Hebrew Scriptures and More . . . .

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Fishbane has divided the inner biblical exegetical material into four categories:¹ scribal comments and corrections, legal exegesis, aggadic exegesis and mantological exegesis. In each of these four categories emendations of meaning/s of an earlier text has been modified, whether through correction, further clarification of an obscure point or even updating the potential application. Such alterations of the text imply a clear and provable diachronic grid.² Here is the first technical difficulty that is encountered. If the traditum that is considered is a portion of the so-called First Isaiah, then a comparison with a traditio in Second or Third Isaiah is straight forward. However when the dating of a Pentateuchal traditum is debated³ and it is being argued that a traditio in the book of Psalms has emended the meaning of the text, then the issue of textual chronology becomes center stage. Furthermore, inner biblical exegesis necessitates an untampered traditum that has not been altered by a redactor who made alterations after the traditio pericope.

The fourfold generic categories each have their own peculiarities in terms of their alterations. The scribal comments and corrections occurred when the scribes needed to clarify words and terms in the process of copying the traditum. These scribes even made emendations that dealt with “theological tone or legal consistency,”⁴ along with the establishing of orthographic forms and dealing with grammatical anomalies. They utilized both a marked and unmarked system. The unmarked inner biblical exegesis can be noted in the “repetition or redundancy that seem to be more than the product of accident or formal style.”⁵ These redundancies are further enhanced by words that give allusion to earlier texts, while deictic markers make clearer other alterations. Fishbane notes the use of markers such as “the formulaic use of pronouns like הוא or היא ‘it is’, demonstrative pronouns like זה ‘this (means)’, and even particles like את ‘namely’, to introduce them. Such deictic, or indicative, elements are part of a broad range of explicit exegetical terms found in biblical texts of various genres and periods.”⁶

The legal exegesis that expanded the traditum was necessary since the legal corpus lacked comprehensiveness and was not sufficiently explicit in necessary details.⁷ This fact led naturally to the exegetical tradition as Fishbane has put it succinctly, “the ambiguity of a legal traditum was ever a source of exegetical energy.”⁸ The traditio process is understood to have taken place within the legal copora itself along with the historical narratives and prophetic materials. In the legal copora the ambiguities were clarified in various ways. Often an או, כל, or כן־תעשה may be used to introduce an expansion to a legal text,⁹ while on other occasions no introductory formulae was used. An important theological motivation for legal exegesis is found in the fact that the legal material is understood as being part of a Sinaitic revelation to Moses. With this theological intent as a background Fishbane argues:

Accordingly, subsequent pronouncements by prophets and priests purport to transmit the words of Moses – even though analysis shows additions or changes; and later historians and legists also promote their understanding or revision of the Law as nothing but the old teachings of Moses. That is to say, the ongoing legal traditio was formulated as expressions of the formative traditum. The same is true for adjustments to the Sinaitic corpus itself. Here, too the words of tradition are valorized as the (written) Torah of Moses. It is only critical study that reveals this faithful traditio.¹⁰

Fishbane’s aggadic exegetical category is extremely broad, including biblical material with legal, cultic and moral themes. The literary genres that are involved are similarly exhaustive, “including epic narrative, historiography, oratory, liturgy and prophetic oracles and condemnations. . . .”¹¹ The crucial definition of this category is stated in the negative, i.e., that which is not scribal or legal exegesis and that which is not prophetic exegesis.¹² Since this aggadic exegesis tends not to use special introductory formulae,¹³ their identification is difficult. Fishbane identifies three important components:

. . . one may say that the movement from traditum to aggadic traditio involves both a shift to a new historical setting, such that a given traditum is aggadically revised by new teachers in new life-settings, and a shift to a new literary setting, such that an aggadic traditio is embodied in new literary milieux and, commonly, in new literary modes as well.¹⁴

Overall the aggadic inner-biblical exegesis indicates that a body of authoritative traditions have developed over time and are accessible for use by being cited. These tradents are then used specifically in real life settings differing from the original of the traditum. This rhetorically re-used traditum becomes the new traditum for a new generation.¹⁵

The final category is that of the mantological exegesis, which includes two basic generic types: dreams, visions, and omens – visual phenomena . . . and oracles – auditory phenomena. . . .”¹⁶ Both the visual and the auditory type necessitate an exegetical tradent, one in which the basic perspective is towards the future over against the legal and aggadic which tends to be in the present. A judgment oracle is a case-in-point in which a future occurrence is indicated. In terms of the development of a traditio the issues tend to be that of once again clarifying ambiguities that are evident in the traditum. These clarifications may be indicated by deictic particles making the innovations clear. By the very nature of these mantological traditum, a possible cognitive dissonance or consonance is a crucial issue in the traditio.

Although Fishbane’s categories have been criticized as being anachronistic by reading later rabbinic categories back into the redaction of the Hebrew Bible, the fact that these four categories overlap makes his parsing too elastic. However, the concept that an authoritative tradent has been re-interpreted by clarification, harmonization and/or out right alteration is a significant insight into the development of the text. When this basic principle is applied to a pluriform textual tradition, in which both internally within a given version/tradition or in the interplay between the versions, a significant analytical tool is evident. The problem is in proving definitive signs of inner-biblical exegesis rather than a generalized phenomenon like narratological assimilation in biblical and Ancient Near Eastern literature.¹⁷

1 Kugel has criticized Fishbane concerning these four classifications as being “rather arbitrary” and in fact a reading of post-biblical rabbinic understanding into the text. See Kugel, “The Bible’s Earliest Interpreters,” 274-6. However Fishbane’s, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 8, sees the post-biblical Jewish exegesis as a development from the tradition-historical development within the Bible itself. See Michael Fishbane, “The Hebrew Bible and Exegetical Tradition,” in Intertextuality in Ugarit and Israel. Oudtestamentisch Studiën, ed. Johannes C. De Moor (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998), 18.

2 See Eslinger, “Inner-Biblical Exegesis and Inner-Biblical Allusion: The Question of Category,” 51-52, 54. Eslinger argues that Fishbane’s intertextual connections tend to produce, “an assumed vector of influence.”

3 As Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book, 81, summarily notes, “scholars have dated Pentateuchal literature everywhere from the tenth century B.C.E. to the third century B.C.E.” Although Schniedewind is unwilling to accept a late date for the composition of the Pentateuch, exact dating is still problematic.

4 Fishbane, “Inner-Biblical Exegesis,” 35.

5 Fishbane, “Types of Biblical Intertextuality,” 40. See the full discussion On “repetitive resumption” or Wiederaufnahme in Fishbane’s, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 44-65. On pages 64, Fishbane summarizes: “Where scribal glosses cannot be apprehended on the basis of deictic elements, inner-biblical parallels, or text versions, one may still isolate exegetical interpolations through a cautious recognition of disruptive redundancies where these are also explanatory in nature.”

6 Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 44.

7 Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 231.

8 Fishbane, “Inner-Biblical Exegesis,” 39.

9 Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 170-87.

10 Fishbane, “Inner-Biblical Exegesis,” 39.

11 Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 408.

12 Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 281. The difficulty of this negative definition is further made problematic by the use of later rabbinic definitions such as that which is non-halakhic exegesis.

13 Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 284.

14 Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 408.

15 Fishbane, “Inner-Biblical Exegesis,” 46.

16 Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 443.

17 See Yair Zakovitch, “Assimilation in Biblical Narratives,” in Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism, ed. Jeffrey H. Tigay (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 176-96.

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