 |
 |
||||||||||
 |
Back to Question of the Week |
||||||||||
|
 |
A: A couple disclaimers: First, I happen to be way on the left edge on this issue; many, possibly most, of my Reform and Reconstructionist colleagues take a more traditional view of the question than I do. So, besides explaining my own skepticism of the historicity and literal divine authorship of the Bible, I'll try to be good, and give some of the arguments on the other side. Second, it is my opinion that discovering fallible, human hands in the authorship of Torah in no way implies that there is no place for God in Torah. On the contrary, the only reason I am sitting here at this moment being Reb on the Web is that I truly believe that God is revealed in the study of Torah. In fact, third, if you want to know how strongly I believe in the revelation at Sinai, albeit in a non-literal sense, check out the outrageous claims that I make below, in my discussion of Yom Ha'atsma'ut--Israel Independence Day. OK, enough beating around the burning bush! What are the reasons many people doubt that the Torah was written word for word by God? Philosophical reasons: In many ways, the great medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides is instructive about this, although he did claim that Torah is revealed, divine truth. The two main philosophical issues, unsurprisingly, relate to the nature of God and the nature of human beings. It is clear that Maimonides was not completely comfortable with the idea that the Creator of the entire universe, who is totally perfect and, therefore, in Maimonides' view, totally unchanging, would pay a visit (impossible, anyway, for an incorporeal God) to our little planet on the edge of the Milky Way and get involved in messing around with the laws of nature in order to give some minuscule group of people this precious gift of the Torah. Maimonides has a way around this problem, but I hope you see that there may be perfectly good, Jewish conceptions of God that make divine authorship of Torah unlikely. (Of course, one who doesn't believe in God would also have a hard time with the idea of literal divine authorship, but that's not where I'm coming from, so let's go on.) So Maimonides pinned the thing on Moses: In Maimonides view, divine wisdom is always overflowing, as it were, into the universe--it's constantly accessible. Most human beings, though, are too limited in their intelligence, imagination, and all-around prophetic receptivity to clue into the available divine wisdom. Luckily for us, says Maimonides, Moses achieved such a state of human perfection that he could understand God and God's wisdom enough to be able to write down a perfect Torah. Doubters like me don't give ourselves or our fellow human beings that much credit. I believe that all human beings are incurably fallible and have too limited understanding to attain certain knowledge of divine truth. A problem related to the limitations on human knowledge stems from the fact that every tradition makes claims for its scriptures: Is it possible to objectively verify our claims against all others? I'll return to this question. Maimonides had one other problem that we still have. If the Torah was absolutely true, it had to agree with what he believed could be rationally demonstrated to be true, for example the incorporeality of God. Often the surface meaning of the Torah did not match (for example, God listens, sees, stretches His arm, and does all sorts of corporeal stuff in the Torah). That leaves Maimonides and us with two choices: either the Torah doesn't mean what it says (by philosophical, halachic, or midrashic exegesis, we find "deeper" meanings than the surface meanings, or the Torah is not perfect. Maimonides chose the former. Some would argue that it is simpler to choose the latter. Of course, the above claims of human fallibility should serve as a caution for jumping to conclusions about who is right when one disagrees with the Torah. Historical/archaeological reasons: Another medieval Jewish philosopher, Judah Halevy, solved the previously mentioned problem of the competing claims of other religions with a sort of historical argument. His basic claim was, "600,000 Jews can't be wrong." In other words, that many witnesses standing at Sinai and witnessing the revelation can't be falsified. No later generation would accept such a claim if none of their parents had presented them with a family tradition that remembered such an event. Unfortunately, Halevy's claim that no other religion made such a claim was wrong, and we also suspect that it was possible for premoderns to accept such claims, based on their different understandings of history and on the possibility that their ancestors forgot. Another strong argument for divine authorship (or at least role in the authorship) of Torah is based on the miraculous survival of the Jewish people all these years, the flourishing of their Torah teachings, and their influence on world culture. On the other side of the historical/archaeological coin, while it has been possible to corroborate many parts of Tanach through archaeology, and those who claim infallibility for it can point to these instances, there are a number of very important discrepancies. The most damning of these concerns the conquest of the land of Israel by Joshua. the Biblical account would lead us to expect an archaeological layer that displays universal destruction followed by the replacement of native Canaanite culture with a distinctive Israelite culture. There simply is no such layer. While some cities do show evidence of destruction at the purported time of the conquest, many other cities that the Bible indicates were destroyed show no such evidence (or weren't inhabited at all at the time!). On the contrary, there is much evidence that Israelite culture gradually arose from Canaanite culture and shared much with it. A somewhat weaker archaeological argument stems from the lack of any evidence (so far!) in the Sinai dessert that an encampment of over 600,000 Jews ever passed through. That is such a big number that one might expect to have found evidence for their existence, but admittedly, the "so far" in the above sentence is an important qualifier. There are many important Biblical accounts for which we have only recently discovered any supporting archaeological evidence, and the evidence for a passage through Sinai could still some day show up. Finally, literary reasons: A fair amount of rabbinic effort through the ages has gone into explaining away apparent contradictions in the biblical text. There is nothing wrong with this; it has been an extremely fruitful way for Jews to create law and midrash and to explore great religious questions. However, Biblical critics--those scholars who try to discover the human literary history of the text--prefer to admit those contradictions as contradictions, and to analyse them for what they can teach us about the history of the Bible. Of particular import has been the many cases where the same story or law seems to be told twice or three times. Scholars have noted that in such cases, the doublets or triplets can often be split into one of three categories that share a number of characteristics. One of these categories tends to use the divine name YHWH and to place events more often in the territory of the ancient kingdom of Judah, among other shared characteristics. This grouping is called "J" after the German transliteration of the divine name, JHWH and, conveniently, for its likely origin in Judah. Another group tends to use the name Elohim and to concentrate on events in the Northern kingdom of Israel, among other characteristics. This grouping is called "E" after Elohim and after Ephraim, the main tribe of the northern kingdom. A third group is concerned with the priesthood and with genealogies and exhibits a theology that is very hierarchical and orderly. This grouping is called "P" for "priestly." Finally, any careful reader of the Torah who is open to the possibility, will note that the entire book of Deuteronomy is totally unlike the other four books in its language, style, and theological concerns. These observations have led to scholars to posit that the Torah is a composite work based on four main strands of teaching: J, E, P, and D. Anyone who wants to learn more on the subject of J, E, P, and D should pick up the highly readable and fascinating book, Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliot Friedman. Of course, none of this implies that God was uninvolved in the composition of the Bible. One could accept all of the above and still maintain that to a lesser or greater extent, the various fallible, human authors of the Bible were guided/inspired be God. written by Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz |
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||
 |
[Home] [Lobby] [Library] [Classroom] [Office] [Lounge] [Gift Shop] Kolel: The Adult Centre for Liberal Jewish Learning
|
 |
|
|
|||
