Notes
Notes Introduction 1. Cambridge History of the Bible, ed. P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 1:422. 2. For some enlargement on these issues, see the introduction to my Midrash and Theory: Ancient Biblical Interpretation and Contemporary Literary Theory (Evanston , Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 1–12. 3. Robert M. Grant with David Tracy, A Short History of the Interpretation of the Bible (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984 [1963]). 4. Martin Jan Mulder, ed., Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading, and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (Assen/Mastricht: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988); and Magne Sæbø, ed., Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1996), vol. 1: From the Beginnings to the Middle Ages (Until 1300), Part 1: Antiquity; Part 2: The Middle Ages. These two works are also not the only multivolume histories of biblical interpretation in production: see as well William Yarchin , A History of Biblical Interpretation: A Reader (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2004); and Alan J. Hauser and Duane F. Watson, eds., A History of Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003). 5. To be sure, there are still omissions. While there is an excellent treatment of Karaite exegesis, there is hardly any mention of Islamic interpretation (of either the Bible or of the Qur’an), but I daresay that it is only time before Islamic exegesis will also be brought into the fold. 6. Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, vol. 1, part 1, 745. 7. The article was published in Recherches de Science Religieuse 58 (1955): 194– 227. An English translation, ‘‘Methodological Note for the Study of Rabbinic Literature ,’’ appears in Approaches to Ancient Judaism: Theory and Practice, ed. W. S. Green (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1978), 51–76. See also her article ‘‘Midrash ,’’ first in published in Supplement au Dictionnaire de la Bible 5 (Paris, 1957), cols. 1263–81, and translated in the same volume of Approaches, 29–50. 8. ‘‘Bible and Midrash: Early Old Testament Exegesis,’’ in The Cambridge History of the Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 1:199–231. See also Vermes, Scripture and Tradition in Judaism: Haggadic Studies (Leiden: Brill, 1973), which includes many of his early studies of comparative exegesis. 9. See her references in ‘‘Midrash,’’ 30, to A. Robert, ‘‘Le sens du mot Loi dans le ps. CXIX,’’ Revue Biblique (1937): 205–6. The term ‘‘inner-Biblical exegesis ’’ was coined by Nahum Sarna, ‘‘Psalm 89: A Study in Inner Biblical Exegesis,’’ in Biblical and Other Studies, ed. A. Altmann (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 29–46, reprinted in Nahum Sarna, Studies in Biblical Interpretation (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2000), 377–94. 238 Notes to Pages 5–10 10. Bloch, ‘‘Midrash,’’ 29. 11. Ibid., 37. 12. Paul Kahle, The Cairo Genizah (The Schweich Lectures 1941) (London: British Academy, 1947). 13. Bloch, ‘‘Midrash,’’ 31. 14. Ibid., 48. Within this historiography, the Palestinian targumim occupied a pivotal position; see Bloch’s remarks on p. 47. Targum is not merely a ‘‘version ’’ like the Septuagint. Rather, it ‘‘includes already the entire structure and all the motifs of midrash.’’ 15. Vermes, ‘‘Midrash and Bible,’’ 220. 16. Ibid., 221 17. The field of recent scholarly literature on orality and literature is vast. For a recent sampling of trends specifically in relation to ancient Jewish literature, see the special issue of Oral Tradition 14 (1999) devoted to the topic. The most recent monograph of importance is Martin S. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism 200 BCE–400 CE (New York: Oxford, 2001). 18. Kugel’s magnum opus is Traditions of the Bible (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), which is an expanded version of the earlier The Bible as It Was (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997). See also In Potiphar’s House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1990); and his book co-authored with Rowan Greer, Early Biblical Interpretation (Philadelphia : Westminster, 1986). 19. The quote from Kugel is from Traditions of the Bible, 24. Kugel first spelled out the point in his ‘‘Two Introductions to Midrash,’’ Prooftexts 3 (1983), repr. in G. Hartman and S. Budick, Midrash and Literature (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985), 77–103. For ‘‘memorial’’ culture, see Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 20. Kugel, Traditions, 14–19. 21. Ibid., 20. 22. Ibid., 18. 23. For Sarna, see n. 9 above; I. Seeligman...
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