Back to Question of the Week Back to Archives Q: In a tradition class we were discussing the thought who wrote the Torah? I would like to know your commentary. Ephraim
		A: This really is the Mother of All Jewish Questions, isn't it? The previous Reb on the Web, my friend and colleague Jeremy Schwartz, addressed this exact topic a while ago, and his answer can be found in our archives. So rather than addressing what Reb Jeremy already covered (which included philosophical and archaeological evidence for human involvement in authorship of the Torah), I'd like to consider the implications of the question rather than the question itself. In other words, what does believing one thing or another about who (or Who) wrote the Torah mean for our lives? What difference does it make who wrote the Torah? Let's assume for the sake of simplicity that there are three possible beliefs about who wrote the Torah: 1) That God gave Moses the entire Torah in its total perfection- let's call this "Divine Authorship." 2) Belief number two might be that humans wrote the Torah, but after having awesome experiences of Divine inspiration- so it's very holy and very connected to God, but has human errors and prejudices and time-bound cultural influences which naturally crept into it- let's call this "Divine Inspiration." 3) The third possible belief is that the Torah, and the rest of the Bible and various Jewish religious texts, are completely products of human imagination and historical circumstances, the myths and religious beliefs of particular people at a particular time. We'll call this "Human Authorship." Now, what's interesting is that the three theories do not necessarily correspond to particular ways of living a Jewish life, as we might assume they would. For example, one might think that if you believed in Divine authorship, you would be an Orthodox Jew, who followed every single commandment as strictly as you could, because you believed that it was still a binding expression of God's will for the Jewish people. Similarly, one might think that someone who believed in human authorship would be a very liberal Reform or Reconstructionist kind of Jew, because they didn't think that the Torah's commands are still valid for our day and age. Those stereotypes might sometimes be true, but if we think about it a bit more, you could believe in human authorship and be a very traditional, observant person, or you could believe in Divine authorship and still be very liberal religiously. How is this possible? For several reasons. First, one could assume that God gave a perfect and complete Torah which was perfect and complete for that day and age, and God meant us to keep interpreting it and wanted Judaism to evolve over the ages. Or, conversely, one could leave God out of the picture entirely, but decide that even if Judaism is merely the accumulated wisdom of Jewish humans, it's still absolutely worth being committed to observance and Jewish community and strict halachic practice, because it's beautiful and moral and connects people to the Jewish community and Jewish history. It seems like the Torah itself has built into it the idea that each age must confront the reality of life in its own way, and must rely on the judges and sages of the time to make important decisions (cf. Deuteronomy 17:11). This leads to the important principle of "lo b'shamayim hi," (literally, "it's not in Heaven), or the idea that- even if you believe that it was written by God- the Torah was given to humans to interpret to the best of their ability. Different communities= Orthodox, Reconstructionist, Reform, Conservative- have different ideas about what it means to interpret Torah for our age, but as I hope to have shown, ideas about where the Torah comes from may be different from one's conception of how to interpret it and its inherent authority for our time. For a simple introduction to different ways of thinking about the origin and authority of Torah, I recommend MITZVAH MEANS COMMANDMENT, by my teacher Rabbi Elliott Dorff. He is a Conservative rabbi, and will at times offer his Conservative perspective, but he also shows, fairly and impartially, how different conceptions of Torah work and how they relate to each other. MITZVAH MEANS COMMANDMENT is written for older teens or adults just beginning their Jewish learning; a far more in-depth and comprehensive book on the evolution of Torah and Jewish law is Rabbi Dorff's A LIVING TREE. Finally, for an examination of different Jewish ideas of Divine revelation, R. Neil Gillman's SACRED FRAGMENTS compares the thinking of several prominent contemporary theologians. This book is not for beginners but is not too academic either. NJL
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