definition—an anticipation of later theological conceptualizations.33 It may not be a long step, but it is a step towards a symbolic tertium. A modem counterpart of Paul's symbolic mediation is Julicher's view that each parable conveyed a simple abstract message. Post-modem consciousness, of course, found Julicher's symbolic interpretation arbitrary. His method appeared to reduce the creative force of the parables by expressing their 'true' meaning with a few catchwords. That was not the way to appreciate the fullness, both literary and symbolic, of the parables. Moreover, the simple symbolic message extracted from the parabolic vehicles curiously turned out to be the liberal-theological programme of Julicher's day. The right observa tion in the post-Julicher understanding of the parables was that the 'translation' of the text-world image into a symbolic-world message was problematic on two accounts. The translation was reductionist in relation to the original symbolic creation, and naive—that is to say, ideologically innocent—in relation to the interpreter's own symbolic creation.34 I fear, however, that not all exponents of the new approach to the parables drew the right conclusions from their justified criticisms. In the name of 'poetic' creativity, many critics in reality reduced the poetic creation to the artistic text-world image, either by ignoring the symbolic level or by assimilat ing it with the textual vehicle. In either case a new mode of ideological innocence resulted, not a genuine second naivete but a nostalgic illusion of returning to the first innocence. Ideological blindness is common to both first innocence and its pretension, but the latter kind is not blindness in the dark. It is blindness in the dazzle of a bright light. The seer, not able to look at the formidable brightness, looks elsewhere and finds a less threatening territ ory, the text world. In a wider context of biblical scholarship, the pretence of innocence sometimes lurks behind the slogan 'the Bible as literature'. Paradoxically enough, the same slogan may signal a quite different hermen eutical stance: that of the disillusioned reader who is neither dazzled nor frightened before the text's symbolic world but who simply finds it dull. 5. METAPHORICAL SPACE II: A HERMENEUTICAL ENCOUNTER If the genuine way to second naivete is only through recognizing the human poiesis as a double enterprise, a detour through the symbolic world of the text cannot be avoided. A journey in the text world is just halfway towards understanding the author's work, there is yet another space to be explored. As the poet's language performance is objectified in the text world of the literary product, so is the poet's symbolic universe objectified in the text's symbolic world. The symbolic world is filled with values, beliefs and concep tual models, but it also has a form and structure; this formal aspect of the symbolic world I term its hermeneutical space. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.60 on Thu, 21 Apr 2016 07:36:53 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms