Midrash:
Haggadah and Halakah
In our verses this week,
and in verses 7-13 next week, Paul is referring back to that most
central story in Jewish history, the exodus story. He is not
doing this just to educate the reader on history, but to use the
past to make a statement about the present. This kind of literary
device is called "midrash."
"Mid'rash"
in Hebrew means "to search, inquire, and interpret."
This is the type of biblical literary form found in rabbinic literature,
especially the Talmud and the midrashic collections.
Midrashic interpretation reflects upon previously written material
and restates the message, but with a new application to the present
life situation of the reader. Midrash assumes that the biblical
text has an inexhaustible fund of meaning that could be applied
to every situation, including future life situations.
The word occurs twice in
OT: "The rest of Abijah's acts, his deeds and
his words, are written in the midrash of the prophet Iddo"
(2Chr 13:22); "There is a written account of him [King Joash]
in the midrash of the book of the kings" (2Chr 24:27).
There are two literary forms
of midrash. The first is "haggadah," which is the
interpretation, in story form, of the historical portions of Jewish
Scripture, the narratives. The Book of Chronicles
is sometimes described as a "historical midrash," that
is, a commentary in narrative form on the earlier historical writings.
Hellenistic Jewish historians such as Josephus and Philo, and writings
such as Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, and the Dead Sea Scrolls,
all contain a wealth of haggadic material. Many stories came
to be told about such central figures in Israel's history such as
Adam, Enoch, Abraham, Joseph, and Moses.
The second form of midrash
is the "halakah" which comes from the Hebrew, "halak,"
meaning, "to walk, go, follow." This literature
focuses on the legal portions of previous scriptures restating them
in such a way so as to teach the reader the way and to serve as
a guide for the reader's life. In all cases, the halakah was
interpreted to be a clarifying restatement of the Torah.
When the Law was given through
Moses, this Law expressed to the people God's will for them.
In the days of Isaiah and Jeremiah, the prophet's message served
to remind and instruct the faithful of the ways of God. In
post exilic Judaism, the law continued to be seen as the revelation
of God's will and way. But now, the halakah fulfilled the
function which had earlier been fulfilled by the prophets; it was
the work of the contemporary writers to put before the people contemporary
lessons from the law which would have the same impact for life which
the word of the prophets had in previous times.
This form of writing, the
halakah, had as its purpose to stimulate understanding of and fidelity
to the Law within the present Jewish community. These new
writers were like Moses in his own generation, except that the contemporary
writers attempted to elicit a response in their readers to the message
uttered by the original Moses himself. Moses spoke to people
of his time, and now it was a matter for a later writer to restate
the message of Moses in a way to make it fit the contemporary scene.
In the OT there
are many retellings of the stories of creation, the deluge, the
episodes of the Patriarchs, and the exodus and covenant. Psalm
78 is a clear example of this in its reflection upon the exodus
event. "God cleft the sea and brought them through, and
made the waters stand as in a mound. God led them with a cloud by
day, and all night with a glow of fire" (Ps 78:13-14).
Ezekiel, chapter 16, reviews the sinful past of Israel
in telling the allegory of the unfaithful spouse so that "then
you shall remember your conduct and be ashamed" (16:61).
As we see, midrash was not
intended to give a deeper literary understanding of the original
text, but to intensify the edification aspect of the text.
Its goal was always the inspiring application of the previous scripture
to the present living situation.
In the NT the gospels
make numerous uses of midrash. Matthew's story of
the three magi expands upon Numbers 24:17: "A star
shall advance from Jacob, and a staff shall rise from Israel"
(2:1-6). And the following verses, (13-15), concerning the
flight into Egypt, express a reflection on Hosea 11:1:
"Out of Egypt I called my son." The massacre of
the infants (16-18) is a narrative reflection on Jeremiah
31:15 and an application of this message to the contemporary situation:
"In Ramah is heard the sound of moaning, of bitter weeping!
Rachel mourns her children, she refuses to be consoled because her
children are no more."
In other parts of the NT,
there are examples of haggadic material. Many are about Moses
showing that these NT writers were familiar with ancient
traditions. The Second letter to Timothy (3:8) gives
the names of the Egyptian sorcerers defeated by Moses, namely Jannes
and Jambres. Several writers refer to a tradition that the
Law was given by angels rather than God (Gal 3:19; Act 7:53).
Jude 9 refers to a legend that the archangel Michael and
Satan struggled over the body of Moses.
Paul uses midrash, in the
haggadic form, in his Letter to the Galatians, chapters
3-4, when he retells the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar.
"It is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman,
and the other by the freeborn woman. . . . Now this is an
allegory. These women represent two covenants. One was
from Mt. Sinai, bearing children for slavery; this is Hagar. . .
. Brothers and sisters, we are children not of the slave woman
but of the freeborn woman" (4:22-24, 31).
We come back, then, to the
midrash Paul uses in his Letter to the Corinthians.
In next week's study, Paul will make a series of parallel exhortations
in midrashic form: "Do not grumble as some of them did, and
suffered death by the destroyer" (10:10). In our study
this week we also hear Paul use midrash in his encouragement of
the Corinthians: "Our ancestors were all under the cloud and
all passed through the sea, and all of them were baptized into Moses
in the cloud and in the sea. All ate the same spiritual drink,
for they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them and the
rock was the Christ" (10:1-4). Paul wishes the Corinthians
to see their story in this exodus story so that for them, the OT
manna becomes their "spiritual food," perhaps even the
Eucharist, and the rock that gave life giving water to the original
Hebrews is now Christ the source of new life, into whom the Corinthians
have been incorporated through the new baptism.
Paul here is reflecting
upon the story of the exodus journey in the desert, retelling those
parts of it to add homiletic exhortation to his message, which is
aptly expressed in verse 6: "These things happened as examples
for us, so that we might not desire evil things, as they did."
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