Concepts of Scripture in Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig 195for all aspects of life in response to God’s immediate command is always
a live option — the biblical canon speaks with one voice and should be ap-
proached as such. Th e spirit of the fi nal redactor — “R” — playfully referred
to by Buber and Rosenzweig as “Rabbenu,” our Rabbi or our teacher, “hov-
ers” over the canon as a whole and speaks through it.37
Th e voice of the modern “enlightened” reader, then, does not have a
monopolistic hold on what can legitimately be construed as the meaning of
this or that biblical passage. Th e living voice of the text has an equal right
to take part in a living event of meaning that must take place in the space
between the reader and the text.
Neither should the biblical text be approached from within the frame-
work of what might be called a “hermeneutics of progress” or “evolution.”38
Th is approach is somewhat diff erent from the one just described. It does
not necessarily regard the supposed truth of the Bible as the function and
illustration of a “deeper” truth — more mundane though no less absolute
and universal (psychoanalysis, Marxism, historicism). Following in the
footsteps of modern Jewish thinkers such as Hermann Cohen and Erich
Fromm, it regards the biblical tradition positively as the birthplace of mod-
ern humanism and as the source from which modern humanistic values
can be traced. Scholars and educators who read the Bible in this spirit will
oft en assign diff erent sections of the Bible to diff erent periods along an evo-
lutionary scale running from “lower” to “higher” spiritual or psychological
development. Th is hermeneutics of progress places the modern reader in
a privileged position with regard to the ancient text. He or she, presiding
over the discussion from the superior perspective of one who stands at the
end of a long process of historical development, evaluates components of
the text as to their relative “primitiveness” or “progressiveness.” Such a her-
meneutic approach prejudices the possibility of a genuine interpretive dia-
logue, since it allows no real parity between the voice of the text and the
voice of the reader.
Th ere is one more hermeneutic posture that would have to be ruled out
if genuine dialogue between the reader and the text were to become possi-
ble. Th is orientation, instead of privileging the contemporary reader, privi-
leges the biblical text as the repository of truth — or, in the more sophisti-
cated versions of Leo Strauss and some of his students, as the repository
of possible truth. From the standpoint of this orientation — alternatively
termed a “hermeneutics of humility” or a “hermeneutics of reverence” —
the contemporary reader is seen as fl awed, not the ancient text.39 Accord-
ing to Strauss, Allan Bloom, and others of this school, present-day readers