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Authors: Daniel Boyarin
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is indeed, and even so, the Israelites did not doubt; they did not say, "Where is God," but followed Moses faithfully. This is the general meaning of this passage.
Let us look now at the very complex structure of citation in this text, for indeed it is made up entirely of quotations. First, let us note the two quotations of folk traditions, which are explicitly marked as such by the rubric, "They [i.e., the people] have told." The folklore is quoted : "They have told," and is accordingly part of the intertextual structure of the text. 10 The snakes and scorpions, however, are not folklore; they are explicitly signified in the verses from Deuteronomy and Isaiah, but the terrible nature, the fearfulness of the viper is greatly enhanced by the quoted legend of what happens to birds by the snake's conjoining with their shadows. 11 We have here, accordingly, a composite text whose mosaic structure is indicated openly on its surface.
The use of the verse from Jeremiah, however, most powerfully manifests the
paradoxical nature of intertextuality in the midrash, for it is used here in a sense opposite to that of its original context. In Jeremiah, it is "what fault did your ancestors find in Me that they have grown far from Me, and they follow nonsense; and did not say, 'where is God who took us up,'" i.e., "they did not say" means there that they should have said it; they should have sought God. However, in the midrash, "they did not say" is to their credit, i.e., they trusted and didn't say where is God who took us up, now that we need Him? This placing of a verse into a new context with a different meaning is emblematic of midrash. The tradition has been breached, but at the same time, this reading of the verse is consistent with Jeremiah's own theology of the desert period. It is, after all, that prophet who says, ''I have remembered for you the faithfulness of your youth, your going after me in the desert" [2:2]. In short, what is, in the context of Jeremiah, an attack on his generation, is made in the midrash an approbation of the generation of the wilderness, a sentiment with which the prophet would be in complete sympathy. The tradition is, therefore, also preserved.
Only the rhetoric is new, not the ideology. The local (''original") meaning of the verse is disrupted, but the meaningsystem to which it belongs, the ideology as a whole, is vivified and confirmed.
We might sum up the difference between midrashic quotation and poetic allusion by saying that while midrash is exegesis of an authoritative text, a specific type of interpretation, poetic allusion is interpretation which is not exegesis. At least the text being read is always explicitly marked in midrash by being quoted at its outset, even though the cotexts being cited are not always so. This is ultimately the difference between the intertextuality encoded in Scripture itself and the intertextuality of the rabbis as well. 12 In the next section, we will begin to see the mechanics of the hermeneutics of citation as a disruption and preservation of meanings.
Paradigmatic and Syntagmatic Citation
Midrash performs its hermeneutic work by quoting. The quoting and resituating of texts from the Torah and the Prophets and Writings, the creation of new strings of language out of the pearls of the old, is accomplished through the placing of collections of quoted verses into set structures. These structures seem to fall into two types, which I call paradigmatic and syntagmatic. 13 In the first kind, verses of the Bible are associated by features in which they are the same or different, that is to say they are substitutable one for the other as tokens of a type; hence they are shown to form a paradigm. In the second kind, verses are replaced into a new narrative structure. Let us have a brief look at an example of each of these types of midrash, beginning with the paradigmatic:
The Lord is a man of war, the Lord is His name : Rabbi Yehuda says: Here is a verse made
Let us look now at the very complex structure of citation in this text, for indeed it is made up entirely of quotations. First, let us note the two quotations of folk traditions, which are explicitly marked as such by the rubric, "They [i.e., the people] have told." The folklore is quoted : "They have told," and is accordingly part of the intertextual structure of the text. 10 The snakes and scorpions, however, are not folklore; they are explicitly signified in the verses from Deuteronomy and Isaiah, but the terrible nature, the fearfulness of the viper is greatly enhanced by the quoted legend of what happens to birds by the snake's conjoining with their shadows. 11 We have here, accordingly, a composite text whose mosaic structure is indicated openly on its surface.
The use of the verse from Jeremiah, however, most powerfully manifests the
paradoxical nature of intertextuality in the midrash, for it is used here in a sense opposite to that of its original context. In Jeremiah, it is "what fault did your ancestors find in Me that they have grown far from Me, and they follow nonsense; and did not say, 'where is God who took us up,'" i.e., "they did not say" means there that they should have said it; they should have sought God. However, in the midrash, "they did not say" is to their credit, i.e., they trusted and didn't say where is God who took us up, now that we need Him? This placing of a verse into a new context with a different meaning is emblematic of midrash. The tradition has been breached, but at the same time, this reading of the verse is consistent with Jeremiah's own theology of the desert period. It is, after all, that prophet who says, ''I have remembered for you the faithfulness of your youth, your going after me in the desert" [2:2]. In short, what is, in the context of Jeremiah, an attack on his generation, is made in the midrash an approbation of the generation of the wilderness, a sentiment with which the prophet would be in complete sympathy. The tradition is, therefore, also preserved.
Only the rhetoric is new, not the ideology. The local (''original") meaning of the verse is disrupted, but the meaningsystem to which it belongs, the ideology as a whole, is vivified and confirmed.
We might sum up the difference between midrashic quotation and poetic allusion by saying that while midrash is exegesis of an authoritative text, a specific type of interpretation, poetic allusion is interpretation which is not exegesis. At least the text being read is always explicitly marked in midrash by being quoted at its outset, even though the cotexts being cited are not always so. This is ultimately the difference between the intertextuality encoded in Scripture itself and the intertextuality of the rabbis as well. 12 In the next section, we will begin to see the mechanics of the hermeneutics of citation as a disruption and preservation of meanings.
Paradigmatic and Syntagmatic Citation
Midrash performs its hermeneutic work by quoting. The quoting and resituating of texts from the Torah and the Prophets and Writings, the creation of new strings of language out of the pearls of the old, is accomplished through the placing of collections of quoted verses into set structures. These structures seem to fall into two types, which I call paradigmatic and syntagmatic. 13 In the first kind, verses of the Bible are associated by features in which they are the same or different, that is to say they are substitutable one for the other as tokens of a type; hence they are shown to form a paradigm. In the second kind, verses are replaced into a new narrative structure. Let us have a brief look at an example of each of these types of midrash, beginning with the paradigmatic:
The Lord is a man of war, the Lord is His name : Rabbi Yehuda says: Here is a verse made
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