An Oven Like a Snake

Abstract

In this article some Jewish sources are taken into consideration in order to outline on one side a conflict, on the other a connection between truth and interpretation, prophecy and hermeneutics. These sources are the story of the akhnai‘s oven (Talmud Bavli, Bava Metzia 59 a-b), Maimonides’ Guide of the perplexed, Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem, Hermann Cohen’s opus postumum, Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophical and Jewish writings. Through the analysis of these texts, belonging to Judaism and Jewish thought, about the problem of the relationship between the unity of truth and the plurality of opinions, the unconditional and the historical, the transcendent God and human activity within time, the article intends to point out a paradigm which could give suggestions to the discussion on the possibility of a critical hermeneutics.