Friends on the Way: Jesuits Encounter Contemporary Judaism

Inscribe the New in the Old: Inner-Biblical Exegesis (M. Fishbane) and the Hermeneutics of Innovation (B. Levinson)

Inscribe the New in the Old: Inner-Biblical Exegesis (M. Fishbane) and the Hermeneutics of Innovation (B. Levinson) Jean-Pierre Sonnet, S.J. In memory of Timo Veijola (1947–2005) Modern exegesis is the place of a paradox of measure: it works on a text that was produced in every detail within a particular tradition— the tradition of the Jewish people—and it applies procedures and models that have been developed in other intellectual traditions, whether that developed in Protestant Germany in the nineteenth century , with its romantic fascination with origins, or that of the United States of W. F. Albright and his archaeological empiricism, or that of the postmodern West, which, in its culture of crisis, spontaneously gives preference to the crisis experienced by biblical Israel at the turning point in its history, the Exile. Without a doubt, this transcultural dialogue is fascinating but it also has its limitations, and therefore one should be even more attentive to the approach developed within the tradition inaugurated about twenty years ago by M. Fishbane, at that time professor at Brandeis University and today professor at the University of Chicago. For the first time, in a reflective manner, a critical exegetical model was developed within the intellectual tradition of Judaism. Briefly it can be said that Fishbane showed that a hermeneutical principle underlies the process of the growth of the biblical text. Furthermore , this principle anticipates what will develop in midrashic Inscribe the New in the Old: Inner-Biblical Exegesis / 129 thought (Targum and Talmud included). Thus whilst an exegetical tradition strove to keep the biblical world at a distance from the subsequent rabbinic tradition, Fishbane showed the intellectual continuity that led from the Bible to the Midrash. Doing this, he opens hermeneutical perspectives that cannot but interest Christian exegesis. Fishbane’s decisive work on this subject was published in 1985 under the title Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel.1 The American exegete did, of course, have precursors, and he himself pays a tribute to the pioneering work of R. Bloch, who in 1954 published a study entitled Écriture et tradition dans le Judaı̈sme. Aperçus sur l’origine du midrash (Writing and tradition in Judaism: Notes on the origin of Midrash).2 Interest in the inner-biblical forms of reinterpretation was also illustrated at that same time by A. Robert, who spoke of an ‘‘anthological process,’’ as well as by A. Gélin, who introduced the term ‘‘relectures’’ (rereadings)—whether one thinks of Deutero-Isaiah rereading Exodus or the Chronicler revisiting the book of Kings.3 Fishbane introduces an unprecedented critical dimension to these perspectives by treating this phenomenon not only as a rereading but also as the rewriting of a previously given datum—and he brings to light the hermeneutical ways and means as well as the techniques of this rewriting. Fishbane characterizes this phenomenon as inner-biblical exegesis. Long before becoming extrabiblical and influencing from the exterior the canonical Scripture, exegesis was already practiced within the canon. The growth of the scriptural corpus and first and foremost the legal corpus of the Bible, was motivated by the successive rewritings within a dynamic of Fortschreibung, which was conservative and innovative at the same time. The hermeneutics of the scribes, inscribing the new in the old, was practiced within the Bible so repeatedly and so pointedly that one might say, echoing B. Levinson, an enlightened disciple of Fishbane, that the Hebrew Bible puts us in the presence of the birth of the critical spirit, within the very womb of a religious tradition. 130 / Jean-Pierre Sonnet, S.J. The Formula of the Canon We speak of the ‘‘canon’’ of Scriptures, referring to its final state.4 The ‘‘canonical’’ dimension is not, however, linked only to the ultimate stage of the growth of biblical texts. It concerns also the initial phase and each of the intermediate phases in the development in question. At a particular moment in time, a scriptural corpus was received as the ‘‘canonical’’ Word of God by ancient Israel and became authoritative in this quality. The Code of the Covenant (in Exod. 21–23) thus represented for a time the authorized legal corpus in Israel, normative, in its own way, for the life of the people. It is the starting point for the legal tradition of Israel. A sign of the antiquity of the ‘‘canonical thinking’’ can be read in the so...