A Great Voice that Did Not Cease
The Growth of the Rabbinic Canon and Its Interpretation
by Michael Chernick
Michael Chernick demonstrates how hermeneutical methods helped the Rabbis confront the difficulties that arose when logical and interpretative problems appeared in scriptural and, later, rabbinic texts.
The growth of the rabbinic canon may be best described as a hermeneutical endeavor. Michael Chernick demonstrates how hermeneutical methods helped the Rabbis confront the difficulties that arose when logical and interpretative problems appeared in scriptural and, later, rabbinic texts. Given the Rabbis’ theological, literary, and rhetorical attitudes, these reading strategies were adopted to obviate the problem the texts presented. After all, the Rabbis of different generations viewed these texts as revealed communications produced by a perfect Author. Chernick analyzes and illustrates six midrashic hermeneutics in great detail: outright midrashic resolutions of contradictions in Scripture, distinguishing between what constitutes true scriptural proof and what is merely a support text, a midrashic hermeneutic that transfers the rules of one rubric to another, two hermeneutics that limit interpretive extensions of halakhot, and the claim that two redundant pentateuchal rubrics are needed to ward off incorrect analogies. He highlights the significant changes that occurred in rabbinic legal hermeneutics from the tannaitic through post-amoraic strata of rabbinic literature-some 500 years at least-and shows how these changes attest to the persistence, continuity, and centrality of hermenutic method to the rabbinic interpretive process. Of particular significance is the connection Chernick makes between changes in hermeneutical practice and the changing revelatory status of the non-Pentateuchal parts of the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic legal discourse. His study draws its title from the traditional view of Sinaitic revelation, when God spoke to the assembled people with “a great voice that did not cease” (kol gadol velo yasaf, Deut 5:19). This view, Chernick believes, is at the core of rabbinic Judaism, the Judaism that claims to hear that great voice through the medium of interpretation.
- By (author) Michael Chernick
Other Titles in this Series
Modernism and Cultural Transfer
Gabriel Preil and the Tradition of Jewish Literary Bilingualism
Volume 10
My Dear Daughter
Rabbi Benjamin Slonik and the Education of Jewish Women in Sixteenth-Century Poland
Volume 33
Karaite Separatism in Nineteenth-Century Russia
Joseph Solomon Lutski's Epistle of Israel's Deliverance
Volume 16
Remember Amalek!
Vengeance, Zealotry, and Group Destruction in the Bible according to Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus
Volume 31
Similar Books
‘For You I Study, For You I Work, For You I Live, For You I Am Ready To Even Give My Life’
Essays in Honour of Francis (Frank) J Moloney, SDB
Liturgia semper reformanda
Adaptations and accommodations in the liturgy in light of canon 838 of the Code of Canon Law
Volume 6
The Therapeutae as the Best Paradigm for the Contemplative Life
A Contextual Reading of Philo of Alexandria's De Vita Contemplativa
Judische Musikerziehung im Preussen des 19. Jahrhunderts
Gesangunterricht an judischen Reformschulen als Facette burgerlicher Akkulturation
Volume 21
Katechetischer Text, oder Unterricht vom christlichen Lehrbegrif für Unstudirte
2 Auflagen: 1765–1772. Bibliothek der Neologie. Kritische Ausgabe in zehn Bänden. Band X
Misericorde et soin des blessures en pastorale au Congo-Brazzaville
Essai dune theologie du Ko-Ngo et de lanastomose
