You are the Reader, Not the Writer - 11, 12 & 13
The rules you must follow for proper interpretation
You must respect the writer of each book you read. It is the reader’s work (your work) to get to the bottom of the things the author is trying to communicate. He or she has written a message, presumably with words formed into sentences containing: subjects, predicates, direct objects, nouns, verbs, adjectives and the like.
It is a great mistake (and at times a sin) to miss the author’s point because there is some obstacle inside of you that has gotten in the way. Just as you do not want people to put words into your mouth, or take what you say out of context, so you must honor each writer in the way you interpret his or her work.
So there are “rules” readers and students must follow in order to respect the written word. And we all know that following rules are important to keep a person in the game, or out of jail, or to have a harmonious home, etc. Without rules you have anarchy. Everyone gets to do, or say, or think, or disrupt anything he wants. Without rules every man becomes a god, and no one else matters. Red means go, you can leave a restaurant without paying, and your wife belongs to me now.
But none of us is God. And there are rules to most everything. They are built into creation. And so the body of rules for reading another person’s writing is called hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is the science of interpreting writing, but the word is used especially in regard to the Scriptures. Hermeneutics is so important for reading and studying that a whole branch of the tree of theology has been given to it. Yet the word itself can be boiled down to this definition: the rules you must follow for proper interpretation.