The Garments of Torah: Essays in Biblical Hermeneutics

by Michael Fishbane

"In this almost painfully beautiful book... Fishbane... explores the question of the kind of canon, privileged status, or Logos, the Torah actually has for the post-modern Western Jew." --Theology Today

"A book well worth reading." --The Jerusalem Post

"This wonderful volume documents the intellectual and spiritual odyssey of one of North America's foremost Jewish biblical scholars." --Shofar

156 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This incredibly dense set of essays is written from a Reform/Reconstructionist perspective- by which I mean, rather than viewing the Torah as Holy Writ, Fishbane views it as a set of interpretations of older traditions. For example, the first essay begins by discussing apparent redundancies in the Torah; while medieval Jewish commentators found ways to explain the redundancies away, Fishbane suggests that one Torah passage might be an interpretation of another. Having said that, at least a few of Fishbane's points could be useful even for people with more traditional views.

His most interesting essay was about the appeal of polytheism. Why is it that until 1300 or so years ago, most people believed in multiple deities? Fishbane writes that to the polytheistic mind, everything was part of the same circle of life- so why should there be a distinction between an insect and the sea and a god? Similarly, law and justice are not something imposed from above by a deity, but part of the natural order of things.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author in a series of essays upon the topic of biblical interpretation delves into the morass of competing interpretations and the problem of defining a sacred text in a world where the text is the interpreter.