That's fine and all, coming from a deconstructionist, but some of us ordinary people believe that once upon a time, words had meanings.
Furthermore, in the past, there were books called dictionaries which sought to solidify the meaning of words, instead of aid in the progression (or digression) of their meanings, as seems to be popular today. It is reasonable to assume that the Bible translators in particular, and authors in general, used words that directly communicated their intent, in keeping with the established meanings of those words. In short (Short? Do I know what short means?
}, I think that lack of 100% certainty (where rounding up to 100% is not permitted) is not reason for discounting the probability of successfully interpreting a text.
I'm not sure if I even know what I just wrote--time for a snack break.
[edit] Oh, and I don't necessarily favor writing over other forms of communication; my original point was just that written text retains the meanings from its time of writing, allowing one to interpret it with reasonable certainty.
[ December 16, 2002, 14:38: Message edited by: Krsqk ]