Jewish Exegesis

The present article seeks to describe, analyze, and evaluate the modern scholarly attempts to grapple with the moral issues about good and evil in the Hebrew Esther story. The first part of the article examines the anti-Semitic sentiments looming behind the pre-World War II European, especially the Protestant, commentators’ ethics assessments of the book of Esther and its Jewish characters, before pointing out a blind spot in these assessments. The second part of the article offers a systematic analysis of the gradual change of attitude induced mainly by the Jewish scholars in the aftermath of the Second World War. Lastly, the paper turns the spotlight on the Esther studies conducted by recent feminist and other marginalized biblical scholars. Attempts are made to demonstrate how their works, coming from different social contexts, enrich the academic discussions about good and evil in the book of Esther.

The Roman period of the East-Mediterranean world witnessed a renewed interest in theodicy. This new interest was pessimistic in its worldview; it represented the violent emotional struggle of Late Antique man against the cosmological injustice, the sudden feeling of which inundated mass conscience in the first centuries CE.  The Hellenistic mindset, with its promise of a philosophical ratio behind the world order, collapsed, and the new religious elite now denounced it, moving towards an irrational paradigm of existential helplessness in the face of unpredictable cosmic forces. Some absolute Good still could be sought of too inexplicable and too large a world, but it was mostly disrobed of logic, and thought to be unattainable – too distanced or too capricious. Spread of the use of magical incantations (though Hellenistic in origin) and mystical Gnosis, draped in almost nonsense-like myths, or Christian credo quia absurdum est – all represent different forms of a general process of so-called derationalization of the Godhead. New religious movements promulgated, to be sure, new hopes – but these hopes were irrational, and grounded in the experience of existential vulnerability. Rabbinic Judaism figured among the main protagonists in the East-Mediterranean marketplace of hope. Not only was it engaged in polemics between different religious communities of the Eastern cities (or rhetorically imitated polemical situations in order to encourage adepts), but was also attacked (though sometimes just nominally, in line with Paul) by rival religious movements. Gnostic dualism, as evidenced in patris-tic writings, was anti-Judaic in its market position. As a characteristic example of Late

Orthographic variation within the manuscripts of the Greek NT is seldom a cause célèbre beyond the ranks of diehard textual critics. Even among these most will concede that orthographic irregularities amount to little more than evidence of scribal incompetency or inconsistency in their spelling practices. To find the same word both spelled correctly and misspelled with a single manuscript b the same scribe is not uncommon. It approaches the  norm. The critical editions of our Greek NTs have therefore opted, on good grounds, to exclude textual variants displaying non-standardized spelling. To include them would make it impossible for anyone to use the critical apparatuses in a meaningful way. The deluge of senseless errors would drown out variants of demonstrable textual significance.

Through a literary reading and analysis of the roles of the main characters in the extant text I come to the conclusion that Anat was punished for murdering Aqhat, though it is not expressed explicitly. Since she is a goddess she cannot be subject to retribution. But from a literary point of view, the narrator responds to the event of the murder, and expresses his criticism and thoughts indirectly. He uses poetic means to connect the event of the murder to other details and events related by him, thus pointing at the possibility that Anat has been subject to retribution on an indirect or symbolic level. Since Daniel’s name may mean ‘El has done justice’ we come to ask: who is responsible for doing justice in this story?
This essay presents just a small part of the elaborate and complex literary creativity of the Ugaritic poet, which is performed in a similar way to comparable phenomena in biblical narrative. Thus, this paper also indirectly supports the assumption that the background of the poetics of biblical narrative is reflected in the Ugaritic epics, and that the two corpora are representative of the same literary tradition in their poetics as in other areas.

This article draws the attention of historians of scriptural exegesis to the relevance of uṣūl al-fiqh — both as a literary genre and as a discipline of the religious sciences — to an understanding of the semiotic foundations and the hermeneutic discourse of scriptural commentaries (uṣūl al-tafsīr) in mediaeval Judaism and Islam. What are the means through which meaning is produced, what are the conditions to be met for the possibility of their understanding? We find the most systematic and exhaustive discussions on these and related questions not in the commentaries themselves but in compositions on uṣūl al-fiqh.

