Biblical Interpretation

The interpretation ( exégesis in Greek: “to carry out out of”) is a thorough and critical study of any text, particularly of Scriptures. A exégète is a person qualified for this type of work. Biblical interpretation applies this step to the text of the Bible.

Judaism

traditional or canonical interpretation

Traditional Jewish forms of interpretation are in the literature of the Midrash .

Judaism karaïte

The Karaïsme is a form of Judaism (today rather marginal) refusing the talmudic interpretation of the rabbinical Judaïsme, and having developed its own step. The karaïsme is pressed on three exegetic pillars in order to determine the halakha (religious laws and regulations):

The Miqra itself, i.e. the whole of the Mitzvot , positive and negative, that Moïse accepted on the the Sinai, and consigned in the Torah written, is the source of predilection. It has value of absolute standard and no law can be enacted which would contradict its apparent direction, the interpretation whose is left with the free appreciation of each one.

The Heqesh (Deduction), i.e. the Hermeneutics karaïte, similar to the Midrash halakha rabbanite, is used by the Posqim (décisionnaires) karaïtes to fix the Halakha (religious law) in the cases not described clearly in the Torah. These deductions can be linguistic or logical. Annan Ben David used the Thirteen principles of Rabbi Ishmaël, to which he recognized a logical but not revealed value.

The Sevel HaYerousha (Burden of the Heritage) is a whole of rules and habits for which there does not exist precise description in the Hebraic Bible, like the Brit mila or the Shehita . Transmitted orally from generation to generation, sometimes even supposed to go back to before the gift from the Torah with Brace (the Circoncision goes up according to the Bible with Abraham, and thus preexists to Moïse), these rules is observed, with the proviso of not contradicting the written Torah and of being the prolongation of this one (for example, the shehita is based on prohibition to consume blood). Often rather similar to the rites described in the Talmud, the karaïtes do not confer however on these traditions the statute of mitzvot of divine origin, contrary to the rabbanites.

Judaism rabbanite

Rabbinical commentators, are known like meforshim (“Hebrew commentators”). There exist several fields of orthodoxe Jewish interpretation:

the Targoum is a translation of the Paracha in araméen, justified by various comments. It was of everyday usage in the synagogs of Galileo at the first century. Nothing similar in the Judaism alexandrine, because the comment was integrated in the text.
the Midrash is a generic term indicating all the debates, comments, explanations, and occasionally research on the texts of the Hebraic Bible. In the generic direction, it is a literary kind, that of the account homelitic. He explains and comments on more than he does not seek sources. The paragraphs related to the law, make object of exposed like case of application.
the Halakha is a talk of the written law.
the Haggada comments on the accounts nonrelated to the law, and produces itself of new apologues.
the Mikra is the rational study of the Prophète S and the Hagiographie.
the Massora exclusively approaches textual criticism while being interested in syntax, the quality of the copy and the sources.
the Guemara , the second of the two large parts of the Talmud, contains the comment of the first great part, the Michna , or collection of the whole of the divine laws as listed by the rabbinical Judaïsme.

The Talmud, which gathers the Michna (laws) and the Guemara (comments exegetic) done itself the object of studies and analyzes, i.e. of interpretation. Jewish interpretation thus does not stop with the drafting of the Talmud, but continuous during the Moyen-âge and the Rebirth.

With dimensions of the fields of biblical interpretation exist methods of biblical Herméneutique. One distinguishes 4 methods of interpretation traditionally: Peshat (direction obviates, i.e. most obvious), Remez (allusion), Drash (indirect direction) and Sod (direction esoteric).

Scientific interpretation

The continuous practice of traditional interpretation or canonical Exégèse as above exposed should not give rise to think that the Judaism ignores the scientific interpretation . At the beginning of the 20th century, the scientists and enquiring Jewish invest the biblical Companies. Thus testifies some an opening speech to a general meeting of the " Society for Biblical Literature "

Les enquiring Jews made their presence real in the opinions and the businesses of the biblical company of literature. Rabbi Marcus Jastrow of Philadelphia became member in 1886 at the same time as Rabbi Gustav Gottheil and his son Richard J.H. Gottheil. Young G Gottheil was elected president in of 1902. Morris Jastrow, Jr. we joined in 1891. It would be impossible to design the Company without the eminent figures of max L. Margolis, Julian Morgenstern, Nelson Glueck, Ralph Marcus, Louis Finkelstein, Solomon Zeitlin, Harry Mr. Orlinsky, Jacob Neusner, or of H. Louis Ginsberg.

Christianity

Traditional interpretation

It is found in the Patristique and functions according to the method Scolastique.

The theologist Jésuite Henri de Lubac took again the bases of traditional interpretation by taking again the Four directions of the writing defined by Origène in the 3rd century.

See Re-examined Thomiste .

Historico-critical interpretation

It is of German origin and enracine in the middle of the 19th century. For more than 100 years, interpretation has developed in the Protestant universities German such as Tübingen and in the United States, in the Divinity School (Chicago, Harvard and Yale became famous). In the same way the universities of Geneva and Lausanne acquired an unquestionable notoriety.

It pursues the study critical of the biblical Textes, while returning to the source (Hebrew text in or Greek old). See the method detailed in

catholic interpretation

Catholic interpretation largely suffered from the modernistic Crise.

Among the catholic centers of the biblical interpretation, most remarkable is probably the French École biblical and archaeological of Jerusalem founded around 1873 with Marie-Joseph Lagrange o.p. with for main motivation “which one could not leave interpretation with the Protestants”. The Biblique school enjoys now a statute of research center and is partly financed by the State. As long as it was a religious organization, it had many difficulties because of modernistic Crise.

