Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ken Smith" <kens AT 180solutions.com>]

Title: Message

And I would also add, using either the NT or the Talmud as a lens is a legitimate way to read the texts when they are being read as part of a tradition, i.e., in private or corporate worship.  That texts may legitimately change in meaning over time is an idea peculiar to neither Judaism nor Christianity, but is indeed an accepted part of literary criticism.  Arguably, the tradition of reading texts through the lens of later developments is not nearly so odd as the attempt to read these texts without that lens.  The only reason we have these texts in the first place is because they have been handed down by communities who read them as speaking not just to ancient Israel, but to their own contexts as well.  These texts survive only because, through a variety of hermeneutical strategies, they helped their readers survive. 

 

The meaning that the texts held when they first achieved their current form is, admittedly, quite interesting and valuable to know.  But the meanings which they have held ever since, and the trajectories of interpretation which they have inspired and continue to inspire, are where the texts come to life, and attain to a more than purely antiquarian interest.  I read the Bible not because I am a scholar (I'm not, at least, not yet), but because in it I meet the same Lord who meets me every Sunday.

 

It is for this reason that I sympathize with Shoshanna's Talmudic and Kabbalistic reading of the Torah, even if (a) I do not share that specific tradition, and (b) I try to be somewhat more circumspect and nuanced in my marshalling of later interpretative tendencies, by acknowledging their relative (and yet still authoritative) nature.  (And hence, their tendentious character with respect to the purposes of this list.)

 

Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: Polycarp66 AT aol.com [mailto:Polycarp66 AT aol.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2002 10:56 AM
To: Biblical Hebrew
Subject: Re: Limits of exegetical aids Was: Elohim not Plural

In a message dated 1/29/2002 1:27:56 PM Eastern Standard Time, lizfried AT umich.edu writes:

Yet, others want to use the NT.
Why should one be privileged over the other? You may think
that only your sacred scriptures hold the key, but others
equally vehemently think only theirs does.
To my way of thinking, both are late and tendentious.
The Hebrew Bible ought to be interpeted on the basis
of itself and other contemporary documents.
I'd say before 150 bce, and the DSS copies of the tanak.
liz

Well put though I have no objection to insights from either rabbinic thought or from the NT.  I simply would not use them to determine what they may have meant when written.  They are of value in understanding what they were later understood to mean.

gfsomsel ---
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