Religious Text Analysis

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In discussing the various approaches to read a text, we are actually questioning the nature of those very texts. Questions such as how can we differentiate a religious text from a literary one? What similarities these two may share together? And what differences may set the boundaries to our reading of both of them? Does our approach to the world in general and to their respective domains─ one being religious and the other being literary─ in particular affect our views as to how we can make meaning of what we read? What about our own personal experiences, don’t they interact with the way we read texts and therefore make us hold subjective views instead of objective ones? All these are but some inquiries and investigations raised in an attempt…show more content…
For our reading of such texts to be objective, we need to conduct both critical and scholarly analysis since the attitudes of both believers as well as scholars differ. The available evidence seems to suggest that an unbiased and impartial reading of a religious text would offer us the opportunity for a better understanding if that text rather gulping down abstract ideas or concepts for which our thirst wouldn’t be quenched since upon finishing reading such materials we feel we raise more questions than the ones we held when we started. On logical grounds, there seems to be no compelling reason to argue that reading religious texts or what one might label as theological reading often makes use of historical or literary approaches to interpret these texts. However, use is also made of other issues such as the originality of the reading material itself. An overwhelming evidence corroborating this idea is that the language in which most religious texts were written is totally different from the one in which they were read subsequently. Some of them were objects for translation to suit large audiences. Hence, there is a chance some of the core elements or even important components may be lost amid this…show more content…
On the basis of the evidence currently available, it seems fair to suggest that as we approach a literary text, our reading mostly focuses on numerous literary devices such as the meaning which derives from the text as a direct correspondence between the grammar of the language that we are using and the object under study. That very meaning is utterly discrete and unambiguous. Sometimes our reading of that same literary work can go beyond the text itself and therefore we may draw conclusions about the meaning in that text based on the connections between different parallels and objects existing within the text itself out of which meaning emerges. It is interesting to know that the meaning we may get from such a text can be interpretive as well as evocative between us as readers and the text itself. So unlike our reading of religious texts, literary texts provides us with much more freedom to analyze, examine, investigate, and even interpret these texts utilizing various tools like allegory, text tones, characterization, style, plot development, connotation, diction, figurative language, symbolism, voice, genre, grammar, and
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