The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

HENGEL The Scriptures in Second Temple Judaism 175
world. A religious-philosophical work of exegesis like Philo's is
actually without analogy in the whole world of antiquity. Without the
Septuagint and these Jewish-Hellenistic scripture interpretations
Christianity would not exist.
We come to the end: in Tubingen, in 1949, the systematic theologian
Gerhard Ebeling delivered his inaugural lecture entitled: 'Church
History as Exegesis of the Holy Scriptures'. 31 He wanted us to look
critically at church history from the viewpoint of the exegesis pursued
in the church. Not without good reason Lutheran theology understands
the church to be a creatura verbi divini. One can say the same
about Judaism in the time of the Second Temple: Judaism is the carrier
as well as the fruit of the word of God which has become scripture.
During that time the Jewish people continually debated about
correct exegesis of God's word. When Genesis 32 describes Jacob's
struggle with God, through which he received his new name Israel—
'because you have fought with God and men'—one may relate this
event to the spiritual-intellectual struggle during those 500 years from
Ezra to the completion of the Old Testament canon. In this struggle
which probably finds no parallel in earlier history, Judaism 'created'
the holy scriptures, but it would be even more correct to say that
God's word created Israel, and the holy scriptures Judaism. Both
forms of exegesis, the 'nomological' and the 'inspired', are thereby
present from the start, namely in the Torah and in the prophetic
corpus, that is, in the tension between the salvific presence of God in
the cult and in the observance of the law, and the expectation of the
coming of God's reign. Both types of interpretation were fruitful in
universal history. Early Christianity developed with the help of this
'inspired' eschatological exegesis, rabbinic Judaism preferred the
nomological interpretation. In both religions this conflict is, of course,
still evident today. In the church it becomes visible in the tension
between a Pauline-Johannine and a Matthean Christianity, in Judaism
in the tension between the institution of rabbis and mystical movements.
This tension will remain as long as the two religions exist; in
other words, we can only aspire to its disappearance as an eschatological
goal because the tension is based in holy scripture itself.
31. Sammlung gemeinverstdndliche Vortrage 189 (Tubingen: Mohr [Paul
Siebeck], 1947) reprinted in G. Ebeling, Gottes Wort und Tradition. Studien zur
Hermeneutik der Konfessionen (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964),
pp. 9-27.