Reflections on Studying the Tanakh (Column 134)

Is a platform for discussion really a negligible matter? All literature is like that. One could have challenged Dostoevsky: give me one page summarizing the messages. But then the learning experience would have been so damaged as to be nullified.
And this joins the fact that the Bible has national and cultural value, and together that carries significant weight.
The fact that people with high analytical ability enjoy Gemara is simply because it gives them an occupation that displays the superiority of their skills. It seems to me that when people try to say that field A is more relevant or more important than field B, it stems from the fact that they are good at it, and therefore it serves them better to engage in it.

The sin of the Tree of Knowledge—there is a major dispute within meta-ethics regarding the nature of moral facts and the ways of knowing them. One can see this story as deciding in the direction of moral realism, that is, the very existence of the categories good/evil, which can be known through eating from the Tree of Knowledge, and God’s ability to know good and evil: “and you shall be like God, knowing good and evil.” Good/evil are simple definitions that do not depend on anything else (similar to Moore); again, this follows from the very expression “knowing good and evil,” especially since without eating, man could not know them. And in my opinion the main point is that without eating from the Tree of Knowledge (and in the future, divine guidance), man cannot know the objects of the good on his own. The proof is that only after eating from the Tree of Knowledge do Adam and Eve understand that being naked is bad, and they are ashamed and cover themselves—something described as a direct result of the eating. In addition, God asks them, “Who told you that you were naked?”—meaning that on your own you could not have arrived at that knowledge. In short, this is how the story of the Tree of Knowledge decides fundamental meta-ethical questions, something that without the Bible I doubt we could reach answers to. In addition, I think my interpretation explains the story, in a way that is logically consistent and fits the plain sense, better than all the commentators, without forcing either the language or the idea…

Indeed all literature is like that, and therefore I see no advantage of the Bible over it. Besides, literature is not meant to teach but to give enjoyment, and any learning comes along incidentally (sometimes). If you compare the Bible to literature, then we have no essential disagreement. Except that I do not see how your conclusion is connected to your arguments—or perhaps it is just an unsupported declaration, in which case there is nothing I can do with it.

Guy, many thanks for the example.
Now I’ll ask you a few questions:
1. Where was the divine guidance for Cain, who was supposed to know that murder was forbidden even before any divine commands?
2. How does everyone in the world know good and evil? (Though in my opinion they are not consistent; see Fourth Notebook, vol. 3.)
3. Where do you find in the Torah divine guidance for us? After all, I brought several examples from morality and from cleaving to God’s attributes to teach you that it is not the Torah that teaches this, but rather it presupposes a natural morality that everyone understands on his own.
5. Covering their nakedness, according to Maimonides at the beginning of The Guide of the Perplexed, belongs not to morality but to accepted etiquette (“conventions” and not “intelligibles”). And reason itself says the same. If so, then this is an even greater wonder, since on your view this passage proves that even manners and conventions are learned through reflection on the world. But the meaning of a convention is that it belongs to “conventions” and not “intelligibles,” that is, it is not a product of reflection but of agreement. I think everything Maimonides says in The Guide is aimed directly against your interpretation. And again, I do not see him as an authority on this matter, but this comes to teach that a different meta-ethics can also fit and interpret the verses.
6. You assume that “knowing” good and evil means knowing intellectually. But R. Chaim of Volozhin explains that “knowing” means connection. Good and evil were outside, and after the sin they entered and became joined within them. The question is whether you see good and evil as something external to you or as part of you. According to this, there is no discussion here at all about how one knows good and evil, but about how one experiences them. And again, I do not see him as an authority, but I bring this as an example of a completely different interpretation of the verses.
7. And the main question: suppose that in my opinion morality has no realist grounding (I actually agree with your position on this issue, but that is only an assumption for the sake of discussion). Do you think that if I learned this passage with you I would change my mind about that? Or would I find ten other interpretations that fit my meta-ethics perfectly well? From what is written above you can already see that you have no chance of convincing me of this. Both because your interpretation itself does not seem necessary to me, and because even if I agreed that your interpretation is the most reasonable, still, if I held a different meta-ethics, I would prefer to adopt a forced interpretation (it is better to force the language than the reasoning).

Thanks for the fun “sport” you gave us readers; I’ll try my part. I don’t know whether the example I bring presents an insight opposite to what you think, but at least it is opposite to a common view among various thinkers.

My example is Abraham’s argument with God regarding the overturning of Sodom.

At first I had thought that God is not bound by human morality. This reasoning can be formulated in several ways: either His considerations override it, or our morality is nothing but “utilitarianism” and nothing more, something we invented because of evolutionary impulses (of course you do not think this), and He is not a product of those. In any event, when He acts in a certain way, we have no right to speak.

In the passage where our father Abraham argues with Him, we see that Abraham brings morality “from home” and expects God to behave according to those rules. He claims, “Far be it from You; shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?” He claims that he understands the considerations of justice, and he sees justification for intervening, because God is not acting with “justice.” (Of course this proof too can be qualified, and one can say that by sharing it with him, God set him up for it and hinted to him to intervene.)

Opposed to this passage, of course, stands the Binding of Isaac, which seemingly carries the opposite message, and one must find a real “resolution” that fits both reason and the text.

This passage stood at the basis of an argument I had with another person regarding the possibility of arguing with God (one can also bring insights here from the book of Job on this matter).
What do you think?

As for your actual claim, I have two comments:
1. Many of our values in Western culture are based on living in the shadow of the Bible, so after the Bible taught us them and we internalized them, one can say that it is superfluous. But a real comparison should be with cultures that were not exposed to the Bible and its legacy.
2. Many of our values need literary frameworks to carry them. It is hard to teach children the value of yielding in an abstract way; it is easier to take Rachel yielding to her sister as a model to imitate. Of course, in the same way one could take a framework from another genre, not from sacred literature.

You can’t learn anything from anything.
If a sugya in the Gemara deals with the status of women, you’ll come out with whatever conclusions you want (and they also change as your outlook changes).
If a sugya in the Gemara deals with an uninteresting issue like monetary law that in any case is not actually practiced, or how many lulavs one must blow on Passover, then you don’t care about it anyway, and so you accept what is written without a problem. When you change your mind and start thinking that the rights of lulavs are very important to you, then suddenly you’ll ask who really said this is tradition, and perhaps this interpretation is dependent on a social context, and in any case when the social conditions changed the halakhic conclusion should change too.
You learn new things (synthetic things) only by means of intuition, and everything else is inspiration. Kant too.

Hello Aharon, and many thanks for the example.
1. You yourself noted that there is a contradiction here between two passages, so it is hard to draw any clear conclusion on the issue.
2. I am not sure Abraham assumed natural morality. Perhaps he understood that this is divine morality, and therefore raised a contradiction within God’s own doctrine. Like the objection he could have raised against the command to sacrifice his son, whether on moral grounds or on the basis of the promise “through Isaac your seed shall be called” (a contradiction within God’s doctrine).
3. Suppose there are those who maintain in the Euthyphro dilemma that God really is not bound by moral rules and there is no possibility of arguing with Him. You bring against them the argument over Sodom. But they can still explain that the passage comes to teach us that, as a matter of fact, God desires natural morality (even though He could also have acted against it). This is, for example, how Rav Kook explains it. Therefore perhaps the Torah describes an event that never happened at all, but rather a myth meant to teach this lesson. And this would also resolve the contradiction with the Binding of Isaac.
4. As for us, this still does not say much, because we have no ability to argue with God, only to interpret the Torah—which He gave. This teaches us a theoretical claim (a metaphysical fact, in the terminology of the post), not a value.
5. Even if one can indeed learn this lesson from the passage of Sodom, that still does not justify studying the Bible. This is a well-known and clear passage, and anyone who knows it can draw this conclusion. The question is whether there is a lesson that emerges from close study of a biblical passage and not just from a general idea. This does not justify investing time and energy comprehensively in Bible study.
6. And again, the million-dollar question: do you think that someone who thinks God is not bound by morality, and who learned with you the passage of the Binding of Isaac, would concede to you? I think not. I happen to agree with you, and therefore this is not much of a feat. Moreover, in my opinion there are better and more direct proofs for your claim, as I wrote in the post about cleaving to His attributes and “you shall do what is upright and good,” where it is clear that the Torah expects from us natural morality.

