(A) Now you have raised a question again, and I have to try to do the hard work so that you can understand. Maybe you will; maybe you won't; maybe you will understand in a different way than I understand. Maybe you will have your own opinion. That is all OK.
(B) Gloss: One of two or more introduces a response in a conversation where there was another question and now this--neither given--the answer to which will be a meta-response about matters affecting future understanding of what will be hard to construct, and will follow. Herein is a care-less concern and aim of transferring a definite understanding, while at the same time acknowledging possibly a different one as result, perhaps more accurately termed an opinion grounded in the other. The speaker accepts this challenge and risk, born of some obligation or insistence, and so will continue thus. The matter of why it will be hard to construct is not clear, perhaps because the other has difficulty understanding and something like this has been tried before?
(C) If I am entirely truthful with myself and write it down or talk about it, then at least I have done my part, which is the first step towards conversation. In the end, hopefully not before, I and you can evaluate or judge what has gone on in conversation, or discussion, and make any decisions based on that, or not.
(D) Which leads to the hypothesis: A text of any length, if translated into its own or another language, has worlds to open to us that we may but dimly sense without the most careful scrutiny, the most careful listening.
(E) No wonder without wonder.
(F) Another, this from the King James version.
14 And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting:
15 And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables;
16 And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.
(G) Seemingly didactic report of an event with quote claiming the protagonist descended from God and that business shall not be conducted in God's house, the temple. Driving merchants and animals out as well as pouring out money and overturning tables suggests less emotionally-charged methods were or would not be effective. Or did he(?) just fly off the handle?
(H) 17 And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of your house has eaten me up.
18 Then answered the Jews and said to him, What sign show you to us, seeing that you do these things?
(I ) In the face of this "scene" and reflection on earlier scripture (Psalm 69?), the do the protagonist's disciples question his "wretchedness"? or the action born of it? These disciple-Jews, or others, then ask in response to the behavior--with or without the wretched part--what was its meaning?
(J) It may be that a "text of any length, if translated into its own or another language, has worlds to open to us that we may but dimly sense without the most careful scrutiny, the most careful listening." But language plain or in translation can also but dimly denote exactly what it is we are to understand.
(K) Wonder with wonder.
(L) Imagine the impossible, that the at the time of the above reductions, or before, there was no interpretation. A baseline text once read is different from what was said if by the tiniest of margins, for it is the consciousness of the other who has created them in reading or hearing. No full access-entry possible into a text. Add to that the slipperiness of words and phrases and larger aggregations, as evidenced by the illustrative reductions, we can only hope for coincidence. The closest approximation is what we are after, but that in its wholeness is persistently elusive.
(M) Yet we proceed based on what we can apprehend, and through interaction, progress towards what we assent to as understanding.
(N) The initial reduction, whatever its shortcomings, has to be compared with the original as re-read, decoded again. And if there is some large measure of satisfaction on what it is we have hold of then, we can interpret in an acknowledged sense.
(O) To restate the now precariously convoluted.
* One, a text, an original.(P) Wonder that we wonder?
* Two, the text is read. In the experience of reading, a first-hand interpretation is made. It is called what-we-think-it-says.
* Three, that interpretation is then reduced to match the text. Here is the second-hand.
* Four, the second-hand is compared with the original for fit and adjusted as needed. The comparative reading-rendering process becomes conceivably a revised second-hand interpretation, call it third-hand, in that a third results from the process of interacting texts.
* Five, the third-hand, if taken up, becomes a fourth text and a part of making additional texts which may bear great or little resemblance to the original.
* Recycle. Here is interpretation beyond the original and must be handled in the same manner as above in order to make sense of it.
(Q) To interpret in an acknowledged sense is roughly to have decoded a text and understood it within one's own language filters and horizons. If one adds external-to-the-text material, or voices, as somehow implied or inferred or reasonably understood as aid to understanding, we run the risk of no (without) wonder, and . . .
(R) No wonder! Full recognition and acknowledgment of how messed up things can get. This without the impossible, that at the time of the original, or before, there was--we assume (another of the genus interpretation) one or more intentions to communicate something or -things, consciously or unconsciously.
(S) Jam-packed, full of wonders, seen and unseen, to delight and dissuade us, much as the spells of sprites do us good or harm, when we think we are looking.
(T) The evocative enters in the empty spaces understanding cries for words like or as. With these, we are brought back to the beginnings where experience is the images we see internal and external which we want to render into language. That word pictures fully depict what we saw is a conceit we accept and ever so tentatively, and not so tentatively, say they describe what we know to have been like or as what it was.
(U) The choice of what to say or write or discuss then turns upon importance, the why of what we would understand. Understanding resident in I and we then drives the process rather than the other way round. It is the understanding of or about that suggests the importance and gives energy to discerning things as they are.
(V) Why wonder?
(W) Because. And more is wholly outside these matters and probably resides in the wondering subject, I.
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