Subject: Intro to the Biblical Narrative
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From: JUICE Administration <juice@virtual.co.il>
Subject: JUICE Biblical Narrative 1/12
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World Zionist Organization
Student and Academics Department
Jewish University in CyberspacE
juice@wzo.org.il birnbaum@wzo.org.il
http://www.wzo.org.il
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Course: Literary and Artistic Aspects of the Biblical Narrative
Lecture: 1/12
Lecturer: Yoel Duman
Introduction:
Biblical stories have served as a source of religious edification, for Jews
and non-Jews alike, for over 2000 years. These stories have been
appreciated and revered for their moral content and uplifting lessons and
have been studied and illuminated by great scholars, who have examined their
minute details, in search of implied meanings and messages.
Traditional Jewish commentators developed four major modes for understanding
the Biblical narrative. These modes are referred to by the Hebrew acronym
PaRDeSs (orchard):
P for Pshat, the literal meaning
R for Remez, the allegorical meaning
D for Derash, homiletic interpolation
S for Sod, the mystical aspect.
Of these modes, the literal and homiletic readings were most widely known
and beloved, while Remez and Sod were mainly the province of adepts.
Thus Jewish tradition, which greatly influenced both Christian and Moslem
interpreters of the Biblical stories, recognized a multiplicity of meanings
in these narratives. Moreover, we find in all the modes of interpretation a
marked tendency toward personalization of these stories, unencumbered by the
constraint of adhering to the "original" intent of the Biblical material.
Traditional Jewish interpretation saw no gap in belief or culture between
itself and the Bible, and was therefore unconcerned about the possibility of
misinterpretation based on cultural or historical distance from the source.
Modern Biblical scholarship, which proceeded on the basis of a very
different set of assumptions, attempted to analyze the Biblical narrative
objectively. Christian German scholars of the late 19th century, following
earlier hints, sought to isolate and identify separate narrative sources,
which originated in various times and places in ancient Israel and were
later combined to create the Biblical text. Much attention was paid by
these scholars to the inconsistencies and duplications in many Biblical
stories - such phenomena could best be explained, according to these modern
scholars, by the existence of separate and originally distinct literary sources.
Modern Biblical scholarship has also made use of archaeological and
philological discoveries, which have provided fresh insights into the
language, style and material contexts of many Biblical stories. Yet modern
researchers are also plagued by the knowledge that significant cultural and
historical differences, between the modern reader and the Biblical authors,
often preclude a full grasp of the implications and the intent of Biblical
tales.
Before launching into a discussion of particular stories and techniques, I
would like to mention four underlying issues in our course. One issue is
that of selection: there are so many wonderful stories in the Bible that no
course of 12 weeks can possibly "cover" them all; of necessity, I have
chosen some stories and not others. The basis for my choice is my desire to
illustrate a literary technique or theme under discussion. The central
theme that will appear throughout these lectures is that of fraternal
conflict. After many years of teaching and studying the Biblical narrative,
I have reached the conclusion that grappling with this theme may provide the
key to much Biblical thinking. Our examination of fraternal conflict will
also lead us to additional related themes, such as societal violence and
human sexuality, which figure prominently in the Biblical narrative.
Another issue in this course is the matter of order and structure. While it
would certainly be possible to build this course along thematic lines, my
students and I have found that limiting ourselves to some particular
literary device when discussing any story is unsatisfactory. I have
therefore decided to organize this course in accordance with the order of
Biblical characters, starting with Adam and Eve and ending with Queen
Esther. I will be very interested in hearing your reactions to this order,
as we proceed.
Reading in translation - a very serious issue! An integral part of Biblical
scholarship is the use and treatment of translations. The most ancient
translations (the Greek septuagint and the Aramaic targums)apparently
contain many alternate readings of the original Hebrew and are used by
researchers to reconstruct the Bible's "original" text. All translations,
ancient or otherwise, are also interpretations; some attempt to limit
interpretive commentary and others give free reign to their imagination.
But since the new interest in the poetics of the Biblical narrative must
center on the Hebrew original, reading in translation becomes acutely
problematic. I will be using the new JPS translation, "The Tanach", but for
the sake of poetics, will occasionally alter its wording toward a more
literal translation.
One of the most finely-honed stories in the Bible, with regard to literary
technique, is the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9), as it is
commonly known in English, or the Generation of Division, as it is called in
Rabbinic sources.
1 Everyone on earth had the same language and the same words.
2 And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a valley in the land of
Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them hard."
