How to Read the Bible

Notes

Notes Chapter 1 1. I have borrowed this characterization of traditional biblical interpretation from James L. Kugel, The Bible as It Was (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1997), 18–23. He expands that book in his Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as It Was at the Start of the Common Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1998). He makes similar observations about a later period in his In Potiphar’s House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990). 2. For a translation of Pesher Habakkuk, see Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1997), 478–85; see esp. 479 (from the middle of column 2): “the priest [in whose heart] God set [understanding ] that he might interpret all the words of His servants the prophets, through whom he foretold all that would happen to His people and [His land]” and 481: “the Teacher of Righteousness, to whom God made known all the mysteries of the words of His servants the Prophets.” For a discussion of Pesher literature, see Shani L. Berrin, “Pesharim,” in The Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman and James C. VanderKam, 2.644–47. 3. Classical rabbinic commentary (midrash) explains the Exodus phrase “in perpetuity” with the words “until the jubilee year.” See, for example, Jacob Z. Lauterbach, ed. and trans., Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1935; reissued 2004), 3.17. 4. See esp. Ibn Ezra’s commentary to Gen. 36:31. 5. Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, (trans. Samuel Shirley (Leiden: Brill, 1991). 285 6. Ibid., 141. 7. For a description of the method itself, see John Barton, “Historical-Critical Approaches,” in The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation, ed. John Barton (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998), 9–20. For descriptions of the development of this method, see The Cambridge History of the Bible, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1963–70), and the series Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996– ). For an outline of the method, see Edgar Krentz, The Historical-Critical Method (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975). 8. The term “historical-critical” may date from the seventeenth century. 9. Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1973). Much of the book brilliantly synthesizes earlier findings. It separates the Bible, especially the Torah, into sources that are dated to particular time periods. Then it puts those sources back together according to a posited historical development of Israelite religion. 10. The works of the German rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann are the most significant of those who decried Wellhausen’s approach. Among his contemporaries who defended the historical-critical method was another German-educated rabbi, the American Reform leader Kaufmann Kohler. 11. Solomon Schechter, Seminary Addresses and Other Papers (Cincinnati, OH: Ark Publishing Co., 1915), 35–39. 12. Ibid., 38. 13. Prolegomena, 227. On Wellhausen’s indebtedness to the age he lived in for his understanding of Judaism, see Lou H. Silberman, “Wellhausen and Judaism,” Semeia 25 (1982), 75–82. 14. Schechter, Seminary Address, 37. 15. The Jewish Study Bible (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004) is further proof of how far this method has spread; two decades ago it would have been impossible to find enough Jewish scholars committed to the historical-critical method to complete that book. 16. Barry Holtz, ed., Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts (New York: Summit Books, 1984). 17. Richard Elliott Friedman has written several excellent readable works on the Bible. However, his Who Wrote the Bible (San Francisco: HarperSan Franciso, 1997) is not Jewishly sensitive, and his more recent Commentary on the Torah with English Translation and Hebrew Text (San Francisco: HarperSanFranciso, 1997) does not use source criticism. 18. The classic of this genre is Otto Eissfeldt, The Old Testament: An Introduction, (trans. Peter A. Ackroyd (New York: Harper and Row, 1965). For a survey 286 Notes of the genre, see Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament As Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 27–45. 19. For those interested in more detailed theoretical discussions of methodology , see John Barton, Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study (revised and enlarged edition; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1996); Douglass A. Knight, ed., Methods of Biblical Interpretation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2004). Chapter 2 1. The Greek word biblia, in turn, likely derives from the Phoenician port city...