Reading the Book: Making the Bible a Timeless

255 Pages·1996·10.461 MB·English

by  Burton L. Visotzky

- -
--.
- - -
...
~
--'-"-
READING
THE
BOOK
Making the Bible a Timeless Text
L.
BURTON VISOTZKY
With a new foreword
by the author
SCHOCKEN BOOKS NEW YORK
READING
THE BOOK
Copyright © 1991, 1996 by Burton L. Visotzky
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by
Schocken Books Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada
by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.-Distributed
by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Originally published by Anchor Books, Doubleday, a division
of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.,
New York, in 1991.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Visotzky, Burton L.
Reading the Book: making the Bible a timeless text I Burton
L. Visotzky.
p. em.
With a new foreword by the author.
ISBN 0-8052-1072-5 (pbk.)
1. Bible. O. T. Genesis-Criticism, interpretation, etc.,
Jewish. 2. Midrash-History and criticism. I. Title.
BS1235.2.V58 1996 96-17783
220.6'l---dc20 CIP
Prin\td in the United States of America
First Schocken Edition
987654321
CONTENTS
Foreword vii
ONE "Princess Di Delivers Two-headed
Monster": Scripture and its
In terpretation
TWO God Dictates, Moses Composes 21
THREE Rabbis as Readers 40
FOUR Father Abraham, Teacher of Faith 57
FIVE Binding Isaac 76
SIX Jacob and Sons 100
SEVEN Joseph's Bones 121
EIGHT Dying 141
NINE Siblings 160
TEN Adam and Eve Back Together Again 183
ELEVEN The Architecture of the Universe 204
TWELVE Reading the Book 225
FOREWORD
When Umberto Eco wrote The Name of the Rose, he
called his work "a palimpsest." That is, a text written over
another text. I can think of no keener designation for
midrash, which is written-if we may imagine a heavenly
copy of the Torah (Written and Oral)-between the lines
of the written text, betwixt each word, around each letter,
interwoven with the calligraphic adornments, dotting the
vowel signs, over the still faintly visible letters of the earlier
words inscribed on the parchment so many centuries ago.
As the Rabbis of old would have it, the words of midrash
were given to Moses as God dictated the Torah at Mount
Sinai, the echo of every divine utterance resounding gener
ations into the future, keeping the Revelation ever in the
present.
This book is a rabbi's romp through the art of his ancient
forebears, an introduction to midrash. By midrash I refer to
a specific process of reading Scripture and the literature
which that reading yields. Ancient, classical, rabbinic midrash
was an attempt by the Rabbis of the first few centuries
of the Common Era to reread the Bible in their own image.
They read the text assuming it spoke to them, in their
FOREWORD •••••••••••••••••••••••••• Vlll
own era. The anthologies of these imaginative readings of
Scripture span more than a millennium and are collectively
called midrash. The Rabbis of old were fond of analogies,
puns, king parables and anachronisms. In this book, I too de
light in viewing the biblical text from odd angles, and in
doing midrash on the ancient midrash itself until it speaks to
us in a late-twentieth-century voice.
Others besides us midrash scholars have hearkened to the
voice of the ancient Rabbis. Midrashic method has captured
the fancy of literary critics, particularly the postmodernists
those obfuscating deconstructionists whom Professor Susan
Handelman calls "slayers of Moses." Searching through the
rubble of the past for a usable history to buttress their read
ing strategies, they have happily settled on midrash as a
suitable ancestor, an ancient reading method that foretells
their own contortions of the text. So midrash has been
rediscovered and brought out to charm the literati, despite
the fact that the most basic of reading assumptions, the very
hermeneutic foundations on which the two disciplines rest,
diverge a sharp 180 degrees one from the other.
For the deconstructionist, the text has no meaning but
that which the critic imputes to it. The process of agonizing
over the words is what forces them to yield meaning. The
critic is all, while the author vanishes well below the literary
horizon. Not so with midrash. For the Rabbis of old, the
Author's intent was everything; it imbued the text with
layers of richness beyond imagination. What was dictated by
God at Sinai was all meaning, merely waiting for the critic
to uncover it centuries hence. Like that of a diamond cutter,
the job of the midrashist was to expose yet one more facet
of the endless faces of Torah. Within the gem of Scripture
still burned the fires and lightnings of the Revelation
ix
•.•••••••••••••••••.••.••• FOREWORD
at Sinai. Midrash gives us a glimpse, a new glance at the
illumination, at the brilliance lying within.
Yet, to be fair, the ancient midrashist brought contempo
rary tools to the text, much as does the postmodern decon
structionist. Whether those tools are the hermeneutics of
the Alexandrian hellenists or the strategies of the American
