Quotes About Interpretation

that if one of the executioners had not moved them, they would have been cut off.

It seems to many that they have to make a choice: either believe the Bible and hold to a young earth, or abandon the Bible because of the persuasiveness of the case for an old earth. The good news is that we do not have to make such a choice. The Bible does not call for a young earth. Biblical faith need not be abandoned if one concludes from the scientific evidence that the earth is old.

The Bible's message must not be subjected to cultural imperialism. Its message transcends the culture in which it originated, but the form in which the message was imbedded was fully permeated by the ancient culture.

These points of continuity and discontinuity should have an important role in our interpretation of the Bible, and knowledge of them should guard against a facile or uninformed imposition of our own cognitive environment on the texts of ancient Israel, which is all too typical in confessional circles. This recognition should also create a more level playing ground as critical scholarship continues to evaluate the literature of the ancient world.

So when I tell you what I think, I am not transferring thoughts to you. I do not lose them when I tell them. I express what I think, and for you to understand, you need not think what I think, or have the same thought as I. You may need to know what I think and to say it, but not to have the thought or think it.

Persons, bodies and minds inhabit language.

When we think language is on one side and reality is on the other, and then puzzle as to how they link up, we forget that we dwell in language and are merely imagining that we can point at them.

We must do away with all explanation and allow only description in its place".

The present is a text, and the past its interpretation.

we must determine whether on the one hand Christianity is still to represent to us a definite teaching from above, or whether on the other its utterances have been from time to time so strangely at variance, that we are necessarily thrown back on our own judgment individually to determine, what the revelation of God is, or rather if in fact there is, or has been, any revelation at all.

Don't you understand?" he would say, "You imagine the story better than I remember it.

MAYBE YOU SHOULD BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR. AT LEAST, YOU GET TO READ STUFF THAT'S WRITTEN BY PEOPLE WHO CAN WRITE! YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING TO BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR, YOU DON'T NEED ANY SPECIAL TALENT, YOU JUST HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT SOMEONE WANTS YOU TO SEE - TO WHAT MAKES SOMEONE ANGRIEST, OR THE MOST EXCITED IN SOME OTHER WAY. IT'S SO EASY!; I THINK THAT'S WHY THERE ARE SO MANY ENGLISH MAJORS!

Novels are just another kind of cross-dressing, aren't they?

You can give yourself a headache trying to decipher the tattoos on a naked man who's leaping up and down on a bed.

The kind of people claiming to be in communication with God today . . . they are enough to drive a real Christian crazy! And how about these evangelical types, performing miracles for money? Oh, there's big bucks in interpreting the gospel for idiots-or in having idiots interpret the gospel for you

Mr. Wiggin injected a kind of horror-movie element into the Christmas miracle; to the rector, every Bible story was-if properly understood-threatening.

A book feels true when it feels true, she said to him, impatiently. A book's true when you can say, 'Yeah! That's just how damn people behave all the time.

Garp was a natural storyteller; he could make things up, one right after the other, and they seemed to fit. But what did they mean?

I just don't dare to make up everything, like you do." I don't make up everything, but when I use things that actually happened, I always change something; I try to make what happens not exactly true.

You're the biggest secret I know...The only way I know what's going on with you is the only way everyone else knows it. I just have to wait and read your next book.

the memoir-novel "dumbed down fiction and traduced

Every misunderstanding has at its center a breakdown of language.

They were William Blake's words, set to song

YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING TO BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR, YOU DON'T NEED ANY SPECIAL TALENT, YOU JUST HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT SOMEONE WANTS YOU TO SEE—TO WHAT MAKES SOMEONE ANGRIEST, OR THE MOST EXCITED IN SOME OTHER WAY. IT'S SO EASY; I THINK THAT'S WHY THERE ARE SO MANY ENGLISH MAJORS