Levinas Faces Biblical Figures by Lin Yael; Meir Ephraim; Langenthal Edna

Author:Lin, Yael; Meir, Ephraim; Langenthal, Edna
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Contrary to the classical philosophical attitude, the Talmudic method is not one of abstraction, of generalization of a particular situation under a general principle, but one of concretion, one of returning to the singular event with the constant attention to its singularity. Particular cases are studied not in order to formulate a general principle, but in order to understand all the existential implications of the very situation studied. This attention to the particularity of human experiences and situations has a direct impact on the way the Talmud refers to the biblical text. The verse is never understood as an illustration, or even a proof in favor of a precise argument in the discussion, but is always an occasion to return to those concrete experiences the verse is describing. Categories of meaning are elaborated by means of returning to the biblical text. This method implies that verses never stands by themselves: they have always to be resituated to their original context in order to actualize the experience, the erlebnis, which the verses stand for. Whenever a verse is quoted in the Talmudic debate, one has to return to the textual source and study the whole context in which the verse appears. Stressing the anti-paulinian accents of the Talmudic approach, Levinas writes in his introduction to Four Talmudic Readings:

Never does the spirit dismiss the letter which reveals it. Quite the contrary, the spirit awakens new possibilities of suggestion in the letter. Talmudic thought casts light upon the symbols that undergird it, and this light brings their symbolizing power back to life. But, in addition, these symbols, which are realities and often concrete forms and people, are given meanings which they themselves have helped to create, are given an illumination bearing on their texture as objects, bearing on the biblical stories in which things and beings are intertwined. In this sense, the Talmud is a commentary on the Bible. There is an unceasing back and forth [. . .] The possibilities to signifying tied to a concrete object freed from its history—the resource of a method of thought we have called paradigmatic—are innumerable.[16]

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