Imaginative Consent
God has spoken once; twice I have heard this: that power belongs to God; Psalm 62:11 [English] NASB
Once; twice – You wouldn’t know it from reading this English translation, but the rabbis used this verse as a prooftext for the assertion that every verse in the Bible demands multiple interpretations. Why did they use this verse? Because in Hebrew it reads:
“One thing God has spoken, two things I have heard.”
The rabbis concluded: One text may yield several meanings.[1] It is this flexibility that keeps Judaism alive. Were it not for continual discovery in the text, the Scriptures would be nothing more than the ossified documents of an ancient nomadic people. However, it is precisely this openness of imaginative discovery that allows the Jewish rabbinic community to forever expand the reach of Torah. As Peter Ackroyd notes:
“ . . . the evolution of law—already a dominant element in earlier thinking, but coming to occupy an increasingly important place in the later period and especially in the post-biblical writings—is marked by a concern both for the purity of the people’s life—so especially in the mass of ritual law—and also for the covering of every aspect of life—and so by an inevitable development of casuistry. . . it nevertheless expresses the recognition that there is no part of life which is outside the concern of God, and that the completely fit community is one in which all life is brought under control.”[2]
Sarna comments on this “inevitable development” when a code is fixed. “ . . . the phenomenon engenders an attitude that encourages a fundamentalist, monolithic approach to the Scriptures, one that is subversive of intellectual freedom, corrosive of tolerance, and productive of doctrinal tyranny.”[3] A moment’s reflection confirms his comment. Christianity exists as the splintered shards of doctrinal rigidity, each denomination claiming God’s true revelation. Christians live with creedal shrapnel. Jews live with rabbinic variance. Christian certainty or rabbinic uncertainty? Most Westerners choose the first without recognizing the implications. Would we rather be “right” than free? Apparently so. “Why?” Why is it that we so willingly give up our creative imagination with the text in order to have the “right” answers? How is it that the Jewish community has survived for centuries without the “right” answer? Do you suppose it has something to do with liturgy rather than theology? In the West, Christianity replaced liturgy with dogma. The “Statement of Faith” was more important than the confessional, genuflecting before sitting, or listening to the cantor. Sacraments became optional. In the Jewish world, the synagogue remained the center of life. Erev Shabbat mattered more than creationist theories of Genesis 1. How one lived trumped what one claimed to believe. And there were always alternatives. Is it baby and the bath water? I wonder if we didn’t make a huge mistake.
Topical Index: creative imagination, multiple interpretations, dogma, law, Psalm 62:11
[1] Cf. Nahum Sarna, “Rashi the commentator,” in Studies in Biblical Interpretation (JPS, 2000), p. 133.
[2] Peter R. Ackroyd, Exile and Restoration, p. 255.
[3] Nahum Sarna, “Writing a Commentary on the Torah” in Studies in Biblical Interpretation (JPS, 2000), p. 254.