The present article explores Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann’s (1843–1921) exegetical
writings – especially his approach to biblical criticism – in the hitherto unexplored context of German-Jewish Orthodoxy’s struggle over the dogmatic principles of Torah. It highlights the parallels and the differences between Hoffmann and other important exegetical protagonists of German Judaism, especially German-Jewish Orthodoxy, as well as the outstanding significance of his enterprise for the latter. Though Hoffmann’s exegetical conclusions conform to a large extent with traditional Jewish exegesis, his methodological principles, his language and the problems he deals with are closely related to contemporary Wissenschaft. So far as the crisis of German-Jewish Orthodoxy at the beginning of the twentieth century is concerned, the question of how much Hoffmann’s exegesis succeeded in bridging the dichotomy between the dogmatic principles of Torah and Wissenschaft remains open.

The aim of this paper is to present and comment a work of the American rabbi and philosopher Yitzchoq Hutner (Warsaw, 1906 – Jerusalem, 1980), on the transmission and reception of the revelation at Sinai, together with a reflection on contemporary Jewish and biblical hermeneutics in general . According to Hutner, the Shofar, musical instrument made from a ram’s horn (and which is played and heard on the occasion of the Jewish new Year), not only is the same Shofar that resonates since the revelation at Sinai (Exodus 19:19), and that has its roots in the horn of the ram that was sacrificed in place of Isaac (Genesis 22:13); it is the same instrument that heralds the Messianic times (Isaiah 27:13) . The replacement of the first stone tablets received at Sinai do not erase the desire to hear the great messianic Shofar at the end of the times, even if now only the maculate tablets of the Torah (David Weiss Halivni) may be read.

The Song of Songs, one of the most perplexing pieces of Biblical literature, posed great difficulties to its Christian and Jewish interpreters on account of its seemingly erotic imagery and oft oblique plot. Despite – or rather due to – the numerous problems contained in its text, Christian  and Jewish exegetes took tremendous efforts to expound the Song of Songs.
A common element in their otherwise different approaches is a shared allegorical understanding of the text in which the male character is identified with Christ or God, while the female character is believed to be the congregation of the faithful (i.e. the Christians or the Jews.)
Given the context of early Jewish-Christian debates concerning the “true meaning” of the shared scriptures, the unclear text of the Song of Songs was an ideal object for religious polemics. In my article, I will outline how representatives of Jewish and Christian exegetical traditions communicated, interacted, and sometimes even quarreled about the meaning of the Song of Songs via their commentaries.

This volume consists of an edition, translated into English and with an extensive introduction, of the Arabic translation and commentary on the book of Esther by one of the preeminent litterateurs of the Karaite “Golden Age” (10th–11th centuries), Yefet ben ‘Eli ha-Levi. Yefet’s text represents the first completely extant, devoted commentary on Esther and, consequently, provides fascinating insight into the history and development of exegetical thought on this book, both among the Karaites as well as the Rabbanites. Various facets of Yefet’s exegesis which we explore in our introduction … read moreinclude his rationalistic method, compilatory tendency, relationship to the doctrines of the Islamic Mu‘tazila, and his influence both by and upon other Jewish exegetes (Karaite and Rabbanite). We also assess Yefet’s Arabic translation technique and include a survey of all extant Karaite commentaries on Esther, both in Arabic as well as Hebrew.

