Summary: My aim is to build a classification of the rules for the interpretation of Ancient Testament used in canonical gospels. This classification shall demonstrate how the Christian fracture in Judaic tradition can be seen as a matter of communication structure’s change and cultural hybridation. Judaic culture built an explicit theory of religious texts interpretation (starting, at least, with Hillel rules): how can we describe the paradoxical relationship of ‘fractured continuity’ between this theory and evangelists use of AT? The critical role of the Septuagint in canonical gospels citations; the renewing of religious literary genres; the strong social impact of ‘Christian words’ are all key-clues of the importance of a rigorous semiotic-philological point of view on these arguments. A semiotic approach to text analysis will help describe hermeneutic structures as intertextual relations. Thus, semiotics will allow us to design a map of the complex relationships between languages, texts and cultures that determined the birth of Christian literature. This map will explain the strong influence of Greek culture on Judaic-Christian forms of religious communication. Once established a typically Christian set of interpretation rules, it will be possible to verify if the set is a useful abstraction to understand the history of Christian culture. In order to do this, I’ll propose some examples from ancient Christian hermeneutic tradition (from Origen to Thomas Aquinas).