As for your comments at the end:
1. I explicitly wrote in my remarks that the Bible has important historical value, since our values developed on its basis. Therefore I wrote that my question is about us today, as part of our culture and society: whether there is value in studying the Bible.
2. As you wrote, that is a pedagogical value, and it can be achieved from any text whatsoever.

I disagree.
First, on the halakhic plane I definitely do find myself surrendering to the authority of sources even when I do not agree (think of an inference that shows you that migo is the force of a claim and not merely “why would I lie.” If the proofs are good, you have to accept them even if you do not agree).
You are right that in halakhic contexts there is often less friction because I have no a priori views about blowing a lulav on Hanukkah. So what? Bottom line: I learn halakhah from halakhic sources and not from my gut. So here Torah study functions as a source of authority and not inspiration. How much do I bend? Indeed, I personally bend less than others even in the halakhic context. But as I said, that changes nothing at all. I would not redeem a firstborn donkey or blow a lulav were the Torah not to command it. But I would honor parents or help others even without the Torah’s command and without knowing the Bible.

Hello Rabbi.

It seems to me that in the presentation of things, the anachronistic interpretation of the Bible received (by stealth) the full weight of the article. This interpretation twists the Bible to fit its beliefs and practices. It is the dominant interpretation on which this article is based, in claiming that there is no value in Bible study. If I came in as I came out, then I did not really gain anything. Indeed, if that is the case—if a person approaches the Bible with the aim of finding who he already is, and everything is permitted to the interpreter—then the text has no meaning whatsoever. It is exactly like what you said about postmodernism and art and creativity: if everything is permitted, then there is nothing to value in a work, because there are no standards. The same is true of an anachronistic text. If everything is permitted, there is no reason to find any essentially valid value that was not there beforehand.

Is it correct to interpret the Bible this way?
No. And many people “of the older generation” would likewise say so. The basic assumption of anachronistic interpretation is wrong from the outset, and therefore asking and wanting to find value in study while starting from an anachronistic assumption is like feverishly searching for a key in order to open an open door.
Are the acrobatics performed mainly by medieval commentators (and sometimes Hazal—when it is not midrash) valid? The answer is a resounding no. To bring them as proof for this basic interpretive assumption neither helps nor hurts; it only says that in my opinion this too is just another mistaken interpretation.

So how should one understand the Bible?
A. First of all, knowledge of the period is essential—archaeology, ancient beliefs, and conduct on the spiritual, material, personal, political, and social planes.
B. After that—through reading and literary analysis of the text, in order to connect the meaning of the text to the world of the text.
C. If a person is honest with himself and neither a fundamentalist nor an anachronist, he is guaranteed to come out with novelty and discovery, and usually enjoyment as well. But not the enjoyment of resolving a Talmudic difficulty by a nice flash of brilliance, rather the enjoyment of discovering the world of the biblical author from within ancient literature, which tells a story full of hints about a people living between the river and the desert.

—At that point the person is left to ask (according to the concept of freedom ;-)) whether he agrees with the text, or chooses to remain perplexed—not to change the beloved text, but also not to accept it, because the extra-biblical reality has changed, and with it the conscience. But under no circumstances should one sin against the Bible by means of fundamentalist or anachronistic interpretation.

I’m saying that you accept authority only when it is not significant to you, because you don’t really care about blowing a lulav on Hanukkah. When you do care—say, on women’s issues—then you find the ways around it. You don’t really care about migo either, because it’s just written there in the book, and you have no intention (nor technically any ability) to go to court according to it. It’s like accepting Islamic law from reading their books. You are basically accepting facts about a foreign halakhic world, but not a command that really binds you.

I understood you very well. And as I answered you, I disagree. I pray even though it does not speak to me. I keep Shabbat even though I have no idea why one should do so, and that troubles me quite a bit. I do not eat, and do eat, various things. I determine halakhic rulings by discussion of the various sugyot, and without learning them I could not do so. Therefore I do not agree that it is only things that do not touch me, and I also do not agree that if things do not touch me then that is a relevant distinction. I am still learning in order to know the halakhah, and without the learning I would not know it, and therefore there is value in that learning. That is all.

All these are mere declarations (some of which I agree with). If you want to discuss it, then please, kindly bring an example.

The Bible is the word of God; it is the only book we have in which the words of the living God were written. He is King of the universe. I am so moved when learning the word of God that your attitude toward it pains me. The Bible was not meant to teach history, physics, archaeology, and the rest of the sciences. The Bible comes to convey to us the word of God. So yes, on the simple level it is about values—some simple, some simpler today—but the Torah is an eternal Torah (“prophecy needed for the generations was written down”), so the Torah’s attitude toward slavery had to fit the time in which it was written (and therefore perhaps there is a Canaanite slave), and yet continue to advance the world toward the proper reality (which the Torah perhaps hinted at in the law of the Hebrew slave, and permitted eating meat while hinting at its problematic nature by allowing it only from the Flood onward and by the way it worded the permission). And a person of our generation should learn Bible as the word of God and try to understand what He is saying to me; after all, this is the commandment of Torah study. And when one studies Bible broadly, suddenly trends emerge: you see that the history of the people of Israel matters, you see that the world progresses, you see that it has a goal, you understand that there is providential governance of reality, there are things that cannot be transformed. And indeed Bible study requires a great deal of fear of Heaven, and the question is whether we approach it in that way. Success to everyone.

You sharply distinguished between the sanctity of the biblical text and the sanctity of the ideas of the Oral Torah, but perhaps there is a middle path. The text cannot be merely a platform for ideas, because it is specific. Why did the Torah write “and He said” rather than “and He spoke”? It would seem that the reason is that although there is a large (very large) space of possible interpretations, they are all influenced by the text, and the way to test them is by the degree of fit to the text (about which one can argue by means of evidence). It follows that the sanctity of the text affects the ideas interpreted from it.
In a footnote, perhaps one can explain on this basis that there is a difference between verbal precision in the Written Torah and precision in the texts of the Oral Torah. In the Written Torah, precision tries to decipher the holy text, whereas in the Oral Torah it tries to decipher the ideas for which the text is only a vehicle.

There is another layer here, and that is the practiced praxis, and the question of how much you are willing to change it in accordance with the Gemara when you have no interest at stake.
Is there any chance that you would take a pear instead of an etrog because you became convinced that this is the Gemara’s intention? Even regarding the prohibition of electricity on Shabbat, which has almost no connection to the Gemara, you defend it when it is only because of praxis. So I do not think you keep Shabbat because of the Gemara. You kept it long before you knew what Gemara was. So it could be that because of a sugya you would change some tiny thing that is both unimportant to you and minor, like what to say in Grace after Meals at twilight between Shabbat Hanukkah and Tisha B’Av that falls on Rosh Chodesh…
Of course there are people whom study of the sugya would actually persuade to change what is practiced, and they would make a huge fight with the whole world just because, as they understand the sugya, the mezuzah should be placed at a 27-degree angle and not 12—but I did not get that impression of you.

Yosef, I’m glad to hear about your excitement, but it doesn’t help me. I too see the Bible as the living word of God. Still, I ask what I am supposed to learn from it and how.

You are saying that the sanctity radiates onto the degree of precision and close attention with which I approach the text. Perhaps. Although some of our sages said, “The Torah speaks in human language,” and did not expound every tiny stroke of the letters. Your footnote is exactly what I wrote, isn’t it?

Hello Rabbi.
In your opinion, is studying Bible considered Torah study?

Fine, I disagree, but we are repeating ourselves.

An example: is a person’s prayer on behalf of another person something of value?

We see in several places examples (mainly of prophets) who pray for others. Especially Abraham praying for Abimelech, and Moses entreating on Pharaoh’s behalf for the removal of the frogs—in the first case one could say that what is required is forgiveness from the injured party, and in the second there are those who explain that the prayer was needed in order to show who rules the world; but still, the simple understanding is that one can pray for others.

When we try to understand the meaning of prayer (change in the person himself?), we can make use of this knowledge.

Admittedly, as you noted to Aharon, one can sometimes find a counterexample; but one should distinguish between an opposing interpretation, which indeed neutralizes the possibility of learning from the verses, and a counterexample, which would require me to understand why there is no contradiction here—for the assumption is that there are no contradictions in Scripture. When I understand why there is no contradiction, there is a good chance that what remains will be able to decide the original issue.

