mls@dasys1.UUCP (Michael Siemon) (06/07/89)
From Bruce Chilton's _A Galilean Rabbi and His Bible_, 1984, published by
Status: RO
Michael Glazier, Inc. Wilmington DE., ISBN 0-89453-374-6:
"... neither Jesus nor his followers was concerned to produce
an extended exposition of the order of midrash, pesher or targum. In
its own way, each of the latter three serves as a commentary on a
book of scripture. But Jesus seems to have broken new ground, not in
contemporizing scripture (which most intelligent preachers do), but
in making God's present activity, not the text, his point of departure.
... In midrash, pesher and targum, the present is related to the text,
which is the organizing principle of the whole enterprise; the fulfil-
ment style also refers to the present, but here the present belongs
immediately to God, and God's action, not the text, is the principal
concern. To put the case a bit paradoxically, God's activity is the
'text' and scripture is only the vehicle of expressing the present
reality of God. That is the essentially distinctive element in Jesus'
interpretation, and on this basis we can see why the fruit of a
Hillel's exegesis is seen in various forms of commentaries, while the
fruit of a Jesus' preaching is the pluriform gospel of the kingdom.
"Perhaps the dilemma in interpreting scripture today is that
we use methods much like Hillel's and expect results akin to those
achieved by Jesus."
This is from Chilton's third section, which is speculative theologizing; the
heart of his book is the second section wherein he -- cautiously and clearly
-- presents evidence of connections between Jesus' preaching and the terms of
the Isaiah Targum (translation/paraphrase into Aramaic.) This isn't give as
any sort of "magic key" to scripture; it *is* an enrichment of the gospel
picture and offers some potential for clarifying nontrivial questions about
the interpretation of some passages. I suggest that soc.religion.christians
may find it a worthwhile read.
Another book, complementary to Chilton, that I highly recommend is Phillip
Sigal, _The Halakha of Jesus of Nazareth according to the Gospel of Mattew_
(University Press of America, 1986?; I don't have the ISBN at hand but can
get it if anyone wants.) Sigal is a Jewish rabbi (my uneducated guess would
be Conservative) starting a second career in academic religious history.
His book is a fascinating placement of Jesus as prarllel and often quite
similar to the protorabbinical sages (not to deny a major difference in the
charismatic nature of Jesus' ministry.) Sigal makes two major claims, one
of them controversial:
1. Early rabbinacal attitudes to the Pharisees ("perushim") were often
as hostile as Jesus'; Sigal emphatically rejects the common view
that rabbinical Judaism grew "out of" the Pharisaic movement. He
points to a (somewhat limited) folding in of the Pharisees after
the disaster of 70 C.E.
2. Jesus' discussion on points of Torah, as Sigal details in the case
of adultery and Sabbath observance, has clear and enlightening
relations with the rabbinc discussions recorded in the Mishnah.
In particular, the METHODS Jesus uses in controversy with Pharisees
are all noted among the standard rabbinical techniques.
Sigal is a useful corrective to Chilton, who still preserves (despite a real
familiarity with rabbinical literature) a somewhat stereotyped Christian
view of what the rabbis were in fact doing (as witness Chilton's gratuitous
remarks about bet Hillel; Chilton's basic point is well taken, but his means
of making it is a bit misleading.) On his own side, Sigal is so concerned to
understand Jesus WITHOUT Christology that he is practically a caricature of
the very common phenomenon that a sympathetic reader of the gospels tends to
project himself onto Jesus*. Sigal's treatment is productive for his own
purposes (and enlightening to a Christian), but since the gospels are at base
Christological, a Christian reading of Matthew must admit at least the possi-
bility of a Christological dimension even where a discourse can be explained
without it. Thus Chilton also provides (from a Christian viewpoint) a useful
"corrective" of Sigal. As I say, the books are complementary.
------
I have also recently read a Reconstructionist rabbi making Jesus into a good
Reconstructionist, and a modern historian giving Jesus a remarkably 20th
century style sensibility to the goings on around him. Oh, well.
[One of the most valuable books about Jesus remains Henry Cadbury's
early 20th Cent work, "The Peril of Modernizing Jesus". It does a
remarkable job in helping see Jesus in his context rather than ours.
--clh]
--
Michael Siemon O stand, stand at the window
Big Electric Cat Public UNIX As the tears scald and start;
..!att!mhuxu!mls You shall love your crooked neighbor
..!uunet!dasys1!mls With your crooked heart.