How Jews and Christians Interpret Their Sacred Texts

A Study in Transvaluation

Isbell

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781630879426
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

How Jews and Christians Interpret Their Sacred Texts is a comparative textual study that demonstrates the connections between the Hebrew Scriptures, sacred to both Judaism and Christianity, and the Jewish Talmud and Christian New Testament, which respectively became the bases for all modern systems of the two faiths. Even as official interpretations changed from "plain sense" to more elaborate explications, commentators in both faith systems continued to hold to the position that their conclusions were not only based firmly upon the initial authoritative text, but were in fact the natural extension and continuation of it. To describe these classical and early post-classical appropriations, Isbell discusses the "transvaluation" of texts, or efforts to retain the core values of authoritative sacred texts that are bound to specific times and situations while seeking to extrapolate from these ancient documents meanings that are relevant to current faith and praxis. As Isbell shows, transvaluation presupposes both the freedom and the necessity of reinterpreting perceived timeless teachings in light of historical, theological, sociological, and political developments that occurred long after the composition of the texts themselves.

1

The Sacred Texts of Judaism and Rabbinic Instruction

As stated in the Introduction, this book is an examination of hermeneutical methods employed to interpret the Bible by the early rabbis, the authors of the New Testament, and early post-New Testament Christian scholars. Because their work involved texts they believed were sacred and authoritative, it is necessary at the outset to describe what those texts were and how they developed into the written forms that Jews and Christians came to venerate as canonical before we proceed to describe the processes by which they went about the business of interpretation.

The Bible

TORAH		PROPHETS		WRITINGS
Genesis		Joshua		Psalms
Exodus		Judges		Proverbs
Leviticus		Samuel		Job
Numbers		Kings		Song of Songs
Deuteronomy		Isaiah		Ruth
		Jeremiah		Lamentations
		Ezekiel		Ecclesiastes
		“The Twelve”		Esther
				Daniel
				Ezra-Nehemiah
				Chronicles

The Hebrew Bible is the basic holy book of Judaism. But the term “book” is misleading. As shown in the chart above, the Bible of Judaism includes three major divisions consisting of five, eight, and eleven smaller units, a total of twenty-four.1 The first of these divisions is known by various names. In Hebrew it may be called the Humash (ḥȗmaš) meaning “five” or “fifths,” or simply Torah, a broad term signifying “teaching” or “instruction.” Its best-known English designation is Pentateuch, a compound word from two Greek terms meaning “five scrolls.”

The second major division of the Bible is the Prophets (nǝvȋ’ȋm), which includes two subdivisions: Former Prophets2 and Latter Prophets.3 Because its subject matter deals with historical events, initially with the conquest and subsequent division of the land and then with the careers of the kings and prophets of Israel and Judah (spanning roughly six hundred years), the first of these subdivisions is often called Historical Books, especially by non-Jewish scholars. Yet the Former Prophets cannot be considered history by any objective reading of the text itself.4 These books present the prophetic interpretation of the religious significance or spiritual meaning of the period of Israelite history from the Conquest led by Joshua in the twelfth century BCE to the conquest of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 BCE. What is more, the perspective of the work is unabashedly Judahite, slanted in favor of a Jerusalem capital, a Davidic king, and a national center of worship at the Temple in Jerusalem. Because of this Judahite preference, northern kings that were merely politically significant received only terse notice from the prophetic editors except in instances where their evil actions were chronicled in detail to explain a current political crisis, and great attention was given to kings whose spiritual deficiency created political problems. The best example of this lack of interest in matters that were merely political or military is found in the way that the career of Omri is treated. Omri was a significant monarch internationally,5 who founded a ninth-century dynasty that still bore his name one hundred years after his death,6 built an impressive new capital city at Samaria, and launched a series of successful military campaigns that brought significant territorial gains to the northern kingdom of Israel. But he was dismissed by the prophetic editors of Kings in a mere handful of verses in 1 Kings (16:16–28). On the other hand, kings like David and Solomon, Hezekiah, and Josiah, all of whom were perceived as spiritually significant leaders and all of whom were Judahite, received lavish praise and prophetic approval from the same editorial guild.

The other subdivision of the Prophets is known in Hebrew as the Latter Prophets, often referred to by scholars as the writing prophets. In this literature, the careers of prophetic giants are chronicled, some of their messages are set down in writing, probably by generations of students who studied in their wake,7 and additional prophetic opinions about political events are recorded. In the past two hundred years, there has been a good deal of scholarly debate about the true authors of these books. Earlier ultra-conservative scholars routinely held that most if not all of the books were written by the prophet whose name they bear. However, the majority of modern scholars view each book as a composite work that has come to its present form from numerous individual hands by a process of growth and development, sometimes lasting for several decades or more.

The third major division of the Hebrew Bible receives the name the Writings (kǝtȗvȋm), a designation that could also be taken to mean “miscellaneous.”8 This division includes literature ranging in subject matter from interpreted history to apocalyptic musings, from practical aphorisms (proverbs) to philosophical speculation about the true meaning of life and death.

From ancient times, the author of the entire Pentateuch was believed to have been a single individual, the great leader of the Exodus from Egypt named Moses. And yet, as early as one thousand years ago, a close reading of the text itself led some Jewish scholars to doubt such a simplistic explanation. First, throughout the Pentateuch, Moses is described in the third person, an awkward perspective for an author who is writing firsthand, especially if one tries to imagine such an author describing his own death in the past tense (Deut 34). Second, the entire work is in Hebrew, a language Moses almost surely did not know.9 The narrative of his life10 describes him as having been officially adopted and given a pure Egyptian name by the princess who found him floating on the Nile River. He was then reared in the Egyptian palace, where he would have received his education in the language of Egypt rather than in what would only later develop as a dialect (i.e., Hebrew) of Canaan, a place he never visited!

Third, some statements appear to have been written down much later than Moses could have lived. Statements like, “the Canaanites were in the land at that time” (Gen 12:6) obviously had to have been written at some time after the Canaanites were no longer in the land, and such a time was long after the death of Moses.

Fourth, Moses is described as “the most humble man on the face of the earth” (Num 12:3), a self-appraisal that a truly humble person could hardly have written about himself.

Fifth, parallel accounts (doublets) of numerous events contain differences in language and style, in important details, and even names by which God is known and addressed. Thus there are two versions of creation, the Flood, the conquest of the city of Shechem, the name by which Abraham addressed God, the call of Moses to lead the Exodus, and many other events. Furthermore, differing names of God, technical terminology, and other details of language and style fall consistently into a particular group of these doublets.

Sixth, even more intriguing is the fact that various strata of the Pentateuch give evidence of different theological perspectives. In one creation story, God is like a kindly big brother who strolls around in the Garden of Eden chatting with Adam and Eve.11 In the other, God is more formal and distant, with a clear chasm existing between the humans and the divine. These th...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Sacred Texts of Judaism and Rabbinic Instruction
• Chapter 2: The Sacred Texts of Christianity: Early Authors
• Chapter 3: Early Jewish Principles of Interpretation
• Chapter 4: Hermeneutics of the New Testament, the Early Church, and Beyond
• Chapter 5: Jewish Transvaluation
• Chapter 6: New Testament and Early Christian Transvaluation
• Conclusion
• Bibliography