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Jewish Approaches to the Bible
From: Cambridge University Press
| By:
Nicholas de Lange |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
The casual observer of religious history could be forgiven for not appreciating the fact that the Christian and Jewish traditions share a literary heritage through the Bible. Recently, scholarship has benefited from cooperation between the two religious traditions. Nicholas de Lange of the University of Cambridge outlines the evolution of the Jewish contribution to biblical scholarship. |
 he term 'Bible' is borrowed from Christian usage, and the Jewish Bible contains substantially the same texts as the Christian 'Old Testament', although they are arranged differently. The existence of this common ground between Jews and Christians has in the past facilitated controversy and disputation, and today happily provides food for friendly dialogue and shared study. In few other areas is the mutual influence of these two religions more evident. Jews tend to refer to the Bible in Hebrew, the original language, whereas the Christian biblical tradition has been dominated by the Greek and Latin translations.  But the Christian Reformation espoused a return to the original text preserved only by the Jews, and in the King James Bible the 'Old Testament' section was translated from the Hebrew, incorporating insights derived from the Jewish tradition of interpretation. Jews, for their part, commonly use Hebrew texts edited and printed by Christians, and have adopted the Christian chapter divisions, while English-speaking Jews have been comfortable reading the King James Version, recognising that it is a faithful and accurate rendering of the original. |
The Masoretic text
The Hebrew text used by Jews, as indeed by Christian scholars, is the so-called Masoretic Text, which was given its present form by Aaron Ben Asher in Israel in the tenth century. He was the last of a series of textual scholars or Masoretes whose work extended over several centuries. The Masoretic text of the Bible consists of a traditional consonantal text, equipped with vowel signs to assist reading, and other signs that aid liturgical cantillation and phrasing, together with an apparatus containing textual variants, conjectural emendations, and notes on the way certain letters are to be written and on the number of letters, words and verses in each section. Most readers pay only scant attention to these last features, but they respect Masoretic advice about certain preferred variants (termed qeri) which are used in reading aloud even if a different form (called ketiv), sanctified by tradition, is written in the text. |
While a fair amount of information about the activity of the Masoretes is available to scholarship through the study of medieval manuscripts, until recent times the previous history of the Bible text mainly had to be studied by means of comparing the Hebrew with the translations that were made in earlier ages. However, the recovery of older Hebrew manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah and the Judaean Desert has made it possible to trace this prehistory in greater detail. While the ancillary signs are the work of the Masoretes, it is now clear that consonantal text they adopted goes right back to the time of the Second Temple, even if we can also see that other forms of the text existed side by side with it. |
Originally the sacred books were written on parchment scrolls, and this ancient form of book is still retained for the copies of the Torah used in the synagogue. The scroll of Esther read at Purim, as well as mezuzot and tefillin, are also handwritten on parchment. In time, however, for other purposes the scroll gave way to the codex, and the manuscript codex was eventually replaced by the printed book. The Hebrew Bible was first printed in its entirety at Soncino, near Mantua in northern Italy, in 1488, and other editions soon followed. In 1516/17 the 'Rabbinic Bible', that is a Hebrew Bible accompanied by an Aramaic translation (Targum) and rabbinic commentaries, was printed in Venice by a Christian printer, Daniel Bomberg. |
The Bible has been printed in Hebrew many times since, by Jews and Christians, in various editions. However, there is hardly any variation in the text contained in the different editions, because they are all based ultimately on the Masoretic Text. It is also possible to obtain a printed facsimile of the text as it is written in a scroll, without punctuation or vowel points but with ornaments on many of the letters; this is known as a Tikkun Sofrim, and is useful for scribes and for practising the reading in the synagogue. The Bible has been translated into virtually every language under the sun, mainly by Christians but also by Jews. English translations are available, some equipped with commentaries. Particularly popular editions are the Torah edited by the British Chief Rabbi J. H. Hertz in the 1920s and 1930s (the original edition had a very fine and catholic commentary); the American translation published by the Jewish Publication Society and drawing on traditional and critical scholarship; and the 'ArtScroll' edition, with facing Hebrew and English text. |
Biblical divisions
The Christian term 'Bible' has been adopted into English-speaking Jewish usage. In earlier Hebrew sources we find such designations as 'the books' or 'sacred books', reminding us that the Bible is not a single work but a library composed of many individual volumes. We also find the expression 'reading' (miqra), a term that points to public reading. The title that figures on modern editions is Tanakh, an acronym made up of the initial letters of the three sections, Torah, Neviim and Ketuvim. This abbreviation has been in use since the Middle Ages. |
The three sections in question were compiled at successive stages. The oldest section, Torah ('guidance' or 'instruction'), is also the one that is considered most sacred and authoritative. According to an old tradition it was written by Moses, and this tradition is widely maintained today among traditionalist Jews, although it is not supported by critical scholarship. The Torah consists of five books, and for this reason the Hebrew term humash (derived from the word for 'five') is used for a book containing it. The Torah tells the early history of the people of Israel, from the beginning of time to the death of Moses, and it also contains a large body of laws and regulations that are the ultimate source of much of the religious practice of Jews to this day. The whole Torah is read in synagogues in the course of a year. |
The second section, Neviim ('prophets'), contains eight books, two of which are divided into two parts each, while another consists of twelve short works. These eight books tell the story of the people from the entry into the Land of Canaan under Joshua to the Babylonian exile, and contain the teachings of individual prophets. The authority of the prophets is secondary to that of the Torah. Only short selections are read out in synagogues, chosen to accompany the readings from the Torah in synagogues. |
