“The primary and literal meaning of the Bible, then, is its centripetal or poetic meaning.”

Source: "Quotes", The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982), Chapter Three, p. 61

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Northrop Frye 137
Canadian literary critic and literary theorist 1912–1991

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Variant translation: The Text can be approached, experienced, in reaction to the sign. The work closes on a signified. There are two modes of signification which can be attributed to this signified: either it is claimed to be evident and the work is then the object of a literal science, of philology, or else it is considered to be secret, ultimate, something to be sought out, and the work then falls under the scope of a hermeneutics, of an interpretation
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