Sárospataki Füzetek 20. (2016)

2016 / 2. szám - ARTICLES / STUDIEN - György Kustár: Ont he Slopes of Sinai - Some Hermeneutical Questions in Light of the Kabbalistic and Historical Critical Exegesis

György Kustár

inquiry reaches back behind the text to evaporate the mythical or fictitious elements in order to regain the historical. The keyword in the hermeneutical process applied is ‘ Vergegenwärtigung, a word in lack of a better term be best translated as actualization or re-presentation.63 What the expression means is that the founding stories of Israel in certain periods went through a re-actualization in order to become comprehensible for the contemporary believing community. The texts in their present forms represent the intricate conclusion of this project that was pursued both by theological and historical modifications.64 Consequently, the texts are perceived in their historical development as layers on each other, after the example of excavation tells, each representing a distinct theological stratum in the ancient Israelite religious thought. Comprehending the text in this way adds a dimension to the narratives that binds them profoundly to the hypothetic history of the Israelites. The manuscript in the process of interpretation is used as a documentation of religious and cubic traditions, and also as a dim reflection of the history of Israel. Through the complementary religious and historical studies of these texts, governed by the principles of self-detached scientific-historical method, through distinguishing different layers of tradition the assumption is that we can gain a picture of the development or change of the religious tradition of Israel. Hypothetically, through the determination and separation of the reliable and the historical texts, the diachronic dimension of Israelite history becomes visible. When in this process, through complementary religious and social-scientific studies, the distinctive Israelite elements are recognized, we begin to access to a synchronic segment. Finally, the narratives in their present form are being re-synthesized in light of all these findings. In this respect, contrary to Kabbalah, where the textual reality seems to absorb the whole reality, here the method of scholarship seems to dominate the text, and, to an extent seems to absorb it.

This tendency is really clear in the case of the Sinai revelation. The story unfolding the Sinai events is shown to be built up by traditions that are not primarily in connection with each other, but primarily with historical events.65 What makes the disclosure of historical background extremely difficult is the tension between the present narrative with its complexity as a textual reality that has its inter-textual and intra-textual references to its own motifs, and between the historical-cultic Sitz im Leben that serves as the explanation of the development and the compilation of the sources. Turning back to the example of the smoke and the sound of the trumpet, we saw that it is interpreted in the frame of cubic practice, referring to the incense being used and real trumpets being blown in the re-actualization ceremony of the

63 In the work of Beyerlin, the term is translated as realize, which does not convey its denotative meaning. Beyerlin: op. dt., 135.

64 Cf. Noth, Martin: The "Re-presentation" of the O.T. in Proclamation, in Westermann, Claus: Essays, 76-89. For the translation of the term, see ibid., 80-83.

65 Until the present day, the complexity of the assumed redactional process left scholars without clue. See e.g. Meyers, Carol: Exodus (The New Cambridge Commentary Series), Cambridge University Press, New York, 2005,142.

42 Sárospataki Füzetek 20. évfolyam 2016 - 2