mg01

This is something I have meant to inquire about for some time...

All through the NT, the various authors frequently reference Hebrew scripture and provide their own interpretations. I've noticed this also extends to the writings found at Nag Hammadi and the Dead Sea scrolls. We also see this with Philo and to some degree (I think?) with Josephus. So then for Mark, who has several of his episodes on thinly veiled imitations of events from the Hebrew Bible, I presume he was likely working from what had become the "fad" of the day. I've also read that between the gospels, epistles, and pastorals, the books quoted most often correspond to the proportion of copies of the writings found with the DSS, also indicating that they were drawing from the scriptures that happened to be the most popular at the time. Do other writings exist that follow this same vein?

Additionally, I saw mention somewhere about how following the Greek philosophical movements around the 5th century, Homer and Hersiod came to be regarded as allegory rather than history/fact and some tried to extract prophecies from them. Hard not to draw a correlation to this with the example of Jewish re-interpretation that appear to have begun after the Greek influence.

Can anyone help illuminate me further on this?

Thanks.

andrewcriddle

Origen is a good example of an early Christian who allegorically interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures. A number of Origen's works are online eg at Roger Pearse's excellent site http://www.tertullian.org

Andrew Criddle

leftbehind

I am not a scholar to be familiar with the sources she draws from, or how accurate her interpretations are, but Karen Armstrong writes about this very well in her book, "The Bible (or via: amazon.co.uk)", in the chapter on Midrash, discussing the tradition of some Jews to exegete scriptures that way. It is very interesting. The first four chapters of the book were very helpful to me in gaining an understanding of some of the traditions which shaped the development of the scriptures, both OT and NT.

bacht

I don't think this was a turn-of-the-millenium phenomenon. The Pharisees and other students of the Oral Torah had been doing midrash on the scriptures at least since Ezra (ca 400s BCE). For one thing, the Hebrew language was dying out by the Hellenistic era. The scriptures quoted in the NT come mostly from the Greek Septuagint afaik. I think the DSS also cite other translations and commentaries.

Philo was one of the Jews who deliberately used allegory in interpreting scripture. I think this was a fairly common approach in the Diaspora, where synagogues were replacing the temple sacrificial cult.

Both the Christians and the DSS community were interested in apocalyptic ideas, thus prophets like Daniel were popular.

The proto-Catholics in the 2nd C fought to retain the Jewish scriptures in the new religion. Gnostics were the opposite, claiming that the Jewish God was not the real high God, in fact that Yahweh was the source of evil (don't quote me, others here know the details). There is also controversy about Paul's attitude toward the Torah, since he was used by the heretic Marcion as the core of his canon (which excluded the OT).