Many thanks.
1. This is about prophets and not an ordinary person. Who says every person can do this? Moses also brought the frogs upon Egypt. Can every person also bring them upon Egypt? Moreover, the Holy One Himself instructs Moses what to do throughout that whole process there, and therefore one cannot learn from here about prayer undertaken on my own initiative.
2. A side note: if prayer is a change in the person himself, it is not clear how it helps with respect to others.
3. Even if in the Bible prayer for others is effective, who says that is also true today? Back then there were also miracles and prophets, and today there are not.
4. And bottom line: suppose you speak with a person who thinks there is no point in praying for others. Do you think he would be persuaded by study of the Bible alone?
5. And even if all this is true, this is not Bible study but rather general knowledge that arises from the Bible. In general, the Bible teaches us a few general things (that there is a God and that He created the world and gave the Torah; in essence, that prayers are effective, not necessarily for others). This is not a basis for the need to study Bible. Everyone knows the prayers of Abraham and Moses. Can you show that there is value in studying a particular passage in the Bible with a specific and less trivial message?

In fairness, I want to note that I did not read the whole post, only skimmed it (I need three cups of coffee and a double dose of Ritalin to stay focused through this whole process…).

I don’t think one needs to “study Bible”; one needs to “read Bible.” Reading Bible is like a mussar talk in Lithuanian yeshivot. No one (I hope) takes literally the words of the great mashgichim that for neglect of Torah study one will eat glowing coals in the World to Come. We listen (amid a long yawn, drowsiness, and deep reflection on preparing a steaming cup of coffee) in order to “wake up”; it is a ‘motivational talk,’ not learning. That is how I relate to the study of the words of the prophets—not as learning but as a national ‘mussar talk’ needed for the generations.

Studying Bible connects one to the Land of Israel, to history, to nationhood, to the previous generations.
It is no accident that the leaders of Zionism saw the Bible as a banner.
Besides, it is holy.

In the test of results, there is something in it… What did millions of gentiles find in it, seeing it as inspiration, if it is only a platform for literary discussion that is not particularly successful?

And regarding the homework you gave the readers, a few examples—
We learn from the Bible that there is reward and punishment.
That the land belongs to the people of Israel.
That it is possible to communicate with the Holy One through prayer.
That there is such a thing as repentance.

If a person’s desire is to be a prophet and know the knowledge of God, it would be proper for him to study the words of the prophets and those who attained knowledge of God. Doesn’t that make sense?

I’m only able to write a reply to my own comment, so I’ll write here.

The objections (numbers 1 and 3) are from reason. I am claiming that there is proof from the text in a certain direction; about any proof from the text it will be possible to argue that one must distinguish (most of the Bible deals with prophets..), but that does not detract from the fact that we learned something from the Bible.

Regarding note 2—that was exactly the point. If we understand prayer as a change in the one who prays, why should it affect another person?

Regarding note 4—the question is whether the Bible teaches a certain view. It does. Does that persuade someone who does not accept the authority of the Bible? No. The Bible is studied as a source of authority (let us compare this to studying the Shulchan Arukh, not to studying Gemara)
*I mention the Shulchan Arukh as a source of authority; I’m not entering the issue of disputes among decisors

Note 5—in my opinion these examples are not trivial (the proof being that many people think prayer is effective because it changes something in the one who prays, and are not aware of this difficulty, nor do they answer that prophets are different).
Ralbag also counts the fact that the heavens are above the earth as something learned from the Bible (because it says “in the heavens above and on the earth beneath,” in the Ten Commandments); apparently this interested him cosmologically. He has hundreds of “benefits” in opinions and character traits.
The fact that Bible stories are familiar to us does not diminish the fact that we learn from them. There are also things that depend on interpretation—and at times the interpretation changes out of necessity; for example, whether Job’s children died or not (R. Saadia Gaon, if I remember correctly, claims they did not, because they did not deserve to die. He answers that the report of their death was a lie). Most non-famous verses can teach only after we have decided what they mean, and that requires interpretation.

Thank you.
With your permission:

1. Even when there is a contradiction, there is still room to draw a conclusion built from a compromise between the two passages.
2. Okay, but that too is an important conclusion. There are those (like me) whose intuition is that morality is not binding in any direction; it is only an evolutionary development, as stated. At least we have gained that not sweeping away the righteous with the wicked is a divine morality.
3. Likewise. At least we have gained that, as a matter of fact, God desires natural morality.
4. I think it does give us something, in order to determine how to act in certain cases. This is a meta-halakhic rule, and with its help one can commit “a transgression for Heaven’s sake” in extreme cases, for example to set aside a commandment in order to protect many innocent people.
5. Okay.
6. As for the million-dollar question: as I said, I used to think that God was not bound by morality at all, that morality is a human invention and of no concern to religion. When I argued with an intelligent person, I retreated from my position because of this passage. It bothered me quite a bit. I changed my mind: according to the Bible, God is bound by the rules of justice.

Note: you probably agree, but you did not write it explicitly (Rachel wrote this in her comment): the state has a national interest in educating the people by means of symbols and foundational texts. This creates a national consciousness among the people, strengthens and unifies the public, and contributes to the dedication of the individual for the sake of the collective. This is a secular nationalist-utilitarian interest, which uses the Bible like other myths, the Holocaust for example.

Very sensible, but irrelevant to the post and to what I asked. I did not ask whether it is a priori sensible to study Bible, but how one does so in practice and what it gives us in practice.

I asked for examples from specific passages and not general ideas. Everything you wrote here I already know, even though I am ignorant in Bible. So is there any reason for me to study? Is studying Bible meant to teach us that there is prayer? Are you serious? For that one needs to study Bible?
In addition, one can argue at least with some of these lessons. For example, who said that the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel after it was exiled from it because of its sins?
Not to mention that someone who disagrees with all these lessons will not be persuaded by the Bible, but will interpret it accordingly (as I myself did here several times regarding providence).
So far no one here has brought a specific lesson from a specific passage, beyond general and trivial lessons that everyone already knows beforehand. These examples only reinforce my point.

Perhaps prayer changes the addressee? Or perhaps the change in me helps the other receive abundance from above? I do not think this proof is necessary. But I am willing to accept it partially.
We all accept the Bible as authority. The question is whether it says something clear enough that by virtue of its authority we will change our position, or whether we will engage in creative interpretation.
This Ralbag is evidence to the contrary. See the example of the whole description of creation, which today is commonly taken as a foundational myth and not a factual description.

You somewhat contradict yourself in different places. I remember quite a few times here that you said story X functions as a ‘foundational myth,’ and now you claim that it cannot found anything at all..

Prophecies of the end of days, for example: a person wants to know about the war of Gog and Magog or about the redemption; a person asks himself whether we are currently already in the redemption or whether other developments are still to be expected, and what they are. Why shouldn’t a contemporary reader be interested in that? What is meant by “a time, times, and half a time”? What is meant by “the revealed end”?

And apart from that, it is simply an unbelievably interesting book—Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job…

First of all, you are not ignorant in Bible. These ideas did not come to you out of nowhere.
You ask whether I am serious—without the Bible, where would we have learned about prayer and about the ideas that “everyone knows”?

Or am I understanding from your response that you mean that to know this one need not *delve deeply* into the Bible? That is, that one does need to study at some level?

If you are in favor of the Oral Torah, then it has many supports from the Bible that form the basis for the Oral Torah.

You want a specific issue?
For every example you will say that it is not relevant or you will interpret it as you wish. If interpretive freedom is entirely in your hands, then there really is nothing to learn.
Perhaps one should approach with humility, as you approach halakhic statements, and understand that even if I do not like it, it is the word of God. Now deal with the contradiction.
The assumption is also that the closer one is to the time of the giving of the Torah, the fresher the knowledge is, so it is worth relating to earlier commentators.

Even if you choose to interpret as allegory (“an eye for an eye,” creation of the world), the written statement is the word of God.
Why was it written? What is to be learned from it? Make use of earlier commentators, logic, the thirteen principles by which the Torah is expounded..

In “an eye for an eye,” perhaps the point is that in truth a person deserves the full punishment according to his deeds.
God avenges? Then there is something real and just in vengeance, despite the prohibition against taking revenge.
Do not wave away any statement.

Hello Rabbi.
If last week I didn’t feel comfortable—this week I’m really on edge 🙂
With your permission, the discussion should be divided in two, and therefore I will be a bit lengthy.

The first thing to learn from the Bible is that there are many ways to serve God.

The prohibition of bamot as a paradigm, and the sanctity of Jerusalem in particular:
For example, according to the book of Genesis it is clear that the holiest place in the Land of Israel is Bethel—“This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” But according to halakhah, and so too in the later books of the Bible, there is only one place (as emerges from the book of Deuteronomy), and it is Jerusalem (all the biblical books from Kings northward).

