Is Allegorical Religion better than Fundamentalism?

[Belacqua]

I do think there is a danger in going too far in reading too much into a text and making up stories  only tangetaly suggested by circumstances. Accepting the possibility of erring is part of the risk, not a reason to not try.

Very much agree with you here, as usual.

The idea that texts are interpretable, and their meanings may be multiple, may evolve, may even come to contradict one another -- does not mean that just anything goes. There are better and worse interpretations. Even the most hard-core "Death of the Author" Barthes-fan has to accept that some interpretations have no support in the text whatsoever. And some new interpretations may ring true and be valuable, while others are just dumb. 

A huge part of these texts' value is that we argue about them.

So the fact that meanings may not be fixed, and that we can read for our own interpretation, doesn't actually let us off the hook at all. We don't all get prizes just for participating. 

In fact I think it puts more responsibility on us when we read texts that are powerful, and have been influential in history. To do a good job we have to know the web of various interpretations that have already been given, and have some knowledge of why those have been saved and not forgotten. The text is not alone -- it is a part of a web of interpretations that come along with it.