Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/779

Rh HERMENEUTICS 743 styled &quot;Hagada&quot; (&quot;opinion,&quot; &quot;free exposition&quot;), was meant for edification, traversed the entire Old Testament, and occupied itself with the application of Scripture to the purposes of practical instruction in all manner of subjects, ethical, political, metaphysical, theosophic, as well as re ligious. Its expositions were conveyed in forms, symbolical, poetic, parabolic, such as were most likely to arrest atten tion, and, though of no binding authority, it made itself so attractive to the people that it was often known as &quot; the Midrash &quot; distinctively. The henueneutical laws followed in these two lines of exposition are sufficiently well known. Eliezer ben Jose, the Galilaean, a distinguished rabbi of the 2d century of our era, has embodied the results of a final redaction of the principles of the Hagadic exegesis in a series of thirty-two rules. Some of these are sound, dealing, e.g., with the use of brachylogy, repetition, parable, the reconciliation of two discrepant texts by a third, &c. Many of them are wholly fantastic, prescribing how explana tions are to be sought by reducing the letters of a word to their numerical value, by the transposition of letters, by the substitution of another word of the same numerical value for one which yields no worthy sense, by studying the introduction of superfluous particles, &c. Such prin ciples held a much smaller place in the Halachic exegesis, which, as it aimed at something higher than applications of Scripture, could indulge in fewer freedoms in certain directions, so far as it was true to its idea. In the fixing of the Halachic hermeneutics Hillel I. (died 8 or 10 A.D.) occupies a conspicuous place. He reduced the traditional legal erudition of the Jews, with its bewildering multiplicity of laws, from the 600 or 700 sections over which it is said previously to have spread, to six capital &quot;Sedarim&quot; or orders, forming a manageable basis on which his successors Akiba, Simon III., and Jehudah I. could work on to the final codi fication of the Mishna. He was also the first to formulate definite rules by which the rabbinical development of the law should proceed. These canons of interpretation were seven in number, afterwards increased by Rabbi Ismael to thirteen by the addition of seven new rules and the omission of the sixth, and looked to the construction of Biblical warrant for precepts which it was wished to prove implicit in the law. These &quot;Middoth&quot; were instructions to reason (1) a, minori ad majus, (2) ex analogia, (3) by derivation of a principal proposition from a single passage, (4) by derivation of a principal proposition from two passages, (5) by limitation of the general through the particular, (6) by explanation of one passage through another, (7) by the use of the context. The idea that the Old Testament, pre eminently the law, held hidden in it the highest wisdom on all subjects, was naturally inimical to the rights of the literal sense. The rabbinical hermeneutics drew inevitable distinctions between the proper or innate sense which again was described as either verbal figurative (-no), and the derivative or studied sense &quot;t^T; 1 )* which was to be sought either by inference or by artificial conjunction (TH). The natural sense, how ever, though practically robbed of its dues, was not pro fessedly ignored. This regard for it, which was never wholly disowned, ultimately took shape in the improved rabbinical hermeneutics of the Middle Ages. In the writings of such rabbis as Saadias Gaon, Jarchi, Rashi, Kimchi, Maimonides, Abarbanel (a line of expositors ex tending from the 10th to the 16th century), we find, along side the traditional rules and explanations, a scientific recognition of the interpreter s duty to give the literal sense as well as a practical application of the principles of grammatical and historical exegesis to the Old Testament. The hermeneutics developed among the Hellenistic Jews had marked characteristics of its own. These interpreters, departing from the exclusiveness of rabbinical devotion to or of native Jews, brought to the study of the sacred books a range of ideas derived from Hellenic culture. They had to devise a hermeneutical procedure which would harmonize their new ethnic learning with the traditional estimate of the Jewish Scriptures. To the theosophic Hellenist, and specially to the Alexandrian Jew, acceptance of the plain sense was often an impossibility. A reconciliation was sought by the use of allegorical interpretation. This method was also pursued by the Rabbinical exegetes. It is em braced in the Halachic hermeneutics, and is seen in the distinctions drawn by Palestinian Jews between the body and the soul of texts. But while the allegorical interpreta tion of native Jews, in consonance with their purer estimate of the Hebrew revelation, moved in the direction of the typical, that of the Hellenists became rather mystical. The corypheeus in this hermeneutical practice was Philo (born perhaps about 20 B.C.), although he .had predecessors in Aristobulus, pseudo-Josephus, and others. He devoted himself mainly to the exposition to the Pentateuch, with the view of explaining the realism and anthropomorphism of the Old Testament in a way to suit the philosophy of the time. Wishful to retain the Alexandrian Jew s regard for Moses as the supremely inspired prophet of God and the oracle of all mysteries along with adherence to the current Platonism and theosophy, he supposed that the Mosaic writings contained a twofold mode of teaching, a popular representation of God and divine things and a spiritual. It was the task of wisdom to penetrate through the envelope of the literal history to the secret sense which it shielded. The verbal sense was acknowledged, but held to be for the illiterate. The outstanding facts in the records of the creation, the deluge, the careers of the patriarchs and Moses, were accepted in an historic sense, but the details of all these narratives were spiritualized. Sometimes the figurative meaning was made the only meaning, but in other cases the objective meaning was allowed to be the intended meaning. The hermeneutical rule, however, was to rise by allegory from the superficial anthropomorphic sense (TO i/or^iKoj/) to the higher or spiritual sense (TO Tn/eu/ActTi/cov). The simple histories were symbols of abstract truths. To the enlightened they were so many modes of soul (rpo-n-oi i/n^x^s) Adam the figure of the sensuous nature, Rebecca of patience, Leah of despised virtue, Egypt an emblem of the body, and Canaan of piety. Two later chapters in the history of Jewish herme neutics deserve notice. On the one band the rabbinical procedure was decisively departed from by the Karaites, among whom Japhet ben Heli, of Bussorah, belonging to the close of the 10th century, and Aaron ben Joseph, of the 13th century, are notable. In their case interpretation again sought the via media between bald literalism and arbitrary spiritualizing. It was prosecuted on the principles of renouncing the quest after a variety of senses, abiding by the natural sense, accepting metaphor where the figura tive was intended, and conserving the religious interest. On the other hand an extraordinary development was given to the rabbinical hermeneutics by the Kabbalists of the Middle Ages, who used the devices of artificial interpreta tion in order to find an Old Testament basis for their mixed Neo-Platonist, Gnostic, and Sabaean culture. The Kabbala (&quot; what has been received,&quot; &quot; tradition,&quot; see KABBALA) had its roots in the ancient doctrine of numbers, for which the Jews were probably indebted to the Chaldseans. The use of the numerical power of letters as a key to mysteries, which the Palestinian Jews had early favoured and which formed a not inconsiderable element in the Hagadic exposi tion, expanded into a vast system of fantastic Hebrew Gnosticism in the 8th century of the Christian era. The written Word was regarded as a depository of secret doctrine
 * the Old Testament revelation, and from the pure Hebraism