Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (24 page)

Solomon's texts are figured here as a source of light which illuminates the dark places of the Torah. This characterization is explicable in terms of the ancient taxonomy of texts into "light and dark." Bruns has pointed out

a commonplace distinction between light and dark sayings, or between proverbs and enigmas, where the one is a truth which circulates widely and which everyone can recognize, whereas the other requires study, reflection, investigation, and the assistance of the sorts of special insight possessed by unique individuals such as Tiresias or even Oedipus: people who are required to cope (often as a matter of life or death) with riddles and prophecies.
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We have, therefore, an ancient topos which divides texts into two categories: those whose meaning is available to all—light sayings or proverbs, and those whose meaning is reserved for an esoteric elect—dark sayings or enigmas. This typology is certainly relevant here, and the rabbis are clearly placing Song of Songs into the category of
light
sayings—proverbs and not enigmas. Indeed the Song is a "proverbial" text whose very function is to illumine the dark sayings of Torah. By reading Song of Songs, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes as meshalim, then, the midrash is claiming that they are not hermetic texts, "locks to which the key has been lost," but hermeneutic keys to the unlocking of the hermetic Torah, or, in the words of the midrash itself, "the secret of Torah." I would suggest that the rabbis read the Song of Songs as a mashal written by Solomon to be hermeneutic key to the unlocking of the book of Exodus. In this chapter, I would like to show
how
the Song of Songs has been read as such a mashal by the Mekilta. I will consider as well the relation of midrashic reading to al

legoresis—particularly with regard to that classic of allegoresis, the common tradition of Song of Songs interpretation.
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This characterization of the midrashic interpretation of the Song as an interpretive mashal, similar to the meshalim of the midrash which I have analyzed in the last chapter, is not the generally accepted one. The most often encountered approach understands the midrash on Song of Songs to be an allegorical reading similar in kind to the later Jewish interpretations of the poem as well as the Christian readings. The claim is made, in effect, that the hermeneutic method is the same; only the specific allegorical identifications are different, with God and Israel the male and female protagonists, rather than Christ and the Church. One finds this view in nearly every handcommentary or introduction to the Song of Songs.
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However, it seems to me that we must clearly distinguish the midrashic reading of the Song from that of allegorists such as Origen. Aphoristically, we might say that the direction of Origen's reading is from the concrete to the abstract, while the direction of midrash is from abstract to concrete. Or, using Jakobsonian terminology, at least heuristically, we could say that allegorical reading involves the projection of the syntagmatic plane (metonymy) of the text onto a paradigmatic place of meaning, while midrash projects paradigms (metaphor) into a syntagmatic plane of narrativehistory. Thus, while seemingly similar strategies of reading (and often genetically connected ones),
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Origen's allegoresis and midrash are really quite different from each other. I would like to add two clarifications at this point. The first is that the category of "allegory," both as a genre(?) of text production and as a reading practice, is a notoriously slippery one. Therefore, it should be clear that when I say allegoresis in this text I mean allegorical reading of the PhilonicOrigenal type, which has a fairly clear structure as well as explicit theoretical underpinnings. The other point is that I am
not
contrasting Jewish with Christian modes of reading. The Gospels themselves, Paul and even much later Christian literature, contain much that is midrashic in hermeneutic structure (more, in my opinion, than is currently recognized, e.g.,
Piers Plowman
). Moreover, much authentic Jewish hermeneutic is allegorical or otherwise "logocentric" in structure. Nor am I trying to claim that midrash is more valuable than Alexandrian allegoresis; I wish only to clarify the two modes of reading as different in order to understand midrash better.

