Plain Sense Research Articles

Speeches on Poetry

Paul Celan’s ‘Speeches’ determine what poetry is and why we need it. He does not want ‘timeless’ poetry but still ‘lays claim to infinity’; he would ‘reach through time’. He neither refuses poetry as contrary to reason, nor elevates it as pure immediacy of meaning. He questions the ambivalent attitudes towards art—as ‘artifice’ or as ‘profound’. Celan cuts into the loose fabric of such ordinary language to shape it. Those who trumpet ‘plain sense’ against such incisive art deface it as degenerate. Celan’s poetic language presents us as ‘of the earth’ and as ‘released from it’—Büchner’s Lenz seeks clarity in the silence of alpine light but falls into madness in his isolation. He is drawn towards the life of the villagers at the foot of the mountains. He perceives the warm household fires, but it is an illusion that he can be a part of that scene. Thus, Celan enquires into art’s intensity. It is at the risk of reciprocity that a reader entertains the language of a poem. Eliot’s old ‘shadow’ between ‘the idea and the reality’ now falls between the poet’s production and the reader’s reciprocation. The reader may need someone with a free hand to hold a lantern to the script.

What Hath New Haven to Do with Chicago? A Reappraisal

One of the most significant theological debates of the late twentieth century was between the postliberal theology associated with Yale Divinity School and the revisionist theology associated with the University of Chicago Divinity School, led by Lutheran historical theologian and ecumenist George Lindbeck, and theologian Hans Frei at Yale and Roman Catholic theologian David Tracy at Chicago. Given that the fortieth anniversary of The Nature of Doctrine is in 2024, it is time to reappraise the terms of the debate, as well as note the commonalities of these two theological schools, by focusing upon the possible role of correlation in theology, the public nature of theology, and the plain sense of Scripture.

Anatomizing God?

Abstract This essay analyses Francesca Stavrakopoulou’s God: An Anatomy with reference to some general questions about the nature of biblical interpretation. Stavrakopoulou’s core contention is that Persian-period theological editing has obscured the original nature of Yahweh, who was not different from any other ancient male deity of southwest Asia. That is, Yahweh was bodily with the desires and practices of a violent and sexually active male, no more than a human projection. Four questions are put to her thesis. First, how well does she understand the kind of classic theological reading which she rejects? Secondly, is her outworking of her core thesis self-consistent, or does it function to warrant a distinctive reading strategy for what has not been editorially obscured but is rather the plain sense of the biblical text? Thirdly, does she do justice to the metaphorical dimensions of language in Hebrew and religious language generally? Fourthly, does she appropriately distinguish the nature of Israel’s scriptures from the religious history that may underlie them? Finally, an analogy is drawn with the work of Robin Lane Fox, in exploring the differences that an interested approach may, or may not, make to ancient historical and biblical interpretation.

The Rule of Peshat: Jewish Constructions of the Plain Sense of Scripture and Their Christian and Muslim Contexts, 900–1270 by Mordechai Z. Cohen, and: Rashi, Biblical Interpretation, and Latin Learning in Medieval Europe: A New Perspective on an Exegetical Revolution by Mordechai Z. Cohen (review)

The Rule of Peshat: Jewish Constructions of the Plain Sense of Scripture and Their Christian and Muslim Contexts, 900–1270 by Mordechai Z. Cohen, and: Rashi, Biblical Interpretation, and Latin Learning in Medieval Europe: A New Perspective on an Exegetical Revolution by Mordechai Z. Cohen (review)

“How Would He Not Protest God’s Putting to Death the Righteous Child?”

Abstract Medieval Jewish readings of the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac, remain almost entirely oblivious to the antinomy between ethics and the revealed divine command that many modern interpretations find at the heart of the story. This study explores an exception, the teaching of the fourteenth-century rationalist, Eleazar Ashkenazi ben Nathan Ha-Bavli. In his Revealer of Secrets, Eleazar seeks a remedy for what he takes to be the theological and moral scandals that arise when the Akedah is read according to its plain sense. While Eleazar’s treatment of the Akedah builds in many ways on that of Maimonides, it also adds novel layers regarding this most difficult of biblical accounts. For this reason, the study begins with a substantial review of Maimonides’ intentionally elusive treatment of the Akedah and its reception among some representative later medieval interlocutors. Turning to its main focus, the article supplies a case study in medieval Jewish rationalism at its limits, in both matter and manner.

