I made it to the end of the Heidegger chapter!  Hurray.  At that point I opted to call it a day, and save Gadamer for my text reading slot.

Towards the end of the chapter, I found a sentence that was worth pondering, both in relation to biblical hermeneutics and hermeneutics of historical artefacts:

'Prior to every interpretation, the hermeneutical manifests itself as "the bearing of message and tidings."'

Jean Grondin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, New Have, Yale University Press, 1994 p. 104

citing Heidegger, On the way to Language tr. Peter D Hertz, New York, 1971 p. 29

Whilst not every 'message' or 'tiding' is 'good news,' and there presumably can be kakangelion (is there such a word?) as well as euangelion, this simple phrase seems to point to something important in interpretation - that it is concerned with releasing/realising the message (meaning and doing perhaps) of a text (or object, film, image, piece of music, set of data, etc).

Hermeneutics as euangelion - as gospel - liberating the message of hope - seems a good thing.  Maybe it balances, in a good way, the ubiquitous 'hermeneutic of suspicion' I have heard of to the point of tedium.