Now it is quite clear that Jeroboam son of Nebat knew only the book of Genesis, for immediately after rebelling against Rehoboam he establishes two sanctuaries, one of them—the main one—in Bethel.
Now let us ask: did Jeroboam see himself as sinning? The answer is apparently no.
How do I know this? Elijah answers it when he complains about the Children of Israel:
I Kings 19:9–10
(9) And he came there to the cave and lodged there; and behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and He said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (10) And he said, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, for the Children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, thrown down Your altars…”

And likewise from Elijah’s last day we see where his study hall was:
II Kings 2:1–3
(1) And it came to pass, when the Lord was about to take Elijah up by a whirlwind into heaven, that Elijah and Elisha went from Gilgal. (2) And Elijah said to Elisha, “Stay here, please, for the Lord has sent me to Bethel.” And Elisha said, “As the Lord lives and as your soul lives, I will not leave you.” So they went down to Bethel. (3) And the sons of the prophets who were at Bethel came out to Elisha and said to him, “Do you know that today the Lord will take your master from over your head?” And he said, “Yes, I know; keep silent.”

Even Jehu, who was terribly zealous for the Lord of hosts, did not object to the sanctuary of Bethel:
II Kings 10:23–29
(23) And Jehu went, and Jehonadab son of Rechab, into the house of Baal, and he said to the worshipers of Baal, “Search and see that there are here with you none of the servants of the Lord, but only the worshipers of Baal.” … (26) And they brought out the pillars of the house of Baal and burned them. (27) And they broke down the pillar of Baal, and broke down the house of Baal, and made it a latrine, unto this day. (28) Thus Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel. (29) But from the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, with which he made Israel sin, Jehu did not depart from after them: the golden calves that were in Bethel and that were in Dan.

Why did zealous Jehu not destroy the sanctuary at Bethel? The answer is apparently that he did not see this as a sin.
But according to the later kings of Judah, and especially Josiah, the sanctuary at Bethel is defiled beyond all measure:
II Kings 23:15
(15) And also the altar that was at Bethel, the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat made, by which he made Israel sin—even that altar and the high place he broke down, and burned the high place, grinding it to dust, and burned the Asherah.

And in general, the first to fight the high places among all the kings of Judah was none other than Hezekiah, the great-grandfather of Josiah.

What can be learned from here?
That one can be quite a good prophet of God and know only certain parts of the Torah.

By the way, how did Hazal deal with Rabbi Jeroboam’s proof from Genesis that Bethel is the gate of heaven?
(Hazal usually have no problem saying that God’s will changed—as with a pillar and the marriage of two sisters) but here they really bring a virtuoso interpretation, even by their standards:
Rashi on Genesis 28:17
I say that Mount Moriah was uprooted and came here, and this is the “jumping of the earth” mentioned in the slaughtering of non-sacred animals tractate (Hullin 91b), that the Temple came toward him up to Bethel, and this is [the meaning of] “and he encountered the place.”

I think one can learn from here two important and non-trivial things:
1. One can be a great servant of God even if one does not recognize our Torah—there is no point at all in trying to turn a Karaite into a Rabbanite and the like.
2. There is no possibility of proving to Hazal that they are mistaken in some assumption if the claim is voiced from a competing stream within Judaism—the gates of excuses were not locked.
3. As a genuine interpretive tool, the assumption of harmonization in the Bible is not correct.

And now I will elaborate a bit more.

I teach Bible in a secular framework, and your description/arguments are remarkably similar to my feelings as a teacher. A Bible teacher is a demagogue of the text, in complete contrast to a Talmud teacher.
The secular education system sees in the Bible a value in proving Israel’s bond to its land.
In my opinion, this is the meaning of the focus on the book of Kings and its parallels in the Prophets in teaching for the matriculation exam. Likewise, in my opinion, in teaching the chapters of Genesis regarding Abraham and the promise of the land to his seed.
There is in this an echo of a complex in relation to the Bible. They do not believe in its holiness, yet relate to it as a text that gives historical justification for our presence here.

I agree that from the standpoint of “study” in its narrow sense—acquiring new knowledge—the Bible does not have much practical significance. But its significance comes from its effect on a person in internalizing values and insights (similar to what you called “inspiration”). In my opinion the Bible is more effective in this than other literature, mainly because of the emotional bond formed with it, both as the book of books of the people of Israel and as a source of influence on a large part of the world. Therefore it is actually very logical that the Ministry of Education (whose authority today is not only learning but also education) would adopt such a tool for internalizing values.

Regarding 1:
It is well known that there are two currents in moral theory: relativist-postmodern morality, and absolute-modern morality. Rabbi Michi and I both belong to the second group.
In contrast, regarding religion I belong to the postmodern conception—that is, God wants you to be faithful to your religion, whatever it may be. In my humble opinion, I have no advantage over the Muslim in serving God; both of us were born into our religion and chose nothing, and so on. In my humble opinion, whoever reads only the Torah will get a very contradictory picture. Seemingly there are 613 commandments given at Sinai and nothing more. In contrast, whoever reads the Prophets will understand that the picture is very complex.

Regarding 2:
Anyone who studied biblical criticism and tries to give a class on it in a synagogue knows, unfortunately, what I am talking about. Rabbi Michi will come and claim that all three of my claims were not learned from the Bible, but that I am only putting into the Bible what I want to believe.
Here I want to claim that it is the same in the Gemara. I have no idea how a Haredi can learn from halakhah that his not serving in the army and living off donations is okay. Rather, once a certain halakhah is colored in a certain way, it is very hard to convince a person that he is mistaken. For example, you will not see a Lithuanian Haredi claiming one should ascend the Temple Mount, and you will not see a Modern Orthodox Jew permitting counting a woman in a minyan. Should we then claim that one should not therefore study the Gemara and Rambam, who say that one must not study Torah at the expense of the public purse, and the sugyot that say there is no obligation to pray with a minyan, only that it is a good virtue, and that women are obligated in prayer like men—the sources used by Golinkin to count a woman in a minyan—because these passages are not relevant today? Rather, if we want, we will make them relevant—that is, if we open our hearts to listen and hear regardless of the sector from which we came.
Had Hazal done so, that foolish Rashi quoted above would never have come into the world.

3. Regarding the third point:
The Torah repeats many times the command to eat matzah for seven days. Only in one place in Deuteronomy does the Torah command eating matzah for six days.
Why only there? It is complicated to explain! (Let us merely hint that this is related to the fact that only in Deuteronomy must Passover be in Jerusalem, whereas according to the rest of the Bible it should be at home.) In any case, here is one of many contradictions between Deuteronomy and the other books.
What do Hazal do with the contradiction? They innovate that one need eat only one day, etc.
The plain sense is that there is a dispute between two books about what God wants. What difference does that make?
The Arukh HaShulchan, in accordance with Rava’s words that “a verse does not depart from its plain meaning,” rules that even today there is an “inyan” to eat matzah for seven days. So here we have a halakhah that the Arukh HaShulchan learned from the Bible! And it is also God’s will according to the plain sense of the verses (at least six days). In the plain sense of the verses there is no contradiction—there is a dispute about what God’s will is. Therefore Hazal’s derashah—whose authority is entirely from the Oral Torah—is completely detached from the plain sense of the Torah. There is no source or even a hava amina in the Torah for there being an obligation to eat matzah only one day.
You will argue: but Rava’s ruling is not accepted by me! I will argue: this is an explicit Gemara—one must obey the plain sense of the verses.
(opposing this Gemara is a service decision [perhaps arising from sectoral belonging])

But if so, if you accept Rava’s rule, namely the duty to follow the plain meaning of Scripture, then we can learn many halakhot:
For example: A. The duty to stand during the Torah reading is learned from Ezra—see Nehemiah 8:
(5) And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up. (6) And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” with hands uplifted, and they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with faces to the ground.

B. How one really does nefilat apayim—see the verse above! Also, from the whole Bible it is proven that the nefilat apayim we do today is mistaken (this is also explicit Rambam, but that is beyond the scope). In truth one should fall on one’s face every day like the Muslims!

C. The attitude toward vegetarianism—very positive. This too emerges from Genesis (before the Flood) and the verses, “when your soul desires to eat meat.”

