Exegesis--interpretation and explanation of sacred texts--is the quintessence of rabbinic thought. Through such means and methods, the written words of Hebrew Scripture have been extended since antiquity, and given new voices for new times. In this lucid and often poetic book, Michael Fishbane delineates the connections between biblical interpretation and Jewish religious thought. How can a canon be open to new meanings, given that it is believed to be immutable? Fishbane discusses the nature and rationale of this interpretative process in a series of studies on ancient Jewish speculative theology. Focusing on questions often pondered in Midrash, he shows how religious ideas are generated or justified by exegesis. He also explores the role exegesis plays in liturgy and ritual. A striking example is the transfer of speculative interpretations into meditation in prayer. Cultivation of the ability to perceive many implicit meanings in a text or religious practice can become a way of living--as Fishbane shows in explaining how such notions as joy or spiritual meditations on death can be idealized and the ideal transmitted through theological interpretation. The Exegetical Imagination is a collection of interrelated essays that together offer new and profound understanding of scriptural interpretation and its central role in Judaism.

This book is the first comprehensive treatment and analysis of the pheno-menon of textual interpretation in ancient Israel. It is shown that the Old Testament is the repository of and witness to a rich tradition of exegesis considerably prior to the development of biblical interpretation in early classical Judaism and in the earli-est Christian communities. The subject-matter is explored under four major cate-gories: (1) scribal exegesis (lexical, philo-logical, and euphemistic interpretations); (2) legal exegesis (additions, analogies, etc., in the legal corpora); (3) aggadic exegesis (theological, homiletical, and his-toriographical interpretations); (4) manto-logical exegesis (omens, dreams, and oracles). Particular attention is paid to the types and techniques of exegesis within the Old Testament and to the continuity of this exegetical tradition in later hermeneutical writings. In the end it emerges that the Hebrew Bible is not only the foundation document for the exegetical culture of Judaism and Christianity but is an exe-getical corpus in its own right. --cover flap.

Explores the question of the kind of canon, privileged status, or Logos, the Torah actually has for the post-modern Western Jew. This book documents the intellectual and spiritual odyssey of one of North America's foremost Jewish biblical scholars.