Biblical Hermeneutics

PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL HERMENETICS ; M. M. NINAN
"darshanim," or preachers,the best examples being afforded by the often highly ingenious
allegorizations of Jonathan Eibeschütz in his homilies, "Ya'arat Debash" (Honeycopse). When
cabalism became incorporated in Ḥasidism, Allegorical Interpretation received a new impulse,
the effects of which are still felt. The following allegorization of the passage concerning the
two wives (Deut. xxi. 15) is from a work entitled "Ezor Eliyahu" (Elijah's Girdle), published at
Warsaw, 1885: "When man's two inclinations [ , "rulers," for , "wives"], the spiritual
and the material, the one which a man readily obeys and the one to which he is not so
obedient, both produce actual deeds, then only the offspring of the spiritual prompting—the
one less beloved—shall be considered as the real 'first-born,' the meritorious one."
Isaac Arama.
It was owing to mystic influence that, toward the end of the fifteenth century, philosophical
allegorization, which had so long lain dormant as under a ban, once more raised its head in
association with derush (exposition of Scripture). Quite the ablest of these allegorizing
preachers was Isaac Arama, who, basing his attitude upon the above-mentioned declaration
of the Zohar, strenuously maintained not only the propriety, but the necessity of Allegorical
Interpretation ("Ḥazut ḳashah," x.), without, however, detracting in the least from the
authority of the literal word. Exactly in the words of Philo, but probably quite independent of
him (compare Paul's allegory of the same Biblical narrative), "Sarah, the mistress, is the
Torah; her handmaiden, Hagar, is Philosophy. The fruitfulness of Sarah [the Torah] followed
only when the Egyptian handmaiden—that is, heathen Philosophy—had for centuries usurped
the position of mistress. It was then that the real mistress, the Torah, resumed her sway, and
Philosophy became her handmaid. But the latter sought to flee from her rule into the
wilderness, where the angels found her at the well. Thus Philosophy essayed to separate
herself from Revelation, and presumed to water the desert of mankind with mere human
wisdom, water from her well; but the angels taught her that it were better for her to be a
servant in Sarah's house [the Torah] than a mistress in the desert." Arama's deduction that
philosophy is the handmaid of theology is thus exactly the opposite of the view of Maimonides
and his successors.
Next to Arama, mention may be made of Judah Moscato, the first darshan in Italy in the
sixteenth century to make extensive use of allegorism. In the Biblical prescription for the
Nazarite, he perceives the intimation that man must renounce the world and its enjoyments,
until his hair, typifying his connection with the spiritual, has grown to such extent that he can
enjoy the world without danger ("Nefuẓot Yehudah," hom. 15). In connection with this
mention may be made of Don Isaac Abravanel, whose allegorism closely resembles that of
the darshanim. He, too, takes his stand upon the Zohar's justification of allegorism and its
distinction of garment, body, and soul in the Torah. Being an admirer of both Maimonides and
the Cabala it is not seldom that he gives to a Biblical passage two interpretations, one
philosophical and one cabalistic. Thus Adam is the type of Israel, the true man, into whom
God breathed His spirit, the holy law. He placed him in Paradise, the Holy Land, where were
the tree of life (the teachings of the Law and prophecy) and also the tree of knowledge
(heathenism). And thereupon a philosophical interpretation follows, based principally upon
Maimonides and Gersonides ("Commentary on Gen." iii. 22, ed. Amsterdam, 34b).
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