D. The attitude toward the New Moon—Rosh Chodesh is supposed to involve a prohibition of labor and to be a holy day (see the haftarah “Tomorrow is the New Moon,” the story of the Shunammite woman, and Jeremiah’s rebuke). According to Rava’s rule there is a prohibition of labor.

I would continue, but I do not want to weary anyone.

Rabbi Michael

Could you explain what studying Gemara gives you more than Bible, and why there too you do not raise the same difficulty (= that whatever you agree with, you agree with anyway, and whatever you do not agree with, even after study you will continue not to agree)?

1. Stories always come to influence—not like a list of values (of Mesillat Yesharim), but as you read you experience what the characters are going through and what the author wants to convey to you, and this affects you. If you assume that the Holy One wrote the Torah in one way or another, then you understand that there is value in being influenced by these stories.
2. I have many stories where, after hearing classes by “Bible experts,” I began to read them in a completely different way from how I had read them before. For example:
Yonatan Grossman on the story of Lot’s daughters – http://www.hatanakh.com/lessons/%D7%91%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%98-%D7%95%D7%90%D7%91%D7%99%D7%94%D7%9F-%D7%91%D7%9E%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%94
There he concludes, by comparing the description of the act of the two daughters, that even when one is forced to do a grave act such as sleeping with one’s father, there is a difference in the way and the intention with which one does it.
A. Without deep study of the story, one cannot read it in this way.
B. After you read it in this way, I think it affects you differently from a philosophical discussion of how we should behave when there is no choice.
3. Another type of Bible study that influenced me is the study of chapters of Psalms, which only after I studied them with Rabbi Elchanan Samet did I begin to have different intention in prayer. For example, since I studied with him Psalm 47, saying “Lamnatze’ach” before the shofar blowing is done by me with far more intention (okay, here I assume that prayer is worth something).

I think you are contradicting yourself.
If the Bible is not divine (and after all you support biblical criticism and do not distinguish between it and the Quran), then it is unclear how you learn from it that there are many ways to serve God. If God had given it and you inferred from His words that there are many ways, that would make sense. But if it is a human text, you cannot infer from it anything about the correct way to serve God. Maybe the correct way is actually something else entirely that you do not know. All you are really saying is that you do not have a divine text, and therefore you are left to decide on serving God independently—so in fact this is a personal conclusion not inferred from any text.

Summary: anyone who does not oppose studying Scripture scientifically—that is, analyzing the text without dogmatic assumptions—I promise him intellectual enjoyment no less than studying sugyot about an ox goring a cow.
Whether he will see in these conclusions binding content and the will of God—that depends only on him. So it is with the entire Shulchan Arukh!
Hazal themselves saw in the biblical text something binding (according to their midrashic interpretation).
Therefore it is quite strange to accept Hazal’s laws but not the basic Hazalic assumption—unless there is a compelling reason for this (logical contradiction, moral wrong, shocking lack of modernity, and the like).

A final note: take an Encyclopaedia Biblica, read one entry carefully—for example, the prohibition of bamot, the Levites, a pillar, Baal worship—and afterward I would be glad to hear your impressions: is this only like studying Tolstoy etc.?

There is no book with literary value like the Bible, because the Bible tells the greatest and most significant story ever. There is no second to it. Moments when the Creator of the world Himself turns to people, speaks with them, splits the sea… this is not just another book.

You assume that on every issue I have a clear, solid, unequivocal prior opinion that cannot be changed, and if it can be changed then only by substantive arguments. That is a mistaken assumption. There are things that are logically necessary, to which I will be forced to “subordinate” the text at any cost (or almost any cost—it may be that I would simply abandon the text; see the latest Othniel controversy). However, there is a broad spectrum of things that seem more or less plausible to me and fit the text more or less well. This gives rise for me, as a sanctifying and loving learner, to a sort of dialogue with the text; that is: I may very well change my position if the position is something I am capable of giving up (sometimes even with difficulty), while on the other hand Scripture seems (sometimes not necessarily explicitly—and certainly if this is something essential and pronounced) to say otherwise. There is no clear boundary, and indeed one can remain with the positions with which one came in, if one’s intellectual flexibility is zero.
As was mentioned before, although it cannot be denied that in halakhah there are things I will do even though I did not think them beforehand and even without being convinced they are correct, still at bottom similar processes exist in the world of halakhah as well. You know better than I do that there is a difference between the various Rishonim on this issue, but in general it is clear that every Rishon, in every issue, creates some combination of his basic assumptions (and/or his worldview) and the text before him. A spectrum is created.
Spectrum, spectrum, spectrum. I really do not know what is so hard to understand about this.
I have written all this on the assumption of your premise that what we are looking for is a concrete addition of content, something with which I strongly disagree (and these matters have already been discussed with your commenters in the Hasidism-poetry series, and there is no need to repeat them).
All this is only on the basis of the assumption, which you also agree to, that in any event it is Torah. If it is Torah—we must study it (though of course one can argue about the bridges of obligation, and about that too you have written in the past).

Regarding a jealous and avenging God, I think one can interpret those as qualities that also have a positive dimension. For example, the zeal of Pinchas and Elijah. And the value in taking vengeance on the wicked and on the enemies of the people of Israel.

And regarding insights from the Bible, here are several prominent examples I remember as lessons from the Bible that without the verse I would not have been so convinced of:
1. “The poor of your city come first”: excluding the belief that the only criterion that should determine priority in distributing support is the need of the recipient, and that his closeness to you is irrelevant to priority.
2. Vegetarianism is a more moral state than eating meat (thus man was created at first, and after sin he descended in level). This excludes the view that animals were created for our sake and that by eating them we benefit them and repair their soul by the blessing recited over them.
3. “The property declared ownerless by the court is ownerless” (from Ezra’s decree of excommunication). That is, there is moral authority for the public and its representatives to confiscate and expropriate the property of the individual where there is a public need for it.

And in general, Hazal themselves extracted many insights and values from the Bible, so why shouldn’t we be able to?

With God’s help, Holocaust Remembrance Day 5778

To Aharon – greetings,

If Abraham had come in the name of human morality, the accepted social convention—then he could have raised a simple claim against God: the people of Sodom are perfectly fine. This is what is accepted throughout the civilized world: if a guest comes to a city, the king may take her to satisfy his desire. Is that not the guest’s moral duty—to delight the ruler who in his great kindness allows her to enter his domain?

On the contrary, the people of Sodom perfected the moral demand upon the guest and applied it even to male guests. Why should men be excluded from the duty of gratitude to their hosts? And why only the king? All the townspeople deserve gratitude from the guest who comes into their borders. If the outsider does not bear the burden of taxes, let him at least honor his hosts with his body!

Abraham did not come to his God in the name of accepted human morality, according to which ‘in war as in war’—in order to win, one cannot distinguish between righteous and wicked. Even thousands of years later it is obvious to humanity that in order to win, one drops bombs that destroy whole cities with their inhabitants.

Abraham came in the name of divine morality, in the name of “the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice,” according to the divine demand for individual providence that distinguishes “between the righteous and the wicked, and between one who serves God and one who has not served Him,” and he demands of his God that He take into account the community of righteous people that may be in the city, even if they are not one hundred percent righteous.

Humanity has advanced greatly since then under the influence of the Bible, to which it was exposed and whose values it absorbed only very partially; but it still has much to learn until it reaches the understanding of “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths”—an understanding that will lead them truly to fulfill “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war anymore,” not because of the balance of nuclear terror, but out of genuine adoption of biblical values.

Regards, Shatz Levinger

In the book of Job, Job moves from belief in the constellations and in a kind of pantheism to becoming a prophet through the question of “why do the righteous suffer,” and when God is revealed to him and asks him 50 questions corresponding to the 50 gates of understanding, he comes to know God and to understand that man is not the center of the world, and the gap between the actual and the desired in the cosmic system.

Not worth it?
From the lectures of Rabbi Uri Sherki.

I didn’t understand. Job did not study Bible; he lived the Bible (if he ever existed at all). My question was about a contemporary learner: what is he supposed to derive from the study? An ancient learner could have learned from the Bible that God created the world and gave the Torah. But I already know that. So is there something for me to learn there?
In short, explain to me exactly what the book of Job teaches me, and why that is contrary to what I would think without it. And now try to convince me that this is indeed what is learned from there.

How to arrive at prophecy and knowledge of God from the question of why the righteous suffer.

First, I would very much prefer that the discussion be conducted through the site.
Second, if you want to make a claim—please spell it out. I have difficulty with riddles.
And third, note my comments in the previous email.

