Biblical Hermeneutics
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PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL HERMENETICS ; M. M. NINAN<br />
rabbinism, as appears from the following classical passage concerning the various methods of<br />
Scriptural interpretation:<br />
(Zohar, iii. 152, ).<br />
"Wo unto the man who asserts that this Torah intends to relate only commonplace things and<br />
secular narratives; for if this were so, then in the present times likewise a Torah might be<br />
written with more attractive narratives. In truth, however, the matter is thus: The upper<br />
world and the lower are established upon one and the same principle; in the lower world is<br />
Israel, in the upper world are the angels. When the angels wish to descend to the lower<br />
world, they have to don earthly garments. If this be true of the angels, how much more so of<br />
the Torah, for whose sake, indeed, both the world and the angels were alike created and<br />
exist [an old Midrash; see Ginzberg, "Monatsschrift," 1898, p. 546]. The world could simply<br />
not have endured to look upon it. Now the narratives of the Torah are its garments. He who<br />
thinks that these garments are the Torah itself deserves to perish and have no share in the<br />
world to come. Wo unto the fools who look no further when they see an elegant robe! More<br />
valuable than the garment is the body which carries it, and more valuable even than that is<br />
the soul which animates the body. Fools see only the garment of the Torah, the more<br />
intelligent see the body, the wise see the soul, its proper being, and in the Messianic time the<br />
'upper soul' of the Torah will stand revealed"<br />
General Allegorization of the Law.<br />
This classical passage reads almost like a declaration of war against rabbinism, whose<br />
haggadic and halakic interpretation is designated "body," or substance by the rabbis<br />
themselves (Ab. iii. 28) and by the Zohar is as it were travestied, being a body without soul.<br />
Characteristic of the Zohar is the fact that it provides a general allegorization of the precepts<br />
of the Law which heretofore had been attempted only in scattered instances. The following is<br />
the characteristic elucidation of the passage in Ex. xxi. 7, concerning the Jewish woman sold<br />
as a slave:<br />
"When God, who in Ex. xv. 3 is called , the man, sells his daughter—that is, the holy soul—<br />
for a slave—that is, sends her into the material world—she shall not go out as the menservants<br />
do. God desires that when she leaves this world and her state of servitude in it, she<br />
should go from it free and pure, and not after the manner of slaves, laden with sin and<br />
transgression; in this manner only can she be reunited with her heavenly Father. If, however,<br />
'she please not her master,' so that she can not be united with him owing to impurity and<br />
sinfulness, 'then shall he let her be redeemed'; that is, man must do penance and liberate the<br />
soul from the punishments of hell, so that she shall not 'be sold unto a strange nation,' the<br />
evil angels."<br />
Next to the Zohar, mention must be made of the mystic allegorical commentaries of<br />
Menahem di Recanati, about 1320, the first writer to mention the Zohar; of the books<br />
"Peliah" and "ḳ;anah"—see ḳ;anah—probably of the fourteenth century, anti-rabbinical works<br />
in the form of a commentary on the <strong>Biblical</strong> account of Creation; and of the "Ẓioni," by<br />
Menahem b. Zion of Speyer, beginning of the fifteenth century. The allegorism of these works<br />
is entirely derived from the Zohar. Extensive use of cabalistic allegorism was likewise made<br />
by Solomon Ephraim Lenczyz (end of the sixteenth century), who applied it even to rabbinical<br />
precepts. This homiletic application of allegorism was quite favored by the Polish<br />
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