by Revd. Peter Chave

I have been reading Gregory of Tours’ ‘The History of the Franks’. This lively tale of what later became France begins, by way of backdrop, with a romp through biblical history. Gregory lived from 539-594CE and was a bishop. It soon becomes obvious that he did not read the Bible in the staid, rational, critical way we tend to do today. Bible readers in late antiquity and the Middle Ages – Christians and Jews - felt tasked with finding as many senses as possible in a passage and discovering truths on a spiritual as well as a literal level.  

Most of Gregory’s readings reflect the idea that events in the Hebrew Bible are ‘fulfilled’ in the New Testament. Thus, when God opens up Adam’s side in order to create Eve, this points forward to the wound in Jesus’ side made by the Roman soldier at the crucifixion! This example illustrates the ‘harmonising mode of exegesis’ that weaves together different parts of the Bible and fills up any gaps: Was Job a real person?  Yes, of course - he must be the Jobab of Genesis 36:33.

Writing about Israel’s escape from Egypt Gregory quotes Psalm 136:13 where God divides the Red Sea either into two, or into more, parts or divisions. Modern translations still dither between these two possible meanings of the verb used. Gregory leans towards ‘divisions’ but does not think there were twelve of them, one for each tribe to pass through.

To know that ‘divisions’ is right we must rise above the literal meaning to a spiritual plane. The divisions are metaphors for the different stages of life. A person may come to God early, late or somewhere In between: ‘These are the parts through which we make our way through the sea’ - of life.

Joseph was seen as a fore-runner of Jesus. Gregory speaks of the thirty pieces of silver the Ishmaelites paid for Joseph as a ‘type’ of the thirty pieces of silver paid to Judas for Jesus. But Genesis 37:28 does not say ‘thirty’ but ‘twenty’!  Unsurprisingly, some Christian scribes ‘corrected’ the ‘twenty’ to ‘thirty’ when copying their texts. Confronted by different sums in different texts another Church Father Caesarius of Arles (470-542 CE) prescribed rising to a spiritual level to realise that the differences are there to teach us that Jesus is loved different amounts by different people.

The readings of Gregory, and of a vast number of other medieval scholars, are exuberant and entertaining. Some modern Christians have advocated paying them much more attention as a way of recapturing the mystery and psychological depth of faith. But in the end, I find them a guilty pleasure.  I cannot put my reason on one side – the text surely doesn’t mean that!  Also, such Christian readings are often a hair’s-breadth from antisemitism: Judaism being seen as only a (poor) preparation for Jesus.  For equal fun with less jeopardy maybe I should turn to Jewish midrash.