First, I tried, but for some reason I didn’t find the comment section. I don’t know why, so I wrote to you by email; maybe on a computer it is more noticeable, but my son is currently on the computer so I wrote to you from my phone by email.
Second, I am not writing in any riddle. Rabbi Sherki explains that if a person asks himself the question of why the righteous suffer, he will arrive at prophecy and knowledge of God, because the gap between the actual and the desired will cry out so loudly to him that he will not be able to make do with the answers of mediocre religious people who decided to become God’s defense attorneys, and he will be forced to find a higher answer than that. That is the path to prophecy and knowledge of God according to the book of Job, according to Rabbi Sherki.
Third, I hope I made myself clear enough. If you want me to elaborate more, I will do so either here or on the site, as you wish.

I have nothing to do with declarations: a person who does such-and-such will surely find such-and-such higher answers. Someone who asks himself the question of why the righteous suffer is not someone who studies Bible. One can ask that without studying Bible. Not for nothing did I ask in the post for an example of something non-trivial that I can learn from the Bible.

Why, in your opinion, is the Gemara really more authoritative than Scripture?

To Yishai:
A – answer: I have no dogmatic assumptions. I distinguish between the Bible and the Quran. Prophets can make mistakes. For example, Jeremiah prophesied that Jehoiachin and his offspring would perish, whereas in truth Jehoiachin survived. Jeremiah prophesied that Zedekiah and his offspring would survive—that is not what happened!
Malachi and Zechariah prophesied that Zerubbabel would be the Messiah (the great-grandson of Jehoiachin), and that did not happen.
The fact that there is disagreement between prophets does not mean that they have no divine source. The fact that Deuteronomy disagrees with Genesis does not mean that both are human—either one is divine and the other mistaken, or both are the word of God and in God’s will there is a contradiction. Exactly like Abaye and Rava.
For the most part, the people of Israel decided like Rava and like Deuteronomy, against Abaye and Genesis. The Quran is not important to me like the words of Abaye and Rava and Genesis and Deuteronomy.
B – neither I nor you decided to be Jews. I am aware of the fact that there are many gentiles in the world and many ways to serve God. I am aware of the fact that my way is definitely no more correct than another’s. So what? I was born into it, and this is the most convenient way for me to serve God.
For some reason, you believe that only your way is correct—I don’t know why. Have you checked this? Have you ever spoken with a Christian or an Arab or a Karaite or a Buddhist and tried to think what his arguments are against your method and in favor of his own? For some reason, I doubt it.
My friend, we both chose the same path! I am only aware of my situation.
I will ask you a question: after 120 years you go up to heaven, and standing next to you in line is Maria—a good Christian who every Sunday went to church and gave generously and studied her holy writings and honored her parents, etc., and I am there too.
God will send you straight to heaven. He will send me to hell (regardless of this argument :-))
What will He do with Maria—heaven or hell? What would you recommend He do? After all, she worships idolatry and transgressed the seven commandments, but on the other hand this is her path.

God and I await your answer.

Abraham too does not ask for fewer than ten righteous people. He understands that one person, or a few individuals, cannot change the norms of an entire city. Only when there is a congregation of ten righteous people holding fast to their faith and values against the overwhelming majority that scorns them—only then is there a chance that society will change sooner or later.

When the Torah offered its faith and values to a pagan world—who cared about them? And there were periods when even the Children of Israel broke down. In the days of Elijah the prophet, only 7,500 people remained in Israel who had not bowed to Baal. And what remains today of paganism in the civilized world? How the cultured Greeks mocked the Jews who canceled an entire day each week, and today the idea of a weekly day of rest is the possession of all humanity.

From evolution we learn that processes of worldwide change grow little by little. Only when one looks from the perspective of hundreds and thousands of years can one discern deep processes of change. And from Abraham we learn: we make our little step, sow the seed, though generations may pass before it bears fruit.

It is not upon us to finish the task, but it is within our power and our duty to try to leave behind us a world a bit better than the one we received, and to bequeath to our children a better starting point than ours.

Regards, Shatz Levinger

I made a principled claim that what is not factual was probably intended to be a foundational myth. In practice I do not see how this myth operates.

I do not understand how you analyze the biblical story of Sodom with the help of interpretations of Hazal.

You are departing from the rules of the present discussion.

After all, the question was whether there is benefit in studying the Bible in itself.

If it interests you, then great. Study it.

And regarding the exercise—though it is cool, it is clearly impossible given your starting assumptions. Any example that deals with details by definition will not be something proven unequivocally, certainly not more unequivocally than providence in the Bible… A principled clarification is needed, and only then can we move to practical application.

Rachel, that’s a lot of maybes. With all due humility, at this point I still do not see an example you brought of a lesson I would derive from the Bible. I already wrote in the post that in the past it certainly was significant in shaping the morality and values of our whole culture. My question concerns our own day and us. Are you suggesting I study Bible in order to know there is a God and that He gave the Torah? Well, that I already know (true, thanks to what previous generations derived from the Bible in the past).

It is accepted among us that it is. But as I wrote, this is apparently a segulah-type study, because almost no new insights are produced from it.

If we have drifted into literature, I’ll mention that following your references I got hold of Tzemach Atlas and The Battle of the Inclination by Chaim Grade, and I simply cannot read them.
I forced my way through half of Tzemach Atlas, and it just doesn’t work. The characterization is flat, the language archaic, and the plot boring. In short, I was disappointed.
I understood that what mainly appealed to you was the difference between Tzemach and “Avraham the visionary,” but I still haven’t gotten there.

It seems to me that you have proven my point quite well.

I explained this in my remarks to Yishai. Without studying halakhah, I would not know how to keep Shabbat. Therefore, there the learning clearly has educational value. I derive from it information that I would not know otherwise. Also regarding migo, I would have thought it means only “why would I lie,” and when I studied it I learned something new: that it also has the force of a claim. Therefore it is not true that in halakhah too I accept only what I already agree with. Not at all.

If so, then we agree that one learns nothing from the Bible. You are only saying that it has a significant emotional effect on you. Fine—on me it does not. For others, pills or hypnosis would do the job. I am talking about learning, not meditation. It reminds me of the discussions following the series on Hasidism.

Waiting for an example. This is all in the air. Give an example according to your assumptions. I am claiming that no one learns from the Bible—not merely that I do not learn from it.

With God’s help, 27 Nisan 5778

At the beginning of Deuteronomy it is explained that it is an exposition of the Torah: “Moses undertook to expound this Torah.” In the command concerning “the place that the Lord will choose,” it is explained that the reason for the permission of bamot is “for you have not as yet come to the resting place and to the inheritance.” The patriarchs wandered from place to place, and therefore all places were fit for the service of God; the Children of Israel wandered in the wilderness from place to place, and the Tabernacle was with them. But with entry into the land and the scattering of the tribes to all its ends—it was time to bring the Tabernacle of the Lord as well to the resting place and the inheritance, and to fulfill Moses’ prophecy in the Song at the Sea: “You shall bring them in and plant them on the mountain of Your inheritance, the place for Your dwelling that You made, O Lord, the sanctuary, O Lord, which Your hands established.”

Regards, Shatz Levinger

Regarding your claims about Jeremiah’s prophecies concerning Jehoiachin and Zedekiah—it is explicit in Jeremiah’s words that prophecy is not an “oracle”; good and evil are decreed upon the individual and the nation according to their deeds, and a change in deeds brings a change in the decree: “At one moment I may speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to uproot and to pull down and to destroy; but if that nation turns from its evil, concerning which I spoke against it, then I repent of the evil that I thought to do to it. And at another moment I may speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant; but if it does evil in My sight so as not to obey My voice, then I repent of the good with which I said I would benefit it” (18:7–10).

Indeed. But the interpretation you are making is because of your own insights. You did not learn this from the Bible.
1. Where did you see in the Bible that “the poor of your city come first”? Beyond that, in my opinion this is a simple intuition. Would you really give to your family as you would give to another person, and if he were needier you would give him more? Besides, here we are dealing with halakhah and not necessarily with a value message.
2. I do not see any necessity for this from the Bible. Again, it all depends on your starting point. Go and see that most God-fearing people are not at all strict about vegetarianism, and none of them finds in the Bible any contradiction to his position.
3. “The court’s declaration of ownerlessness is ownerless” was innovated on the basis of a verse from the Prophets, and one cannot learn Torah-level laws from there except perhaps as a mere disclosure. And that itself simply indicates that this is based on reasoning and not on learning from a verse. Beyond that, here we are dealing with halakhah, whereas I am speaking about a biblical narrative passage that is not halakhah.
Indeed Hazal extracted such things, and in principle there is no a priori reason we could not. My claim is practical, not essential.

