For this parable, we are going to have the benefit of not only seeing its Hebrew but also two translations. John Hobbins was kind enough to translate the text in two posts entitled “The Parable of the Banquet in the Talmud.” In the first part, he looks at the exchange between R. Eliezer and his students culminating in a quote from Qohelet. Hobbins reminds us of the importance of taking the context of the parables into consideration as they may have never been stand-alone units.

I have my doubts about the tendency to treat parables as self-contained units. They may have been (or may never have been), once upon a time, autonomous units. But, just as is the case with the parables of the New Testament, the parables of the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud do not stand on their own anymore. Relationship to context needs to be taken into full account.

In the second part, he looks at the parable of a king who invited his servants to a feast (hence the title of the parable). He also provides a list of non-biblical expressions in the Talmud text and a vocalized biblical Hebrew assimilation that makes it a lot easier to read.

In the book They Also Taught in Parables, the authors go all the way to the end of Berakhot 153a since the last unit has R. Meir’s son-in-law expanding on the last parable. To make things a little easier to follow, I will divide this whole section (as demarcated by the book) into three parts. The first two will follow Hobbins’ sense-units and the last will include the conclusion. I will first provide the translation in They Also Taught in Parables (PT) followed by the Hebrew text and Hobbins’ translation (HT) (expect, of course, for the last part).

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There are different approaches that one can use to understand the complexities of the Pentateuch. I have been thinking about two approaches in particular, source criticism and literary criticism, after reading James S. Diamond’s book Stringing the Pearls: How to Read the Weekly Torah Portion. Dr. Diamond teaches in the Program in Judaic Studies at Princeton University and this book grew out of his two-year intensive Tanakh course sponsored by the Hebrew College of Boston. Although the aim of the book is to introduce the Jewish reader to the Torah portions (there are 54 portions or parashyiot which are read throughout the year covering the entire Torah), it covers a whole range of topics making it a great introductory short book on the Torah from a Jewish perspective.

My intention in this post is to look at Diamond’s handling of Genesis 37, a text that he uses to illustrate how the narrative can be read using literary criticism. Part of my interest in literary criticism is my admiration for Robert Alter’s work in this area.

Diamond gives us a general overview of source and literary criticism and how each one approaches the text in the Torah. Although source criticism can be quite technical, he points out that it is easier nowadays for lay people to understand it due, in great measure, to the work of Richard Elliot Friedman. In short, he says that source criticism “seeks to identify the different hands and voices that are visible and audible in the text. Source criticism builds on linguistic analysis but looks at larger literary issues such as style and point of view” (71).

Literary criticism on the other hand is attuned to the esthetic dimension of the text. “It seeks to illuminate the internal coherence of an individual narrative, of a poem, of a book, of the Pentateuch as a whole, even of the TANAKH as a whole” (72). He cites Gabriel Josipovici who contrasts the literary approach with source criticism:

It is not that the documentary hypothesis is necessarily wrong in substance; Genesis is clearly made up of a number of traditions which have been combined at different stages. But is not the task of the critic to try and come to grips with the final form as we have it, and to give the final editor or redactor the benefit of the doubt, rather than to delve behind his work to what was there before?” (72)

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I recently read a fascinating book entitled They Also Taught in Parables: Rabbinic Parables from the First Centuries of the Christian Era by Harvey K. McArthur and Robert M. Johnston. The first part is a collection of selected parables of the תנאים (tannaim – the Rabbinic sages in the Mishnah from approximately 70-200 CE) and the second part comprised of essays on the nature of their parables and some comparisons with the parables of Jesus.

The rabbinic word for parable(s) is mashal/meshalim, and, to mark a literary item as a narrative mashal, the authors chose the following elements:

Explicit label. Often the introductory formulas to the items explicitly label them as meshalim. Some typical introductions are: “A parable”; “A parable: It is like unto . . .”; and “They parable a parable. Unto what is the matter like? It is like unto. . . .”

Abbreviated label. Frequently the introductory formulas are abbreviated in such a way that the word mashal itself is omitted: “It is like unto. . . .”

Structural characteristics. The immediate environment and internal structure of the typical narrative mashal in its fullest form include these five parts:

Here is an example:

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