When we seek to interpret any passage of Scripture, we must always remember that for the devout and scholarly Jew, and especially for the rabbis, scripture had more than one meaning; and, it is true to say, that the literal meaning was often regarded as the least important. For the Jewish rabbis of Jesus' day any passage of scripture had four meanings:
1. PESHAT, which was the simple or literal meaning.
2. REMAZ, which is the suggested meaning.
3. DERUSH, which is the meaning evolved and deduced by investigation.
4. SOD, which was the allegorical meaning.
The first letters of these four words -- P R D S - are the consonants of the word "Paradise." When a rabbi had succeeded in penetrating into these four different meanings he reached the joy of paradise! It therefore often happened that the rabbis would take a simple bit of historical narrative form the Old Testament and would read into it inner meanings, which often appear to us fantastic, but which were very convincing to the people of their day.
Furthermore, Jesus spoke Aramaic which was the common spoken language throughout the Middle East. Like its sister languages Hebrew and Arabic, Aramaic can express at least three layers of meaning:
1. INTELLECTUAL - the face value of the words in question. The "literal" meaning in modern terms.
2. METAPHORICAL - how the story presents a metaphor for our lives or the life of a community. Here we must awaken our poetic sensibility
3. UNIVERSAL - the universal truth of the text; the wordless experience to which the text points
To a Middle Eastern teacher like Jesus, none of these viewpoints excludes the others. We should consider all the possible meanings of key sacred phrases and prayers and let them work inside. The tragedy of biblical translation and interpretation has been that teachings which were meant to resonate on many different levels of meaning have been whittled down or restricted when this is completely foreign to the rabbis and wisdom teachers of Jesus day.
Hmmm...makes you think, doesn't it?
7 comments:
As a onetime past victim of spiritual violence, this is a welcome post to read. I just wish the fundamentalist perpetrator of the aforementioned spiritual abuse would have followed these guidelines. It would have saved me alot of grief. i really enjoy your blog. It's been a huge blessing, especially in my town where there is no welcoming Christian denomination. Thanks for the work you do. I'm truly grateful for it.
Actually those four levels of meaning are simlar to Christian interpretation in the medieval and early church, the literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical meanings. Typology is another type of interpretation too
The main diffference is that for Christians the Word is Jesus and all of the scriptures referrred and deferred to him, whereas for the rabbis the Word is Torah, from which all the rest of scripture and commentary elaborates and explores
Lutherans also believe that all Scripture is to be interpreted in light of Jesus. Everything is understood through this interpretive lens. However, that doesn't mean that a text has a single fixed meaning. We sometimes forget that Jesus spoke Aramaic and all Aramaic wisdom teaching contained many multiple levels of meaning just like the Jewish rabbis. I think I mentioned this in "Interpreting Scripture, Part 1"
Oh no, I wasn't advocating for a single fixed meaning or even arguing that early and medieval Christian interpretation expected a single fixed meaning. They didn't but of course the focus is different and probably more narrrow for Christian than Jew. Bu my main intent was to show how Christiaintiy had it's parallel multiple levels of meaning just as Judaism.
I'll have to read part 1 because I'm not certain what you mean by Aramaic Wisdom as opposed to general Jewish Wisdom traditions, be they Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek.
Look at me new post of Aramaic. It was a bit long to place on the comments section. Hope that clarifies things for you and I appreciate your reply back. I think we're on the same page here.
I hope that you are told often enough what blessings both this blog and your persistent, non-rancorous, faithful witness are. Since I've never done that, I thought I should.
Thank you Frank for the kinds words. It's a good reminder to me that people are reading my blog and it does make a difference out there to someone. Blessings! David
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