Concepts of Scripture in Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig 199important change: one of the partners, the text, carrying within it the living
speech of God, is also regarded as the founder and fountain of dialogical-
ity in the world. It is the biblical text that called out the reality of dialogue
to the world, bringing so many readers throughout the generations into its
orbit. As such, the reader is not its equal.
However, while the midrashic mode has infl uenced the balance between
the reader and the text for Buber and Rosenzweig, it has not undone its di-
alogical character. In fact, just as midrash has modifi ed dialogue, dialogue
has also modifi ed midrash. Th e midrashic mode of reading assumes that
the chiddushim [new interpretations] off ered by qualifi ed readers of sub-
sequent generations are not fundamentally new. What they say represents
an unfolding of the preexisting. Within Buber and Rosenzweig’s herme-
neutics, however, every dialogical encounter with the biblical text has (like
all dialogues) a unique and unrepeatable character. Th e encounter has its
own “face,” as do the participants in it. Any new interpretation resulting
from such an interaction between a modern reader and the text (even if
the reader is not “qualifi ed” from a traditional point of view) is a genuine
chiddush that was never predeposited, even as a potential, anywhere. True,
the Bible is the fount of dialogue and therefore should not be regarded as
merely parallel to the interlocutors who have engaged with it over the gen-
erations. But its primacy consists in its uncanny ability to evoke and pro-
voke dialogue. Th is value does not accrue to it by virtue of any content that
it might, even potentially, contain.
According to Buber and Rosenzweig, the divine voice can only be heard
in the context of an address, challenge, or question put to a listener or
reader. It does not subsist “in” the text (as the symphony is not the score)
but in the “space” between the text and the reader (in the event of the per-
formance of reading). In this sense, the hermeneutics of Buber and Rosen-
zweig retains its identity as a dialogical hermeneutics. On the other hand,
the source that has founded — and repeatedly proven itself capable of invit-
ing — this kind of dialogical experience is the Bible. Th e dialogue between
heaven and earth that has somehow been captured and preserved46 in the
biblical text has become a world-historical paradigm and inspiration for
subsequent dialogue. Th is gives the biblical text a primacy and normativ-
ity of the kind assumed in the midrashic mode. Th is primacy, however, is
only formal and not material. Th e structure of the relationship between the
reader and the text has been modifi ed, but the content of any new inter-
pretation begotten by such a relationship must await the event of meet-
ing itself.