With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

• Author: Eliav, Yaron Z.
• Position: Book review

With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Edited by JANE DAMMEN McAULIFFE, BARRY D. WALFISH, and JOSEPH W. GOERING. Oxford: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. 2003. Pp. xvii + 488.

The phenomenon of interpretation--conveniently labeled "exegesis" in this volume, although not without risking the misconception of harmonization, as if the diverse types of literature discussed here belonged to a single genre--is a central tenet of the three monotheistic traditions. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam model their beliefs and religia on their own amalgamation of sacred texts, canonized over time as "Scripture" and inscribed with authoritative, perpetual, and divine status. The central incentives for those who engaged over the centuries in explicating these texts were vitality and relevance. Commentators of far-apart generations, distant geographic locales, and variegated hermeneutical prepositions and literary methodologies, all confronted this challenge, producing in the process one of the richest corpora of interpretative literature.

The current volume gathers twenty-six studies, originally delivered at a 1997 conference in Toronto, on the medieval realm of biblical interpretation. It is not a book for beginners. The editors provide short introductions to each of the religions (chapters 1, 12, and 20) but these are slim, unequal in value, and too often miss the mark. The introduction to Christian interpretation, for example, does not include in its discussion of the so-called Patristic period even a slight hint as to the rich exegetical traditions that lay outside the perimeter of the Graeco-Roman languages. Syriac, Coptic, and Armenian and others are all left out, thus undermining the introductory value of the essay. The author also asserts that "One of the unusual characteristics of the early Christian communities is their insistence, seemingly from the outset, on the...