This volume consists of a critical edition, English translation, and extensive introductory discussion of the Judaeo-Arabic commentaries on Ruth and Esther from the exegetical digest («Kitāb al-bayān») of Tanḥum ben Joseph ha-Yerushalmi (d. 1291 CE), the last known exegete of the “rationalistic” school who wrote in Judaeo-Arabic. Although past scholarship has tended to regard Tanḥum’s exegetical contribution as little more than that of a compiler-abridger, our own assessment, as explored in the introduction, is that his role was in fact much more significant. Not only does he display the critical acumen and intellectual independence of a true exegete in his own right, but he also appears to have assimilated—and hence (like Abraham ibn Ezra) mediated into the continuum of Rabbanite exegesis—certain elements of Karaite exegesis, most notably, as developed by the tenth-century Karaite littérateur Yefet ben ‘Eli, the role of the «mudawwin» in the composition and transmission of the biblical text.

Evidence is presented that Jewish quadruplex exegesis (the "pardes" method) results directly from interfaith dialogue in 13th-century Spain, for which conclusion the odd reception history of remez is presented as a smoking gun.  The improbable but widespread translation of "remez" as "allegory" traces this odd reception history.  If Jewish pardes exegesis was received from an amalgam of Christian and Islamic sources, then interfaith dialogue can add to and enrich religious traditions and experiences that are authentically, though not originally, Jewish.

G. Stemberger's review, Henoch 26:3 (2004) 374-377:
"The author offers in this book- a "reference work"- a systematic analysis of all hermeneutic procedures, not only the three groups of middot frequently studied, in one complete haggadic midrash and tries to show the unitarian hermeneutic approach of this midrash and the richness of its exegetical methods...
This book contains the first complete analysis of the exegetical methods of a classical midrash of the Amoraic period".

Yehezkel Kaufmann (1889-1963) was the first Israeli to introduce a historical-critical approach to the Bible into the Jewish tradition and the first scholar to hold a chair for the study of the Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Some see him as «the greatest and most influential Jewish biblical scholar of modern times» (B. Sommer). His studies on the history of the Jewish Diaspora and on the origins of the Jewish religion are masterpieces in the field with great impact on Israel’s politics at Kaufmann’s time and on Jewish and Biblical studies today.
He wrote his PhD dissertation in Bern on the principle of sufficient reason. His supervisor was Prof. Richard Herbertz (1878-1959), also a mentor for Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), who completed his PhD in Bern more or less at the same time.
During these years, Kaufmann worked together with Rav Tsair Chaim Tschernowitz (1871-1945) in Lausanne on a short edition (Kizzur) of the Talmud, he wrote an article on the question of which language Jews should speak in a Jewish state for Martin Buber’s journal Der Jude, and began working  on his future major works Gola weNekhar (Exile and Alienation) and Toledot haEmunah haIsraelit: Mimey qedem ad sof bayit sheni (The History of Israel’s Religion: From its Origins until the End of the Second Temple).

In his studies of the Pentateuch, David Zvi Hoffmann challenges the hermetical Jewish canon and thus opens it up to new exegetical explanations, hitherto unknown within the German Neo-Orthodoxy. In his commentary of the Bible, he relies upon views of contemporaneous leading Protestant scholars, utilizing their terminology and methods. Thus, one could argue that Hoffmann acknowledges the principles of lower criticism of the Bible as valid. In the aftermath of the Shoah, Hoffmann’s exegetical approach discontinued and a further development of his approach in the Post-war German-Jewish context became impossible. The present paper is focused on the broad impact of Hoffmann’s innovative exegetical approach to the Torah and his attempt to connect the historical-critical approach and the religious approach to the Torah.

