Read on Twitter
Usually when one reads the mediaeval Jewish peshat (plain sense) Bible commentators, one nods along in time to their music: ‘all very plausible’, one says to oneself.
But then sometimes this sort of thing happens:
(1/7)
But then sometimes this sort of thing happens:
(1/7)
When expounding #Psalm29 according to its plain sense (!), Qimhi explains that the 'sons of the gods' are the stars. He reasons that the angels are 'gods' (with emphatically lower-case 'g'), and the stars are like the angels' sons.
A bit like 'the stars are God's daisy chain'...
A bit like 'the stars are God's daisy chain'...
This used to upset me, but now I love it.
For Qimhi et al, this was top notch integration of the best science available, with the best exegesis. This was 'world-beating' scholarship.
And here's the point: it would have seemed SO intuitively 'right' to them. So plausible.
For Qimhi et al, this was top notch integration of the best science available, with the best exegesis. This was 'world-beating' scholarship.
And here's the point: it would have seemed SO intuitively 'right' to them. So plausible.
Which is a fantastic reminder that OUR exegesis, too, is riddled with the thought-world in which we live. What seems intuitively plausible, scholarly, 'right' to us, is to a large part predetermined by the large-scale currents of thought in which we swim, even if unknowingly.
Now I'm out of my depth here (can someone suggest some good reading?), but it seems to me that the inward turn towards psychology & hidden motivations, & the post-modern 'power-play' and 'vested interests', play a huge part in what we now find intuitively plausible, and scholarly
Which helps explain why statements like:
'Deut. was composed in 7th c., part of Josiah's ambition 2 centralise power @ Jerusalem by investing Jerusalem cult with exclusive divine approval'
just sound so plausible, even b4 examining actual evidence. Isn't it always about power?
'Deut. was composed in 7th c., part of Josiah's ambition 2 centralise power @ Jerusalem by investing Jerusalem cult with exclusive divine approval'
just sound so plausible, even b4 examining actual evidence. Isn't it always about power?
Reading Qimhi raises the gratifying possibility that one day, when our thought-currents have shifted once again, statements like this may seem every bit as bonkers as 'the sons of god are the stars, the children of the angels'.
