182 Jonathan Cohen
as either divine or human; it is considered a work similar to philosophy or
a work of practical instruction for the nonphilosophical majority, a spe-
cies of history (claiming to be “empirical” and “veracious”) or a species of
literature (thereby “mythical” or “fi ctional”). Some claim that the Bible is a
book that can be reduced to a set of theological tenets. Others describe it as
a book that, despite its narrative, exhortatory, and prayerful components,
actually centers on a law.8 Buber and Rosenzweig did not believe that the
Bible could be understood by reducing it to any of these categories. For
them, the Bible is both like these other types of books and unlike them.
First of all, Buber and Rosenzweig did not regard the Bible as an esoteric
book that is accessible only through discretely “religious” or “mystical” ex-
perience. True, the Hebrew Bible, for Buber and Rosenzweig, is both the
record of and the witness to a series of genuine encounters between great
religious spirits, the Israelite people, and their God — a veritable “dialogue
between heaven and earth.”9 Th is record, however, has been mediated by
fi nite human beings who see the world and events in a human way and
who employ all the modes of expression proper to human beings. Since
human beings narrate their individual and collective lives within the me-
dium of time, the Bible can and should be seen as a kind of history — both
like and unlike what moderns conventionally understand as history. Th e
“secular” tools of historical investigation can and should be applied to the
Bible, although they should not be regarded as exhaustive. Since human
beings use language, as well as all the literary forms attendant on language,
the Bible can also be seen as a kind of literature that points beyond itself
without undoing itself as literature. It is therefore proper to employ the
best “secular” literary tools at our disposal in order to disclose the form-
content relations that are inscribed in the biblical text, for only by doing so
will the “religious” message of the text be released.10 Since human beings
form worldviews in response to perennial existential questions, the Bible
can also be regarded as a species of philosophy or theology. It is a unique
species, however: narrative (describing the vicissitudes of a relationship)
and not propositional (composed of a system of “objective” statements).
Now the Bible certainly gives law pride of place, but it is a law that does not
exist for the sake of obedience or regulation but rather for the purpose of
constituting a community with a common “personality” and solidarity that
can face its God as an integral whole.