interpreting the Word

[Dave Monroe]

Was quite interested in this article myself (see link
below).  A few titles that come to mind that might be
of interest ...

Boyarin, Daniel.  Intertextuality and the Reading
   of Midrash.  Bllomington: Indiana UP, 1990.

Faur, Jose.  Golden Doves With Silver Dots:
   Semiotics and Textuality in Rabbinic Tradition.
   Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986.

Handelman, Susan A.  The Slayers of Moses: The
   Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern
   Literary Theory.  Albany: SUNY Press, 1983.

__________.  Fragments of Redemption: Jewish
   Thought and Literary Theory in Benjamin, Scholem
   and Levinas.  Bloomingon: Indiana UP, 1991.

Hartman, Geoffrey H. and Sanford Budick, eds.
   Midrash and Literature.  New Haven, CN:
   Yale UP, 1986.

See also various essays by the above (as well as
Jonathan Boyarin) in various back issues of, as I
recall, Representations, Critical Inquiry and Poetics
Today, and I'm sure there's more, but I haven't kept
up, so ...






--- Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>
wrote:
> 
> "What did the Israelites hear at Mount Sinai?
> According to one 
> rabbinic commentator, they were so overwhelmed by
> the divine voice 
> that they could hear only the first two of the Ten
> Commandments. 
> Another said they couldn't withstand even that much.
> All they could 
> hear was the first letter of the First Commandment:
> the aleph. But 
> the 20th-century historian of Jewish mysticism,
> Gershom Scholem, went 
> a step further. He pointed out that an aleph is not
> really a sound at 
> all. It is a mere opening of the throat. It is not
> actual speech; it 
> is potential speech. And that means that the
> revelation is itself 
> inchoate; everything else is an interpretation, a
> human creation. 
> This is a suggestive but mischievous idea. It means
> that everything 
> canonical in Judaism, every religious law, every
> divine prophecy, is 
> open to modification because it has human origins.
> This is not, of 
> course, what devout believers think. But because
> there is no central 
> religious authority in Judaism and because the
> religion is based on 
> sacred texts, Judaism is marked by constant debate
> over textual 
> interpretation. The canonical texts of Judaism,
> particularly the 
> Talmud, are themselves chronicles of interpretive
> argument.  .... 
> the canon lives by mutation and adaptation: every
> boundary, every 
> category, every rule requires interpretation. The
> canon becomes the 
> central authority not because it is the source of
> all answers, but 
> because it is the source of all questions. The canon
> shapes the 
> world; it does not determine it.
> 
> from:
> February 24, 2001
> Critic's Notebook: A Jewish Canon, Yes, But Not Set
> in Stone
> By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
> http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/24/arts/24CANO.html
> 
> .... an article in today's NY Times asks questions
> familiar to many 
> Pynchon readers.
> -- 
> d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n 
<http://www.online-journalist.com>


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