A number of narratives in the Hebrew Bible deal with seemingly inappropriate behaviors
such as drunkenness and prostitution. These stories include, Noah's drunkenness after the
flood in Genesis 9:18-29, Lot's drinking of wine with his two daughters in Genesis 19:31-
38 and the narrative of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38:1-30. The unseemly aspects of
these stories are the more puzzling because the major protagonists are often characters
who are portrayed as models of righteous behavior. Noah, for example, is the only
character in the Bible who is referred to as a righteous ( צ××ק ) man (Genesis 6:9 and
Genesis 7:1). Yet, after he leaves the ark after the flood, his first action is to plant a
vineyard and to get drunk. The biblical narrative does not dwell on Noah's inappropriate
behavior. Similarly, in Genesis 19:31-38, the Bible describes the actions of Lot and his
two daughters after the destruction of Sodom. The two daughters make their father drunk
and commit incest with him so that they can conceive children. In this narrative, the act
of drunkenness is compounded by the sin of incest. Yet this provocative biblical narrative
is elliptical in style giving no judgment of their behavior. The story of Judah and Tamar
in Genesis 38:1-30 is also a puzzling moral narrative. Tamar intentionally deceives her
father-in law by impersonating a prostitute and Judah engages a woman who he considers
to be a prostitute. Moreover, he and his daughter-in-law commit what appears to be
incest. This seemingly inappropriate behavior on the part of royal ancestors creates an
intolerable tension within the narrative that calls upon the reader for meaningful
resolution.
These provocative and perplexing biblical narratives invite and even demand
interpretation. This study explores how ancient interpreters provided new meanings to
these ancient texts. Despite their varied cultural and historical backgrounds, this study
details how these interpreters shared common perceptions about the underlying
hermeneutic principles of biblical interpretation. These include the ideas that the Bible is
a cryptic document, that scripture is fundamentally a relevant text and that the Bible is
harmonious and divinely inspired. While the narrative features, themes and canonical contexts of these three biblical stories
guided early Jewish interpreters to some natural conclusions, this study shows how these
interpreters also made hermeneutic decisions at critical junctures in the biblical narrative
and sometimes reconfigured the story's plot and characters to correspond with their
understanding of its central message. Their elaborations and clarifications therefore
restricted and channeled the meaning of the biblical narrative in distinctive directions.
The study focuses on the literary and rhetorical strategies and received exegetical
traditions that influenced the interpreters' understandings of the narrative. The striking
differences between the treatments also stem from the very active nature of the
interpreters' engagement with the biblical narrative, which included reshaping the
narrative into forms capable of expressing the values and ideals of different types of
ancient Judaism.
The study also explores how ancient interpreters and particularly the authors of early
midrashic literature, established standards of rabbinic morality by reshaping and
developing the early biblical narrative. Their interpretations of the biblical narrative may
in fact offer an assessment of what the early Rabbis considered moral behavior. While
drunkenness is clearly denounced by the Rabbis, we find much more nuanced postures
about the evils of prostitution. The introduction of exegetical motifs such as the Messiah
and Godly intervention in their interpretations ensured that these somewhat puzzling
narratives were interjected with values and religious ideals with which their readers could
identify, thereby enabling scripture to retain its normative and vital function within these
living religious communities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-09252007-140853 |
| Date | 25 September 2007 |
| Creators | Kohn, Eli |
| Contributors | Prof Y Gitai, Prof PJ Nel |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-09252007-140853/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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