The Human Being as the Mystery of Kun Fa Kān: An Engagement with Shoaib Ahmed Malik’s Islam and Evolution: Al-Ghazālī and the Modern Evolutionary Paradigm

ABSTRACT The theory of evolution has supposedly displaced human beings from their lofty positions as unique special creatures and placed them within a process of evolution where they are nothing more than a species that has evolved from primitive ones and will be eclipsed by more superior ones. In this article, I engage with Malik's book using a plain sense reading of Islamic scripture. I single out “human exceptionalism” as the optimum view that fits a plain sense reading of scripture as well as one that has the potential to pacify Muslim concerns about evolution.

:The Rule of Peshat: Jewish Constructions of the Plain Sense of Scripture and Their Christian and Muslim Contexts, 900–1270

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsMordechai Z. Cohen, The Rule of Peshat: Jewish Constructions of the Plain Sense of Scripture and Their Christian and Muslim Contexts, 900–1270. (Jewish Culture and Contexts.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. Pp. x, 413; black-and-white figures. $89.95. ISBN: 978-0-8122-5212-5.Sara LabatonSara LabatonShalom Hartman Institute Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 98, Number 2April 2023 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/724344 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Darian R. Lockett. Letters for the Church: Reading James, 1–2 Peter, 1–3 John, and Jude as Canon

Darian R. Lockett. <i>Letters for the Church: Reading James, 1–2 Peter, 1–3 John, and Jude as Canon</i>

David F. Ford. The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary

David F. Ford. <i>The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary</i>

The Rule of Peshat: Jewish Constructions of the Plain Sense of Scripture and their Christian and Muslim Contexts, 900–1270, written by Mordechai Z. Cohen

The Rule of Peshat: Jewish Constructions of the Plain Sense of Scripture and their Christian and Muslim Contexts, 900–1270, written by Mordechai Z. Cohen

The Rule of Peshat: Jewish Constructions of the Plain Sense of Scripture and Their Christian and Muslim Contexts, 900–1270CohenMordechai Z.The Rule of Peshat: Jewish Constructions of the Plain Sense of Scripture and Their Christian and Muslim Contexts, 900–1270University of Penn­sylvania PressPhiladelphia PA, 2020, x, 413, $89.95ISBN 978-0-81225-212-5

The Rule of Peshat: Jewish Constructions of the Plain Sense of Scripture and Their Christian and Muslim Contexts, 900–1270CohenMordechai Z.The Rule of Peshat: Jewish Constructions of the Plain Sense of Scripture and Their Christian and Muslim Contexts, 900–1270University of Penn­sylvania PressPhiladelphia PA, 2020, x, 413, $89.95ISBN 978-0-81225-212-5

‘A New Book according to the Syllables’: Organizing Scripture in Clement of Alexandria

Abstract The work of classicists in recent years have shown the creative means by which readers organized knowledge textually within the Roman Empire. In the sixth book of his Stromateis, Clement of Alexandria reflects on a passage from the Shepherd of Hermas that contrasts reading ‘according to the letter’ and ‘according to the syllables’ to interpret Isaiah 8:1–2 on the composition of a ‘new book.’ In this article, I take this passage as a springboard to analyze the grammatical and rhetorical features – hinted subtly in these two passages – that Clement adapted for organizing the knowledge he believes Scripture to transmit. I argue that Clement employs a form of archival thinking to transfer the skills of grammarians and rhetoricians to the hermeneutics of Christian Scripture. This ‘grammatical archive’ and ‘memorial archive’ form the structures to Clement’s craft of thinking, which is ultimately expressed in the construction of textual constellations that aid in understanding the plain sense of the Scriptures and their subject matter.

