Reading the Bible as Scripture

Reading the Bible as Scripture

How have the Jews read the Bible?

Rabbinic Judaism and the Synagogue After the fall of Judah, the destruction of the Temple, and the Babylonian exile Jewish life and faith were centered in synagogues where rabbis read and taught the Torah.

The Rabbis and the Midrash

Upon the return to Jerusalem and the rededication of the second Temple, the institution of the synagogue continued. There developed an oral tradition which was based upon the teachings of the rabbis (midrash- "to seek out, investigate, inquire of").

Midrash ," refers to (1) the particular mode of scriptural interpretation practiced by the rabbis of the land of Israel and Babylonia in late antiquity, (2) any individual rabbinic interpretation ("a Midrash"), and (3) the corpus of edited literature composed of rabbinic scriptural interpretations.

1. Midrashic Hermeneutics. As a mode of scriptural interpretation Midrash is characterized by its dense overreading of the biblical text. Every lexical element is deemed to bear meaning. Underlying techniques of Midrash is the conviction that the scriptural text in all its details constitutes the revealed word of God, hence every textual element is significant and conveys a meaning (frequently multiple meanings) intended by the divine Author; there are no redundancies. Moreover, Scripture is treated as a kind of oracle requiring interpretation; many of the techniques employed by the rabbis are common to ancient dream interpretation, oracle interpretation, and divination.

Example of Midrash: Genesis 2:16-17

How did the early Christians (converts from Judaism) read the Bible?

The earliest Christians were either Jews or converts to Judaism. They would therefore have seen Christianity not as a new religion, but rather as the fulfillment of the essence of the entire Jewish heritage. As one would expect, they used the familiar interpretive methods of Midrash to show how the Christian message relates directly to, and is derived from, the Hebrew Scriptures.

The key new feature, of course, was the Christian claim that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. Therefore, the use of Israel's scriptures by the early church is both a continuation of the reinterpretation and adaptation of the Jewish scriptures as it had been practiced for centuries within the Jewish community, as well as a significant departure that sends interpretation in new directions. Numerous Old Testament terms, phrases, and passages now took on a Christological reference. The goal was to demonstrate that Jesus was the Messiah who had inaugurated the kingdom of God.

They were able to do this because the methods of Midrash assume that all words and passages of scripture are of equal weight; so they can be used to interpret one another because they all derive from God. Therefore, any word or passage of scripture can be used to interpret any other word or passage, while historical and literary contexts of any passage are not of primary significance.

Examples: Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth

Peter's sermon in Acts 2:14-36

How did the Apostolic Church read the Bible?

Alexandrian School

This school, center in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, is particularly associated with the practice of allegorical interpretation. The most notable practitioner of the allegorical method was Origen (c. 185-254).

Origen was by no means the first to employ allegory in exegesis. The method, derived from philosophical treatment of classical Greek texts like those of Homer, had been used extensively by the Alexandrian Jew Philo. So again, it was from Jewish and Greek scholars that the Alexandrian school learned its methods of interpretation.

Origen's theory of scriptural interpretation was dependent on that of Philo, but it was developed in his own way and backed up by Scripture. Origen used the analogy of body, soul, and spirit, claiming that Scripture has three senses: the literal, the moral, and the spiritual. The threefold sense of Scripture was grounded in Prov 22:20-21: "Do thou record them threefold in counsel and knowledge, that thou mayest answer words of truth to those who question thee." The simple person, said Origen, may be edified by what we might call the flesh of Scripture, this name being given to the obvious interpretation; while the person who has made some progress may be edified by its soul; and the person who is perfect and, like those mentioned by the apostle in 1 Cor 2:6-7, able to receive God's wisdom in a mystery, may be edified by the spiritual law, which has "a shadow of the good things to come." Just as a person consists of body, soul, and spirit, so also in the same way does Scripture (De Prin. 4.2.4). Origen's practice of scriptural interpretation was not, however, so schematized as this theory suggests. He rarely set out each of the three meanings of any given text.

Although often undistinguished, two different things are meant by the "literal" meaning: the historical reference of a narrative and the actual practice of legal and ritual rulings. Origen tended to undermine the importance of both these "obvious" senses, on the one hand attributing literal interpretation to the Jews, who practice the law, and claiming that Christians are not meant to take legal texts literally but spiritually. On the other hand, he pointed out that such impossibilities as God's planting a tree like a farmer or walking in paradise in the cool of the day are to be taken as figurative expressions that indicate certain mysteries in the semblance of history and not actual events. His practice of contrasting the literal exegesis of the Jews with the "spiritual" exegesis of Christians is given NT backing. For example, Isaac's weaning suggests the necessity of leaving milk and moving on to solid food (see 1 Cor 3:2 Heb 5:12-14), while the story of Sarah and Hagar is interpreted in the light of Gal 4:21-24; a purely historical understanding is regarded as inadequate.

When it comes to moral and spiritual meanings, the lack of correspondence between theory and practice becomes the more marked. There is never any question of the moral or the spiritual meaning; rather, Origen's fancy produces one or the other of a whole series of possible "deeper" meanings. Moral meanings seem to be those that speak of the soul's purification and acquisition of virtues; spiritual meanings are those that refer