In my reading today of Messianism Within the Scriptural Scrolls of Isaiah, Randall Heskett says (on page 277) that Psalm 1:2 assists “the readers/hearers in their understanding of the scriptural psalms as meditations on Torah”. I wonder if Randall is saying that Jewish interpretation treats the five books of the Psalms as meditations on the five books of the Pentateuch, like E.W. Bullinger does in his Companion Bible. I’ll be reading more about this when I get to my weekly quiet times in the Psalms, in which I will read Bullinger and (hopefully) rabbinic midrashim on the Psalms.
I’ve looked a little at Bullinger’s treatment of the Psalms, and he seems to artificially attach the Psalms to the Pentateuchal books. When the Psalmist complains about his problems in the second book of Psalms, for example, Bullinger ties that to the affliction of the Israelites in Egypt, for he holds that the second book of Psalms must be connected with the second book of the Pentateuch, namely, Exodus. The problem here is that the Psalmist complains about his afflictions throughout the Book of Psalms, not just in the second book. So why should I assume that his complaints in the second book have anything to do with the Exodus? But Bullinger is trying to find a purpose in the arrangement of the Psalms within five books, and he makes connections in his attempt to do so, whether or not those connections even exist.
On Monday night, I read scholarly articles that maintained that things are ordered in certain parts of the Bible or in pieces of rabbinic midrashim by design, rather than as a result of scribes throwing traditions together in a haphazard manner. Stephen Kaufman’s article in the 1978-1979 Maarav, “The Structure of the Deuteronomic Law,” argues that the Deuteronomic laws are ordered according to the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5. He maps it out as follows:
I-II. Deuteronomy 5:6-10 (no other gods, no graven images) is connected with Deuteronomy 12 (destroy Canaanite sanctuaries, honor central sanctuary).
III. Deuteronomy 5:11 (don’t take God’s name in vain) is connected with Deuteronomy 13:1-14:27, which discusses apostasy and dietary laws. But it is also relevant to testimony, which is where not taking God’s name in vain is an important rule.
IV. Deuteronomy 5:12-15 is about the Sabbath, and the laws in Deuteronomy 14:28-29 pertain to Israel’s festivals.
V. Deuteronomy 5:16 commands Israelites to honor their parents, and Deuteronomy 16:18-18:22 concerns authority figures.
VI. Deuteronomy 5:17 prohibits murder, and Deuteronomy 19:1-22:8 discusses manslaughter and respect for human and animal life.
VII. Deuteronomy 5:18 prohibits adultery, and Deuteronomy 22:9-23:19 discusses sexual sins.
VIII. Deuteronomy 5:19 bans theft, and Deuteronomy 23:20-24:7 talks about respect for people’s property, kidnapping, and divorce (which is about whose property the wife is).
IX. Deuteronomy 5:20 bans bearing false witness, and Deuteronomy 24:8-25:4 is about leprosy (which was a divine punishment on Miriam for her slander of Moses) and respect for people’s dignity.
X. Deuteronomy 5:21a bans a man from coveting his neighbor’s wife, and Deuteronomy 25:5-16 is about levirate marriage, the only way a man can legally marry his brother’s wife (to raise up offspring for his dead brother). Deuteronomy 5:21b bans an Israelite from coveting his neighbors goods, and Deuteronomy 25:13 prohibits unjust weights, which were used to defraud people.
Some laws don’t fit neatly into this grid, at least not on the surface. For example, Deuteronomy 22:5 bans transvestism. What’s that have to do with the commandment under which it falls in Kaufman’s scenario, the one against murder? Kaufman says that Deuteronomy 22:5 could have been misplaced, but he prefers a structural argument: other law-sections that pertain to commandments discuss garments within a certain structure, and so that may be why the “murder” section in Deuteronomy 19:1-22:8 has something about men wearing women’s clothing, and vice versa. Kaufman offers other explanations for the laws that don’t appear to fit. Is there a structure of the Deuteronomic laws that accords with the order of the Ten Commandments, or are scholars who claim such merely seeing what they want to see in a mass of various laws, which lack a particular order? This is debated within biblical scholarship.
I also read two articles by Norman Cohen, “Leviticus Rabbah: Parashah Three: An Example of a Classic Rabbinic Homily,” and “Structure and Editing in the Homiletic Midrashim.” In the first article, Cohen disputes the claim that literary homilies are merely a mash of rabbinic traditions haphazardly thrown together, for he believes that the different traditions in Leviticus Rabbah: Parashah Three were purposely brought together to communicate a theological point: that Israelites should offer themselves to God (i.e., pray, repent, do good deeds) to bring about atonement. In the second essay, however, Cohen acknowledges that some midrashim are better edited and have fewer loose ends than others, so not all midrashim are created (or edited) equal.
I felt really excited as I read these essays, for they were making cool points—making connections, seeing purpose. It’s for this sort of thing that I entered the realm of religious scholarship, as much of a baby as I still am in this area.
But then there are scholars who don’t always believe that we should be looking for something deep in the details of the biblical text. One of my professors once said that the number forty in the Bible is not used for a specific reason; rather, it’s a trope (or maybe he used another word for it). But people like Bullinger or Adrian Rogers try to identify a meaning in each number that appears in Scripture. They’re probably not pulling their proposed meaning out of the clear blue sky, for they’re basing it on something. But are they establishing an absolute rule: a number appears in the biblical text, and so it must mean this? But what if the number doesn’t appear to mean that? Can exceptions to a rule prove that the rule does not exist?