The Fourfold Gospel: A Formational Commentary on Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, volume 1: From the Beginning to the Baptist

This volume, and the one to follow, are the product of 20 years of research and devotion from the author (p. xi). DelHousaye’s Fourfold Gospel seeks to walk the line of biblical commentary and devotional, utilizing the medieval Quadriga. This interpretive methodology, drawn from the Latin word for a chariot drawn by four horses, embraces four levels of scriptural interpretation: the literal, anagogical, typological, and tropological. The commentary itself is structured along the parallel rabbinic structure of PaRDeS (פַּרְדֵּס), wherein the “P” stands for peshat (פְּשָׁט)—the plain sense of the words; the “R” for remez (רֶמֵז)—the allegorical sense; the “D” for derash (דֵּרַשׁ)—the homiletical sense; and the “S” for sod (סוֹד)—the intent of the divine author (p. 30). The biblical text is then arranged in the form of a fourfold Gospel reminiscent of Tatian’s Diatessaron, with the commentary categorized by the letters explained above.Before arriving at the commentary proper, DelHousaye spends the first 126 pages explaining the methodology of the book, the historical development of its devotional approach, and a summarized history of the Gospels—including their reception in history, alternative arrangements, and competing Gospel texts within the first 300 years of the church. This introduction is a vital part of this commentary, as most Western readers will be wholly unfamiliar with the approach utilized or how to appropriate it. The author should be commended for his desire to reintroduce popular medieval concepts such as lectio divina into the Protestant reading of Scripture and present a work that is both academically challenging and spiritually enriching. For the reader interested in medieval spirituality, the bibliography contained within this introduction alone will be an invaluable resource for further study. While this work does not rest comfortably in the genre of biblical commentary that most are accustomed, DelHousaye encourages the reader to approach the text with spiritual preparation in order to allow the devotional content to permeate. Though this methodology may be uncomfortable for scholastics as well as lay Protestants, the author should again be commended for making the purpose of the text absolutely clear at the outset.Where this book succeeds is in its valiant attempt to summarize an often-overlooked era of Christian spirituality and synthesize it with modern academic Gospel studies. Its acknowledgment of the status quaestionis of the Synoptic Problem, as well as the historical-critical breakthroughs in Gospel research, open the door for the academic discussion without taking the forefront. Alternatively, this commentary seeks to demonstrate that modern academic discourse and medieval mystagogy can cohabitate. While not all commentary sections incorporate every aspect of the PaRDeS approach illustrated in the introduction, most attempt to close on a devotional thought designed for later reflection, and while this may be out of place for its peers, the devotional approach of this work presents the academic reader with something often overlooked: opportunity for introspection and internalization of the biblical text.While there is much to be lauded over an intrepid endeavour such as this, there are also infelicities that distract from the overall book. The introduction itself not without purpose, yet one wonders if it is necessary to include in a commentary on the canonical Gospels a lengthy discussion of apocryphal and heretical Gospels and Muslim literature. While worthy subjects of study in their own right, this diverts from the text in hand. Additionally, the author has chosen to include his own English interpretations of the Greek text—a common approach in most academic commentaries—resulting in several awkward readings of familiar texts and the adjusting of the Greek in uncommon ways.1 Last, the authors insistence that the Gospel of John was composed prior to Luke is at odds with most contemporary scholarship and is reasserted throughout the text without suitable substantiation.In spite of these minor disputations, it can be said that this work will stand out among its peers, given its unparalleled approach within the Protestant tradition. DelHousaye should be commended for his tireless efforts to gather such an immense collection of resources and his willingness to relate a work that is a deeply personal expression of his own spiritual formation. There is certainly a need in the academy for more of this within contexts dominated by intellectualism.

What Is That To You?

What Is That To You?

Biblical Interpretation, Race, and Union Presbyterian Seminary

Chattel slavery in the United States was never foreordained. The deliberate misinterpretation of Scripture predisposed people to accept what the Bible condemned. The development of the Biblical Theology movement, by emphasizing the plain sense of Scripture over cultural assumptions and discredited scientific theories, led Union Presbyterian Seminary to repudiate the immorality that was slavery and segregation.

