Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash by Daniel Boyarin

Author:Daniel Boyarin [Boyarin, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Biblical Criticism & Interpretation, Old Testament
ISBN: 9780253114617
Google: dFme_Fl3JX4C
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 1994-08-21T16:00:00+00:00

Patterson seems then to be confuted by this text in his claim that ambiguity is located only in the reader's work. This ambiguity can, it appears, be located in the text. However, it could be argued as well that my analysis confirms Patterson's theoretical point, since each of the readings in the Mekilta denies ambiguity. Put in other words, I believe that Patterson is arguing that since "for some readers no text is ambiguous," this puts into question the very idea of a textual ambiguity as such, placing my (perhaps by now, our) perception of ambiguity on precisely the same epistemological level as those readings which foreclose that ambiguity. I think that I can counter that argument in two ways. First of all, the energy which the tannaim must expend in order to read the text, the penetration and boldness of the

hermeneutic moves required to rationalize the ambiguity, serve not to hide or deny that ambiguity but rather to dialectically reveal it. Thus Geoffrey Hartman has argued that "the heterogeneity of poem or original text by no means disappears in the older hermeneutics, but it appears only by way of the daring interpretation that is startling and even liberating in its very drive for harmony."45 Each of the tannaitic interpretations, in order to drive toward a harmonious understanding of the nature of Israel in this time, is forced to distort the local meanings of certain passages. The strength of these harmonistic readings is placed into relief by contrast to the weak harmonistic way in which later midrash deals with these contradictions. The later tradition almost invariably assigns the positive indices within the Torah to the "true Israel" and the negative ones to the ''mixed multitude." The refusal of the Mekilta to adopt this reading is a strong affirmation of the complexity and polyphony of the Torah.46 Thus R. Yehoshua, usually presented in the Mekilta as a proponent of ''plain" reading, here presents several very daring interpretations in his desire to understand the story in the light of the "honeymoon" tradition of Israel and God at this period, while R. El'azar works to emphasize the evil of their ways, e.g., by turning their murmuring against Moses into a fullscale blasphemy against God. Each of these interpretations, by

the very distortion necessary for its maintenance, forces us to recognize the ambiguity encoded in the narrative. Sternberg has remarked on the function of such ambiguities in the Bible:

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