Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/780

 EXEGESIS

702

EXEGESIS

ists, as the Sadducees were related to the Pharisees. They rejected the Talmudic traditions, just as the Sadducees refused to acknowledge the authority of the Pharisaic teaching (of. Joseph., Ant., XVIII, x, 6). The Caraites derive their origin from Anan, born about A. D. 700, who founded this sect out of spite, because he had not obtained the headship of the Jews outside Palestine. From Bagdad, the place of its birth, the sect soon spread into Palestine and especially into the Crimea, so that about a. d. 750 it occasioned what is practically a schism among the Jews. The Caraites reject all tradition, and admit only the Mosaic Law. By means of Ismael's thirteen hermencutical rules, they establish the literal sense of Scripture, and this they supplement by means of the syllogism and the consensus of the Synagogue. Owing to their rejection of authentic interpretation and their claim of private judgment, they have been called by some writers " Jewish Protestants ".

(ii) Hellenistic Exegesis. — Generally speaking, the Alexandrian Jews were favourable to the allegorical explanation of Scripture, thus endeavouring to har- monize the inspired records with the principles of Greek philosophy. Eusebius has preserved specimens of this Hellenistic exegesis in the fragments of Aris- tobulus (Hist. Eccles., VII, xxxii; Pra-par. evang., VIII, x) and in the letter of Pseudo-Aristeas (Prsepar. evang., VIII, ix), both of whom wrote in the second century B. c. Philo attests that the Essenes adhered to the same exegetical principles (De vit. contempl., x); but Philo (died A. D. 39) himself is the principal representative of this manner of interpretation. Ac- cording to Philo, Abraham symbolizes virtue acquired by doctrine; Isaac, inborn virtue; Jacob, virtue ac- quired by practice and meditation; Egypt denotes the body; Chanaan, piety; the dove, Divine wisdom, etc. (De Abraham, ii).

The Cabbalists exceeded the preceding interpreters in their allegorical explanation of Scripture. Traces of their system are found in the last pre-Christian centu- ries, but its full development did not take place till the end of the first millennium of the Christian Era. In accordance with (heir name, from a word meaning "to receive", the Cabbahsts claimed to possess a secret doctrine received by way of tradition from Moses, to whom it had been revealed on Mount Sinai. They maintained that all earthly things had their heavenly prototypes or ideals; they believed that the literal sense of Scripture included the allegorical sense, as the body includes the soul, though only the initiated could reach tliis veiled meaning. Tlu-ee methoils helped to attain it: Gematria takes the numerical value of all the letters which make up a word or an expression and derives the hidtlen meaning from the resultant num- ber; Notaricon forms new entire words out of the single letters of a word, or it forms a word out of the initial letters of the several words of a phrase ; Temura consists in the transposition of the letters which make up a word, or in the systematic substitution of other letters. Thus they transpose the consonants of mal'akhi (my angel; Ex., xxiii, 23) into Mikha'el (Michael). There is a twofold system of substitution: the first, Athbash, substitutes the last letter of the alphabet for the first, the second last for the second, etc.; the second system substitutes the letters of the second half of the alphabet for the corresponding let- ters of the first half. The Cabbalistic doctrine has been gathered in two principal books, one of which is called " Yevirah", the other "Zohar".-

We may add the names of the more prominent Jew- ish commentators: Saadya Gaon (b. S'.t2; d. 942), in the Fayiiin, l^gypt, trarislated the whole of the Old Testament itilo Arabic and wrote comment arie.-i on the same.- -Moses ben Samuel ihn Chiqitilla, of Cordova, explained the whole of the Old Testament in .\rabic, between a. I). lO.'iO and 1080; only fragments of his work remain. — Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac, kno^vn also

under the names Rashi and Yarchi (b. about 1040, at Troyes; d. 1105), explained the whole of the Old Testa- ment, except Par. and Esd., according to its literal sense, though he did not neglect the allegorical; he shows an anti-Christian tendency. — Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra, often called Aben Ezra (b. about 1093 at Toledo, Spain; d. 1167 on the Island of Rhodes). Among his many other works he left an incomplete commentary on the Pentateuch and other parts of the Old Testament; he renders the literal sense faithfuUj without excluding the allegorical, e. g. in Cant. — Rabbi David Kimchi, called also Radak (b. 1170 at Narbonne; d. 1230), explained nearly all the books of the Old Testament in the literal sense, without exclud- ing the spiritual; his anti-Christian feeling shows itself in his treatment of the Messianic prophecies. — Rabbi Moyses ben Maimon, commonly called Maimonides or Rambam (b. 1135 at Cordova, Spain; d. 1204 in Egypt), became a convert to Mohammedanism in order to escape persecution, then fied to Egypt, where he lived as a Jew, and where, for the guidance of those who could not harmonize their philosophical principles with the teaching of Sacred Scripture, he wrote his celebrated " Guitle of the Perplexed ", a work in which he presents some of the Biblical stories asmere literary expressions of certain ideas. — Rabbi Isaac Abarbanel (d. 150S), explained the Pentateuch, the prophetical books, and Daniel, adding often irrelevant matter and arguments against Christian revelation. — Rabbi Elias Levita (d. after 1542), is known as one of the best Jewish grammarians, and as the author of the work "Tradition of Tradition", in which he gives the his- tory of Massoretic criticism. — Among the Caraite in- terpreters we must mention: Rabbi Jacob ben Ruben (twelfth century), who wrote brief scholia on all the books of Scripture; Rabbi Aaron ben Joseph (d. 1294), author of a hteral commentary on the Pentateuch, the earlier Prophets, Isaias, the Psalms, and the Book of Job; Rabbi Aaron ben Elia (fourteenth century), who explained the Pentateuch. — Among the Cabbal- ists, Rabbi Moyses Nachmanides, also known as Ram- ban (d. about 1280), deserves mention on account of his explanation of the Pentateuch, which is several times quoted by Paul of Burgos. — The principal Jew- ish commentaries have been reprinted in the so-called Rabbinic Bibles which appeared at Venice, 1517; Venice, 1525, 1548, 1568, 1617; Basle, 1618; Amster- dam, 1724.

(2) Christian Exegesis. — For the sake of clearness we may distinguish three great periods in Christian exegesis: the first ends about A. d. 604; the second brings us up to the Council of Trent; the third em- braces the time after the Council of Trent.

(i) The Patristic Period. — The patristic period em- braces three distinct classes of exegetes, the Apostolic and apologetieal writers, the Greek Fathers, the Latin Fathers. The amount of exegetical literature pro- duced by these three classes varies greatly; but its character is so distinctively proper to each of the three classes that we can hardly consider them under the same heading.

(a) The .\postolic Fathers and Apologists. — The early Christians made use of the Scriptures in their religious meetings as the Jews employed them in the synagogues, adding however the writings of the New Testament more or less completely to those of the Old. The Apostolic Fathers did not write any professional commentaries; their use of Scripture was incidental and casual rather than technical; l)ut their citations and allusions show unmistakably their acceptance of some of the New-Testament writings. Neither do we find among the apologists' writings of the second cen- tury any professional treatises on Sacred Scripture. St. Justin and St. Irenaeus are noted for their able defence of Christianity, and their arguments arc often based on texts of Scripture. St. Ilippolytus appears to have been the first Christian theologian who at-