Intertextuality and the Haftarot

Judaism, Wntr-Spring, 2004 by Gershon Hepner

The JPS Bible Commentary: Haftarot, Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2002.

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THE HAFTARAH, A READING FROM THE PROPHETS RECITED publicly on Sabbaths, festivals, and certain fast days after reciting the required portion of the Pentateuch, perhaps originally acted as a farewell address before Jews left the synagogue after the Torah reading. (1) The annual cycle of Torah readings followed by the reading of the haftarot is a central part of the synagogue service, the linkage dating to a period before the canon had been fixed when the Scriptures were globally referred to as "The Law and the Prophets." (2) The ritual was probably derived from a so-called Triennial Cycle in which there were two three-and-a-half year reading cycles, (3) which concluded on the festival of Sukkoth at the onset of the eighth year of the cycle, in ostensible conformity with the law in Deuteronomy 31: 10-13. (4) This custom probably echoes the way the Torah was read during the ministry of Ezra throughout the festival of Sukkoth (Nehemiah 7: 73; 8: 14-18), perhaps also echoing the way that the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish was recited during the course of the akitu or New Year Festival, and certainly foreshadowing the way that in the Annual Cycle the Torah reading is concluded on Simhat Torah, Rejoicing of the Torah, the last day of this festival.

However, our knowledge concerning the weekly readings of the haftarot is somewhat obscure, since our sources are not contemporaneous with its origins, and depend heavily on Abudarham, a fourteenth-century Spanish liturgical commentator. He reports that at the beginning of the second century B.C.E. Antiochus Epiphanes IV issued an edict prohibiting the reading of the Torah and the Jews evaded this proscription by reading a related passage from the prophets. While this explanation is uncorroborated, the Talmud in B. T. Sabbath 24a reports that Jews used to read portions of Isaiah during the Minhah service on the Sabbath. The existence of such a custom is corroborated by reports in Luke 4: 16-19 and Acts 13: 15 (5) and by the reference to a regular sequence of haftarot in Mishnah Megillah 3: 4 that precedes a passage prohibiting prophetic readings for Minhah on the Sabbath as well as Mondays and Thursdays in Mishnah Megillah 4: 1. (6) While the selection of specific haftarot has historically varied greatly from community to community and these variations continue to this very day, the custom of reading haftarot is now universal among Jewish communities regardless of origin and denomination.

In the so-called Triennial Cycle comparatively few haftarot were chosen from the Former Prophets which contain historical and archival material, in contrast to those chosen in the Annual Cycle, which contains eight haftarot from Joshua, Judges, and Samuel and eleven from the Book of Kings. Nearly half of the haftarot chosen for the Triennial Cycle were taken from Isaiah, of which two thirds were from chapters 40-66, which emphasize national return to the homeland. The significance of this preponderance is emphasized by the fact that the Annual Cycle has only 10 haftarot from Isaiah, seven of which come from chapters 40-66, apart from those read on special Sabbaths. (7) The extraordinary concentration on readings from Isaiah 40-66 suggests to Michael Fishbane, in his The JPS Bible Commentary: Haftarot, that the reason the Persians banned the recitation of haftarot on Sabbath afternoon in Babylon may have been because of their emphasis on national return to the homeland expressed in these chapters. (8)

It is a pleasure to see that the editors of the Jewish Publication Society Commentary on the Bible selected Michael Fishbane, Professor of Jewish Studies at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, to be the author of the commentary on the haftarot. He is an ideal choice for this task since most, though not all, haftarot are linked to the Torah reading by intertextual links. No one alive has done more to establish the importance of intertextuality in biblical literature than he, and his book analyzing this phenomenon, "Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel" (Oxford, 1985), has become a classic. One of the four forms of exegesis that he describes is aggadic exegesis, which he says characteristically draws forth latent and unsuspected meanings from the primary text. (9) Although the choice of haftarah often reflects aggadic exegesis, it is not always dependent on the presence of intertextual links between it and the Torah reading, for it is sometimes based on the religious topic of the day. Special haftarot are read on the Sabbaths in the three weeks before the Ninth of Ab and the seven after it, as well as the four Sabbaths between the first of Adar and the first of Nisan, and on the New Moon and during Hanukkah. Apart from these important exceptions, Fishbane points out that the choice of haftarah for most weeks in the Annual Cycle reflects biblical intertextuality based either on historical parallels or symmetries with that day's Torah reading or on verbal resonances that link the haftarah to the text.