In recent years, there have been many more studies of the early history of hermeneutics which transcend the individual disciplines. These focus on problems in understanding the text, on scriptural interpretation as initiated by the Protestant scriptural principle, the early modern traditions of rhetoric and dialectics as well as the origins of hermeneutics as a distinct discipline within logic in the early modern period. The articles in this edited volume, which originated during a symposium of the ‹European Melanchthon Academy in Bretten‹ in October of 2008, summarize previous research and provide perspectives for future analyses of the early history of hermeneutics.