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May 19, 2021

A Rabbi Explains the Jewish Way of Reading the Bible to a Protestant Scholar

Seeing scripture as a problem to be solved.

In a typical synagogue sermon, the rabbi will begin by posing a problem that arises out of the sacred text itself—where there appears to be something “wrong” with scripture. Such an approach to the Bible is very different from that normally taken by Christian preachers and clergy. Ari Lamm discusses the merits of this Jewish exegetical method with the Christian scholar Dru Johnson, using as an example some of the moral anomalies of the Joseph story, and addressing why the rabbinic genre known as midrash takes such great liberties with the text of the Tanakh.

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