Let us consider this difference by examining Origen's reflections on his method. In the third book of his great commentary on the Song of Songs, the Alexandrian father has discussed in detail the theory behind his allegoresis. It is explicitly founded on a PlatonicPauline theory of correspondence between the visible things of this word and the invisible things of God.
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Origen goes on to say:

So, as we said at the beginning, all the things in the visible category can be related to the invisible, the corporeal to the incorporeal, and the manifest to

those that are hidden; so that the creation of the world itself, fashioned in this wise as it is, can be understood through the divine wisdom, which from actual things and copies teaches us things unseen by means of those that are seen, and carries us over from earthly things to heavenly.

But this relationship does not obtain only with creatures; the Divine Scripture itself is written with wisdom of a rather similar sort. Because of certain mystical and hidden things the people is visibly led forth from the terrestrial Egypt and journeys through the desert, where there was a biting serpent, and a scorpion,
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and thirst,
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and where all the other happenings took place that are recorded. All these events, as we have said, have the aspects and likenesses of certain hidden things. And you will find this correspondence not only in the Old Testament Scriptures, but also in the actions of Our Lord and Saviour that are related in the Gospels.

If, therefore, in accordance with the principles that we have now established all things that are in the open stand in some sort of relations to others that are hidden, it undoubtedly follows that the visible hart and roe mentioned in the Song of Songs are related to some patterns of incorporeal realities, in accordance with the character borne by their bodily nature. And this must be in such wise that we ought to be able to furnish a fitting interpretation of what is said about the Lord perfecting the harts, by reference to those harts that are unseen and hidden.
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Origen's text describes a perfect correspondence between the ontology of the world and that of the text. In both there is an outer shell and an inner meaning. We see accordingly the metaphysical grounding of the allegorical method used by Origen, and indeed by Philo
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as well. In order for the Scripture to have an "inner meaning," there must be an ontological structure that allows for inner meaning. Allegoresis is thus explicitly founded in a Platonic universe. Indeed, it is no accident that for Origen, the Song of Songs has three meanings, a corporeal one, a pneumatic one, and a psychic one, for we have here the "Platonic tripartite man—bodysoul spirit—applied to the Word of God, in which Origen sees an incarnation of the Holy Spirit."
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Moreover, as Lawson has pointed out, "If the Logos in His Incarnation is GodMan, so, too, in the mind of Origen the incarnation of the Pneuma in Holy Scripture is divinehuman."
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All this is very far from the description of hermeneutic activity which the midrash offers:

BenAzzai was sitting and interpreting [making midrash], and fire was all around him. They went and told Rabbi Akiva, "Rabbi, BenAzzai is sitting and interpreting, and fire is burning all around him." He went to him and said to him, "I heard that you were interpreting, and the fire burning all around you." He said, "Indeed." He said, "Perhaps you were engaged in the innerrooms of the chariot [theosophical speculation]." He said, ''No. I was sitting and stringing the words of Torah [to each other], and the Torah to the Prophets and the Prophets to the Writings, and the words were as radiant/joyful as when they were given from Sinai, and they were as sweet as at their

original giving. Were they not originally given in fire, as it is written, 'And the mountain was buing with fire' [Deut. 4:11]?"
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Ben Azzai does not speak of having achieved the original meaning or inner meaning or hidden meaning of Torah, but only of having read in such a way that he reconstituted the original
experience
of revelation.
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He did what he did, not by linking texts with their meanings but by linking texts with texts, that is, by revealing the hermeneutic connection between the Prophets and Writings and the Torah. For the midrash the correspondences are not between things seen and their hidden or inner meanings, but between texts and the historical contexts in which they were produced or to which they apply, or texts and other texts, between signifiers and signifiers, not between signifiers and signifieds. In midrash, emotional and axiological content is released in the process of generating new strings of language out of the beads of the old. Indeed, if Origen is correct in his description of his own, and it would seem,
mutatis mutandis
, of Philo's hermeneutics, his type of allegoresis is only possible in a Platonic world of ideal forms, for which there is precious little evidence in early rabbinic thought. In midrash, the Written Text is not read by recovering the Oral Event of its original speaking as in a logos theology, but neither is the process of reading it characterized by absence as in some contemporary theories of meaning; rather it is reciting the Written Torah, as in BenAzzai's wonderful experience, recreating a new event of revelation.