Rashi's Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic by Eric Lawee (review)

Reviewed by: Rashi's Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic by Eric Lawee Yedida Eisenstat Eric Lawee. Rashi's Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 478 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009420000227 Lawee's volume is the history of how Rashi's Commentary on the Torah (hereafter: the Commentary) attained its unparalleled status in the post-talmudic Jewish canon. The book is thus both a reception history, which details the embrace as well as the rejection of the Commentary—both of which contributed to its canonization—and an intellectual history, in its recounting of the philosophical and religious currents the Commentary encountered as it spread throughout the Jewish world. How does a work gain its place in a canon? This is the central question Lawee sets out to answer in the first part of this work of careful and erudite scholarship. Lawee follows the reception of the Commentary through time and place and takes up theories of canon—for example, whether canons are normative or formative. Whereas the reception of the Commentary in northern France has long been studied, Lawee traces the Commentary's reception, embrace, and growing canonical status as it spread through much of the medieval, and later, premodern Jewish world. The second part of the book bears the fruit of the author's years-long exploration of the nearly uncharted territory of the Commentary's eastern Mediterranean supercommentaries; here Lawee recounts the previously unknown story of the vituperative rejection and resistance with which Rashi's work was met in eastern Mediterranean locales, where a more rationalist Judaism had already taken root. "What is at stake in the battle over the Commentary," writes Lawee, "is not just a proper reading of the Torah … but irreconcilable visions of Judaism, with the Commentary embodying a traditionalist version of the faith untainted by distorting Greco-Arabic encumbrances," that is, rationalism and philosophy (59). Among this book's major insights is that the battle for the character of Judaism was waged on the terrain of Rashi's Commentary (149). Lawee continues with a masterful discussion of the nature of the Commentary and of key scholarly debates. While many have long contended that Rashi set out to write a peshat biblical commentary (we may translate the term as "plain sense," though this does not do it justice), the Commentary's primary character is midrashic. [End Page 432] Indeed, its midrashic character was the basis of the thirteenth-century ruling that allowed for the weekly review of the Commentary in place of reading the Aramaic Targum Onkelos to fulfill the rabbinic program of "Scripture twice, Targum once"—which led to the Commentary's popularity outside of Ashkenaz and subsequent wide dissemination. The Commentary's midrashic character is also what drew the response of nearly all of its supercommentators and "rejectionist readers"; their selection of the Commentary as an interpretive subject set in motion the processes of canonization. A large portion of the book is devoted to Lawee's presentation of the evidence for the Commentary's arrival in new locales and his analysis of ensuing local literary responses. He accounts for the factors that moved the Commentary from one place to the next and describes the modes of reading and interpretation to which it was then subject. The picture that emerges is one in which biblical commentators embraced, critiqued, or rejected Rashi's Commentary. In Spain, the work first encountered criticism from the vantage points of rationalism, philosophy, and Kabbalah, and was openly mocked for its overuse of midrash and seeming ignorance of the peshat, presaging future eastern Mediterranean critiques. One anonymous mystical defender observed the widely accepted authority of the work and thus asserted its divine inspiration (60). Here, too, Spanish supercommentators subjected the Commentary to "omnisignificant" interpretation—that is, the exegetical ascription of significance to even the most minute details of the text—otherwise reserved for study of the Bible and the Talmud, a reflection of its authoritative and canonical status. Southern France was a hybrid region where Andalusian rationalist learning pitted itself against "antirationalist" Ashkenazic traditionalism, embodied in the giants...

Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic

Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic

Essays Introducing a Jewish Perspective on the Gospel of John

This article’s aim is to highlight the impact that plain sense readings of the Gospel of John have on educated Jewish and Christian lay persons but who typically do not aspire to learn or appropriate current scholarly theories seeking to explain sacred texts in a technical and often inordinately complex fashion. Essay topics include: 1) the anonymous author (“John”), the relationship of his gospel to the Synoptic Gospels, his interpretation of Jewish actions and customs, and his influence on a distinct group of early Christians, the “Johannine” community; 2) John’s portrayal of Jesus’ self-identification in using the divine name YHWH; 3) John’s description and interpretation of various Jewish responses to Jesus, as well as the author’s understanding of the reasons for Jews rejecting the message and person of Jesus; and 4) John’s portrayal of the early break between Judaism and Christianity, laid entirely at the feet of “the Jews.”

Is Nicene Trinitarianism "In" the Scriptures?

Is Nicene Trinitarianism "In" the Scriptures? Lewis Ayres Tout ce qui demeure cache dans le Nouveau Testament fait encore partie du Nouveau Testament1 My title poses a blunt question, one that is full of ambiguity. But this is just the sort of question that my students are apt to pose when they study the emergence of classic doctrinal formulae, and I emphasize that the controversies that gave them birth are deeply exegetical. The crux of any plausible answer to the question is the bridge that one must construct between the language of the New Testament—where a clear statement of the nature of the godhead is absent—and the language of later Nicene Trinitarian formulation.2 My own attempt at spanning what to modern eyes easily seems a significant gap will begin by critiquing another attempt, [End Page 1285] one that might initially seem to offer all that we need. As I do so it will be clear that I am focused on the texts of the New Testament, but as I begin to set out my answer I will at least hint at how we might also extend this argument to cover Israel's Scriptures. I In the first few years of my teaching career, David Yeago's short essay "The New Testament and the Nicene Dogma" was frequently referenced as an answer to the question of how one might understand the classical formulae of the Christian faith to be fundamentally in accord with that which is revealed in Scripture.3 The essay offers an approach to the question of my title that appeals to any scholar taken by the post-liberal vision of doctrine as fundamentally regulative, or taken by the concept of the "plain sense" of Scripture as it was articulated by a number of those who were associated with Yale during the 1970s and 1980s. At the heart of Yeago's argument lies a fairly simple principle: in order to understand the relationship between the Church's Trinitarian teaching and the text of the New Testament we need to look to the judgments that the text renders. Yeago writes: The New Testament does not contain a formally articulated "doctrine of God" of the same kind as the later Nicene dogma. What it does contain is a pattern of implicit and explicit judgements concerning the God of Israel and his relationship to the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth.4 Thus, Philippians 2:9 tells us that God has bestowed on Christ "the name which is above every name," and this must be the name of Yhwh. We read this text in the light of the Philippians 1:10–11 insistence that "every knee should bend," and we know the latter to be alluding to Isaiah 45:21–24, which insists that in Yhwh are "saving justice and strength." Hence the judgment of the text is that "within the thought-world of Israel's Scriptures, no stronger affirmation of the bond between the risen Jesus and the God of Israel is possible."5 Yeago goes on to write: It is perfectly consistent with this that the early communities came [End Page 1286] to speak by preference of the God of Israel as Jesus' Father and of Jesus as God's unique Son, in a relationship definitive for the identity of each.6 Yeago's understanding of the judgments that Scripture delivers is quite expansive and yet precise: The affirmation that this God has so radically identified himself with Jesus can rhyme with Israel's confession of the singularity and incom-parability of God if and only if their relationship is eternal. There is only one God, Yhwh, and relationship to Jesus of Nazareth is somehow intrinsic to this God's identity from everlasting. There is only one God, but the one God is never without his only-begotten Son.7 In this quotation Yeago seems to be arguing that the judgments we can attribute to the text include some second-order logical consequences. Thus, he doesn't point to other key texts that one might use to argue for the Son's eternity, but presents belief in the Son's co-eternity as a necessary...

Reasons, Rights, and (Mis)readings: A Response to Emden

Christian Emden misreads the Report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights, as well as my own “Further Thoughts” about that document.1 His errors reveal what I believe is one of the biggest obstacles to the success of the report, namely, the unwillingness of its pre-announced opponents to read it with a mind open to its plain sense.