Messianic Prophecies?

[SEEtheScorn]

Just like anything, literature is read in context of the reader.

 

Where in the name of all that's good do you get this atrocious conclusion? Tell me! Please! So I can burn whoever started it to the ground.

 

This persepctive infuriates me as a pursuant biblical scholar. It is, by far, the WORST thing someone can impose on a specific text.

 

In other words, "what does this mean to me?"

 

No no no no no!

 

The words mean what they mean. They account what they acount. I don't give a rats ass whether Jesus parable on the wise and unwise virgins gives you a fuzzy feeling or now, what matters is WHAT IT ACTUALLY MEANT from Jesus perspective and HIS perspective alone!

 

What do you read in the context of the reader? NOTHING! You pick up a newspaper and what context do you read it in? This year? That would be stupid. You look at the date, and read it through that context.

 

You pick up any fictional book and the only way you can understand it fully is to read it in the context of that era. Haven't you ever taken an English class??? Haven't you ever had to do indepth study to the history behind the literature you were reading? Haven't you ever discovered so much more from doing so?

 

If you haven't, for intelligence's take audit a college English 101 class or something!

[Shyone]

In other words, "what does this mean to me?"

 

No no no no no!

 

The words mean what they mean. They account what they acount. I don't give a rats ass whether Jesus parable on the wise and unwise virgins gives you a fuzzy feeling or now, what matters is WHAT IT ACTUALLY MEANT from Jesus perspective and HIS perspective alone!

Makes sense to me.

 

I think there are sometimes problems with trying to assign a perspective to the speaker though. We can't really know what he/she was thinking other than from the words, and if the words mean something different today, must we then assemble the entire "context" of the speaker?

 

That would be ideal, but under most circumstances it's impractical, so we take short cuts.

 

Simple things, like "I am", should be easy to understand, but given the significance of the phrase in the OT, it might mean, "I am God." Or it might simply mean what the words mean, which is "I exist."

 

Sometimes a text has a superficial meaning and a deep meaning. I hated that about Literature classes because I had to rely on the teacher to tell me the "deep" meaning. The book Animal Farm has a "social context" and 1984 had a historical context. Poems, in particular, never made sense to me until the teacher filled me in.

 

I'm rambling now, and I apologize, but language can be confusing; particularly text that requires interpretation.

 

Is there always only one interpretation? Or is the best interpretation the only "correct" one?