The crucial concept for understanding how the midrash relates the texts of the Writings to the text of the Torah is the concept of
dugma
or
mashal
.
The text of the Writings is itself understood as a mashal
, that is, as a series of readings in figurative language of the text of the Torah, which provides through these figures powerful emotional and axiological realizations of the narrative situations described mimetically in the Torah itself. Moreover, the formal device of mashal is, as we have seen, used selfconsciously by the midrash as a tool for "stringing together the verses of the Torah and the Writings." Thus the common prophetically used mashal which compares Israel to a bride and the Covenant to a wedding provided the rabbis with sufficient motivation for reading the Song of Songs as they did, as a figurative poem interpreting the
text
of the love between Israel and God at the moment of their nuptials—the Exodus and its sequels. Jeremiah's, "I have remembered for you the grace of your youth, the love of your honeymoon, your following after Me in the wildeess" [Jer. 2:2] or Isaiah's, "as the groom rejoices over his bride, so shall your God rejoice over you" [Isa. 62:5]—these were the models for application of the mashal, song of Songs, to the love of bride and bridegroom at the Red Sea and at Sinai.
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The first text I will analyze here illustrates very nicely the reading of Song of Songs as a mashal which interprets the Torah. The text is found in
Song of Songs

Rabba
on the verse, "My dove in the clefts of the rock, let me hear thy voice" [Song. 2:14]:

The one of the house of R. Ishmael teaches: In the hour in which Israel went out from Egypt, to what were they similar? To a dove which ran away from a hawk, and entered the cleft of a rock and found there a nesting snake. She entered within, but could not go in, because of the snake; she could not go back, because of the hawk which was waiting outside. What did the dove do? She began to cry out and beat her wings, in order that the owner of the dovecote would hear and come save her. That is how Israel appeared at the sea. They could not go down into the sea, for the sea had not yet been split for them. They could not go back, for Pharoah was coming near. What did they do? "They were mightily afraid, and the children of Israel cried out unto the Lord" [Exod. 14:10], and immediately. "The Lord saved them on that day" [Exod. 14:30].
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What is going on in this text? First of all, the clearly figurative utterance, "My dove in the clefts of the rock, let me hear thy voice," is being expanded into a full narrative, or rather it is being provided with a narrative context in which it can be read. What is the dove doing in the clefts of the rock? Who is addressing her? Why does he want to hear her voice, or why is it necessary that she make a sound? All of these questions are being answered by narrative gapfilling. The dove is in the rock, because she is afraid. The rock is not a sufficient protection for her. The speaker is her master, and she must cry out so that he will save her. However, the claim is being made that this figure refers to a concrete situation in Israel's history, the crisis situation at the shore of the Red Sea. In order that we experience fully that situation, that we understand the predicament of the people, why they cried out unto the Lord and why He answered them, the verse of Song of Songs is associated with it, by means of the mashal or narrative figure. This is not truly an interpretation of a verse of Song of Songs, but rather of a verse of Exodus.
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The assumption having been made that Solomon wrote his poem as a key to the reading of the Torah, that poem is then read by reading it into (literally) a narrative context in the Torah. Its figures are made concrete by being identified with particular situations and characters from the Torah history. Those situations are rendered axiologically and emotionally sharper by the figures of the poetic text.

As evidence for this claim, I would like to offer another text, a parallel version, indeed, of the same text, from the Mekilta, which originates in the same "school of R. Ishmael":

They were mightily afraid, and the children of Israel cried out unto the Lord
[Exod. 14:10].
Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord
[Exod. 14:13]. To what were the Israelites at that moment like? To a dove fleeing from a hawk, and about to enter a cleft in the rock where there is a hissing serpent. If she enters there is the serpent! If she stays out there is the hawk! In such a plight were the