The sermon has its unique roots in Jewish tradition and was carried on and explored in the Christian tradition, as this entry demonstrates.
The Beginnings of Preaching
The First Sermon. It can be said that the sermon and spoken word are at the very source and origin of the Jewish experience. Even God began his intervention in the universe with the spoken word. When God said: “Let there be light,” it can be said that we have the first sermon with instant results.
To be sure, historians of the Jewish sermon, qua sermon, situate the earliest sermon in the Tannaitic period, with at least one complete sermon, as such, so recorded. It is a sermon by Rabbi Eleazar ben Azaraiah, found in Hagigah 3a in the Babylonian Talmud.
Abraham as Preacher. However, it is possible to suggest that Abraham, the first Jew, began his career with the spoken word. To be sure, the inference comes from an exegetical interpretation of the text, in a way that some scholars would never accept. It is my feeling that the rabbinic interpreters of Scripture had such a feel for what really went on that their comments have a dependability on which we can count. For the most part, they had the right “feel” for the context, and very often it is very useful to turn to them.
Nevertheless, when we are informed that after accepting God’s command to leave his home and his native land and to go to a land that God would show him, the text records that Abraham [then Abram] took with him his wife Sarah [then Sarai], his flocks, and “the souls that they had gotten in Haran” (Gen. 12:5, KJV).
That last phrase cries out for interpretation. What could it possibly mean? The sages interpreted it to mean the converts he had made to the One God he had newly discovered. And how did he convert them? By talking to them, of course! By preaching to them! Hence Abraham must have been the first darshan!
Moses as Preacher. So the sages see Abraham as the first preacher. Then how about Moses? What is the Torah that Moses receives at Sinai if not one great “Sermon on the Mount”? What is it if not a roaring, fiery sermon that sets the Jewish people on its course of destiny? Moses, in this sense, is the darshan par excellence. This is apparent at the beginning of his career at Mount Sinai. It is apparent throughout his career. It is especially apparent at the end of his career in those two masterful sermons in the book of Deuteronomy, written in such limpid prose and soaring poetry. I refer of course to his great sermon that encompasses the whole book, and that sermon-poem Ha’azinu at the conclusion, where he calls heaven and earth to witness as he outlines, for the last time to his people, their story, their destiny, and their covenant obligation.
Of this poem, an early midrash [Sifrei, to Deut. 32] says: Great is song for it contains the present, the past and the future things of this world and things of the world to come. This is prophetic speech. Its inspiration comes directly from God, and the prophet speaks the word to the people. It is direct speech. It is not text centered and text oriented. The prophet does not prepare his text. He is the human vessel, divinely chosen to project God’s message to the people. It is the Mount Sinai syndrome, continued throughout the period of the first commonwealth.
As we speak of prophecy in relation to the development of preaching and of the sermon, it is wise to remember the root meaning of the Hebrew word for prophet. The root meaning of the word navi’ is “spokesman.” Moses, as we know, was a stammerer, and when he raised this objection with God with respect to his role, his brother Aaron was assigned to be his spokesman; and the term used is navi’. When we come to the meturgeman, the first actual preacher, a little later, we will see its first echo in Aaron.
That, indeed, is how Rashi and Ibn Ezra describe him. The midrash to this Exodus passage tells us that Moses and Aaron would go among the people in Egypt, teaching, instructing, and inspiring them. In fact, we are told that “they had scrolls from which they entertained the people, in order to persuade them that God would redeem them” (Exodus Rabbah 80:5).
The Power of the Spoken Word in the Bible
The power of the spoken word in this sense emerges clearly throughout the Bible. A few examples will suffice. When Samuel, the seer-prophet, comes upon the scene to lead the people, it is because “the word of God was rare in those days.” It had dried up and disappeared, and now it was restored.
King David could also be seen as a preacher, communicating with the harp through his psalms. I can just see the modern folk singer with the guitar, speaking to the soul of the people through folk songs, speaking of their hopes, fears, and aspirations. All the ingredients for the sermon-derasha-folk communication are there.