After one strictly repressive period materialized by the excommunication of Alfred Loisy, the refusal of funeral made to Georges Tyrell, the pope Leon XIII tried an opening with the Encyclique on the study of the biblical texts, Providentissimus Deus (1893).

In the modernistic context of Crisis, the biblical and archaeological school French of Jerusalem had to stop its activities around the New Testament and to be confined with the Ancien. This activity will take again after the Vatican II - with the Collegium Biblicum of Rome which functions in a more canonical way. Emile Poulat shows how much this organization quickly entrusted to the Jesuits, was used to fix quotas for the research of the biblical School in the framework of the traditional competition between the Dominican ones and the Jesuits and to put sticks in the wheels to them as the long fight of Lagrange shows it to publish its criticism of the assumption of Graf-Welhausen also said documentary assumption.

The work of François Laplanche, the Crisis of the origin , watch the difficulty which had the catholics to leave the apologetic one to dare to approach religious sciences. It was necessary to await the creation of the AFCEB, in 1967, so that work includes in a certain serenity for the catholic researchers. They resumed work where the Protestants had left it, not having been able to maintain of expertise, during the time which goes from the introduction of the anti-modernistic Serment and until the medium of the Concile Vatican II that in a field where they excel: that of the old languages whose Bollandistes became and remain experts.

During the Concile Vatican II, the Pontifical Biblical Commission made appear a instruction on the historical truth of the Gospels (April 21st 1964) which was greeted like a guide of work for the catholic exégètes.

In his work Jesus de Nazareth (Flammarion 2007), Joseph Ratzinger Benoît XVI states to prefer with historico-critical interpretation the canonical , or dogmatic Exégèse.

the laicization of the knowledge

Since the judgment of Loisy, in France, biblical interpretation passed to the hand of the laic universities such as the EPHE (practical School of the high studies, France) are implied in the biblical interpretation, the history of the constitution of the Seventy or the Hebraic Bible. The lines of rupture are not denominational any more.

Various phases of interpretation

Critical textual

The textual critical is a branch of the Philologie which examines the existing copies of the Manuscrit S of an ancient literary work or medieval to produce a text which is as narrowly as possible near to the original. The original is called the Autographe. It requires the competences affirmed in old languages, Paléographie and epigraphy.

Before the invention of the Printing works, literary works were copied with the hand. With each copy of a manuscript, errors could be introduced by the human Copiste. The difficulty in textual criticism comes from the difficulty of even distinguishing for each lesson (different reading) the alternative from original from the faulty one.

The task of the critic textual thus consists in indexing the alternatives and establishing a text criticizes such as it represents the original by as well as possible explaining the state of all the existing witnesses.

Critical textual of New Testament

For reasons of coherence inter-wiki, the methodology of textual Critique is described in an article with share. New Testament was transmitted in many manuscripts (approximately 5.000 Greeks and 10.000 Latin), more than any other ancient work. The enormous number of witnesses present of the single difficulties, mainly while returning the stemmatic impracticable one though data processing starts to offer solutions. Consequently, the textual critics of the New Testament adopted eclecticism after having restuck witnesses in three principal groups, the text-types.

the alexandrine text-type sets up a primitive group whose texts are well considered; among these texts, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaïticus .
the Western text-type is also very old, but its witnesses are more inclined with the Paraphrase and other corruptions.
the Byzantine text-type forms the great majority of the manuscripts, particularly after the 5th century.

After Westcott and Hort, the textual critics of the New Testament concluded that the Byzantine text-type late, is based on the Western Alexandrine and text-types. Among the other types, the Alexandrine is considered purer than the Westerner. Thus the practice of the textual criticism of New Testament must follow the reading of the texts alexandrines unless those of the Westerner are definitely higher.

The oldest papyrus, fragment of codex found with Oxyrhynque in Egypt, which comprises part of the text of the Gospel according to Jean, is the papyrus Ryland 457, year 125.

Critical of sources

According to the reasons for the account, the criticism of sources determines the various loans with Littérature S neighbors. It determines the medium of production of the text which is often that of the authors.

Critical of form ( Formgeschichte )

The criticism of form is a Untermethode criticisms method of the interpretation of Bible. The criticism of form examines the biblical text compared to its category of text.

For example, for a text with historical contents bringing into play two people, it looks at what say the Chronique S of the other people relating to the same event. For example, the Massacre of the innocent the is brought back by one of synoptic but not documented in the Roman chronicles which would not have supported such intrigues on behalf of one their subjects was he king, without bringing back the massacre and relieving the king to take the country in direct administration. One must thus carry another glance on this account and bring closer it to another massacre of children brought back in the Old Testament, that of the male newborns of wire of Israel by Pharaon (Exodus 1,16). One then includes/understands the glance related by the writer to the sovereign reigning in Syria - Palestine with the turning of the first century. It is also understood that the newborn that one wanted to reach by this supposed massacre must be regarded as new a Moïse.

Narrative interpretation or rhetoric

She considers the text in her structure rhetoric such as he reached us and releases the tension fields from them. In the best of the cases, one leads to scouring readings where aware is become that the important moment of the text is not that which one imagines it. This work requires a good knowledge of the old literatures.

personalities of exegetic research

Paul Beauchamp, Jean Bottéro, Günther Bornkamm, Raymond E. Brown, Rudolf Bultmann, Charles-Harold Dodd, Eugen Drewermann, Maurice Goguel, Pierre Geoltrain, Johann Jakob Griesbach, Marie-Joseph Lagrange, Daniel Marguerat, John P. Meier, Charles Perrot, Jacques Schlosser, Etienne Trocmé.

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