I did not write anywhere that it is more authoritative. On the contrary, plainly it is less authoritative. What I claimed is that this authority is empty so long as there is no way to extract new content from it.

In principle my feeling was always as you describe, but the picture changed completely when I became acquainted with the books of Rabbi Elchanan Samet.
He develops a scientific literary method that is meant to function throughout the Bible, and he succeeds with it quite a bit.
It is hard within this framework to present examples of messages that arise from particular verses according to his method, since each of his essays is somewhat long and complex. I merely point to his books, which are worth serious study for someone interested in systematic, in-depth Bible learning.

Enjoyable reading. To each his own taste.

Aharon, that was not a literary recommendation. I do not even remember how successful it was literarily. Indeed, the comparison between the characters was illuminating.

To Aharon – greetings,

The interpretation of Hazal is an enormous added value in understanding Scripture. Scripture was the central text of their lives; they lived and breathed it 24 hours a day and seven days a week, scrutinized every word and letter, and for its precise interpretation and implementation in practical life they gave up their lives—literally.

But in these responses I did not have the scope to go through the words of Hazal, and my analysis relied only on the plain sense of the verses, from which it clearly emerges that the actions of the people of Sodom, who demanded of Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them,” are deeply rooted in the social convention practiced around them, beginning in Egypt and continuing in Gerar and Shechem, that the lords of the place are entitled to appropriate for themselves any woman who enters their territory without asking her consent. This was the most up-to-date ‘human morality,’ from whose rules Abraham our father deviated.

Regards, Shatz Levinger

To Moshe – greetings,

Rabbi Elchanan Samet did not “invent the wheel.” He sees himself as continuing the path of Prof. Nehama Leibowitz, whose studies are full of the words of Hazal and the traditional interpretation of early and later commentators. What Nehama Leibowitz did to Scripture was to turn it into something studied in the yeshiva way of Talmud study: understanding the moral and textual questions, and how each commentator dealt with those questions. And of course correct analysis also yields genuine new insights.

Regards, Shatz Levinger

Regarding 2, even if there is no necessity, that does not mean it is not learning. After all, you taught us that non-deductive logic is logic that is not necessary/certain, yet is still valid. True, one can argue about this learning, but that does not mean it is invalid. In the end, this seems to be a reasonable conclusion from the biblical story. And there are probably several other reasonable conclusions that are not necessary.

I thought of a few more examples that can be learned from the first verse in the Torah: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Shema mina, three things:
1. There is a beginning to time. (As opposed to the one who says that the world is eternal.) That is, the dimension of time itself was created.
2. The world was created ex nihilo. (As opposed to the one who says it was created from primordial matter or that the world is eternal.)
3. The world is not God. (As opposed to pantheistic conceptions.) That is, God is transcendent.

Agreed.
Every generation tries to reconcile the text with the spirit of the times. After several such incarnations, anything goes interpretively. The result is the absurd situation that precisely because of its sanctity it becomes irrelevant.

In the Bible there are many times when a particular individual is judged for no wrong he committed, just because he happens to be part of a certain group.
Isn’t the general judgment of the individual an issue that the rabbi himself often brings up in his lectures, and that is decided in the Bible contrary to the position of many people today?

I fear that Rabbi Michi does not really understand what a human being is. Therefore the rabbi writes things with which the heart does not agree.

The rabbi, as I understand him, lives in a world of facts. Only facts. There are no other things, and if there are, then they have no value.
Only facts have value. So it seems according to the rabbi.

I remember arguing with you on the subject of Hasidic studies, where you strongly claimed that it is not learning, and when I asked what you wanted, you answered that you wanted whoever can to study, and not to play stupid games.

You then seemed to me like a mathematician who claims there is no value in arithmetic games, only in mathematical study for its own sake, and wants the whole public to study mathematics the way he, the professor, studies and knows it.
Now you appear to me as if you said that now that there is an abundance of beverages and juices in the world, we no longer need water.
Why drink water? And not for nothing did I use that image.

This is exactly your weak point as a person. You understand yourself very well, and you love your approach to the surrounding things very much. Your analytical tools are excellent, and you rejoice in them greatly, because they organize reality for you, grant you a certain inner calm, allowing you to look at things from afar, with a relatively cold eye, and analyze situations. You are very self-confident, and you express your confidence in your writing.

With all this, you have great difficulty understanding that other people are other people. Truly other—almost to the point of being aliens. Those people act according to other principles. They are not as analytical as you, nor as intelligent as you, but they live here, and they see things differently from you, and their existence is just as important and principled as yours, and they contribute to the world in places that do not require especially developed rationality but rather fertile imagination. They work hard and sustain the world in their way, and they have no reason to justify each and every thing, since they are not people of thought but people of action.

This common situation, where person A seeks an explanation for the actions of person B (Michi seeks an explanation for why Il studies Bible), according to his own values, supposedly in order to understand the rationale behind the other person’s conception, is a situation that is generally neither right nor comfortable. As though person B has to justify his actions before person A, whose actions—as it were—are self-justifying. (And indeed within his internal system, his actions really are self-evident. But they are self-evident only to him, not to others observing him from within another system.)

According to my way of thinking, the Written Torah is truth. It does not describe events, even though that is how it appears.
It says the truth.
It distinguishes—and this is learned only after many years of very deep study—between truth and events.

I am an event. You are an event. One day we will die, and leave no trace behind us. The State of Israel is an event. The Holocaust is an event. But two plus two equals four is not an event. It is truth.
The Torah is truth. It is not an event. It teaches that truth is of the category of eternity, and that it is necessity, and that it is not accidental and fleeting. Studying the Bible is what gives validity to all other studies, and without studying the Bible as such, all other studies will lose their meaning.

You are looking for a detail, but the Torah is a whole. To see it as a collection of details relating to facts is a complete mistake, and a failure to understand what it is.

From the Torah I learned to love Moses.
I assume this is not a fact, and therefore it has no meaning in your eyes.
But hey, that does not matter to me.

And I also learned God’s love for His creature, man.
And I also learned about courage and difficulty and despair and anger.

And I learned about humility, and that the opposite of humility is jealousy, not pride.

Three times Moses cries in the Torah.
One—when Pharaoh’s daughter takes him from the ark.
Two—when Zimri comes to Cozbi.
Three—when Aaron dies.

Hazal taught that he wrote the final words in tears, as though his tears were ink, and by themselves they wrote the account of his death.
That was his fourth cry.

I do not even know how to explain why I wrote what I wrote.
It is the night, which wreaks havoc in me.
Perhaps one of your readers will learn something else here.

Hello Rabbi Michi, after all you have been occupied for many years in reviving the hermeneutical principles by which the Torah is expounded. You are the first person who must study Bible so that one day you can use those principles to derive new halakhot. After all, deriving new halakhot from the hermeneutical principles is something anyone can do, unlike decrees and enactments, for which one needs a Sanhedrin.

P.S. I think there are rabbis who try to do a kind of study like this on entirely new questions—for example secularization. Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun tried to go back and learn general principles from the Bible and not use the Talmudic term “a child taken captive.” Or Rabbi Goren, in issues of the morality of war, conducts a discussion with the Bible itself. So דווקא in our own times, when questions arise that do not exist in the Talmud, there is reason to go back and learn the principles from the Bible.

Oren,
2. My claim is that if you had not believed in vegetarianism, you would not have learned it from the Torah. If there is a conclusion you arrived at and you indeed adopt it against your original opinion, then that would really be learning something new from the Bible. As I wrote, usually this is not the case: because the interpretation is not necessary, and because I have opinions on these matters, I will prefer to force the language rather than the reasoning, as is customary in the yeshivot (and the source is Beit Yosef Yoreh De’ah 228).

1. Not at all necessary. It is clear that one who thinks time has no beginning will explain that this is speech according to the understanding of the listeners.
2. Indeed, but again this stems from the understanding that eternal primordial matter is not plausible. Ramban in his commentary to Song of Songs explains that there was primordial matter (following Plato). If I thought otherwise, I would say that the description in Genesis refers only to the last part of creation, or that “tohu va-vohu” is not nothingness but primordial matter (quite a few medieval commentators wrote this explicitly).
3. Well, that is simple logic. How is this different from simply learning that there is a God? This lesson, of course, emerges from the Bible, but I did not mean trivial things like these. I am looking for a reason for me now to go study Bible. These things I already know.

