Re: Midrash as exegesis

[barbara wolf <lupa@biddeford.com>]

At 04:54 PM 3/14/96 -0600, John Carter wrote (with his theologian's suit on):

>I think your definition of exegesis assumes a dry, lifeless passage or a dry
>and lifeless exegete.  The scriptures are not like that.  Certainly, the
>unimaginative will make dull exegesis.
        Unfortunately true.  The dullness often spills over into sermons
        when the same kind of exegesis shows up in the pulpit.

  However, more and more, our
>seminarians evidence no ability to separate exegesis from midrash (in my
>experience, which is limited).
        Again, true--and as I said, I have only read a few midrash, so I
        probably shouldn't have generalized from sefond-hand sources.
        There are two traditions of midrash (I can[t remember the names)
        and one of them permits far more allegorical than the other.
        As to what seminarians are doing, from year to year, and why, only God
        (and the faculty) know.

>My premise is that they ought to start with the traditional exegesis and
>move out from there.  At base, exegesis may in part simply be interpretation
>guided by long established midrash. If spirituality is not grounded in the
>historical Christ of the Gospels it is not Christian spirituality. Perhaps
>the LDS or the Jehovah Witnesses are doing equally valid midrash; in those
>cases we can see the advantage of solid exegesis.
        I would say here that the *techniques* we are labelling exegesis and
        midrash are not limited to scripture, but also appear in literary
        criticsm.  The wilder flights of fancy (say, in the Baconian camp
        of Shakespearian critics) suffer from not being tethered to the
        texts of the plays.  On the other hand, and reverting to my allusion
        to Longfellow's dissertation on "The Placement of Commas in
Shakespeare's plays referred to the other extreme of critical analysis.
        (Of course, Longfellow had been having a marvellous time in Europe.
        He had to scrape up something to account for his vacation, and commas
        in WS was a very clever thing--nice and stodgy and soporific, as befits
        Serious Thought!

cras amet qui nunquam amavit quique amavit cras amet

     Showing off, aren't we?  (Meaning I haven't the foggiest idea what
you're trying to tell me.  I hope it isn't indelicate!)
Barbara Wolf

        "But we've got to be careful not to reduce people by cramming
        them in the limits of our understanding, haven't we?"

                                                Reginald Hill