The Rabbinic techniques of interpreting Scriptures are defined in the rabbinic lists of hermeneutical norms – the Seven Middot of Hillel, the Thirteen of Ishmael and the Thirty-Two of Yose ha-Gelili. Each middah in these lists is named by a
standard formula and illustrated by typical examples, in which it is applied according to the stereotype. They offer a uniform view of the middot and present the rabbinic interpretation as a fixed system.
Even when it is known that these lists are only a compilation of some of the exegetical techniques used in that period, this uniform overview has been assumed in the studies devoted to them. Except for some examples2, most of these studies
have described the middot by merely giving some illustrative examples chosen from different midrashim that contain the characteristic literary formulations. Such approaches failed to appreciate their variations and their different forms.
Furthermore, the studies focusing on the middot assumed the division of the collections in ones utilized for the halakhic exposition (7 of Hillel and 13 of Ishmael) and those for haggadic interpretation (32 of Eliezer) and the different classifications of rabbinic texts (Tannaitic versus Amoraic, haggadic versus halakhic and exegetical versus homiletic Midrash). As a consequence, most of the studies have focused on the tannaitic halakhic midrashim and have usually excluded the 32 middot of Eliezer3. Therefore, these conclusions are partial and, sometimes,
wrong or insufficient.
I realized all of these problems as I started studying Genesis Rabbah, with the main aim of carrying out a systematic study of all the hermeneutical techniques involved and their function as far as the exegesis is concerned. The first step of my research consisted in investigating the text in order to identify the techniques, apparently an easy task because I just needed to follow the definitions already given to them. But soon, I noticed that their definition and their application were two different things. In the midrash in question, most of the techniques are applied with no formula to indicate which rule is being applied, and even in the cases where a technique is applied in an explicit way, usually rather than mentioning its name, that is to say the traditional formula, an alternative formula or a technical
term is mentioned. Not only was I confronted with formal differences, but with differences in application methods as well. In some cases the technique defined by an alternative formula presents an application method which differs from the one
used when the same technique is defined by the traditional formula (for example, in remez).
Judging from the results of the Genesis Rabbah’s analysis, I would like to suggest a systematic study of each midrash as the basis for understanding how the middot and other hermeneutical techniques behave in their practical application.
The identification and exam of them will enable us, firstly, to establish their specific use in each midrash, and secondly, once all the midrashim are analyzed, to draw more complete conclusions about each technique and middah.
This article offers the first step of such a systematic analysis of the Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael: the identification of the exegetical techniques, their formulas and procedures.
Due to the huge number of techniques used on it, I concentrate here only on those, which present meaningful variations with respect to the general procedure.

The paper analyses some trends of political presentation of Moses as evident in Rabbinic texts. Comparison to earlier, Hellenistic, trends shows radical changes in both style, scope and tactical aims of judgment on the figure of the acknowledged and highly estimated national leader. Those changes are proved traceable to actual transformation of political culture and political consciousness that occured in Jewish (and, more generally, Roman provincial post-Hellenistic) milieus in the first centuries C. E.

Reviewed by Stephen J. Schweitzer in Old Testament Abstracts, vol. 24, nº3 (2001):
"The author of this article analyses the use of the expression ’en... ’el.la’ in Genesis Rabbah as a technical term. Three distinct ranges of meaning for the phrase are listed by examples. The first two uses have a compartive sense, while the third is restrictive. M. Suggests that this phrase occurs as a marker to indicate possible meaning in the biblical text"

In this article we suggest that the terminus ad quem of the Palestinian Yeshiva’s final relocation (from either Tiberius or Ramla) to Jerusalem be narrowed down from ca. 960 CE to 934/35–942, based on deduction from the evidence afforded us by a heretofore unpublished excerpt from Saadia Gaon’s commentary on the book of Esther. The excerpt in question offers (so we argue) insight into contemporary discourse and realia regarding Jerusalem and underscores the potential importance of medieval exegetical sources as a venue from which primary historical data may be gleaned.

"Maimonides and his Religious Rationalism in an Aristotelian Key: An Attempt at Harmonization"

Abstract: Moses Maimonides’ philosophy is Aristotelian both in its essence and in its intention to achieve the greatest truth for human beings who are both religious and learned. This intellectual framework serves as the basis for understanding the truths of the Sacred Scriptures of Judaism, which are animated by the spirit of prophecy and by a profound religiosity that is steeped in mysticism, and that allows us to complete the picture of reality that we can reach as human beings. In this paper, the authors seek to shed light into the theoretical and ideological foundations of his argument, as well as his use of rhetorical, allegorical, and exegetical resources in general, to harmonize his religious discourse, in which he participated as a rabbi, combined with his philosophical frame of mind in an Arabic Aristotelian vein.

