history of biblical texts opens an ecumenical dialogue in which both the living and those long dead relate how their identity was shaped through the scriptures. The scholarly community working on the EKK has always seen itself in this sense as an ecclesial dialogue community. It is evident from all this that we do not understand “effective history” simply in Gadamer’s sense of its being the foundation of “effective history consciousness” which makes the interpreting subject aware of his or her “relation