking to understand and put into practice the meaning of the book... This is the hermeneutical circle operating within the believing community."

-Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, p. 55.