Interpretive Traditions and Commentary
Layers of reading
After the text comes the history of reading it. You need the main witnesses, the main interpreters, and what each is evidence for.
Ancient versions
The Septuagint (third to second century BCE) is a translation and often a theological reading; the Targums (Onkelos on the Pentateuch, Jonathan on the Prophets) combine translation with paraphrase; the Peshitta and Vulgate are later witnesses. The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Dead Sea Scrolls - including the pesharim, which apply prophecy to the sect's own history - show that textual plurality is ancient, not a modern invention.
Rabbinic exegesis
Mishnah and Talmud preserve halakhic debate; midrash collects aggadic interpretation; the thirteen middot attributed to R. Ishmael codify inference rules such as qal wahomer (light to heavy) and gezerah shawah (verbal analogy). The peshat/derash distinction separates plain sense from homiletical application.
Medieval and modern
Rashi, Ibn Ezra and Ramban represent the great medieval commentary tradition, each with characteristic methods and concerns. Modern criticism - source (Wellhausen), form (Gunkel), redaction and canonical approaches - asks different questions and should be named precisely rather than lumped together as 'criticism'.
Traps
- Treating the Septuagint as a neutral window on an earlier Hebrew text.
- Assuming a single 'original' text rather than a plurality of witnesses.
- Quoting a commentator without saying what question they were answering.
- Reading later doctrine back into the text and calling the result exegesis.
- Confusing midrash with peshat, or halakhah with aggadah.
Worked example
Where the Septuagint of Genesis 1:2 reads 'invisible and unformed', the translator has interpreted תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ rather than transliterated it. Rule of thumb: every version is also an interpretation - label your evidence by date, language and tendency before you use it.