When Solomon, the wisest man of his time, expounded his wisdom, and it was finally brought together in a book, that book was called Qohelet. Qohelet means “preacher.” It comes from the word qahal, which means “community.” Qohelet really means “community-communicator.” Let us take a glance at a pertinent passage from the Midrash Qohelet: All the people would gather together in the presence of Solomon to listen to words of wisdom that God had placed in his heart. That is why he was called Qohelet because his words were spoken before the community [qahal]. [Midrash, Yalkut Shim’oni II, par. 965].
Prophetic Speech. We return, however to the prophet and prophetic speech, for that is the central factor in the process of development. Prophetic speech provided the core and kernel, which the various forms of derashah presented. For the words of the prophets were words of insight. They were words of warning, of denunciation, of consolation. By and large the prophet is at odds with the people because he tells them what they do not wish to hear.
Who can forget Isaiah’s denunciation of the selfishness and insensitivity of the people who followed their pleasures and forgot God’s directions? Who can forget the intensity and power of Jeremiah’s temple sermon, which ends with the traumatic prediction of the destruction of the temple where he was speaking? Who can forget the fight for social justice of Amos and his cry?
Assuredly, because you impose a tax on the poor and exact from him a levy of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted delightful vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine. (Amos 5:11, author’s translation)
Who can forget Micah’s prescription for decent conduct, his “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God”? Who can forget Deutero-Isaiah’s words of consolation, when, after the destruction and his pain, he could bind the wounds with his “Nahamu, nahamu ‘ammi [comfort ye, comfort ye, my people]”?
And who can forget those last words of Malachi, that Malachi who, as we have already noted, may be one with Ezra, bridge from prophet to rabbinic/pharisaic/sage?
Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. (Mal. 4:4, KJV)
Prophecy ceases, but God can henceforth speak to the people through Torah. The task of finding what God’s message is and communicating it to the people becomes the task of the sages. They train other sages by teaching them how to exegete and communicate the love of Torah, and what it teaches, and how one must react when it is tested; their purpose is to teach all the people through the derashah and sermon.
The End of Prophecy. These words of Malachi mark a shift in the nature of the communication of God’s way to the people. Up to now it had been through the prophets, directly inspired by God. The prophets did not speak out of texts. They communicated what God commanded them to say. From Jeremiah we learn how painful this could be: When your words were offered, I devoured them; your word brought me delight and joy.… Why must my pain be endless, my wound incurable? (Jer. 15:16, 18, author’s translation)
But painful or not, that is the way it was. With the destruction of the first commonwealth, the sacking of the temple, and the exile of the people, something changed and changed drastically.
For this catastrophe marked the end of many things. But most of all, it marked the end of prophecy. This reality is preserved in the Talmudic dictum: “When the Temple was destroyed prophecy ceased” (Sanhedrin 11a). The children of Israel had heard from God directly at Sinai, and for the next six hundred years the word of God comes to them from the prophets. But now, with the destruction and the end of prophecy, they were another step removed. Henceforth the divine will would be mediated through the sacred texts, brought together and prepared for them by the sages, and mediated by the sages through the process of midrash.
Since ultimately the Jewish people were to be God’s witness to the world and the bearers of the covenant promise and heritage, the people needed to know; the people needed to be taught.
Reading of the Torah
It was Ezra—and if we are to believe the Targum comment Malachi-become-Ezra, or prophet transformed into scribe/sage/pharisee—who makes the crucial change. The Torah, hitherto in possession of the priests and read infrequently to the people, is now to become part of their regular discipline. It is to be read to them regularly and interpreted to them. It is to be introduced into the liturgy.
