Does the Bible Contradict Itself?

[The Grand Nudger]

Just stop, no one said anything about accuracy. Stop trying. You interpret my responses in the manner that you do because of some need or desire for my responses to be the way you interpret them, not because of my intent, not because of the "accuracy of your interpretations" not because of any "truth" there is to be had in them. Case in point, no matter how often I repeat myself or correct you, you continue to interpret them in the manner that suites you. I am apparently powerless (as the author) even in conversation.

Any story, any narrative, fiction or non-fiction, is likely to have a life beyond what the author intended. What a narrative means to a reader generally has far more impact than whatever the writer meant. You, as the author, could tell the reader that you didn't mean that, or that such-and-such was not your intent all day long, and it won't make a dent in what they took away from your narrative. Pages and pages ago I suggested that you might want to abandon this whole "truth" line because it doesn't seem to apply -at least not the way you seem determined to use it - in the case of the stories we tell, and how those stories affect us, regardless of whether a narrative is meant to be fiction or non-fiction.

You don't understand my meaning? Is the ambiguity in the text or have you created the ambiguity in your mind? Has this entire conversation been an attempt to establish that ambiguity exists in text, or an attempt to create it because you need it to be there (for whatever reason)?

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Let me add this as well, and keep in mind I'm only repeating myself here. What do you hope to do, if you can establish such ambiguity in the first place? You hope to fill that gap you've created with specificity, don't you? You'd like to offer your interpretation, wouldn't you? Doesn't that set off alarms in your mind?

-"This line is ambiguous...what the author really meant here was......" -