Quotes About Interpretation

Freud said there's no such thing as a joke—a joke is an expression of veiled hostility.

When your words come out of your mouth and back into your ear, your brain gives them a second rinse, and cleans them up a little better. All Tom knew was that when he tried to explain things to Sharon, his own thinking clarified.

I know what I have said, but not what you have heard.

Each man sees what his own experience has taught him.

No field of knowledge is so transparently simple as another's

Marxists interpreted everything in terms of class; Freudians in terms of childhood; and feminists in terms of gender.

We gaan er altijd van uit dat lezen gemakkelijk is omdat we de techniek die we zo lang geleden hebben geleerd, vergeten zijn en het nu voortdurend zonder nadenken doen. Als een boek dus moeilijk lijkt, moet dat eerder de schuld van het boek zijn dan van de lezer.

Not your view, I know—you'd be happy to describe what you were up to purely in differential equations if you could—" Excerpt From: Michael Frayn. "Copenhagen".

I can't help feeling sceptical about the Bible's claim that God made man in his own image...He could have achieved that by creating a couple of mirrors; or a closed-circuit television.

In fundamental respects, the Constitution does not mean what it says. It means what the Supreme Court says it means. Or, more particularly, it means what five Supreme Court justices say it means at any particular time.

I see architecture not as Gropius did, as a moral venture, as truth, but as invention, in the same way that poetry or music or painting is invention.

The eight-a-day recommendation can be traced back to a 1921 paper in which the author measured his own urine and sweat output and determined he lost about 3 percent of his body weight in water a day, which comes out to about eight cups. Consequently, for the longest time, water requirement guidelines for humanity were based on just one person's urine and sweat measurements.

All movies assault the viewer in one way or another.

Maybe nothing's so unfunny as an omen read wrong.

Na podstawie tego niepeÅ'nego zbioru pomiarów mo?na uÅ'o?y? historiÄ™ logicznie spójnÄ…, o której nie da siÄ™ jednak powiedzie?, ?e jest prawdziwa; jest tylko niesprzeczna.

The other corollary of this principle is an understanding of scriptural interpretation not merely as an academic exercise, but as an ecclesial practice. For theological interpreters, even the most technical and sophisticated academic biblical interpretation has the church as its primary location and ultimate focus. Good theological biblical scholarship is a form of prayer, communion , and, most importantly, service to the church.

2. Remember that Revelation was first of all written by a first-century Christian for first-century Christians using first-century literary devices and images.

it is the only New Testament book on which Calvin did not write a commentary.

G. K. Chesterton's comment is apt: "though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators."1 So also Luther's: "Some have even brewed it [Revelation] into many stupid things out of their own heads.

The first approach is the predictive approach, which is the most common approach to Revelation, focusing on the future. This approach is not, however, a recent invention; it goes back to some of the earliest interpreters of Revelation, such as Justin Martyr and Irenaeus in the second century and Victorinus in the third,

The fourth approach can be called political, or theopolitical. This approach, for our purposes, does not refer to the political implications of predictive, dispensationalist interpretations but to a basic view of Revelation as a document of comfort and (especially) protest, to borrow words from the title of South African theologian Allan Boesak's interpretation of Revelation during the apartheid era: Comfort and Protest (1986).

We read Revelation as words from a prophet-pastor (and ultimately from God), in order to be formed and transformed, not merely informed

That Revelation 2–3 contains an outline of church history seems rather forced and quite far-fetched. But the idea that these seven churches somehow symbolize the range of possible Christian churches—particularly the range of common dangers the churches face—is much more plausible.

Statistics don't appeal to our need to understand cause and effect, which is why they are so frequently ignored or misinterpreted. Stories, on the other hand, are a rich means to communicate precisely because they emphasize cause and effect.