The poetics of The Midrash on Psalms: elements of dialogical and polemical interactivity in refracted hermeneutics

Current methodologies in the study of Midrash allows for the hypothesis that the medieval anthology known as The Midrash on Psalms incorporates polemically structured texts as exegetical disputes with the Christological interpretation of Psalms. Such discourse, whether structured around individual מדרשים (homiletical interpretations on Scripture), or a cultural poetics that gathers various מדרשים according to themes, display evidence of interactivity with external, specifically Christian, concerns. In the former case, the homilist(s), seemingly unprovoked, abandons traditional rabbinic readings of key Christological texts, namely Ps. 29:1'מזמור לדוד. הבו לה' בני אלים' (‘A Psalm of David. Ascribe to the Lord, O ye sons of God’), Ps. 2:7 'בני אתה' (‘Thou art My son’), Ps. 110:1 שב לימיני' 'נאם ה' לאדוני (‘The Lord said unto my lord: “Sit thou at My right hand”’), and Dan. 7:13 'וארו עם ענני שמיא כבר אנש אתה הוא' (‘Behold, there came with the clouds of heaven one like unto a son of man’), thus fashioning a singular shift in the history of rabbinic hermeneutics. I argue that the repositioning of these texts generate hermeneutic sites of resistance to Christian Imperial hegemony, precisely through appropriating and requisitioning rival discourse and, at the same time, subverting its Christology. This is a process that prompted Mid. Ps 29.1 to incorporate the Septuagint’s second and mistaken doublet γιοι των κριών, namely ‘sons of rams’ – a reading that coincides with the translation of Ps. 28:1a in the Hebraica Veritas (‘Adferte Domino filios arietum’). Similarly, in Mid. Ps. 2.9, which features a collection of canonical texts, the homilist(s) deviated from traditional hermeneutics by re-eschatologising these scriptures, attributing their very Christological titles to the scholarly Messiah of Israel, who is yet to come. Such a foray into the sphere of disputed dogma is the midrashic way of defending a vision of Israel’s unmediated covenantal life in the face of the Christian usurpation of Psalms as a proof of Jesus’ messianism that renders all other covenants obsolete. No less evident in this volume is rabbinic defence against disturbing Christian claims that propagated the notion of Judaism’s invalidity and demise throughout the Muslim era. Multiple, disparate verses that display thematic affinity often indicate redactory intention to contravene claims of Israel carnality and divine rejection, precisely through reshaping and repositioning theological narratives in response to such allegations. So we see how claims arising from Exod. 32:8 and reproduced in Mid. Ps. 3.6 represent the patristic notion of innate Jewish vice and depravity. Rabbinic defence constitutes in showing how Israel thrived in the aftermath of the molten calf apostasy. Henceforth, subsequent errancy, especially a spiral to a spiritual and existential rock-bottom, is understood to be messianically charged, as this generates religious wakening, leading to eventual redemption. Furthermore, in patristic interpretations of Ps 3:3, which is reproduced in Mid. Ps. 4.8, Israel is portrayed as so lowly and abased that its historical degradation must reflect God’s rejection of His people. Yet, passages dispersed throughout the volume show common rabbinic concern to contradict this notion by showing that God’s attachment to the people is elemental, necessary, even ontological hence, immutable.