NOTES for Luk 24:45
What does a person need in order to read the Bible? Interest? Yes, of course, first of all interest, otherwise there is nothing to talk about: there is no interest, and the person will not pick up the book. But the ability to read is also needed. What, in essence, is a text, any text: literary, artistic, musical?
Meanings embodied in signs. In words, if we are speaking of a literary work. In words that are never unambiguous, unless, of course, the issue is terms, but the Bible is not a theological or philosophical book, and it has no terms. Every literary work is a system of meanings embodied in words. And the reader must reproduce these meanings. Re-create them. Build anew the system created by the author.
Because meanings cannot be read off the way information is read from some medium on which it is recorded. They can only be restored, re-created after the author, by walking his path. Of course, not exactly as they were created or revealed to the author, for copying is impossible here. Any reading of a text becomes its interpretation, whether the reader wants this or not, whether he realizes it or remains unaware, imagining that he "reads what is written."
And so it is always, in every case, with any literary work. But what if there is not one author? What if there are two: a human being who created the text and God who inspired it? One cannot read the text, cannot re-create the meanings, without interest in the author, in the one through whom the meanings were revealed. And if the meanings were revealed not by a human being, if they were revealed to him by another Author and the human being only expressed and embodied them?
Then without interest in the Author with a capital letter, the main thing cannot be understood. To understand the Bible means to understand God. And of course the people through whom He spoke as well. Jesus taught His disciples this understanding. For God is easiest to understand in His own house, in His Kingdom. And the people through whom He spoke are easiest to understand through the Man in whom He was incarnate. Then revelation and life are joined, and the word of God becomes understandable to the end through the "Word made flesh."