You are making the assumption here: You are assuming you know what the source documents are or that there are even documents in the first place.
You're right, Pr. Kruse. I am assuming a coherent historical community that possesses something objective (a text, a practice, a worldview) to "interpret." Perhaps I am assuming 'way too much.
Written sources come with an interpretation of the authors/compilers/editors that we can only partially imagine. I recently read, "Recent Form Criticism Revisited in an Age of Reader Response," by Roy F. Melugin, in
The Changing Face of Form Criticism for the Twenty-First Century, ed by Marvin A. Sweeney & Ehud Ben Zvi. Melugin states: "While 'reader-response' critics do not all agree as to the nature and extent of the reader's role in the making of meaning, they do concur that what readers bring to the activity of interpretation affects to no small degree how a text will be understood." He adds a footnote to this statement: "If this s so, we can no longer uncritically assume that meaning resides solely, or perhaps even primarily, in author or text." (pp. 59-60).
I believe that this is just as true for a community seeking to interpret a text. What they bring to the task determines to a great deal what the interpretation will be. To use one of his examples, a form-critic will ask different questions than a non-form-critic will ask of a text.
I wasn't targeting the big picture of liberal Christianity (although I applaud those who do). I'd just like to figure out what people mean when they talk about "interpretation."
Interpretation is seeking to explain the meaning of something. It is seeking to answer the question, "What does this mean?" One process is to see what the scholars throughout the centuries have said about a text. The Talmud presents this kind of "interpretation". Another process is to let individuals respond to a text as to what it means to them. I'm sure that translation committees often debate the questions: "What does this mean?" and "How do we express that in English?" It becomes a corporate event to determine the meaning.
Mark Allen Powell in, I believe,
Chasing the Eastern Star, discovered that asking lay people about a text, "What does this mean?" or "What does this mean to you?" produced the same response. However, among clergy, they saw them as two separate questions. I can and have argued about possible meanings of a text. There is likely to be one of those possible meanings that affects my mind and life more than the others.
That leads to another aspect of meaning -- how does the meaning affect or change ones life? I'm willing to argue that the the proper meaning of God's Word is to effect changes in one's life. It is to produce metanoia -- a change in thinking and living. It leads to the question: "What difference(s) does it make in your life to believe that this is true?"
