Exegeting a stop sign

I could have put this in humor, but I figured more of the 'right' people would see it here...

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Hermeneutics in Everyday Life
by Tim Perry
Suppose you're traveling to work and you see a stop sign. What do you do?
That depends on how you exegete the stop sign.

1. A postmodernist deconstructs the sign (knocks it over with his car),
ending forever the tyranny of the north-south traffic over the east-west traffic.

2. Similarly, a Marxist sees a stop sign as an instrument of class conflict.
He concludes that the bourgeoisie use the north-south road and obstruct the
progress of the workers on the east-west road.

3. A serious and educated Catholic believes that he cannot understand the
stop sign apart from its interpretive community and their tradition. Observing
that the interpretive community doesn't take it too seriously, he doesn't feel
obligated to take it too seriously either.

4. An average Catholic (or Orthodox or Coptic or Anglican or Methodist or
Presbyterian or whatever) doesn't bother to read the sign but he'll stop if the
car in front of him does.

5. A fundamentalist, taking the text very literally, stops at the stop sign
and waits for it to tell him to go.

6. A preacher might look up "STOP" in his lexicons of English and discover
that it can mean: 1) something which prevents motion, such as a plug for a
drain, or a block of wood that prevents a door from closing; 2) a location where a
train or bus lets off passengers. The main point of his sermon the following
Sunday on this text is: when you see a stop sign, it is a place where traffic
is naturally clogged, so it is a good place to let off passengers from your
car.

7. An orthodox Jew does one of two things:
1) Take another route to work that doesn't have a stop sign so that he
doesn't run the risk of disobeying the Law.
2) Stop at the stop sign, say "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, king of the
universe, who hast given us thy commandment to stop," wait 3 seconds according
to his watch, and then proceed.
Incidentally, the Talmud has the following comments on this passage: R[abbi]
Meir says: He who does not stop shall not live long. R. Hillel says: Cursed is
he who does not count to three before proceeding. R. Simon ben Yudah says:
Why three? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us the Law, the Prophets,
and the Writings. R. ben Isaac says: Because of the three patriarchs. R. Yehuda
says: Why bless the Lord at a stop sign? Because it says: "Be still, and know
that I am God." R. Hezekiel says: When Jephthah returned from defeating the
Ammonites, the Holy One, blessed be He, knew that a donkey would run out of the
house and overtake his daughter; but Jephthah did not stop at the stop sign,
and the donkey did not have time to come out. For this reason he saw his
daughter first and lost her. Thus he was judged for his transgression at the stop
sign. R. Gamaliel says: R. Hillel, when he was a baby, never spoke a word,
though his parents tried to teach him by speaking and showing him the words on a
scroll. One day his father was driving through town and did not stop at the
sign. Young Hillel called out: "Stop, father!" In this way, he began reading and
speaking at the same time. Thus it is written: "Out of the mouth of babes." R.
ben Jacob says: Where did the stop sign come from? Out of the sky, for it is
written: "Forever, O Lord, your word is fixed in the heavens." R. ben Nathan
says: When were stop signs created? On the fourth day, for it is written: "let
them serve as signs." R. Yeshuah says: ... [continues for three more pages]

8. A Pharisee does the same thing as an orthodox Jew, except that he waits 10
seconds instead of 3. He also replaces his brake lights with 1000 watt
searchlights and connects his horn so that it is activated whenever he touches the
brake pedal.

9. A scholar from Jesus seminar concludes that the passage "STOP" undoubtedly
was never uttered by Jesus himself, but belongs entirely to stage III of the
gospel tradition, when the church was first confronted by traffic in its
parking lot.

10. A NT scholar notices that there is no stop sign on Mark street but there
is one on Matthew and Luke streets, and concludes that the ones on Luke and
Matthew streets are both copied from a sign on a completely hypothetical street
called "Q". There is an excellent 300 page discussion of speculations on the
origin of these stop signs and the differences between the stop signs on
Matthew and Luke street in the scholar's commentary on the passage. There is an
unfortunately omission in the commentary, however; the author apparently forgot to
explain what the text means.

11. An OT scholar points out that there are a number of stylistic differences
between the first and second half of the passage "STOP". For example, "ST"
contains no enclosed areas and 5 line endings, whereas "OP" contains two
enclosed areas and only one line termination. He concludes that the author for the
second part is different from the author for the first part and probably lived
hundreds of years later. Later scholars determine that the second half is
itself actually written by two separate authors because of similar stylistic
differences between the "O" and the "P".

12. Another prominent OT scholar notes in his commentary that the stop sign
would fit better into the context three streets back. (Unfortunately, he
neglected to explain why in his commentary.) Clearly it was moved to its present
location by a later redactor. He thus exegetes the intersection as though the
stop sign were not there.

13. Because of the difficulties in interpretation, another OT scholar emends
the text, changing "T" to "H". "SHOP" is much easier to understand in context
than "STOP" because of the multiplicity of stores in the area. The textual
corruption probably occurred because "SHOP" is so similar to "STOP" on the sign
several streets back that it is a natural mistake for a scribe to make. Thus
the sign should be interpreted to announce the existence of a shopping area.

14. A "prophetic" preacher notices that the square root of the sum of the
numeric representations of the letters S-T-O-P (sigma-tau-omicron-pi in the Greek
alphabet), multiplied by 40 (the number of testing), and divided by four (the
number of the world--north, south, east, and west), equals 666. Therefore, he
concludes that stop signs are the dreaded "mark of the beast," a harbinger of
divine judgment upon the world, and must be avoided at all costs.

[15. The chicken didn't see the stop sign, and crossed the road.]