university, midrash decodes the divine Document for its
own time, in its own day, as though the Words of God were
always waiting to be heard. Like a whisper uttered long ago,
it reaches the ear of a listener and brings clarity to his or her
countenance.
The "her" of the last sentence is another recent addition
to the norm of midrashic reading. In the good old days, the
good 01' boys read midrash and Scripture in a rather exclu
sive club (no women, thank you). Today, millennia later, some
of the most insightful midrash is being created through the
happy vehicle of feminist readings of the Bible. My colleague
and neighbor Professor Phyllis Trible, a Baptist, a feminist and
a formidable reader of Scripture, has produced and inspired
some of the profoundest midrash in this century. An entire
generation of midrashists follows in her wake.
There are yet other means of making the Bible a timeless
text. So~e years ago, upon my return from a sabbatical year
in Oxbridge, my interest in the midrashic process was suffi
ciently piqued that I undertook a long-running experiment.
I had thought that if I gathered together a group of Bible
scholars to read with a group of creative readers and writers,
I might gain a clue as to how the Rabbis of old read Scrip
ture. At my home institution, the Jewish Theological Semi
nary of America in New York City, I convened the Genesis
Seminar with the goal of learning how midrash was
achieved.
FOREWORD. . . . . . •••••••• . ••. ••.• •••• X
The seminar, which I describe briefly in Chapter Twelve,
met monthly for five years, during which time we read our
way through the fifty chapters of the Book of Genesis. Not
a little midrash was created during those sessions in which
screenwriters, poets, novelists, editors and essayists argued
and discussed Scripture with Bible scholars, ministers and
rabbis. We created modern midrash, a rereading of the Bible
as it spoke to our twentieth-century consciousness. What
was, perhaps, unusual about this midrash was that it came
from such a mixed group: men and women, scoffers and
believers, Jews, Christians and neither of the above (one
Hindu Brahmin and one Zoroastrian were among us). What
we shared was a commitment to the text, even though not
all of us held it to be sacred or canonical. We also learned
how to read the rough-and-tumble contextual meaning of
Genesis, to recapture its "literal" meaning, and then start the
midrashic process anew.
Throughout the half decade we spent reading together,
the writers of the Genesis Seminar repeatedly asked me
to teach them classical rabbinic midrash. I resisted doing so
in our study groups because I was more interested in what
they had to say about Genesis than in what my Rabbis of
old had already said. But in my last year with the seminar,
I began writing this book. I felt that I should give them
ancient midrash-not only my writers' group but as broad
an audience as possible. The Rabbis of old had lots of
entertaining, creative and thought-provoking insights into
the Scriptural text. They also had a unique way of reading,
one which I thought worth introducing to a wide popular
readership.
Having finished the Book of Genesis with my Genesis
Seminar, I announced to the group of writers that it was
xi .......................... FOREWORD
time to move on, to close up shop. In the end, I moved
on and they continue to study. I believe they are now read
ing the biblical books of Samuel. It pleases me very much
that my study group has endured. I am equally pleased that
Reading the Book has endured. I hope that through it readers
will find their way to Bible or midrash study beyond these
pages.
When I moved on, it was to continue the study of
Genesis, but with different company. For the last four years
I have read Genesis with two different groupings, each
of which has given me insight and community in very
satisfYing ways. For the first, I formed a group much like
my Genesis Seminar but consisting of CEOs, bankers and
lawyers. This group met for two years at Kekst and Com
pany on Madison Avenue, and then, somewhat reconsti
tuted, in the boardroom of the Milstein Properties Offices in
midtown Manhattan. The writers' seminar and the CEO
seminar differed radically from each other. Indeed, although
both groups were reading Genesis and the words remained
the same, I sometimes wondered if each were not reading a
different book after all.
Writers and CEOs simply view the world differently. Of
course, this comes as no news, but it effectively illuminated
for me an old saw about how a reading environment affects
one's understanding of a book. Indeed, I find that virtually
every time I reread Genesis I read it as a new book-for
I have changed from year to year. This held true as well in
my second reading venue, a television series that I had the
good fortune of filming with Bill Moyers for PBS. I enjoyed
immensely the many hours I spent with Bill and Company
wrestling over the words of Genesis. Once again, it seemed
a new book. Once again, we formed a close community