judaism without a temple 249
63:9. Instead of reading that ‘it was no messenger or angel but his pres-
ence that saved them,’ the text was understood by the masoretes to say
‘He was their saviour. In all their distress he was distressed,’ with the
important implication that God suffers with the suffering of Israel. The
impulse to such clarification of the texts, along with the careful enum-
eration of the number of words, the uses of particular letters and
other such minutiae, reflects an increasing veneration of the text in its
own right. This veneration had its own momentum, but the concerns of
Karaites as biblical fundamentalists (see Chapter 12) may have played a
part in its later stages.
The liturgical interpretation of the Torah continued to be enhanced
in some congregations, as in Second Temple times, by consecutive trans-
lation of the Hebrew text into Aramaic. The Aramaic targumim, some
of which incorporate a great deal of commentary into their versions of
the original, were still in use in much of the first millennium ce, until
particular versions were put into their final form in around the fifth
century ce and adopted by different communities: Targum Onkelos
was used in Babylonia and a number of different targumim are known
from Palestine, of which one, found in just one manuscript, was dis-
covered only in 1956 in the Vatican.
Exegesis of the text was the role of the darshan, or ‘expounder’, who
is envisaged in the Babylonian Talmud as a preacher tasked with deliv-
ering a sermon on Sabbaths and festival days. At least some of the works
of biblical exegesis preserved through the rabbinic tradition from late
antiquity seem to have originated in this synagogue setting. So, for
instance, the Pesikta (literally ‘section’) cycle of Palestinian midrashim,
which deals with selected passages from the Pentateuch and the Proph-
ets and exists in two versions, one apparently mostly from the fifth
century and the other mostly from the ninth century, follows the cycle
of the calendar from Rosh haShanah. The exposition branches off into
law as well as narrative for homiletic purposes, usually by placing one
biblical verse in apposition to another:
‘Yet the righteous holds on his way, and he that has clean hands enhances
strength’ (Job 17:9). ‘The righteous’ is the Holy One, of whom it is said
‘The Lord is righteous, He loves righteousness’ (Ps 11:7); ‘and he that has
clean hands’ is also the Holy One, to whom it is said ‘You who are of eyes
too clean to behold evil’ (Hab 1:13); ‘he ... enhances strength’ is again the
Holy One who enhances the strength of the righteous to enable them to do
His will. Another comment: ‘The righteous holds on his way’ applies to