Contextual Interpretation Quotes

It depends on what the meaning of “is” is.

History is not, of course, a cookbook offering pretested recipes. It teaches by analogy, not by maxims. It can illuminate the consequences of actions in comparable situations, yet each generation must discover for itself what situations are in fact comparable.

… words acquire scope and function from the history of events which they summarize

Every generation of Muslims should be permitted to solve their own problems, guided but unhampered by the work of its predecessors.

Siobhan also says that if you close your mouth and breathe out loudly through your nose it can mean that you are relaxed, or that you are bored, or that you are angry and it all depends on how much air comes out of your nose and how fast and what shape your mouth is when you do it and how you are sitting and what you just said before and hundreds of other things which are too complicated to work out in a few seconds.

I think fiction isn't so good at being for or against things in general - the rhetorical argument a short story can make is only actualized by the accretion of particular details, and the specificity of these details renders whatever conclusions the story reaches invalid for wider application.

Religious laws should be interpreted according to this era's circumstances … Benefit from the modern laws of other nations and cultures

Time Team' is by definition very static. Once you're in that field and you've dug your trenches, that's it.

[The Bible] has to be interpreted. And if it isn’t interpreted, then it can’t be put into action. So if we are serious about following God, then we have to interpret the Bible. It is not possible to simply do what the Bible says. We must first make decisions about what it means at this time, in this place, for these people.

Human languages tend to be much more ambiguous than computer languages because humans are much smarter about interpreting the context.

What is meaningful cannot in fact be isolated…. We achieve understanding within a circular movement from particular facts to the whole that includes them and back again from the whole thus reached to the particular significant facts.

I did ... learn an important distinction in graduate school: a speculation about who had syphilis when is gossip if it's about your friends, a plot element if it's about a character in a novel, and scholarship if it's about John Keats.

Now all the myths that you have heard and that resonate with you, those are the elements from round about that you are building into a form in your life. The thing worth considering is how they relate to each other in your context, not how they relate to something out there-how they were relevant on the North American prairies or in the Asian jungles hundreds of years agon, but how they are relevant now-unless by contemplating their former meaning you can begin to amplify your own understanding of the role they play in your life.

I don't think that word - the word pirate - has any real meaning. Or it's something that's had meaning imposed on it.

All Scripture is equally inspired, but not all Scripture is equally applicable or relevant to every stage of life.

When someone drew a picture of Pope John wearing an Avis 'We try harder' button, those words no longer meant which car rental to patronize, and yet some of the overtones from its original meaning are there and make a contribution to the new situation.

It shows the truth - that the real meaning of a word is only as powerful or harmless as the emotion behind it.

In archaeology, context is the basis of many discoveries that are imputed to the deliberate workings of intelligence. If I find a rock chipped in such a way as to give it a sharp edge, and the discovery is made in a cave, I am seduced into ascribing this to tool use by distant, fetid and furry ancestors.

All alone - shorn of context, without captions - a photograph is neither true nor false.... For truth, properly considered, is about the relationship between language and the world, not about photographs and the world.

There are infinite shades of grey. Writing often appears so black and white.

When people try to read between the lines - critics, they have a job. Their job is to make something bigger than it is.

The Bible was written in several languages, embraces many literary forms, and reflects cultures very different from our own. These are important considerations for properly understanding the Bible in its context.

There are words and words and none mean anything. And then one sentence means everything.

No man with any sense assumes that a woman's words mean to her exactly what they mean to him.

Every time has its own 'Hamlet.'