"There are four basic assumptions shared by all ancient biblical interpreters:
- The belief that the Torah is a fundamentally cryptic text, so that when it says A it often really means B;
- The assumption that the Torah is a perfect text, without any internal contradictions or even any unnecessary words;
- The idea that, although the words of the Torah were uttered in the past and in a specific historical setting, those words are nonetheless directed to us today, teaching us what to do and think; and
- The idea that the Torah is a divinely given text from start to finish—not just the parts that are explicitly labeled as divine speech, “And the Lord said to Moses…” and the like, but every single word.
All
four of these assumptions might be described nowadays as
counter-intuitive, in the sense that they are not what we generally
assume about, for example, the laws of Hammurabi or the Legend of King
Keret or other writings from the ancient Near East—and, more to the
point, they’re not what modern scholars generally assume about the
Pentateuch. But they are what people came to assume about the Torah, and
ultimately this changed the meaning of the text as a whole. It also
became a mark of the Torah’s specialness. The Torah was the Book, the
profound, unitary, and eternally valid revelation of divine truth, and
the fact that it was interpreted in these special ways only vouchsafed
its unique standing."
James Kugel in "Not a Naive Reading: An Interview with Prof. James Kugel" (here)
