Gadamer, Wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein, and What To Do about Judas (Acts 1:12–22)

Hans-Georg Gadamer’s artfully ambiguous phrase, wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewußtsein (historically-effected consciousness), evokes both a consciousness that is aware of how understanding is shaped by effective history, but also the consciousness which is already always being shaped by effective history. This paper begins by unpacking Gadamer’s concept of historically effective consciousness, drawing on his later works alongside the more familiar Truth and Method. Part two explores how his phenomenological hermeneutics might assist a reading of the New Testament as a literary text. Gadamer's principles can be seen at play in Acts 1:12–22, in which Peter explains Judas’s betrayal as the fulfilment of Psalms 69 and 109. While midrashic techniques explain some aspects of Peter’s exegesis of these Old Testament texts, it can be difficult to find a coherent hermeneutical principle behind this kind of apostolic exegesis of the Old Testament. Historically-effected consciousness offers a promising overarching hermeneutic, drawing our attention to three elements of the text’s historical horizon: question, geography and genre. Part three then considers what a historically-effected consciousness might mean, in turn, for New Testament exegetes reflecting on their own phenomenological predicament.