Reinterpeting Jewish sages

It has often been said that the Bible is a Hebrew book and we must learn to think like Hebrews to understand it. Unfortunately, having driven believing Jews from the church, it has been predominantly Greek for at least 1600 years. The influence of Greek philosophy, logic, and rhetoric upon Church doctrine and dogma cannot be denied.

Is it possible to reproduce a thoroughly Hebrew thought process at this late date?

The problem with turning to modern rabbis is that they are philosophically descended from the Jews who rejected Jesus. Their teaching can be expected to be biased against anything that would suggest that Jesus is the Messiah.

If the effects of these biases can be identified, is there a remnant of the early hermeneutic still contained in the modern version?

As an experiment, various teachings will be explored for that purpose and with those assumptions.

The Hebrew letters of the alphabet

There are various Hebrew stories of how the alef-bet or the Torah came to be that personify the letters. Some even give them power of creation, supposedly justified by references to the Sefir Yetzira.

Rabbi Benjamin Blech suggests that the את consisting of the first and last letter, but left untranslated, before the heavens השמים in Ge 1:1 suggests that God created the letters before he created the heavens.

Discerning

We must reject the personification of the letters.

We may accept that the letters were created first since when he spoke to create, he used words comprised of letters. Though we don't fully understand it, Jesus is the Word. He is the creator. He is diminished if we pass that work off to the letters.

Pardes: the orchard

The rabbis suggest that the Torah must be analyzed on the basis of four different methods:

Peshat פשט - the simple or literal meaning

Remez רמז - allusion

Derush (Drash) דרוש - inference

Sod סוד - secrets

Discerning

We must reject the conclusions of the rabbis as being subject to their anti-Christ bias.

We may accept their observation on the nature of scripture, and methods they use.

The four methods have parallels to the Catholic Quadriga and the four voices of God identified in SP.

Peshat : the King - the literal-historical meaning

Remez : the prophet - the allusions reference the prophetic riddles of the OT

Drash : the judge - the will of God concerning the literal is inferred

Sod : the priest - the hidden text is nothing less than the mystery which was revealed through Christ.

The Messiah is destined to reveal a completely new understanding in the Torah, about which the sages have said that “the Torah of our day is like naught when compared to the Torah of the Messiah.” Of course, the text of the Torah will not change, only its understanding. [1]

NOTE: The sages apparently reject the idea that the Torah should be interpreted in the context of the original readers.

Gematria

Hebrew words have a numerical value.

The rabbis suggest that words which have the same numerical value are related in a way similar to the way molecules are related that have an -OH radical.

Discerning

We must reject any method that produces free-for-all interpretation. I am not familiar nor comfortable with the practice.

We may accept the use of those numbers when we see NT authors use them in a certain way.

We may observe proposed interpretations to establish if there is a verifiable way to use them.

Rabbinic expectations

Modern interpreters insist that the OT scriptures be interpreted in the context of the OT authors and readers. The Jews have a different understanding:

"The Messiah is destined to reveal a completely new understanding in the Torah, about which the sages have said that “the Torah of our day is like naught when compared to the Torah of the Messiah.” Of course, the text of the Torah will not change, only its understanding."

When will we start reading the scriptures like Jesus did?

Western bias

Much Hebrew interpretation is foreign to the Greek thought process and inference, allusion and gematria seem to be a stretch of the imagination. However, even in English, Blech points out, that the word radar originally was an acronym for "Radio Detecting And Ranging".