Introductory Remarks: “What are hermeneutics?”
Put plainly, hermeneutics is the study and practice of interpretation. Hermeneutics could be applied to anything that needs to be interpreted, but the focus of this short course is on Biblical Hermeneutics, which deals with the methods of interpreting the Bible well.
There are a variety of ways to do hermeneutics, some better than others. How good a method is depends on how helpful it is at moving us toward a clearer understanding of what the author wants to say. More about that when we get to “Meaning.” A close, brief summary of the sort of method I promote in this course is found in the Wikipedia article on the Historical-grammatical method, though I recommend taking a look at the Resources page for better sources.