Ever since the Enlightenment, hermeneutics have been of critical importance as one of the fundamental principles of the arts and humanities. Their incorporation into the field of historical cognition is associated with one name above all: that of Johann Salomo Semler. As well as leading to a methodical reclassification of all aspects of theology, hermeneutics subjected the notion of Christianity itself to a process of historicisation. Marianne Schröter shows that the question of hermeneutics forms the leitmotif in Semler’s thinking.