The typological interpretation of the Bible and its influence in the representation of Jewish people

Author(s)

Marta Bernadete Frolini de Aguiar Marczyk

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2010-10-07

Examining board members

Berta Waldman; Suzana Chwarts; Michael Hermann Leipziger; Alexandre Goes Leone; Enrique Isaac Mandelbaum

• Advisor: Berta Waldman

Abstract

The aim of the present research is to present biblical typology as a factor affecting the representation of the Jewish people in Christian civilization. In order to do this, I endeavour to describe the procedure of typological interpretation as a means of reading and producing the canon of the Christian scriptures, emphasising that biblical typology had a key participation in the separation of the Christian and the Jewish faith.The complexity of this rupture, during which the main writings of the Jewish textual tradition became legitimised by their incorporation into the Bible, can be observed as a parallel to the discrediting of the Jewish reading practices. By resorting to the shaping of the Christian canon and the writings of the Early Church Fathers, Justine and Tertulian, I endeavour to show that biblical typology involves, besides interpretive factors, a negative appraisal of the Jewish, once that from the standpoint of Christianity this people would violate the interdependence principle between the so-called Old and New Testament. I study a number of papal encyclicals with the aim of examining the Christian tradition in its code of dismissal of Judaism. In these writings, the prescription of biblical typology is maintained, as well as the disapproval of other interpretive practices. Furthermore, in contemporary writings disseminating the hatred against the Jews, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and their apologists\' discourses, one can notice that the rationale of biblical typology is a particular and specific form of characterising this people that is supported by, although independently, deprecating representations supposedly historical. I also propose a survey of literary practices of biblical typology, by going through the studies of Erich Auerbach and Northrop Frye, which demonstrate its influence along the last two millenia on Western literature.Under this perspective, I present two literary works by Brazilian authors, a novel by José de Alencar and a poem by Jorge de Lima, revealing two ways in which biblical typology is reflected in the construction of the image of the Jew. This research, in sum, demonstrates how important it is to recognise that Christian religion consolidated historically with its split from Judaism and that it thereby maintains reading practices that discredit Jewish religion. It shows, in this way, that more than often this act of discrediting spreads from the religious precepts to the Jewish community, thus shaping and disseminating representations that depreciate the Jewish people. (AU)