Keywords: Aristotelianism, Rhetoric of Concealment, Moderate Rationalism, Biblical Exegesis, Philosophy of Religion.

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Resumen La naturaleza de la filosofía de Moisés ben Maimón es aristotélica tanto de fondo como en su intención de alcanzar la mayor verdad para el hombre religioso e iniciado que se aplica a ello. Este marco intelectual sirve de base para entender las verdades que guardan las Sagradas Escrituras del judaísmo, mismas que están animadas por el espíritu de profecía y por una profunda religiosidad que se hunde en el misticismo, y que permite completar el cuadro de la realidad que podemos alcanzar como hombres. En este trabajo se buscan aclarar los fundamentos teóricos e ideológicos que guardan el complejo intento de su argumentación, así como el empleo de recursos retóricos, alegóricos y exegéticos en general, para armonizar su discurso religioso del que como rabino forma parte, combinado con su talante filosófico de cuño aristotélico árabe.

Palabras clave: Aristotelismo, retórica del ocultamiento, racionalismo moderado, exégesis bíblica, filosofía de la religión.

In this article the author identifies and examines all the examples of Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael in which the hermeneutical technique en ketîb kan el-la is applied.
This analysis will enable us to establish its specific use in the midrash. All the examples can be splited in two groups according to the element commented: 1) textual problem or detail and, 2) words or expresions without any problems in their context. The function of this technique is also different in each group: it
has a textual function in the first group and an exegetical one in the second.

David Zvi Hoffmanns exegetische Ausführungen zum Pentateuch entstanden während seiner 47 jährigen Lehr- und Rektorentätigkeit am Berliner Rabbinerseminar und umfassen unter anderem die Übersetzung und Kommentierung von Levitikus (zwei Bde., Berlin 1905–1906) und Deuteronomium (bis Dtn. 31, zwei Bde., Berlin 1913 und 1922). Eine Besonderheit dieser eng mit dem Kommentar verwobenen Übersetzung der Bücher Leviticus und Deuteronomium besteht in der Auseinandersetzung Hoffmanns mit der zeitgenössischen Bibelkritik und den Argumenten der führenden (zumeist protestantischen) Exegeten seiner Zeit. Hoffmanns Eintreten für die Integrität des hebräischen Bibeltextes in Bezug auf die von der Bibelwissenschaft aufgeworfenen kritischen Fragen fordert einen Wissenschaftsdiskurs, der sein Übersetzungs- und Kommentarwerk sprachlich, stilistisch und inhaltlich prägt. Die Komposition von Hoffmanns Werk, der Übertragung des in der Regel mehrere Bibelverse umfassenden Sinnzusammenhangs mit nachfolgendem Kommentar, stellt sich, in Anlehnung an mittelalterliche Exegeten, in die Tradition von Moses Mendelssohn und Samson Raphael Hirsch, verzichtet jedoch auf die Wiedergabe des hebräischen Originaltexts. Hoffmanns Übersetzung grenzt sich somit nicht nur von Hirschs Bibelkommentar ab, sondern bricht auch mit anderen Entwürfen deutsch jüdischer Bibelübersetzungen.

This article is a response to the article by Jon Levenson in volume 1 of Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, which asked the question, "Can Catholicism Validate Jewish Biblical Interpretation?" The author, a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission during its work on the study, The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible, engages some of Levenson's reservations about that work. Among the topics discussed are the authority of the study, the perils of religious relativism, and Paul's understanding of the Law in reference to Christ.

The study of the examples of gezerah shawah's and binyan ’ab's rules in the midrash Bereshit Rabbah, offers a new approach to the comparative method. This method needs not only a similar word to connect verses but also a common context. The
requirement of the context, not studied until now, has a restrictive function in the rule of gezerah shawah. Indeed, only the verse with the appropiate context can be adduced, the other verses where the similar word appears can not be adduced.