The Earliest Biblical Exegesis is in the Bible Itself - The BAS Library
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Home > Magazines > Bible Review > Winter 1986

The Earliest Biblical Exegesis is in the Bible Itself

By Micheal Fishbane

We usually think of exegesis as the external interpretation of a text, and of biblical exegesis as interpretation external to the Bible. Exegesis of the Hebrew Bible began, however, long before the canon closed and the text became fixed. And this exegesis, or interpretation, can be identified within the sacred text itself. I call this kind of textual interpretation inner biblical exegesis. In short, the Hebrew Bible not only sponsored a monumental culture of textual exegesis (the rabbinic corpus) but the Bible itself was its own first product. Without any attempt to be comprehensive, I would like to explore […]

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Footnotes

1.

YHWH is the tetragram customarily rendered in English as Yahweh and translated as Lord.

Endnotes

1.

In his famous essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (Selected Essays, new ed. [New. York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950]), T. S. Eliot has reflected on this dynamic with respect to the English literary tradition.

2.

For additional examples, see Michael Fishbane, “Inner Biblical Exegesis: Types and Strategies of Interpretation in Ancient Israel” in Midrash and Literature, ed. Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford Budick (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986); and Fishbane Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).