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7 - Humanism and the rights of exegesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Richard A. Cohen
Richard A. Cohen
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Charlotte
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Summary

This is an ascent within words, be they the most recent ones, to I know not what antiquity that is already to be translated, already to be deciphered. A dead language to be resuscitated, in order that its innumerable intentions may be reawakened! The latent birth of Scripture, of the book, of literature, and an appeal to interpretation, to exegesis, an appeal to the sages who solicit texts. A solicitation of solicitation – Revelation.

Levinas, “From Ethics to Exegesis”

Revelation needs commentary in order to be rightly understood and applied – this is the far from self-evident religious doctrine out of which grew both the phenomenon of biblical exegesis and the Jewish tradition which it created.

Gershom Scholem, “Revelation and Tradition as Religious Categories”

The present chapter is central to this book. It is guided by two related aims. At its core it aims to explicate the nature and value of the ethico-exegetical approach that operates in Emmanuel Levinas's work. This approach is especially evident in his Talmudic Readings, but it is also operative throughout his philosophical writings proper. Exegesis, in Levinas's hands, signifies far more than what one might ordinarily expect from a method or technique of text analysis, and certainly far more than text analysis “limited” to so-called religious writings.

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Ethics, Exegesis and Philosophy
Interpretation after Levinas
 , pp. 216 - 265
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

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