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Suppose you're traveling to work and you see a stop sign. What
do you do?
That depends on how you exegete (interpret) the stop sign.
1. A post modernist deconstructs the sign
(knocks it over with his car), ending forever the tyranny of
the north-south traffic over the east-west traffic.
2. Similarly, a Marxist refuses to stop because he sees the stop
sign as an instrument of class conflict. He concludes that the
bourgeois use the north-south road and obstruct the progress
of the workers in the east-west road.
3. A serious and educated Catholic rolls through the intersection
because he believes he cannot understand the stop sign apart
from its interpretive community and tradition. Observing that
the interpretive community doesn't take it too seriously, he
doesn't feel obligated to take it too seriously either.
4. An average Catholic (or Orthodox or Coptic or Anglican or
Methodist or Presbyterian or whatever) doesn't bother to read
the sign but he'll stop the car if the car in front of him does.
5. A fundamentalist, taking the text very literally, stops at
the stop sign and waits for it to tell him to go.
6. A seminary educated evangelical preacher might look up "STOP"
in his lexicons of English and discover that it can mean: 1)
something which prevents motion, such as a plug for a drain,
or a block of wood that prevents a door from closing; 2)a location
where a train or bus lets off passengers. The main point of his
sermon the following Sunday on this text is: when you see a stop
sign, it is a place where traffic is naturally clogged, so it
is a good place to let off passengers from your car.
7. An orthodox Jew does one of two things: a) Take another route
to work that doesn't have a stop sign so that he doesn't run
the risk of disobeying the Law; b) Stop at the sign, say "Blessed
art thou, O Lord our God, king of the universe, who hast given
us thy commandment to stop," wait 3 seconds according to
his watch, and then proceed. Incidentally, the Talmud has the
following comments on this passage: Rabbi Meir says: He who does
not stop shall not live long. R. Hillel says: Cursed is he who
does not count to three before proceeding. R. Simon ben Yudah
says: Why three? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us
the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. R. ben Isaac says: Because
of the three patriarchs. R. Yehuda says: Why bless the Lord at
a stop sign? Because it says, "Be still and know that I
am God."
8. A scholar from the Jesus Seminar concludes that the passage
"STOP"
undoubtedly was never uttered by Jesus himself because being
the progressive Jew that he was, He would never have wanted to
stifle peoples progress. Therefore, STOP must be a textual insertion
belonging entirely to stage III of the gospel tradition, when
the church was first confronted by traffic in its parking lot.
9. A NT (New Testament) scholar notices that there is no stop
sign on Mark street but there is one on Matthew and Luke streets,
and concludes that the ones on Luke and Matthew streets are both
copied from a sign on a street no one has ever seen called "Q"
street. There is an excellent 300 page doctoral dissertation
on the origin of these stop signs, and the differences between
stop signs on Matthew and Luke street in the scholar's commentary
on the passage. There is an unfortunate omission in the dissertation,
however; it doesn't explain the meaning of the text!
10. An OT (Old Testament) scholar points out that there are a
number of
stylistic differences between the first and second half of the
passage "STOP." For example, "ST" contains
no enclosed areas and five line endings, whereas "OP"
contains two enclosed areas and only one line termination. He
concludes that the author for the second part is different from
the author on the first part and probably lived hundreds of years
later. Later scholars determine that the second half is itself
actually written by two separate authors because of similar stylistic
differences between the "O" and the "P.
11. Another prominent OT scholar notes in his commentary that
the stop sign would fit better into the context three streets
back.(Unfortunately, he neglected to explain why in his commentary.)Clearly
it was moved to its present location by a later redactor. He
thus exegetes the intersection as though the sign were not there.
12. Because of the difficulties in interpretation, another OT
scholar amends the text, changing the "T" to "H".
"SHOP" is much easier to understand in context than
"STOP" because of the multiplicity of stores in the
area. The textual corruption probably occurred because "SHOP"
is so similar to "STOP" on the sign several streets
back, that it is a natural mistake for a scribe to make. Thus
the sign should be interpreted to announce the existence of a
shopping area. If this is true, it could indicate that both meanings
are valid, thus making the thrust of the message "STOP (AND)
SHOP."
13. A "prophetic" preacher notices that the square
root of the sum of the numeric representations of the letters
S-T-O-P (sigma-tau-omicron-pi in the Greek alphabet), multiplied
by 40 (the number of testing), and divided by four (the number
of the world-north, south, east, and west) equals 666. Therefore,
he concludes that stop signs are the dreaded "mark of the
beast," a harbinger of divine judgment upon the world, and
must be avoided at all costs.
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