ABSTRACT
There is no writing or reading without bias. Both are acts of interpretation. What Theodor W. Adorno says of knowledge can be fruitfully applied to interpretation: “knowledge comes to us through a network of prejudices, opinions, innervations, self-corrections, presuppositions and exaggerations, in short through the dense, firmly-founded but by no means uniformly transparent medium of experience.” 2 In her book on the reception history of the Jonah story, Yvonne Sherwood cites much of the above quote by Adorno and goes on to show the biblical “original” is overwhelmed, eclipsed, and preceded by interpretation. She declares:
My premise is that biblical texts are literally sustained by interpretation, and the volume, ubiquity, and tenacity of interpretation make it impossible to dream that we can take the text back, through some kind of seductive academic striptease, to a pure and naked original state …. [T]hough the biblical text can always be re-deflected, it can never be recovered.” 3
