To effectively contextualize meaning from Yahweh through the authors of Scripture, the biblical reader eventually comes to recognize that God inspires all Scripture (2 Tim 3:16). Where along with an indwelling Spirit, a reader gets at intended meaning that takes into account a biblical context. Specifically to appropriate original meaning in a powerful, relevant, and truthful way.
Across time, worldviews, and cultures, a reader takes a position from authorial intent to recognize scriptural specifics and principles. To appropriate and contextualize meaning for his or her circumstances over a lifetime.
An absent or disconnected author from textual communication with multiple potential language conflicts can allow for numerous possibilities in meaning from nonsense to that which goes well beyond linguistic intent. Furthermore, communicative intentionality can become lost along a spectrum between what is transmissive or expressive. Such as a range of biblical Epistles, and Poetry to a narrative storyline somewhere in the middle.
While poetry and some forms of narrative communication are relatively safer to accurately interpret and get at relevant meaning without authorial intent and control, an author’s objective and transmissive intent are not. Transmissive meaning that is instructional or objective at its surface is independent of an author, as illustrated on Brown’s communication spectrum of intent.
While there are often presuppositions between an author and reader that affect textual meaning. With those, there are risks of misinterpretation from a reader to suit intended or unintended personal interest. A misreading can, in turn, result in unfavorable or harmful outcomes. Whereas, eventually, readers of text become the authors and assert all-powerful ownership of meaning. “The reader becomes the god of the text whether through assimilation or mastery.”
