ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the importance of applying different hermeneutical models to the interpretation of different types of parables. It explains different types of response theory both in terms of different disciplines and pedigrees, and in terms of the place of each on a spectrum from moderate or cautious to radical. The chapter considers respectively some of the values and limitations of these of approaches. It argues that Stanley Fish holds an inadequate philosophy of language, especially when compared with the approach of the Wittgenstein, and a hermeneutic that places communities including the church beyond critiques of biblical texts. The chapter addresses a dilemma that emerges between respecting the cognitive content of parables, which can be abstracted from them retrospectively as "teaching", and respecting the initial hermeneutical dynamic of parables as "projected worlds", as address, as seductive and transforming narratives, and in other ways. It examines degrees of open-endedness and levels of reader-involvement.
