Suspending New Testament: Do the Two Talmuds Belong to Hermeneutics of Texts?
Keywords:
Old Testament, New Testament, Palestinian Talmud, Babylonian Talmud, theology, suspension, cancellation, hermeneutics of texts, literature, formal logic, Aufhebung, Auerbach, Kafka, political philology, political theology, political thought, literary theory, critical theory.Abstract
The paper explores the role of competing notions of what does it mean to have a testament of the law of the past in Christian and Rabbinic corpora of text and thought. The argument probes and renegotiates the complex relationships of the Christian suspension of Old Testament by the New Testament and the Rabbinic suspension of (any) new testament in the two Talmudim. It consequently draws implications of that analysis for understanding the relationships of the two Talmudim to the tradition of hermeneutics of texts, as influenced as the latter has been by theological and literary approaches of various Christian theologies of the two Testaments. As a part of that analysis the articles justifies the task of advancing and providing a critique of political theology and political philology as modes of thought and investigation. That provides a way to ask anew the question about relationships between theology, literary theory, and political thought.
