The Scarlet Cord - Moriel Ministries

Hebrew Teaching
Jacob Prasch
“Midrash and the book
of revelation”
a. midrash study
1. history of the church
a. christ’s teachings
b. apostolic teachings - paul
2. history of false teachings
a. gnostic
3. history of hellenistic teaching
4. midrash
a. jewish culture
b. how rabbi’s taught - paul
I
R
Introduction
ecently, a blogging match concerning
my comments on the New Testament
use of midrash sprung up
between believers who seriously study the
Word of God, and religious babblers who
mislead those who imagine themselves to
be the guardians of scriptural truth.
A wide array of conservative Evangelical
scholars has affirmed the use of midrashic
hermeneutics throughout the history of the
church. These theologians include John
Lightfoot, the 17th century English Puritan
who published a midrashic commentary
on the New Testament, to Bilderbeck and
Strauss, to more contemporary figures such
as T. Dockerty, E.E. Ellis, Richard Longnecker,
Moises Silva and many others.
Midrashic hermeneutics was used by the
first-century Jewish Apostolic church from
the Sitz im Leben of Second Temple period
Judaism in the New Testament. Prophecyas-pattern,
“pesher” interpretations, and
apocryphal typology are ways a growing
cadence of conservative Evangelical
scholars account for the way in which the
New Testament handles the Old Testament.
This is seen in everything from the infancy
narrative formula (eg., the Matthew 2:15
pesher interpretation of Hosea 11:1, etc.),
to Paul’s parody of Sarah and Hagar in Galatians
chapter 4, to the literary genre of the
epistle of Jude.
It is obvious that Jesus and His apostles,
being Jews, wrote not from a cultural vacuum
but were divinely inspired to write
from the context of their own language and
culture. The Midoth of Rabbi Hillel that St.
Paul would have learned from his rabbinic
mentor Rabbi Gamaliel (Acts 22:3) are
evident throughout his epistles and in the
epistle to the Hebrews. In short, the New
Testament handles the Old Testament in the
same manner in which the Qumran Dead
Sea scrolls and the inter-testamental apocryphal
I & II Maccabees and I & II Enoch
do. This responsively refutes the claims of
liberal theologians (such as Oxford Professor
James Barr) who argue by grammaticalhistorical
exegesis that the New Testament
is not to be taken literally because its apostolic
authors did not handle Scripture in a
literal fashion.
In fact, it is not a misuse of midrash,
but the misuse of the grammatical-historical
exegesis that the Reformers borrowed
from 16 th -century humanism that gave
rise to higher criticism by theological liberals.
A more recent attempt made by the
Anglican ultra-liberal John Shelby Spong
to argue that midrash negates literalism, is
automatically discredited as bogus and devoid
of substance by the fact that the literal
‘peshet’ interpretation must be established
before the further ‘pesher’ meaning can be
determined. Spong’s very premise reveals a
fundamental ignorance. Moreover, in light
of the Qumran discoveries even traditional
Evangelical attempts to explain the New
Testament’s handling of the Old by conventional
conservative Protestant exegesis (as in
the views of otherwise credible voices such
as Walter Kaiser whose overall ministry this
author endorses) cannot carry significant
weight in light of the Qumranic evidence.
Essentially, believers who are serious in
their approach to the Word of God focus on
what Scripture actually states concerning
midrash and not on later rabbis or subscribers
to the doctrinal errors of replacement
theology debunked in Romans by Paul. Either
of these extremes is erroneous.
There are multiple passages in the origi-
10 Moriel Quarterly • September 2012