Exegesis

About: Exegesis is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 3017 publications have been published within this topic receiving 25212 citations. The topic is also known as: Bible interpretation.

A commentary on Pseudo-Philo's Liber antiquitatum biblicarum, with Latin text and English translation

Abstract: One of the earliest and most important works of biblical interpretation is a Latin text that is commonly known as the Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum. It was written in the first second century C.E. and is thus a great source of illumination for the period and milieu out of which arose various Jewish sects and Christianity. This book offers the Latin text of LAB, a dramatically new translation, a commentary that deals extensively with LAB's place in ancient biblical exegesis, and an introduction that treats the major problems associated with LAB (e.g. date, original language, manuscript tradition, exegetical techniques). The author seeks to illuminate LAB in new ways by reconstructing the original Hebrew when that is useful, and by bringing new and pertinent evidence from the Bible, from Rabbinic literature, and from early Christian literature.

Scripture as Logos: Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Midrash

Abstract: Scripture as Logos: Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Midrash, by Azzan Yadin. Divinations. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Pp. xiii + 231. $55.00 (hardcover). ISBN: 0812237919. The central thesis of Scripture as Logos is that the Tannai m (second-third centuries C.E. rabbis) who composed the Ishmaelian midrashic collections (basically the Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishtnael and Sifre Numbers) instituted a relatively restrained approach to the interpretation of Scripture. The notion of a fully polysemous Torah was not shared bv these rabbis. Their motto might be summarized as "Be silent until the text speaks," a motto that contrasts with that which they ascribe to their opponents, who say to the text, "Be silent until I expound." The reader of Scripture is to engage in moderately passive hermeneutics; the meaning of Scripture is not entirely open, as some literary theorists might propose, but rather semi-closed. The reader must accept interpretive cues from Scripture itself and not impart them from without. Scripture speaks to its interpreter and acts as its interpreter's teacher in a system where ultimately authority and control belong to the text itself. The classification of the midrashic schools into those of R. Ishmael and those of R. Aqiva upon which Yadin's work rests is worthy of note. Over one hundred years ago, David Zvi Huffman demonstrated that the halakic/tannaitic midrashim can be separated into these two schools. This classification was reinforced by the research of Jacob Nahum Epstein and Menahem Kahana, among others. Recently the classification was challenged by Gary Porton and Jay Harris. Yadin's book is a welcome response to their challenge. While we can no longer be certain that these midrashic collections reflect the opinions of their eponymous fathers, we can be certain of the basic differences between them. Overwhelming textual evidence for such a classification has been documented, and neither Porton nor Harris directly addresses this evidence. Yadin refutes Harris's implication that nineteenth-century' polemical scholars/rabbis constructed the idea of the Ishmaelian school and its "simpler," less fanciful approach to biblical interpretation. Yadin convincingly demonstrates that such an approach did exist and is not a scholarly fantasy. Yadin begins by analyzing the different uses of two terms which frequently appear in Ishmaelian midrashim: Torah and ha-katuv ("the verse"). As a term, Torah stands for the voice of revelation and is usually used to introduce Scripture itself. It is a voice of authority, but it speaks in the past and is not active. In contrast, ha-katuv is the midrashic voice, a teacher of Scripture, and it steins from Scripture itself. The personification of ha-katuv as Scripture teaching the hermeneutics of Scripture serves as a basis for the remainder of the book. In ch. 2, Yadin examines the restraint demanded of the Scriptural reader in Ishmaelian midrashim. He elucidates a fascinating exchange between R. Eliezer and R. Ishmael, in which the latter rebukes the former for replacing the proper submission to the verse with aggressive hyper-interpretation. While R. Ishmael listens to the verse and then interprets, R. Eliezer tells the verse to "be silent" until he is done interpreting. As part of their hermeneutical strategy, Ishmaelian midrashim claim that certain words in Scripture are "marked" and therefore "available" for interpretation. The reader is to search for and locate such marks (superfluity, anomalous spellings, and other such phenomena) and then and only then interpret them. Even this search for "markers" is restrained. Not all verses are "marked" and some "markers" merely lead toward understanding the simple, noninterpreted meaning of the verse. Without evidence of "marking," the Scriptural interpreter has no right to engage in creative exegesis. In contrast, the Sifra, the pinnacle of Aqivan midrashic creation, perceives all words as potentially "marked" and hence makes the category of "marked" meaningless since it has no contrast. …

Patristic Counter-Evidence to the Claim that ‘The Gospels Were Written for All Christians’

Abstract: Ματθαιος μeν eγραψeν Eβραιοις θαυματα Χριστου,Μαρκος δ Ιταλιη,Λουκας Αχαιαδι,Πασι δ Ιωαννης,κηρυξ μeγας, ουρανοϕοιτης.(Gregory of Nazianzus, Carmina dogmatica 1.12.6–9)Richard Bauckham has called on scholars to abandon the reading strategy of redaction criticism that had risen to prominence especially in the 1960s, and return to the way the gospels had always been understood before that – as having been written ‘for all Christians’. The present essay resituates this debate as actually yet another instance of a very old and enduring hermeneutical problem in the exegesis of Christian literature: the relationship between the particularity and universality of the gospels. Study of patristic gospel exegesis reveals no author who says the gospels were written ‘for all Christians’, and, even more importantly, shows that early Christian readers – through evangelist biographies, localizing narratives, audience request traditions, and heresiological accounts of the composition of individual gospels, as well as in their theological reflections on the fourfold gospel – engaged in a sustained and deliberate dialectic between the local and universal audiences of the gospels which defies any simple dichotomy between ‘specific’ and ‘indefinite’ readers.

Septuagintal Exegesis and the Superscriptions of the Greek Psalter

Abstract: This chapter argues that though genuine exegesis and exposition are found in the Septuagint, including in the Greek Psalter, it needs to be identified on the basis of its textual-linguistic make-up. If its textual-linguistic make-up argues for a translation characterized more by formal correspondence than by dynamic equivalency, one's approach to hermeneutics in the Septuagint should be governed by these findings. That means at a minimum that exegesis needs to be demonstrated. From that perceptive the author suggests that one work from the least intelligible phenomena to the more intelligible; that one proceed from the word level to higher levels of constituent structure; that one pay more attention to the translator's deviations from his Hebrew-Greek defaults than to his defaults and standard equations; and that one assign greater context to segments of the Greek text than to the segments of the Hebrew text only as a last resort. Keywords: Greek Psalter; Greek text; Hebrew text; hermeneutics; Septuagint