Text and Time: Ten Propositions on Early Rabbinic Hermeneutics

Abstract

In the first part of the paper, I present ten propositions on the natureof early rabbinic hermeneutics. These propositions focus on the factthat the rabbis treat the meaning of a text from the past as unfoldingin the present. Specifically, rabbinic hermeneutics ties biblicalmeaning to human action, the horizon of which is the present and theprojected future. The fixed verbal structures of the biblical text arecontextualised in that action-oriented rabbinic present, somewhat akinto the ``fulfilment'' in a present which give prophecy or proverb theirfull meaning. Also, the institution of a weekly reading of Scripturemust have created random hermeneutic contextualisations of the biblicaltext through the reader's present. The rabbinic homily, however, doesnot contextualise the biblical text through a rabbinic present butthrough a biblical past, albeit an exemplary one. This amounts to anarticulation of the rabbinic present through the language of Scripture.The biblical text thus was on the one hand the unquestionable languagethrough which the salient features of the present were constituted (andtheir perception limited); and on the other hand, it was the target ofan objectification which problematised linguistic meaning. In the secondpart of the paper, I attempt to identify some of the modern conceptswhich underpin the ten propositions, concentrating largely ontwentieth-century philosophy.