DIALOGICAL BIBLICAL THEOLOGY

A Jewish Approach to Reading Scripture Theologically

Benjamin D. Sommer

"Any disagreement that is for the sake of heaven is destined to endure." m.' Abot 5.19

INTRODUCTION

Strictly speaking, there can be no such thing as Jewish biblical theology. While many definitions of the term "biblical theology" exist, they all accord some privileged place to the Bible. All forms of Jewish theology, however, must base themselves on Judaism's rich postbiblical tradition at least as much as on scripture, and hence a Jewish theology cannot be chiefly biblical. (By Judaism's rich postbiblical tradition, I mean first of all rabbinic literature found in the Talmuds and midrashic collections, which stem from the first through eighth centuries C.E., and also postrabbinic Jewish commentaries, legal literature, mysticism, and philosophy from the eighth century through the present.) Conversely, any theology that focuses especially on scripture isby definition Protestant and not Jewish, for the notion of sola scriptura has no place in Judaism—even as an unrealizable ideal. Nevertheless, there can be such a thing as a Jewish theology that attends to scripture along with tradition, or perhaps to scripture as one part of tradition. Such a theology would recover or renew biblical voices that are often lost in Jewish thought, while placing them in the larger context of Jewish tradition. It is in the interaction or dialogue between biblical and postbiblical Jewish thinkers, then, that something we might loosely call a Jewish biblical theology can arise. The model I propose here might also be termed "dialogical biblical theology." This model works well for modern Judaism's attempt to think theologically with its scripture, but it can be adapted for other religious communities. While it is especially appropriate for those forms of Christianity that emphasize tradition, such as Catholic and Orthodox Christianities, it may be useful, we shall see, for Protestant Christianity as well.

In the following, I intend to accomplish several tasks. I will explore the question of whether a field such as biblical theology can really exist; I will articulate a program for what I call dialogical biblical theology, a program that involves a method of reading or a hermeneutic more than a particular theological viewpoint; I will discuss several scholars, Jewish and Christian, who have implied this program in their work without actually articulating it (and, in some cases, without relating it to the field of biblical theology); and I will provide several examples of how a dialogical biblical theology in a Jewish context might work, thus putting to work the hermeneutic I propose. Before doing any of this, however, it behooves me to discuss a claim frequently heard in academic discussions of this field: to wit, that Jews are not interested in biblical theology. Discussing this claim will reveal much about the field of biblical theology as it was practiced in the twentieth century.

ARE JEWS INTERESTED IN BIBLICAL THEOLOGY?

In 1987 Jon Levenson published an essay with the provocative title "Why Jews Aren't Interested in Biblical Theology." He contended that Jews had paid scant attention to that field, and he attempted to explain why this was the case. Moshe Goshen-Gottstein had made similar points about Jews' lack of participation in this field several years earlier.

I hope to show that Jewish interest in this field had in fact been vigorous even before the publication of Levenson's article. Nevertheless, Levenson's essay remains important and instructive. Levenson succeeded in showing that the dominant model of biblical theology as practiced in the past two centuries was uninteresting, indeed deeply problematic and often offensive, for Jews. As a result he implicitly suggested how Jews should not do Jewish biblical theology—and how Christians interested in engaging in dialogue with Jews ought not to do Christian biblical theology either.

Jewish Work on Biblical Theology before and after Levenson

As a number of people have pointed out since Levenson's stimulating essay was published, many Jewish scholars have engaged in theological and even systematic expositions of biblical texts. These Jewish scholars did not use the term "biblical theology" in their titles, however, and the structure of their works differed considerably from those of most Protestant biblical theologians. (To Levenson's credit, we should note that nobody found Jewish biblical theology until Levenson prompted his fellow biblicists to go looking for it.) Shimon Gesundheit, for example, recently pointed out numerous examples, such as Leo Adler's Der Mensch in der Sicht der Bibel, which was published in 1965. We might readily add Abraham Joshua Heschel's book The Prophets (first published in 1962) or numerous works by Martin Buber. It will be noticed that none of these authors are biblical scholars. Adler was the rabbi of the Jewish community of Basel, and he also published on modern analytic philosophy. While Heschel and Buber defy easy categorization, the label "biblicist" does not quite fit either one especially well. On the other hand, all these authors devote considerable space to explicating biblical passages for theological purposes, and they attend to modern biblical scholarship when doing so.

Jewish scholars whose training was primarily in biblical studies and whose academic appointments were in departments of Bible also produced works that can be seen as belonging to the field of biblical theology. I think first and foremost of the most influential Jewish biblical scholar of the modern era, Yehezkel Kaufmann, and his four-volume magnum opus Toledot Ha-Emunah Ha-Yisraelit. The title of this work is usually translated into English as The History of Israelite Religion, but it might be more accurately rendered The History of Israelite Belief or even The Generations of Israelite Faith. 10This magisterial work is an outstanding—and foundational—example of Jewish biblical theology. One might object to my characterization by pointing out that Kaufmann's study is historical in nature and thus presumably not theological. I will return in the next section to the unfounded presumption that a historical work cannot also belong to the field of biblical theology; for my present purpose, it will suffice for me to show that on closer inspection, one finds Toledot to share essential features with many works of biblical theology. By investigating one central biblical idea (Israel's monotheism and concomitant rejection of mythology), its growth, and its permutations, Kaufmann wrote a text comparable to some of the most famous works of biblical theology. Many biblical theologians have focused their work on some central idea or process. To name only a few prominent examples: Walther Eichrodt structures...