Hermeneutics: A Very Short Introduction by Jens Zimmermann

Author:Jens Zimmermann
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780199685356
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2015-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

Inspiration and Judaism

Ancient Jewish prophets were ‘filled by God’s Spirit’, when speaking for God, and traditionalists hold that the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah (or what English scholars call the Pentateuch, Greek for ‘five books’), were dictated word for word by God to Moses, while the remaining sacred writings were more generally inspired. In a broader sense, Torah can also refer to the entire biblical narrative or even the totality of Jewish teaching, culture, and practice. At the same time, this view of verbal inspiration did not blind interpreters to historical inaccuracies in the text, but these were regarded as challenges to the human understanding rather than evidence against the trustworthiness of divine revelation.

Nor did respect for divine inspiration automatically require literal reading. Biblical scholars often read passages allegorically when they seemed to contradict human reason. Jewish hermeneutics thus always contained elements that allowed for the broadening of conceptions of inspiration from strict verbal dictation to the more general notion that emerged with reform movements in Judaism during the 19th century. This modern view of inspiration still accords the biblical text special divine status, but also recognizes the human mediation of God’s revelation by acknowledging different authorial styles, composition of single texts from multiple source materials, internal contradictions, and anachronisms in the Bible.

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