Abstract:

This article proposes a theoretical basis for understanding a crucial component of the maskilic literary approach to Scripture, which many proponents of the Jewish Enlightenment referred to as meliẓah (eloquent or figurative language). Once a venerated concept, it declined following the late nineteenth-century neo-romantic critique of Haskalah literature. Beginning with a brief discussion of Moses Mendelssohn, this article explores these themes by examining the work of Benedict de Spinoza, Robert Lowth, and Naftali Herz Wessely. Pursuing a unique mode of interpretation, these four thinkers strongly affirmed the role of figurative language in Hebrew Scripture, thus promoting an emphatically rhetorical approach to scriptural language. Mendelssohn, Spinoza, Lowth, and Wessely believed that figurative language played a constitutive role in the formation of the anagogical meaning of Scripture and that this meaning was conflictual and open-ended due to its reliance on persuasion, public deliberation, and the use of eloquent speech. While scholars have suggested that maskilim tended to read the Jewish Enlightenment as a movement that either re-sanctified or desacralized Scripture, this article shows that proponents of the much-maligned meliẓah literature were keen on showing that Scripture is not a container of philosophical knowledge. For them, what made Scripture sacred was not its truth—which could be manipulated at will—but its engagement in an often inconclusive struggle between sacredness and secularity, reason and revelation, mythical and philosophical conceptions of God.

摘要：

这篇文章提出了一个理论基础，用于理解对圣经的面具文学方法的一个关键组成部分，许多犹太启蒙运动的支持者将其称为meliẓah（雄辩的或比喻的语言）。它曾经是一个受人尊敬的概念，但随着 19 世纪晚期对哈斯卡拉文学的新浪漫主义批判而衰落。本文从对摩西·门德尔松的简短讨论开始，通过研究本尼迪克特·德·斯宾诺莎、罗伯特·洛思和纳夫塔利·赫兹·韦斯利的工作来探索这些主题。这四位思想家追求独特的解释方式，强烈肯定了希伯来语圣经中比喻语言的作用，从而强调了对圣经语言的修辞方法。Mendelssohn、Spinoza、Lowth 和 Wessely 认为，比喻语言在圣经的比喻意义的形成中发挥了构成性作用，并且由于依赖说服、公众协商和雄辩的使用，这种意义是矛盾的和开放的。演讲。meliẓah文学热衷于表明圣经不是哲学知识的容器。对他们来说，使圣经成为神圣的不是它的真理——它可以随意操纵——而是它参与了神圣与世俗、理性与启示、神话和哲学概念之间的一场往往没有结果的斗争。