This claim, besides being false, is internally inconsistent. For if nothing at all can be understood from the wording, it is impermissible to say that it has an interpretation that contradicts an “apparent sense,” for it may in fact carry a sound meaning, and that sound meaning would not oppose any apparent sense known to us—precisely because, on their own view, the text has no apparent sense to begin with. In that case, its indication of such a meaning would not constitute a departure from the apparent sense and therefore would not count as interpretation.

Likewise, one may not deny that the wording could point to meanings unknown to us, for the very meanings it does convey might simply be ones we have yet to learn. Moreover, if we cannot grasp the wording itself and the meaning actually intended by it, we are even less likely to know the meanings that the wording does not indicate; a text is more closely linked to what it is meant to convey than to what it is not meant to convey. Hence, if the wording gives no indication of any meaning and yields no understanding whatsoever, it certainly does not intimate the intended meaning—how much less, then, could it intimate a meaning that was never intended in the first place.