Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/779

 EXEGESIS

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EXEGESIS

uous, full, learned, well-reasoned, and complete ex- planation, touching upon not merely the more diffi- cult passages, but everything that stands in need of elucidation. Hence the commentator must discuss all the variants, state and prove the genuine sense of the book he explains, add all the necessary personal, geographical, historical, ethnical information, and in- dicate the soiU"ces whence it is drawn, harmonize the single sentences with each other and with the scope of the entire book, consider its apparent contradictions, and explain the sense in which its quotations from the Old Testament must be understood. With a view of securing an orderly exposition, the author should premise the various historico-critical studies belonging to the whole book; he should divide and subdivide the book into its principal and subordinate parts, clearly stating the special subject of each; he should, finally, arrange the various opinions concerning disputed questions in a neatly distributed list, so as to lighten the work of the reader. What has been said suffi- ciently shows the qualities which a well-written com- mentary ought to possess; it must be faithful in pre- senting the genuine sense of Scripture; it must be clear, complete, and brief; and it ought to show the private work of the commentator by the light it throws on the more complicated questions. The commentaries which consist of mere lists of the patris- tic views on the successive texts of Scripture are called catenae (q. v.).

Perhaps the homily may be added to the foregoing methods of Biblical exposition. It is written in a popular way, and is of a practical tendency. It is not concerned with the subtile and more difficult questions of Scripture, but explains the words of a Biblical sec- tion in the oriler in which they occur. A more ele- vated kind of homily seizes the fundamental idea of a Scriptural section, and considers the rest in relation to it. The Church has always encouraged such homi- letic discourses, and the Fathers have left a great num- ber of them in their writings.

IV. History of Exegesis. — The history of exe- gesis shows its first beginnings, its growth, its decay, and its restoration. It points out the methods which may be safely recommended, and warns against tho.se which rather corrupt than explain the Sacred Scriptures. In general, we may distinguish between Jewish and Christian exegesis.

(1) Jewish Exegesis. — The Jewish interpretation of the Scriptures began almost at the time of Moses, as may be inferred from traces found both in the more recent canonical and the apocryphal books. But in their method of interpretation the Palestinian Jews differed from the Hellenistic.

(i) Palestinian Exegesis. — AU Jewish interpreters agree in admitting a double sense of Scripture, a literal and a mystical, though we must not understand these terms in their strictly technical sen.se.

(a) The literal exposition is mainly represented by the so-called Chaldee paraphra.ses or Targumim, which came into use after the Captivity, because few of the returning exiles understood the reading of the Sacred Books in their original Hebrew. The first place among the.se paraphrases must be given to the Targum Onkelos, which appears to have been in use as early as the first century after Christ, though it at- tained its present form only about a. d. 300-400. It explains the Pentateuch, adhering in its historical and legal parts to a Hebrew text which is. at times, nearer to the original of the Sejjtuagint than the Ma.ssorefic, but straying in the prophetic and piK'tical portions .so far from the original as to Umvc it hardly recognizable. — Another i>ara|)hra.se of the Pentateuch is the Tar- gum Pseudo-Jonathan, or the Jeru.salein Targum. Written after the seventh century of our era, it is vahie- less both from a critical and an exegetical point of view, since its explanations are wholly arbitrary. — The Tar- gum Jonathan, or the paraphrase of the Prophets, be-

gan to be written in the first century, at Jerusalem; but it owes its present form to the Jerusalem rabbis of the fourth century. The historical books are a fairly faithful translation from the original text; in the poetical portions and the later Prophets, the para- phrase often presents fiction rather than truth. — The paraphrase of the Hagiographa deals with the Book of Job, the Psalms, the Canticle of Canticles, Proverbs, Ruth, the Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, and Paralipomena. It was not written before the seventh century, and is so replete with rabbinic fiction that it hardly deserves the notice of the serious interpreter. The notes on Cant., Ruth, Lam., Eecles., and Esth. rest on public tradition; those on the other Hagio- grapha express the opinions of one or more private teachers; the paraphrase of Par. is the most recent and the least reliable.

(b) The method of arguing employed in the First Go.spel and the Epistle to the Hebrews shows that the Jews before the coming of Christ admitted a mystical sense of Scripture; the same may be inferred from the letter of Pseudo-^\risteas and the fragment of Aristo- bulus. The Gospel narrative, e. g.. Matt., xxiii, 16 sqq., testifies that the Pharisees endeavoured to derive their arbitrary traditions from the Law by way of the most extraordinary contortions of its real meaning. The mystic interpretation of Scripture practised by the Jewish scholars who lived after the time of Christ, may be reduced to the following systems.

(a) The Talmudists ascribed to every text several thousand! legitimate meanings belonging either to the Halakhah or the Haggadah. The Halakhah con- tained the legal inferences derived from the Jlosaic Law, all of which the Talmudists referred back to Moses himself; the Haggadah was the collection of all the material gathered by the Talmudists from history, archa-ologj', geography, grammar, and other extra- Scriptural sources, not excluding the most fictitious ones. In their commentaries, these writers distin- guished a twofold sense, the proper, or primitive, and the derivative. The former was sulidivided into the plain and the recondite sense; the latter, into logical deductions, and inferences based on the way in which the Hebrew words were written or on association of ideas. As to the hermeneutical rules followed by the Talmudists, they were reduced to seven by Hillel, to thirteen by Ismael, and to tliirty-two by R. Jose of Galilee. In substance, many of these principles do not differ from those prevalent in our day. The in- terpreter is to be guided by the relation of the genus to the species, of what is clear to what is obscure, of verbal and real parallelismstotheirrespectivecounter- parts, of the example to the exemplified, of what is logically coherent to what appears to be contradictory, of the scope of the writer to his literary production. The commentaries ivritten according to these princi- ples are called Midrashim (plural of Midrash); the following must be mentioned: Mekhilta (measure, rule, law) explains Ex., xii, 1-23, 30; xxxi, 12-17; XXXV, 1-4, antl is variously assigned to the second or third century, or even to more recent times; it gives the Halakhah of the ceremonial rites and laws, but contains also material belonging to the Haggadah. — Siphra explains the Book of Leviticus; Siphri, the Books of Numbers and Deuteronomy; Pesiqta, the Sabbatical sections. — Rabboth (plural of Rabba) is a series of Midrashim explaining the single books of the Pentateuch and the five Megilloth or the five Hagio- grapha which were read in the sjmagogues; the alle- gorical, anagogical, and moral sense is preferred to the literal, and the fables and sayings of the rabbis are highly valued. — Taiiehuma is the first continuous coinnic'ntary on the Pentateuch; it contains some valuable traditions, especially of Palestinian origin. — Yalqut Sinioni contains annotations on all the books of the Old Testament.

(/3) The Caraites are related to the Talmud-