The Babylonian Talmud records ten innovations credited to Ezra, and the first two, clearly in their eyes the most important, have to do with this. Thus we read in Baba Kama, folio 82a: The following ten enactment’s were ordained by Ezra: that the Torah be read publicly in the Minha [afternoon] service on Sabbath; that the Torah be read [publicly] on Mondays and Thursdays; that Courts be held on Mondays and Thursdays.…
Every Sabbath a portion from the Pentateuch is to be read, and the same portion is to be read on Mondays and Thursdays at morning prayers. Why Mondays and Thursdays? Because that was when people came into the market, so before they gathered to earn their daily bread, the Torah was read and interpreted, and the courts were to be in session.
Listen to the account of this innovation, as we read it in the book of Nehemiah (8:4, 7–8, KJV): And Ezra the scribe stood upon a pulpit of wood, which they had made for the purpose; and beside him stood Mattithiah and Shema, and Anaiah, and Urijah, and Hilkiah, and Maaseiah, on his right hand; and on his left hand, Pedaiah, and Mishael, and Malchiah, and Hashum, and Hashbadana, Zechariah, and Meshullam.… And the Levites caused the people to understand the law: and the people stood in their place. So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading [emphasis added].
Here, with the reference to those who “read in the book in the law of God distinctly and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading,” we have the first clue to the origins of the darshan.
The Emergence of Meturgeman
Sometime thereafter we become aware of the structure of the meturgeman. Meturgeman is an Aramaic word that means “one who translates,” but the “one who translates” became also the “one who interprets.”
The fact that the earliest term for this craft is Aramaic and not Hebrew is very significant. Recall the destruction of the first temple and the letter of Jeremiah to the exiles. Recall that the Babylonian community persisted and grew, always out of reach of the Roman expansion. Recall how after the destruction of the second commonwealth, it was rabbinic Judaism of the long-range messianic type that moved first to Jabneh, then to the Galilee, and finally back to the Parthian empire, out of the reach of Rome.
The Judaism that developed thus developed among Jews whose language was no longer Hebrew. Their language was Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Middle East. By the second century, even Galilee had become Aramaicized. It was Jews from Babylonia who returned with Ezra and Nehemiah to build the second temple. It is doubtful that most of them by this time knew Hebrew well.
The changeover probably began with the Assyrian destruction of the northern kingdom, Israel, and the siege of Jerusalem, which was miraculously terminated because of a plague in the Assyrian forces. However, at the height of the siege, and a bitter siege it was, the Assyrian general, Rab-shakeh, called for surrender as he parlayed with the leaders: Then said Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and Shebna, and Joah, unto Rab-shakeh: Speak, I pray thee, to thy servants in the [Aramean] language; for we understand it: and talk not with us in the Jews’ language in the ears of the people that are on the wall. [Despite this plea] Rab-shakeh stood and cried with a loud voice in the Jews’ language, and spake, saying … (2 Kings 18:26, 28, KJV)
Language process changes do not occur overnight. Within a space of perhaps three centuries from the Assyrian invasion to the years following the confrontation with Babylonia and the destruction of Jerusalem, the change takes place, and Aramaic becomes the language of a majority of the people. And according to tradition, Rab-shakeh, who spoke for the Assyrians, was a convert from Judaism.
Evidence of this Aramaicization is to be found in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, as well as in the book of Daniel, where significant portions are in Aramaic. The Kaddish prayer itself, used at the conclusion of the period of study, and in the Hebrew liturgy to act as a division between the sections of the service, and to serve as a prayer for the dead, was in Aramaic.
So it becomes clear that the public reading of the Torah meant translation into Aramaic by the meturgeman. This was his principal role, as it developed in Babylonia. The Torah would first be read in Hebrew, and then translated into Aramaic. These Aramaic translations have persisted, as Targum, and to this day are printed side by side in the Rabbinic texts of the Bible. In fact, the custom persisted, long after Aramaic ceased to be the current language of Jews, to read the weekly portion of the Torah at home once in Hebrew and twice in Aramaic.
The Targumim as Expansions and Amplifications. Although there are no collections of early sermons of this period, a careful reading of the Targumim illustrates that these were not simply direct translations of the texts. They were expansions and amplifications, such as a later preacher or darshan would do. It is indeed an early echo of the preaching process.