The Ketuvim ('scriptures') constitute a miscellaneous compilation of historical, poetic and other works. The largest component is the Book of Psalms (Tehillim), itself divided into five books on the model of the Torah. These poems are used in private and public devotion. The five scrolls (Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Kohelet [Ecclesiastes] and Esther) are read publicly on specific annual occasions, and the Book of Job, a profound meditation on the problem of suffering, is also read among Sephardim. The other books in this section are generally less studied and carry less authority than the rest of the scriptures. |
The authority of these various books, the most ancient works to have come down to us in the Jewish tradition, is enormous. However, the different books enjoy different kinds and levels of authority, and different sectors of Jewry have different understandings of the claims the books exert on Jews today. At the heart of the matter is a theological question: whether the books are believed to emanate directly, so to speak, from the 'mouth of God'. These are complicated questions.  We should take note of the strongest claim, shared to a greater or lesser extent by more or less the whole of the Jewish tradition down to the beginning of the nineteenth century and by all traditionalist and Orthodox authorities today, that the five books of the Torah at least are a direct revelation from God given to Moses and the people of Israel at Mount Sinai. This tenet has been challenged in the past two centuries from a number of angles, historical, philosophical and theological, but despite all the challenges the authority of the Torah has remained very strong, and is invoked even by Jews who reject any supernatural belief. In the modern period the appeal to the prophets has also become stronger, particularly among Reform and socialist Jews, who admire the loud and confident cry for justice and compassion for the less privileged members of society. |
Reading and interpretation
The reading of the biblical books is inseparable from their interpretation, and the Jewish tradition of interpretation is embodied in a large mass of writings going back to antiquity. Leaving aside various works written by Jews in Greek and other languages and only preserved in the Christian Church, which enable us to reconstruct many otherwise lost interpretations, we have a vast literature, mainly written down in Hebrew or Aramaic, of which the earliest layers are found within the biblical books themselves, as later books rewrite or expound material from earlier books. The Masoretic notes also embody a large amount of interpretation, and much more interpretation can be found in the pages of the Talmud, to which we shall return below. However, the main classical rabbinic sources for the interpretation of the biblical books are found in the bodies of writings known as Targum, Midrash and Commentary (perush), each of which comprises an enormous mass of written materials. Selections from these three categories of writing accompany the Hebrew text in the Rabbinic Bible, which is the foundation of serious biblical study among Jews, and in the annotated texts that are used by congregants in synagogues for following the public reading. |
Targum ('translation') is the name given to various translations of biblical books into Aramaic, which was in ancient times the spoken language of a vast area including the major Jewish centres of Babylonia and the Land of Israel. Their origin is thought to be in synagogal practice, when a vernacular translation was given in conjunction with the Hebrew reading to help the public understand the Hebrew words. Some of the Targums adhere very closely to the actual words of the Hebrew and to what might be called their plain meaning, while others import a greater or lesser amount of explanatory material and even mini-sermons, but all of them represent an interpretation of what the Hebrew text means. The best-known Targum is the one attributed to Onkelos (a shadowy figure of whom nothing is known beyond his name, and indeed even that is in doubt). Onkelos became the favourite Targum of the Torah for eastern (Babylonian) Jews, while Jews in the west (Israel and associated areas) used a variety of different translations. |
Midrash ('investigation') is the name given collectively to a mass of works compiled mainly in Israel between the third and eleventh centuries, preserving excerpts from sermons and lectures and other comments on the words of scripture. In the sixteenth century the so-called Midrash Rabbah was published, presenting midrashic compilations on each of the five books of the Torah and the five scrolls from the Ketuvim, and these ten books have acquired a kind of canonical status. However, there are many more midrashic texts surviving in whole or in part, and scholars have hardly begun to grapple with the complexities presented by this literature, which is one of the richest departments of the rabbinic tradition. While the midrashic interpretations do not have explicit religious authority, they are read with interest and cited with affection, and they have exerted a strong influence on biblical commentary and preaching. |
Hebrew scholarship
Biblical commentary in Hebrew arose in the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries, replacing and at first building on the midrashic tradition and no doubt echoing trends in contemporary Arabic study of the Qur'an and Greek study of the classics. The work of the Masoretes fed an interest in the 'plain' meaning of scripture as opposed to the flights of fancy that are characteristic of Midrash. Of the commentators whose writings are still widely known and used the earliest is Rashi (1040-1105), who lived and wrote in Troyes in Champagne, a region with little previous history of Jewish scholarship. Rashi's work is characterised by brevity and clarity, and he avoids being drawn into technical arguments. His commentary is thus remarkably accessible to anyone who can read Hebrew (although he often explains difficult words in French), and it is often the first port of call for serious Jewish readers in search of guidance on the meaning of a biblical obscurity. It is printed alongside the biblical text in rabbinic bibles and drawn on freely in annotated editions, side by side with the commentaries of Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089-1164) and David Kimhi (c. 1160-1235), who represent the Spanish tradition characterised by an interest in the study of grammar and a rationalist philosophical orientation. Many other commentaries survive from the Middle Ages. |
A new era in Jewish Bible commentary was inaugurated by Moses Mendelssohn, the towering figure of the German Jewish Enlightenment movement of the eighteenth century. Mendelssohn published in the 1780s his own translation of the Torah into German, accompanied by a commentary in Hebrew (known as the Bi'ur) composed by a group of scholars under his direction, and combining traditional comments with the ideas of the Enlightenment. Subsequent Hebrew commentaries have tended to follow in Mendelssohn's footsteps in combining traditional and modern insights. Meanwhile, with the rise of secular education since the Enlightenment fewer Jews are at home in Hebrew, and so editions of the Torah and other parts of the Bible used in the synagogue are generally accompanied by notes drawing on older and more recent commentaries. |
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