Quotes About Interpretation

Silence might not be...entirely silent.

The story might sound like common gossip when told by another person, but in the mouth of a storyteller, gossip was art.

By a man's fingernails, by his coat-sleeve, by his boots, by his trouser-knees, by the calluses of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt-cuffs, by his movements—by each of these things a man's calling is plainly revealed. That all united should fail to enlighten the competent enquirer in any case is almost inconceivable. SHERLOCK HOLMES, 1892

Negli occhi della gente si vede quello che vedranno, non quello che hanno visto.

If you don't know what it is, then it's jazz

the world is ever so slightly but uncorrectably out of focus, that there are no absolutely precise answers. Whatever

Art's underlying strength is that it does not intend to be literal. It presents a metaphor and leaves the viewer or listener to interpret. It is giving in to art, not trying to divine its meaning, that brings the viewer or listener the deepest measures of satisfaction.

you will depend on how you do your accounting. People often talk jokingly about how "creative" accountants can make a corporate balance sheet look as good or as bad as they want it to look. Well, the point here is that we are all creative accountants when it comes to keeping our own psychological balance sheet.

Kneading memory makes the dough of fiction; which we know, sometimes never stops rising.

We might mean different things. How can you tell? Only by reading each of us carefully and seeing what each of us has to say—not by pretending that we are both saying the same thing. We're often saying very different things.

the idea that Jesus rose on the 'third day' was originally a theological construct, not a historical piece of information.

The problem comes when readers take these two accounts and combine them into one overarching account, in which Jesus says, does, and experiences everything narrated in both Gospels. When that is done, the messages of both Mark and Luke get completely lost and glossed over. Jesus is no longer in deep agony, as in Mark (since he is confident as in Luke), and he is no longer calm and in control as in Luke (since he is in despair as in Mark). He is somehow all things at once. Also

This is how readers over the years have come up with the famous "seven last words of the dying Jesus"—by taking what he says at his death in all four Gospels, mixing them together, and imagining that in their combination they now have the full story. This interpretive move does not give the full story. It gives a fifth story, a story that is completely unlike any of the canonical four, a fifth story that in effect rewrites the Gospels, producing a fifth Gospel. This

In Galatians 4:14 Paul is not contrasting Christ with an angel; he is equating him with an angel.

But one thing they all (i.e., E. P. Sanders, Geza Vermes, Dale Allison, Paula Fredriksen, and many others) agree on: Jesus did not spend his ministry declaring himself to be divine.

Orthodoxy is my doxy and heterodoxy is your doxy.

Donald Trump was elected in 2016, which, as it turns out, is the sum of 666 + 666 + 666 + 6 + 6 + 6.

To approach the stories in this way is to rob each author of his own integrity as an author and to deprive him of the meaning that he conveys in his story.

All of these authors are trying to understand the world and their place in it, and all of them have valuable things to teach us. It is important to know what the words of these authors were, so that we can see what they had to say and judge, then, for ourselves what to think and how to live in light of those words.

The problem with material remains is that they are silent: they don't provide their own interpretations. And that means various interpretations are possible.

If one wants to insist that God inspired the very words of scripture, what would be the point if we don't have the very words of scripture?

How did Jesus understand and describe himself? Did he talk about himself as a divine being? I will argue that he did not.

Our Bibles today have chapter and verse divisions. These are extremely helpful, of course, since without them it is very hard indeed to tell someone where to find a passage. But the authors did not write in chapters and verses. One problem with our having them is that they make us think that the next chapter (or even verse) is changing the subject.

what the book of Revelation actually does say and how it says it, matters surprisingly overlooked by many so-called experts on biblical prophecy.