How to Read the Bible According to Leo Strauss

In choosing the title of my article I have tried to follow the example of Leo Strauss, who uses "How to" in the titles of a number of his studies. Strauss claims that in reading a text the question "How?" precedes the question "What?" We cannot penetrate into the deep meaning of the text without first meticulously analyzing the form in which it appears or presents itself for us. "How" means some kind of what is usually called by such thinkers as Bultman and Gadamer "pre-understanding." It implies our basic approach to the text. This statement, as I shall show, is also valid for Strauss's approach to the Bible.¹

There are some similarities between Strauss's reading and those of Buber and Rosenzweig. All these thinkers are concerned with the question of how to overcome alienation and ideological suspicion toward the biblical text created by atheistic and historicist social sciences: how to "save" the text, namely, to retrieve its meaning for the modern man. However, unlike Buber and Rosenzweig, Strauss does not search in the Bible for the living speech of God. He was neither a theologian nor a biblical scholar. He was a philosopher, and the motives that led him to interpret the Bible are mainly philosophical ones. Yet his insights are no less fruitful than those of Buber and Rosenzweig for making us aware of the biblical message. It is especially correct for un-Orthodox readers whose approach to the Bible is directly or indirectly shaped by Spinoza's criticism. For Strauss, the Bible is one of the two roots of Western culture, side by side with classical philosophy. Each of these claims to possess the only right answer to the most important question for a human being: What is the good life? Strauss believes that there is an eternal conflict between the Bible and classical philosophy that can never be reconciled; moreover, the struggle between them is the secret of the vitality of Western culture. However, in the last two centuries, under the impact of the Enlightenment and modern philosophy, the main lines of the conflict have been obliterated, and as a result there has been a deep depreciation of the status of both philosophy and theology. Therefore, there is an urgent need to clarify anew the essential nature of the old conflict by unbiased reflection on its origins in classical philosophy and the Bible. Strauss's philosophical oeuvre may be perceived as an effort to restore the prestige of both of them. From a Jewish perspective we may add that Strauss believes that only on the basis of classical philosophy, or more precisely Socratic-Platonic philosophy, is it possible to defend Judaism effectively.

In the following presentation, I shall first discuss Strauss's general hermeneutical presuppositions, with special attention to their relevance for his understanding of Judaism. Then I shall show what his main intentions are in his interpretation of the Bible. In this way I hope to be faithful to Strauss's demand to understand a philosopher as he understood himself.

I

In his lecture on Freud and his book Moses and Monotheism Strauss raises the question, What is "a good non-religious Jewish thinker" (pp. 287–288)?² From his discussion of Freud it seems that such a thinker would have three necessary virtues: loyalty (fidelity), intellectual probity, and love for the truth. As we shall see, there is an internal connection among these three virtues.

Interestingly, Strauss explicitly calls loyalty to one's own community the primary qualification of a good Jewish thinker. He believes that it is an existential necessity for a good thinker as a matter of dignity and integrity. Since he knows that one cannot get rid of one's past, he makes a virtue out of this necessity. Not only does he feel an obligation not to desert the community, but he also supports and defends its survival and its heritage. It seems that Strauss believes that a person who denies his or her origin, who is unable to accept the community into which he or she is born, can never...