Though I haven't carefully followed the whole thread on the literary analysis of Tanakh, I would like to briefly comment on R. Yitzchak Blau's most recent post noting reasons to prefer the use of classical commentaries over contemporary work in the field.
First of all, as he himself mentioned it doesn't have to be either/or. It would seem to me that not only are the approaches not mutually exclusive, but rather that the advantages of each can help to fill in the weaknesses of the other. Neither are the categories so distinct as many, though certainly not all, of the tools of literary methodology were actually used by chazal (and resultantly by the classical commentators) albeit in less methodical fashion.
But most important, I would either rephrase or add to R. Blau's points about the quality control and hashkafic advantages of classical commentaries. My general critique of Jewish education is that we too often forget that our primary task is not that of teaching text per se, but rather the moral and spiritual refinement and edification of our students. Intellectually honest yet religiously meaningful study of our texts should be viewed in that context. And it is from such a perspective that our contemporaries generally pale in the face of the more established commentaries. In most cases, the use of academic methodology has made contemporary work in Tanakh overly academic and thus comparatively sterile, something which though not inevitable is clearly understandable. This relative sterility is what I see as the biggest lacuna in contemporary study of Tanakh and why I would continue to include a healthy dose of classical works in all but the most specialized or advanced courses in Tanakh.
Indeed, one the reasons I moved out of Talmud and into Tanakh is the realization of how far away our teaching of Talmud has taken us from what it is supposed to be doing religiously for our students. It would be highly regrettable for the same to happen to the study of Tanakh.
Francis Nataf
