After two decades of teaching the subject, this distinguished Old Testament scholar compiles a synthesis that takes in to account and organizes the factors that are at work in the act of understanding and interpreting literary texts: producer, receiver, text, subject matter, language. Two chapters deal with normative interpretation and the sociology of interpretation. The author, a learned and independent thinker who is in bondage to no theory, has aimed at density without obscurity, order without showiness. Luis Alonso Schokel is Professor Emeritus for General Introduction to Scripture and Theology of the Old Testament at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome.