Biblical Hermeneutics

PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL HERMENETICS ; M. M. NINAN
Palestinian allegory more clearly than its application to the Halakah; a mere Greek fashion—
and one specifically antagonistic to the letter of Scripture—could never have taken part in the
Halakah, which is professedly founded upon the Scripture text. Devoted as the Palestinians
were to the Pentateuch, it is nevertheless a fact that the Halakah, both before and after
Akiba, made use of allegorism. It is expressly stated that Rabbi Ishmael (died about 132)
explained three Pentateuchal passages by a species of parable (Mek., Mishpaṭim, vi.).
His younger contemporary R. Jose of Galilee interprets Deut. xxiv. 6 also allegorically, or
rather euphemistically after Job, xxxi. 10 (Gen. R. xx. 7). Akiba, although he more than any
one else perceived the danger of this allegorization of the Law, which just then was
fashionable in the Christian and the Gnostic worlds, could not refrain from adopting
something of this method of interpretation. Thus, referring to the verse, "And she [the
heathen captive] shall bewail her father and her mother" (Deut. xxi. 13), Akiba understands
by "father and mother," "idols," according to Jer. ii. 27 (Sifre, Deut. 213); and in Lev. xix. 26
he perceives a warning to judges to partake of no food upon a day on which they are to
consider a capital sentence (Sifra ḳedoshim, vi. 90a). Similarly the verse, Deut. xxv. 4
(forbidding the ox to be muzzled when treading out corn), when taken in conjunction with the
following law (by or interpretation by sequence), is allegorically used to explain that the
widow may not be compelled to enter into a levirate marriage with a leper. Just as the ox in
the passage is not to be prevented from helping himself to a share of the harvest he is
threshing, so the woman may not be deprived of her right to happiness in her marriage (Yeb.
4a).
Book of Jubilees.
The essential characteristic of Palestinian allegorism which distinguishes it from Alexandrian is
its acceptance of the Scripture as the inalienable heritage of Israel. The Bible was a Jewish
revelation, so that any hidden import discovered by means of allegorism was an inherent part
of the history or of the religious life, the Torah of the Jews. An excellent exemplar of
Palestinian allegorism is afforded by the Book of Jubilees. The periods prescribed in Lev. xii.
for the purification of women are deduced by it from the legend that Adam was forty days old
when he entered Paradise, and Eve eighty (iii. 9); in vi. 15, the Feast of Weeks is associated
with God's covenant with Noah after the flood. These interpretations are strictly Haggadot
rather than allegorisms, but nevertheless they show the typological character of Palestinian
allegorism in the endeavor to expound the pre-Mosaic period by the light of the later period
of the Law.
The Essenes.
The oldest form of Palestinian derush (exposition), already archaic in the year 70 of the
common era, is that of the
Symbolists, literally "interpreters of signs"; called also
, "interpreters of parables" (Ber. 24a; see Bacher, "Die Aelteste Terminologie," s.v.).
Their method is allegorical or symbolically allegorical; thus: "they found no water" (Ex. xv.
22) means "no Torah," as in Isa. lv. 1; "and God showed Moses a tree," that means God
taught him—a play upon the word , which means "to teach," as well as "to show"—the
Law, as it is said, Prov. iii. 18, "It is a tree of life" (Mek., Beshallaḥ, Wayassa', i. 1). Another
instructive example is the following: The Symbolists say that all, even the wickedest, kings of
Israel shall enter the future world, as it is said, Ps. lx. 9; "Gilead is mine" means Ahab who
fell at Ramoth-Gilead; "and Manasseh is mine," that is, literally, King Manasseh; "Ephraim is
the strength of mine head" means Jeroboam who was an Ephraimite; "Judah is my law-giver"
104