Week 6--Barker Chapter 11: Television, Texts and Audiences

What does the field of hermeneutics, the encoding/decoding model, and active audience theories mean for authorial intent? What implications are there for how we are to understand the Bible? If we can derive any number of meanings (decode) from the Bible, regardless of the specific intent of the author, what does this say about biblical inspiration? Maybe considering authorial intent more ambiguously is more reflective of reality anyway. After all, people often say or do things without perfectly clear reasoning. I love watching a movie or something where the writer or director’s use of symbolism or metaphor is obviously beyond what they intended. Indeed, isn’t this at the heart of biblical inspiration? Doesn’t God continue to creatively bring out new meanings, in spite of the authors’ intent, from the Bible, through our involvement in daily life?