-Brick served them as stone, and bitumen served them as mortar.-
4 And they said, "Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in
the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over
the world."
5 The Lord came down to look at the city and tower that man had built,
6 and the Lord said, "If, as one people with one language for all, this is
how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be
out of their reach.
7 Let us, then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall
not understand one another's speech."
8 Thus the Lord scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth;
and they stopped building the city.
9 That is why it was called Babel, because there the Lord confounded the
speech of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them over the
face of the whole earth.
Traditional Jewish scholarship concerning this story focused on its moral
lesson. The lack of a clear delineation of the sin of the people of Babel
engendered a variety of suggestions. Rashi, following a Talmudic comment,
reconstructs a planned armed attack on God, by way of the "tower with its
top in the sky". Literalists, such as Ibn Ezra, center on the repeated fear
of "scattering" found in our story and suggest that the people of Babel
refused the Divine command to "fill the earth". Ramban for his part hints
at a mystical rebellion, deriving his comment from the repeated use of the
homonyms "sham" (there) and "shem" (name).
Modern scholarship too has been perplexed by this story. Most recent
commentators have dealt with our story as one of the many aetiological
legends embedded in the Biblical narrative. Similarly to stories in a
number of other world cultures, the Tower of Babel is an explanation of the
phenomenon of languages and part of the general description of the spread of
humankind throughout the world, whose huge dimensions and complexity already
astounded Biblical man. A further refinement of this direction highlights
the pattern found in verse 9, "That is why...". This phrase is found
throughout the Bible both as a marker for the moral lesson of the story and
in conjunction with naming legends, which explain the origin of the names of
noted places and people. Thus, our story is intended as a (tongue-in-cheek)
explanation of the name Babel (Babylon), deriving the great city's name from
the root "confusion". In other words, our story not only blames the people
of Babylon for the dispersion of humankind and the confusing welter of
languages already known to the Biblical world, but it ridicules the people
of mighty Babylon as the epitome of confusion.
Attractive as the foregoing suggestions may be, they do not entirely solve
the problem of the nature of the Babylonians' sin. A good example of the
value of modern archaeology to Biblical commentary is the discovery that
temple-towers, or ziggurats, were the major religious structures in ancient
Babylon. The most famous of these ziggurats was called E-sagila, an ancient
Sumerian term meaning "the temple whose top is in the sky". In other words,
it is highly likely that our Biblical story refers specifically to this main
tower-temple of ancient Babylon and that although the story itself never
clearly reveals so, the main issue here is paganism.
Another form of modern analysis -structuralism- was used by J.P.Fokkelman,
who discovered two imbedded word patterns in our short story (if possible,
these structures should be examined in Hebrew):
a chiastic (crossed) structure
a on earth
the same language
b they settled there
c They said to one another
d Come let us make bricks
e let us build us
f a city and a tower
x The Lord came down to look
f the city and tower
e that man had built
d Come let us go down and confound
c they shall not understand one another's speech
b scattered them from there
a over the face of the whole earth
and a parallel structure:
vv. a b c d e
1-4 the same let us let us to make a else we
language make build us name for shall be
and the bricks a city ourselves scattered
same words and a all over
tower the world
vv. a b c d e
5-9 one people Come and they That is why and from
with one let us stopped it was there
language go down building called the Lord
for all and the city Babel scattered
confound them over
the face
of the
whole earth
What is the significance of these hidden structures? If we return to the
overt content of our story, which deals with building and language, we
obtain a clear direction for analysis. The story of the Tower of Babel is
itself a tower, a tower of words, held up by several verbal infrastructures.
Language and technology were used, or rather abused, by the people of
Babylon, in their desire to advance and overcome the dangers of their
environment - they built a pagan tower-temple in their attempt to reach the
gods and obtain their grace. Thus the people of Babylon, representing
humankind at its most advanced state, strayed from the grace and the will of
the one God by misusing the special gifts of their kind, language and
technology. The aesthetic of the content, the balance of sin and punishment,
is reflected in the aesthetic of the story's structure. As we shall see,
such "modern" literary techniques are frequently found in the Biblical
narratives and sometimes provide important keys for the understanding of
these hoary tales.
Bibliography
J.P.Fokkelman, Narrative Art in Genesis
M . Greenberg, Journal of Biblical Literature 81 (1962)
Suggested readings for next week's lecture on the stories of Creation:
N . Sarna, Understanding Genesis
N. Leibowitz, Studies in Bereshit
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