In the second version of the Creation story, in Genesis 2:7, we read: And the Lord formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and Adam became a living creature. (author’s translation)
The Targum to the last phrase is more than just a translation. It reads: “and it became in Adam the spirit of uttering speech.” The meturgeman is not simply translating nefesh ḥayyah, he is exegeting it. He is suggesting that the power of speech was the unique quality of Adam, as, by implication, the power of speech through derashah was a unique quality for the Jewish people in the spread of Torah.
Then we come to the story of the Garden of Eden and the expulsion of Adam and Eve because of the temptation of the serpent. Adam is told that because of this sin he will henceforth earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. Eve is informed that she will bear children in pain. And to the serpent, God says: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. (Gen. 3:15, KJV)
The Targum to the last phrase is not simply a translation of “it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel,” but an elaboration, which again has the germ of a homily, if not given in full, then at least clearly suggested: “He [humankind] will remind you of what you did to him in the past, and you will preserve your hatred for him into the future.” From the beginning, the serpent/human relationship had a deep and enduring psychological impact.
When Adam and Eve sinned, God had a twinge of regret for having created them. After all, he had, according to one midrash, been warned against this by a group of his angels, but he had ignored the advice. In any event, we read: “And God repented that he had made man on earth, and it grieved him at his heart” (Gen. 6:6, author’s translation). The translation to this comes out as: “He determined upon breaking their power according to his will.” Quite a change, is it not? Not man’s downfall, but his defeat by God through man’s loss of power is central. We almost hear an echo of the Prometheus myth!
Another instance deals with the moment at Mount Sinai after the people have heard the Ten Commandments proclaimed and have cried out with one voice, “All that the Lord hath said, we will do, and be obedient” (Exod. 24:7, KJV). Afterward, Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu go up to the mountain for a revelation of the divine, and the heavens are opened in all their radiant glory for the people to see. The people are included in this experience: And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink. (Exod. 24:11, KJV)
This passage troubled the meturgeman. The image of feasting at such a moment, an act of total self-indulgence, was not to his liking. Hence his translation reads: They beheld God’s glory and gladly offered sacrifices which were received with favor as though they had eaten and drunk. [emphasis added]
Targumim Linked to Talmudic Tradition. Furthermore, we find on some occasions that the variants of translation in the Targum are clearly linked to a Talmudic tradition, which had by this time developed. For example, in the legal code that follows the proclamation of the Ten Commandments in Exodus, where the damages for injury are recorded, we read:
If he then gets up and walks outdoors upon his staff, the assailant shall go unpunished, except that he must pay for his idleness and for his cure. (Exod. 21:19, author’s translation)
The Targum reads: “He shall pay him for the hire of a physician,” which is exactly the formula we find in the Talmud. Similarly, in Deuteronomy, where we are told that the “Levites shall have equal portions to eat except for that which is sold according to their patrimony” (Deut. 18:8, author’s translation), Targum reads: “They shall have equal portions to eat except for that which is sold accrues to them from their tour of duty, for thus their fathers have decreed.” What is vague in the Torah text comes out clearly as their daily wage, and it is thus specified in the Talmud (Sukkah 56a).
Here then are glimpses of how the meturgeman functioned, and what he did by way of not only interpreting but expounding the Torah. We have to dig for the evidence and ferret it out, but when it is put together, the portrait begins to emerge.
We watch this role of meturgeman grow and expand, as the process of rabbinic exegesis develops and the Talmud emerges. There was a two-level process of communication. The sage taught his students in smaller groups, but as these grew in size, and the sages were not always good speakers, they required someone who could do this for them.
Such a role was known as meturgeman or amora. The commentator Rashi, who in the eleventh century in the Rhineland wrote the classic commentary of the Talmud, making its study possible in the West, found it necessary to describe the role as follows:
Amora—the translator who stands at the side of the preaching sage while the latter quietly whispers to him in Hebrew what he wishes to say, while the former translates it into the language the people understand. (Rashi to Yoma 20b and Ketubot 106a)
In another source, we learn that Rav Huna had thirteen meturgemanim, so large were his classes. They were scattered throughout the audience, and they listened to what he said and repeated it to the assembly on either side and from the front and rear of the audience, positioning themselves in every section of the crowd (Ketubot 106a).
