On the edge of your mouth with the wise man – Torah from heaven
Your Honor,
I heard your debate with Yaron Yadan. Yaron spoke about the negligence of compiling the Pentateuch, and about strange and immoral passages as a sign that the Torah is not from heaven. You replied to him that your starting point is that (all or most of) the Torah is from heaven, and therefore his question falls apart.
If I understood you correctly, this was your argument:
1: You have good philosophical arguments in favor of the reality of God (especially as the Creator of the world)
2: You expect there to be a purpose to creation.
3: One of the components of this purpose is "beyond creation," and it is called "religion."
4: You expect God to give us His religious goals (because we have no way to achieve them without revelation)
5: We have evidence of revelation at Sinai and the giving of the Torah
Conclusion: There is a high chance that the Torah we have is from heaven.
I completely agree with the assumptions, but I only partially agree with your conclusion.
I think the assumptions, combined with an examination of the Torah text, lead to the conclusion that only a small minority of the Torah is indeed from heaven.
If the Torah is indeed from heaven, then there are difficulties:
1) Since the revelation of God is necessary to know the religious purposes, I assume you did not expect anything about the content of this revelation. Therefore, how do you explain that in such a great case, many of the commandments are so similar to the surrounding practices (blood atonement, sacrifices, impurity and purity, etc.)?
2) Why did God reveal only to our people and say nothing to other nations? Why do we have no role towards the nations of the world?
3) According to the simplicity of the verses, Moses did not write the Torah (only small parts). Rather, someone wrote that God spoke to Moses who spoke to the Israelites. It is possible to insert many things into such a text from the author's own knowledge.
4) The confusion and contradictions in the text show that it is likely a collection of separate writings.
And this is my question: Why are you committed to a text that most of it seems to be out of the blue?
לגלות עוד מהאתר הרב מיכאל אברהם
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
- I don't think there's that much similarity to spin, but in any case I don't see what the problem is with that.
- He did reveal himself to other peoples. At Sinai and with Noah. From our perspective, of course. From their perspective, he revealed himself to them through their prophets and scriptures. Do we have a role to play toward them? Simply put, yes. To help them fulfill their seven commandments.
- I don't see it. But simplicity doesn't matter anyway.
- It is indeed possible that there is an interweaving of separate sources. So what? The question is who interweaved and how. If it was done by prophets, then I see no problem with the text. By the way, I am not really committed to it, since the Bible itself does not say much without the Toshabah.
לגלות עוד מהאתר הרב מיכאל אברהם
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
השאר תגובה
Please login or Register to submit your answer