Jewish Concepts of Scripture

(Grace) #1
Concepts of Scripture in Moshe Greenberg 263


  1. See chapter 13 in this volume by Job Jindo.

  2. Greenberg, “Kaufmann,” in Studies in the Bible and Jewish Th ought, 175.

  3. Ibid., 175, 184, 187 – 88.

  4. Moshe Goshen-Gottstein, “Scriptural Authority: Biblical Authority in Juda-
    ism,” ABD 5 (1992): 1017. For a discussion on Jews and biblical theology, see Jon
    Levenson, “Why Jews Are Not Interested in Biblical Th eology,” chap 2. in Th e He-
    brew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism (Louisville, KY: Westmin-
    ster/John Knox, 1993), 33 – 61; there is also some relevant material on this topic in
    my essays “Biblical History and Jewish Biblical Th eology,” JR 77 (1997): 563 – 83; and
    “Biblical Authority: A Jewish Pluralistic View,” in Engaging Biblical Authority: Per-
    spectives on the Bible as Scripture, ed. William P. Brown (Louisville, KY: Westmin-
    ster/John Knox, 2007), 1 – 9, 141 – 43.

  5. I have borrowed this term from James L. Kugel, Th e God of Old: Inside the
    Lost World of the Bible (New York: Free Press, 2003).

  6. Greenberg, “Prophecy,” in Studies in the Bible and Jewish Th ought, 416;
    Greenberg, “On Sharing the Scriptures,” in Magnalia Dei: Th e Mighty Acts of God:
    Essays on the Bible and Archaeology in Memory of G. Ernest Wright, ed. Frank
    Moore Cross, Werner E. Lemke, and Patrick D. Miller (Garden City, NY: Double-
    day, 1976), 455.

  7. See Moshe Greenberg, “A Faith-ful Critical Interpretation of the Bible,” in
    Judaism and Modernity: Th e Religious Philosophy of David Hartman, ed. Jonathan
    W. Malino (Burlington, VT: Aldershot, 2004), 210: “In dedicating this essay to Da-
    vid, I acknowledge my debt to him who persists in calling me provocatively a ‘theo-
    logian’ when I am no more than an exegete, though keenly aware of the ideal mar-
    riage of exegesis and theology, so rare in Judaism.” Of a younger generation, the
    recent book of Michael Fishbane, Sacred Attunement: A Jewish Th eology (Chicago:
    University of Chicago Press, 2008), is especially noteworthy, as is the more recent
    Benjamin D. Sommer, Th e Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (Cam-
    bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), esp. 124 – 32.

  8. See the comments of James Barr on Brevard Childs, in Th e Concept of Bib-
    lical Th eology: An Old Testament Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress,
    1999), 49: “[Scripture] is a distinctively religious usage that evokes holiness, au-
    thority, the Word of God.” See also James Barr, Holy Scripture: Canon, Authority,
    Criticism (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1983), 1, where he glosses Scripture as a “written
    guide for religion.”

  9. Brevard Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadel-
    phia: Fortress, 1979), 71. Greenberg the canonical critic is especially evident in
    Understanding Exodus (New York: Behrman, 1969) and Th e Anchor Bible: Ezekiel,
    vols. 1 – 2, and in his volume of Hebrew collected essays, On the Bible and Judaism
    (in Hebrew).

  10. On textual criticism, see Odil Hannes Steck, Old Testament Exegesis: A
    Guide to the Methodology, 2nd ed., trans. James D. Nogalski (Atlanta: Scholars,

Free download pdf