The Centre for Jewish Studies
University of Manchester
Extra-Mural Lectures January-March 2000
Roger Tomes
DIVIDED BY A COMMON SCRIPTURE:
JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN APPROACHES TO THE BIBLE
(In 5 linked sections: click on the relevant number for
sections II, III,
IV and V)
What I propose to do in this lecture is
* to look at the ways in which the scriptures (i.e. the scriptures Jews
and Christians have in common - the Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament)
were read in the first century C.E., before the 'parting of the ways';
- to look at the ways in which Jews and Christians traditionally
read the scriptures before the rise of biblical criticism;
- to look at the respective responses of Jews and Christians
to biblical criticism;
- and to ask why it is that, when Jews and Christians
read and study the Bible today, they do not think of themselves as engaged
in a common enterprise.
But first I should like to explain what has prompted me to deal with
this topic. Throughout my adult life I have been a student of the Hebrew
Bible as part of the Christian scriptures. I have preached on it, and still
do, to Christian congregations, and I have taught it at various times to
students for the Christian ministry, full time for the latter part of my
career. I have been a member of the British Society for Old Testament Study
for over 40 years, and I have taken part in various university seminars
in biblical studies. But even now, after so many years, I am still puzzled
by a question which has concerned me for a long time: Why is it that I have
so rarely studied the Bible with Jews, despite the fact that I lived in
London for 10 years and have lived in Manchester for over 20? When Rabbi
Warren Elf was in Manchester a small group of Jews and Christians met for
Bible study on a few occasions, and I was very grateful for that. And I
am bound to say that Bernard Jackson's arrival at the university has made
a great difference. His regular participation in the Ehrhardt Seminar and
the programme he has devised for the Centre for Jewish Studies have created
new opportunities. But this sort of thing doesn't happen very often. That
is why I should like to explore the reasons with you this evening.
I
I begin therefore by asking how Jews read the Bible in the first century
C.E., before 'the parting of the ways'. The sources indicate that they were
reading the scriptures - searching the scriptures in the New Testament phrase
(John 5.39; Acts 17.11) - in a number of different ways and for a number
of different purposes.
Coming from my background I naturally got my first impressions about
this from the New Testament, particularly from the gospels. I would defend
this as a good place to start. It is reasonable to hold that all the gospels
were written before the end of the first century and are therefore earlier
than the Mishnah or any of the midrashim. The gospels may be biased; they
may reflect some of the bitterness on the Christian side which led to the
break between synagogue and church; but they offer good evidence for Jewish
practices, or at least for popular perceptions of them.
From my youth I was aware of the Pharisees, devoted to halakah,
interpreting the commandments with the aid of 'the traditions of the elders':
questions about what was permitted and what was prohibited on the sabbath
(Mk 2:23-3:6; Mek. Nez.4:74-109), about what should and what need
no be tithed (Mt 23:23-24), about purity (Mt 23:25-26; Mk 7:1-8), about
the Korban vow (Mk 7:9-13; dealt with in M.Ned. Cf. CD 16:14-15:
'No one shall consecrate the food of his house to God.'), to some extent
about kashrut (Mk 7:14-23) - all these are reflected in the gospels.
The difference between the School of Hillel and the School of Shammai on
the legitimate grounds for divorce also underlies a question put to Jesus
(Mk 10:2-12; cf. M.Gitt. 9:10; Gittin 90a; Sifre Deut.
§§268-69). I learned too about the Sadducees, not so much about
their differences with the Pharisees on halakhic matters, as about their
rejection of beliefs not clearly attested in the scriptures, belief in resurrection
and belief in angels (Mk 12:18; Acts 23:8; Josephus, BJ 2.8.14 §§162-63).
The Sadducees' rejection of the Oral Torah is not mentioned in the New
Testament, but it is clearly attested in Josephus (Ant. 13.10.6 §§297-98).
Josephus' interest in the scriptures is twofold: one is to commend the commandments
in the Torah to Gentile readers as ancient and reasonable; the other is
to treat them, as many others must have done, as the great source book of
Jewish history, with few parallels, perhaps none, in other nations. His
method was to paraphrase the biblical narrative, with minor additions from
such other sources as were available to him. The key personalities - Abraham,
Joseph, Moses, David and Solomon - exhibited the classical virtues - justice,
courage, prudence and self-control - rather than rabbinic piety. It is interesting
that he omits all mention of the canonical prophets. His success in reaching
a Gentile audience may be judged by the fact that his works were preserved
and handed on in Christian rather than Jewish circles.
The works of Philo of Alexandria were also preserved by the church rather
than the synagogue, and he undoubtedly influenced Christianity much more
than Judaism. Nevertheless his interest was almost entirely in the exposition
of the Pentateuch, presenting its laws as in harmony with the laws of nature,
the patriarchs and Moses as models of the way to live, and the narrative
of Gen 1-17 as providing an allegory of the life of the soul. In the use
of allegorical interpretation Philo was following the Greek tradition of
interpreting Homer allegorically, and he in his turn was imitated by the
Christian Fathers, Clement, Origen and Ambrose.
Our knowledge of how Jews read the scriptures in the first century has
of course been greatly expanded and altered since the discovery of the Dead
Sea Scrolls. This is a subject in itself and we can only deal with it briefly.
But the pesharim which have been discovered show an interest in the
prophetical books as such which is not found in Talmud and Midrash (nor
in Josephus or Philo for that matter), and a conviction that their predictions
had been fulfilled in recent or contemporary events which is shared with
the New Testament. Thus the Habakkuk pesher declares that 'God told
Habakkuk to write what was going to happen to the last generation' (1QpHab
7:1-2) and finds in the book references to the Teacher of Righteousness
and his antagonist the Wicked Priest, taking the references to the Chaldaeans
to be encoded references to the Kittim, that is, the Romans. The listing
of texts from different parts of scripture in the Florilegium, which are
taken to promise that in the last days there will be a pure temple, a pure
priesthood and a Davidic Messiah, suggests a searching of scriptures for
its eschatology comparable to that which must lie behind many of the New
Testament citations of the older scriptures.
In the light of this range of Jewish scriptural interpretation, the
New Testament'a ways of reading scripture do not appear particularly novel.
A case can be made out that Paul employs rabbinic methods from time to time,
and that the letter to the Hebrews stands in the Alexandrian Jewish tradition.
The patriarchs and Moses are models for Christians to follow, as they are
in Josephus and Philo. The difference between the New Testament and other
Jewish sources is in what they found in scripture not in how they found
it.
Most of the Jewish pseudepigrapha - the Enoch literature, Jubilees,
the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs - had been written before the 1st
century C.E., but two works written after the Fall of Jerusalem - 4 Ezra
and 2 Baruch raise important theological questions, such as, Where has evil
come from? Why are the righteous so few? The issue of Adam's responsibility
for the sins of his descendants is discussed in both (4 Ezra (= 2 Esdras)
7:118: 'O Adam, what have you done? For though it was you who sinned, the
fall was not yours alone, but ours also who are your descendants;' 2 Baruch
54:15,19: each of us is his own Adam). These writings again were totally
forgotten by Judaism; 4 Ezra survived in Christian circles in the West and
the East; the only known manuscript of 2 Baruch was rediscovered in the
19th century. The questions they raise, however, continued to be important
in Judaism, while the discussion of Adam's role may indicate that the writers
knew of Paul's treatment of Adam in Romans and 1 Corinthians.
This all too brief survey at least shows that there were widely different
ways of reading the Bible among Jews in the first century C.E., and that
the New Testament approach to it as a book of prophecy was not without its
parallels.
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