[148] but have made something "third" out of him, [by] their own organs of reception. The same is true, of course, of the biblical literature. And since l have to speak anyhow about it more than in my former lectures, in these [remarks] on history let me say immediately the following: THERE IS NO ONE WHO HAS NOT MADE SOMETHING "THIRD" OUT OF THE BIBLICAL TEXTS AND HIS PARTICIPATION OF UNDERSTANDING IN THEM. Therefore the history of commentaries is a continuous history going on through all centuries, and the present- day commentaries contain the same texts---almost the same, with very few changes---and in most cases where EXACTLY the same texts are used, the commentaries today say something quite different than the commentaries by Origen^a or Augustine^b or earlier commentaries. Now this means that the commentary to a text is a creation of a special type of truth: it is the truth of understanding^c. But don’t misunderstand ME, now! I do NOT mean to say that the commentator, the interpreter of a text, simply makes something new out of it, says his OWN thought, in terms of a commentary. Then he is not a commentator---then he is a systematic theologian [some laughter]. And I know some commentators who were systematic theologians and who used---for instance Karl Barth^d on Paul's Letter to the Romans, [written] IN ORDER TO EXPRESS Barth’s THEOLOGY, using the Pauline text but not even INTENDING to give a real commentary, in terms of understanding of Paul. Now this is an extreme case, and we have other people who did the same thing, and sometimes a very fruitful case---I still believe that this commentary on Romans is Karl Barth's by far the best book. But you shouldn’t take it if you want to understand Paul. Now the same was done, for instance, by another very good book, which l ALSO would call perhaps his best book, namely Heidegger's^e commentary on Kant^f, which is a really great book, in which he interprets Kant existentially, or existentialistically, and this interpretation is a GREAT WORK of philosophy, a tremendous thought. But if you want to know what Kant HAS SAID, please don't use it and quote it in your papers about Kant. But if you want to RELATE