Quotes About Interpretation

Our minds have an amazing ability to create a narrative that explains the world around us, an ability that works particularly well when we already know the answer.

We perceive the world in the light of our hopes and fears.

Many of the modeling mistakes are modeler's poor listening skills.

Augustine once warned, "If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself."80

Augustine once commented, "If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.

It may be Jewish in the traditional sense to deny that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, but that is only because that particular form of Jewishness deviated at some key points from the Hebrew Scriptures.

The first draft reveals the art; revision reveals the artist.

You can't see reality. You never could: You just distort the truth until you end up with a version you can live with.

Actually, the Bible doesn't say anything about masturbation," I said, adding, "unless you count, 'Whatever you find to do with your hand, verily I say, do it with all your might.'" He looked perplexed. I smiled. "It's a joke. The Bible doesn't say anything about it.

I guess, like some guy once said, if triangles invented a god, the chances are high it would have three sides.

we make the mistake of viewing history through modern eyes. Instead, it must be evaluated with an open mind. We must take into account the fears and superstitions of the times, for they are critical to understanding the people and their motivations.

Whether we know it or not, our lives are acts of imagination and the world is continually re-imagined through us.

The point has never been to 'believe' in myths or to simply accept what others have said they mean. The key issue with mythic images is to let them speak to us, wherever and whenever we find ourselves seeking guidance, permission, or understanding.

the great critic is one who deepens our experience of the great text.

It doesn't have to mean anything to you to mean something to me.

Her work was indeed elliptical, she left out everything that was essential, including logic and meaning. Her words neither described nor observed things. They were just words scattered across the page. This was braininess of the highest order, the verbal equivalent of the white canvas passed off as a painting; so abstract that to have expected some sense from it would have insulted the artist.

while people and circumstances certainly matter, what's even more important is what we think about those people and circumstances.

Neither the truth nor the character of history depend, in any way, upon its having some lesson to teach us. And if ever we persuade ourselves that the past has taught us something, we may be certain that it is not the historical past which has been our teacher.

just them by themselves Mark apparently thought that simply writing "Jesus took Peter and James and John" would leave open the possibility that others joined them, so he clarifies that the four were "just them by themselves." Generally we must take care not to attribute more exactness to a Gospel text than is strictly required. For example, if the evangelist gives a list, we are not justified in inferring that the list is exhaustive.

You mean that's your idea of desire, with all those commas?

In the end, it wasn't so much that there was an alternative narrative--there always was--but it came down to belief: Which one did you want to believe. Which one suited you best? Or, perhaps more to the point: Which one told the story you were already telling yourself?

Finally, Sacred Tradition is also necessary because some truths of the faith are expressed in a completely definite form in Scripture, while others are not entirely clear and precise and therefore demand confirmation by the Sacred Apostolic Tradition.

You should give up sarcasm. People could get the wrong idea about you.

And concepts rejected when they came from someone else often looked better when rethought as one's own. Even the Emperor, it seemed, was not immune to that particular hubris.