ABSTRACT
Writing is inherently incomplete and fragmentary; it demands a supplement, a commentary which will rescue it from invalid interpretation and provide it with proper meaning. Commentary is necessary to fill in the hermeneutical gap. The commentary provides in effect a second reading, an explicit rereading, which invests the text with authority. Commentary identifies the text as worthy of attention. Kafka’s story and its metatextual commentary depict the struggle between the reader and the “law” of the book. Like the man from the country, the reading of the book is outside of its law, but it makes the law both possible and necessary. Despite the narrative depiction of Jesus’s oral performance in Mark 4 and elsewhere, the parables of Jesus are written texts, requiring but necessarily eluding the rescue offered by the selfcommentary. Disputes about reading the parables arise from different hermeneutical choices being made, which in turn are the results of the readers’ different theological or methodological commitments.