How would a lecture be stopped? If it was deemed improper it was stopped with the command: “Remove the meturgeman.” In our own time, they would say: “Turn off the public-address system!” For example, it was related that one time when Rabban Gamliel was publicly insulting Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah, the sages put an end to it by ordering Huzpit the meturgeman to halt!
The Prevalence of the Darshan/Meturgeman Role. We find here and there in the Talmud the listing by name of the meturgeman to a given scholar. Judah the Prince, the man who finally edited the Mishnah (c. 200), had a meturgeman whose name was Abba Yudan (Jerusalem Talmud, Berakhot 1:1). Rav, his son-in-law, who with Samuel moved the academies to Babylonia, was the meturgeman for his uncle Hiyya and for the great sage Shila (Yoma 20b). We are informed that he had a special talent as a popular darshan, that he had a very attractive voice, and often acted as cantor (Teshuvat ha Geonim, Sha’arei Teshuva 178). Judah ben Nahmani was meturgeman for Simeon ben Lakish (Hagiga 15a). Bar Yehuda was meturgeman for Abbahu (Megillah 14:7) and Rabbi Pedat was meturgeman for Yissa. The mere citation of these names and references shows the wide prevalence of the darshan/meturgeman role.
One need only look into the Code of Maimonides, in which the whole corpus of Talmudic exegesis and development is fixed and codified as Judaism develops in the Middle Ages to the modern era, to see how this role emerges as a fixed institution in the process of teaching and continuing Judaism. In the section dealing with the laws surrounding the study of Torah, the entire gamut of this process that is at the heart of Judaism is explored in direct and pithy statements as to what is required.
Dealing with how a teacher must teach, how the teacher must relate to his students, and the students to their master: Does one sit or does one stand when a class is in session? Does the teacher stand and the class sit, or vice versa? Who respects whom and how? What are the grounds for excommunicating a teacher and a student? When must a busy person study? In the midst of this, we suddenly encounter the following:
If he [the Sage] was teaching through a meturgeman, the [meturgeman] between him and his students, the Sage speaks to the meturgeman and the meturgeman speaks to all the students. When they [the students] ask a question of the meturgeman, he asks the Sage and the Sage gives the answer to the meturgeman, and the meturgeman gives the answer to the students.…
What Maimonides was here describing was clearly something institutionalized and part of the learning process. What is more, there was a whole series of mutual obligations and a whole ethic of relationship. See how he continues:
The sage may not speak louder than the meturgeman, nor shall the meturgeman speak louder than the sage when he asks a question of the sage. The meturgeman may neither subtract from nor add to what the Sage has said, nor may he change anything unless he happens to be the Sage’s father or teacher.
What we see is a carefully balanced and orchestrated relationship designed to respect the status of each. One perceptive commentator raised the question, and rightly so, that if the class were large, the meturgeman would have to speak louder than he spoke to the sage. And the answer comes through in the affirmative. But mutual respect is what is really important.
God as Meturgeman
The commentator invokes God to make his point, and God, in this connection, is given the role of meturgeman! How does the commentator make the deduction? By describing the moment at Sinai when God and Moses spoke to each other. He quotes the account from Exodus: “And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice” (Exod. 19:19, KJV). The question is: With what kind of voice? Being God’s, was it louder and more powerful, as clearly it had to be? No, came the answer. God responded to Moses in exactly the same level of voice with which Moses spoke, just as any good meturgeman was required to do (Num. Rabbah XIV:3).
Preaching in rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity came out of the same source, developed in the creative years of the second commonwealth. They emerged as reactions to the cataclysmic end of that commonwealth. They shared and developed a common basis in sacred text, spread its word, each according to its own light, through the spoken word.