Understanding and Overstanding: Religious Reading in Historical Perspective

Abstract

I SUGGEST THAT, in universities, we often use the word ‘understanding’ when we mean ‘overstanding’. This is connected to relying on limited approaches to reading, ones that are forgetful of religious ways of reading. I offer a critical retrieval of religious ways of reading, practised in the past, and suggest how they might be included in the university today, thereby providing a richer form of educational experience for students.