Ancient Jewish Exegesis

• The Work of Ezra

• Neh 8:8 So they [Ezra and the Levites] read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.

• Hebrew Scribes held the inspired Scriptures with profound reverence:

• They thus copied every dot and tittle with that extreme reverence
• But some over-reverenced its communication expecting hidden communication instead of plain communication

• Rabi Akiba 1st century AD, maintained that every repetition, figure of speech, parallelism, synonym, word, letter and letter shape had hidden meanings –and Letterism overrode the literal meanings.

• There arose a classification into four main types of interpretation

• Literal (peshat), midrashic, pesher (finding veiled prophetic meaning), and allegorical (a true hidden meaning beneath the literal)

• Midrash comes form the verb darash meaning to search. It was to highlight and explain the relevance of Scripture in new and changing circumstances, … i.e. no more temple, no more sacrifice, etc.