So what’s left to us is the task of interpretation. Or, to frame it as a question, Can I reject the Bible’s metaphysics without rejecting its message? That’s a bridge too far for many of your fellow atheists (although they have no problem accepting Plato’s wisdom while rejecting platonic metaphysics). But it’s not a bridge…
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Interpretation
So what is your poem about?
In “The Well Wrought Urn” — that well-known and well-wrought book of literary criticism — Cleanth Brooks described what he called “the heresy of paraphrase.” The main idea — that efforts at paraphrasing poetry into prose fail in ways that parallel attempts for prose do not — was not new. It has been generally agreed…
A New Language. Do you speak it?
Another Language Recently another language has grown up within the one others use. The new language has a special way: it avoids saying obvious things as if they are not so obvious; it never proclaims something that the kind of person being addressed is presumed to know already; it courteously gives credit to the needs…
Midrash: Not Allowing the Text to Turn into Stone
“The rabbis, when they read, walk into the text. They bring themselves to it and step across the edge of the scroll onto its body, bouncing a little, believing it will hold their weight. And then on hands and knees crawl through the furrows of words, examining, brushing away dirt, not unlike a botanist examining…