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1 Interpreting Torah Traditions in Psalm 105 Adele Berlin This essay is about interpretation: my interpretation of Psalm 105 and the psalm’s interpretation of the Torah traditions from which it is fashioned . The latter brings us into the domain of inner-biblical interpretation , a term designating the many ways in which one segment of the Bible may reappear in another. In the explication of the psalm that follows , I will attend to the ways in which Torah traditions are alluded to, interpreted, or reinterpreted. This approach has a twofold benefit: it sheds light on the meaning of the psalm and it shows something of the early interpretation of authoritative texts. Psalm 105 is one of a group of psalms, most notably 78, 106, 135, and 136, that recount and rework, in poetic form, the prose narrative traditions of Israel’s past preserved in Genesis–Kings, especially the Torah traditions about the creation, the patriarchs, the Exodus, and the coming into the promised land. These psalms exemplify the use of scripture within scripture, or, to be more precise, the use of texts already considered authoritative in liturgical compositions that would, in time, themselves become authoritative. Psalm 105 employs two vehicles of inner-biblical interpretation: allusion and exegesis. While both bring new meaning to old traditions, they do so by different avenues. Allusion recontextualizes an authoritative text, setting an older text alongside, or inside, a newer text. Exegesis affirms the meaning of an older text, be that a longstanding accepted meaning or an innovative meaning promoted by the exegete. In allusion , the new text is primary; the old text is the servant of the new. In exegesis the old text is primary; the new text is the servant of the old. When allusion and exegesis go hand-in-hand, as they do here and elsewhere in the Bible,1 the relationship between the old and new text is fraught with complexity. The goal of all this interpretive activity in our psalm is to reaffirm the authority of the old text and at the same time to create new meaning for the traditions invoked, a new way of seeing Psalm 105 21 them. By reenvisioning the Torah traditions, the psalmist contemporizes them so that they address the needs of his own community. A Brief Sketch of Modern Approaches to Psalm 105 It is a truism, but worth stating nevertheless, that different methodologies yield different results since different questions are posed and different assumptions maintained. Even the label attached to Psalms 78, 105, 106, 135, and 136 says a lot about how one views these psalms and the Torah texts they reference. Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932) called them legends, since he saw in Genesis various folklore genres, legends among them.2 Most recent studies label these psalms ‘‘historical psalms,’’ a term that reflects the preoccupation of current biblical scholarship with the history of, and the historicity of, the biblical text.3 The designation ‘‘historical psalm’’ is, from the perspective of inner-biblical interpretation, not especially helpful because it imposes a modern notion of what constitutes history, omitting psalms that, like Psalm 104, do not focus on ‘‘historical events.’’ Yet Psalm 104 is no less dependent on Torah traditions than Psalm 105, albeit a different part of the Torah, the creation story. These days the term ‘‘historical psalm’’ is even more problematic, given that serious questions have been raised about the historicity of much of the Torah’s narrative. I prefer a term like ‘‘psalms invoking traditions about Israel’s past,’’ a more inclusive term that avoids the question of historicity. The point is not whether these events actually occurred but that the story of them had been incorporated into the national memory by the time of the psalmist. The traditions about Israel’s past are evoked selectively in Psalm 105, often diverging from the exact wording and content of the source texts (most noticeably, the number and order of the plagues). How should these divergences be explained? Some historical critics concluded that the psalm preserved ancient alternative traditions of the Exodus, traditions as authentic as those in the book of Exodus.4 In other words, the traditions contained in the psalm were taken as an alternative version of the story of Israel’s past, a different version from that preserved in the Torah. This position excludes the possibility that the psalm is an intentional refashioning of the Torah’s story. Literary approaches to the Bible take a different position, prizing the poets...

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