On continual exegesis
[Early Hillel] rabbis liked to point out that King Solomon used three thousand parables to illustrate every single verse of the Torah, and could give a thousand and five interpretations of each parable — which meant that there were three million, fifteen thousand possible expositions of each unit of scripture!
Indeed, a text that could not be radically reinterpreted to meet the needs of the day was dead; the written words of scripture had to be revitalized by constant exegesis. Only then could they reveal the divine presence latent within God’s Torah.
– Karen Armstrong: The Bible: A Biography, p. 82
One serious implication of the “democratization” of the post-Lutheran Protestant movement is a tendency toward populist exegesis of scripture. This has given rise to an unprecedented degree of overt literalism in interpretation; naturally so, since the literal, surface-level reading is the most obvious level of meaning, and the easiest to grasp. But when the Bible, or any holy text, is approached not as a mystery to be contemplated and studied over a lifetime, but rather as a quick reference guide to life’s ills with easy, one-size-fits-all answers ready for any situation, time, or place, we can avoid uncomfortable reflection about ourselves and the fact that our first impulse in a situation isn’t always the right one. The Bible: Use it to confirm what you already know. Anything beyond that is too much work.