Human language was never designed to convey the truth -- it can only describe how the truth appears from different angles. This puts the responsibility on the reader/listener to do the detective work and reconstruct the meaning, the truth behind words, using the words themselves as clues. This detective work is what we often fail to complete and that's why we often disagree -- we misinterpret the words of dead philosophers, most often by taking them too literally.

It's even worse when it comes to religious texts.