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Hello!

I was really interested in the idea of hermeneutics, the study of interpretation. As I was reading, I began to think about how I go about reading and rereading a book. Each time I read and reread that certain book any amount of times, I always end up having a different interpretation of the text and discover something I hadn’t noticed in the previous readings. It shows that all texts are functions of interpretations and that a text does not only say what the author meant for it to say. A text has many different interpretations, some intentional by the author and some not. I liked the idea of the Hermeneutic circle, how Schleiermacher says that interpretation moves between the parts and the whole, which means there is no defined absolute ending. I also liked how Gadamer says that the reader is part of the circle, how one’s interpretation of a text is dependent on one’s prejudices which is then able to be influenced by another interpretation. There is this constant relationship between the text and the reader. I then thought about what I gain from the readings for this class, and then what I discover when I go back and reread certain parts. My interpretations of the different texts change after each reading because I notice something new or understand something better in terms of the religion. This idea of Hermeneutics allows one to have multiple interpretations of any sort of text.

As a side-note, I really like Tj’s idea that education is like a bucket of sand. I can relate this to my post in the sense that one needs to “sift through the sand” or through a text multiple times in order to understand more and see what is not as obvious.