Indeed. But I do not base myself on the Bible; I base myself on my own understanding. If I did not accept this—I would interpret the Bible differently. On the contrary, Abraham argues, “Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?!”

Il, indeed this returns us to the posts on Hasidism. I learn from Chippopo to love animals. Even without comparing the Bible to Chippopo, heaven forbid, is such a thing called learning? This is influence and not learning. And I am not saying it is worthless or not positive, only that it is not learning. This is a matter of definition and not a question of tendencies or talents. The fact that someone likes to experience and not analyze does not turn the experience into analysis.
And regarding the night, see the beautiful song by Shalom Hanoch:
https://shironet.mako.co.il/artist?type=lyrics&lang=1&prfid=960&wrkid=1945

I already wrote that I am not dealing with the study of halakhah but with study of the non-halakhic parts of Scripture. Though even in the halakhic parts we are not really “studying Bible.” The hermeneutical principles belong to the Oral Torah, not the Written Torah. Explain to me why I now need to take a chapter in Joshua or Kings, or even in Exodus, and study it.

Some try. The question is whether some succeed. Yoel Bin-Nun did this in light of Ramban and not from the Bible (incidentally, in my response in Akdamot I showed that he interpreted him incorrectly).
I am waiting for examples. Show me an example from Rabbi Goren where I would have said otherwise but because of an inference from the Bible I would change my opinion and act according to those conclusions. But forget me. Show me this regarding him or regarding anyone else.

I didn’t understand what you want from me. Fine, you assume I’m Jewish—that’s certainly reasonable when I browse this site and have a Hebrew nickname—but where did all the rest of the assumptions about me come from?
The discussion here is not at all whether Judaism is true or not, but whether one can learn from the Bible or not. You say that you learned from the Bible that there can be many correct paths, and I tell you that you did not learn that from the Bible, and in your response here you prove me right.

As stated, I do not think this is likely to be practical, because you always raise the claim, “And what if someone thinks this is not true—will he change his mind because of this?” whereas my whole claim is that I do not always think something is necessarily true or not true, and therefore I am willing to listen and learn.
Still, I will answer the request:
A. An example of learning an “intellectual” moral claim—In Nehemiah 4 the building of the wall begins, and it is completed in chapter 6. In between is “inserted” chapter 5, which deals with the social plane—Nehemiah demands that the public relinquish their debts owed by the poor. Whether we say this is chronological order, or literary order that is not chronological, it seems that Nehemiah is saying that despite the preparations and pressure, one must not abandon justice and concern for the weak (parallel to our time: even when there are security problems, one must not ignore economic questions).
This is a statement that could influence even the ballot I cast in elections (it is not all that obvious to me from reason alone).
True, if someone thinks this is really not right, he will be able to explain it another way, but if I have no special reason to interpret it differently, I will remain with what, in my opinion, emerges from the verses.
B. An example of “emotional” influence and a brief explanation of its meaning—In Nehemiah 4 he describes his great devotion to building the wall. By analogy to today’s army (= my world at the moment), he had patrol, watchman, static guard, emergency squad, and intervention squad 🙂 Beyond what this teaches about the importance of building the wall, it also gives a sense of general devotion to things of value.
Here you always say—and is the same not true of a telephone pole? The point is that it is not. It is clear (actually, there are clearer examples for this point than this one, but I preferred examples fresh in my mind and both in the same place) that the Bible *aims* to create in me as a reader a certain emotional response that is supposed to influence me toward the value direction in which the Bible is trying to educate. This is a benefit (call it learning or call it a table) that grows specifically out of Bible study.
If you are not satisfied with the examples, I can demonstrate with others, but it seems to me that this really is not the point.

Rabbi, from what I understand you are looking for an example in the Bible of an instruction that goes against your faith/opinions, and that nonetheless you would follow only because it is written in the Bible, against your natural intuition.

But if the Bible is not a halakhic source, you will not find such a thing. That is not the reason to study Bible.

So the following examples are of non-halakhic learning.

1. In an earlier response you spoke about vegetarianism (in your response to Oren), saying that no one becomes vegetarian because of the Torah. Neither did I.
On the one hand—“Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; like the green herb, I have given you everything.”
On the other hand—
“Only, whenever your soul desires, you may slaughter and eat meat”
“And you say: ‘I will eat meat,’ because your soul desires to eat meat—you may eat meat whenever your soul desires.”
The Torah’s emphasis that eating meat is desire, when in other places in the Torah where the word desire appears it is usually not in a positive context (the graves of desire, “desirable to the eyes” [the Tree of Knowledge]).

Okay, so you will say: one learns nothing from this. If you are in favor of vegetarianism, you will find the right verses, and if you are against vegetarianism, you will find other verses.

But both are the words of the living God, and one can learn from both directions—there is a statement in each of them. Eating meat for need. Post factum and not ideally. Not more than is necessary.

2. Another example:
God says to Moses, “I am the Lord,” and regarding the patriarchs, “but by My name the Lord I was not known to them.” According to Rashi, “I am the Lord” means: I fulfill My promises. And yet the patriarchs were not known by the name the Lord, since they did not see the fulfillment of the promises, but on the contrary (“through Isaac shall your seed be called”—yet the Binding of Isaac; “to you I will give this land”—versus the need to buy the Cave of Machpelah, redug the wells, divide the land with Lot, etc.).
There is no halakhah here, but I learn from this that if even the patriarchs did not see the fulfillment of the promises, one should not infer from appearances when one sees promises of God that have not been fulfilled.
In this generation we have merited to see “I am the Lord” with regard to the prophecies of consolation about the ingathering of the exiles and the return to the Land of Israel after 2,000 years that Jews read in the words of the prophets in exile.
And not one of Your words shall return empty.
Is that self-evident? Maybe to you. (Actually, from your perspective there is no providence today, so I don’t know.)
So you’ll say—it’s interpretation, not the Torah itself. I’ll answer: delving into Torah also means making use of its commentators.

In summary:
True, there is no situation in which there will be a verse in the Torah that everyone reads and arrives at exactly the same conclusion, even if it goes against their opinions. But that does not mean it is not true.

For one who believes this is a text given to us by the Creator, there is no better way to draw close to the Creator and know Him than to delve into the text. For me, in every word there is a lesson hidden, a kind of code that I need to decipher.

Where I have no opinion or lack information (for example, the question whether time was created or has a beginning), I will adopt the plain sense of the verse so long as I have no good reason to uproot it from its plain meaning. Thus it turns out that we can learn new things from the Bible as long as we have no other way to understand them from reality.

You made two very significant comments:
1. I am willing to accept the claim that if there is an open question for me, and I have a reasonable basis to interpret the Bible in way A, I will adopt that claim. But this is a rare case. I do not think this justifies investing in Bible studies. The example of the wall is excellent, because no one will infer any conclusion from it. For there is always the question whether my situation today is similar, both in terms of the necessity of the wall and in terms of the plight of the poor, to the situation Nehemiah was speaking about. Therefore in my opinion this is an empty lesson. In other words, I too know that one should not neglect the poor while dealing with security. The question is what degree of security distress and what degree of distress justify giving up security for the sake of dealing with poverty. That is the only non-trivial question here, and regarding it you will not find an answer in the Bible. Therefore no one will change his vote at the ballot box in light of the book of Nehemiah.
2. You wrote that indeed everything has an effect (the telephone pole), but the Bible’s effect is in the right direction. But of course that assumes some direction emerges from it. As stated, I doubt that.

Rachel,
Why in a non-halakhic source can one not find this? If I find in the Bible some idea or belief, even if it is not practical, I am supposed to adopt it. That is exactly what I am asking about.
1. Both and both—therefore precisely one cannot learn anything from it. Clearly there is a side in favor of being vegetarian and a side against. The only non-trivial question is which side prevails. And that cannot be extracted from there.
2. Actually this example is seemingly better. This is not interpretation but the Torah itself. Even if Rashi had not written it, seemingly these things really do arise from the Torah itself (after all, Abraham bought the cave). But this too is highly questionable, since the promise “to your seed I will give [this land]” does not mean that he need not buy the cave. The promise concerns the sovereignty of the people of Israel over the whole land, but Abraham wanted ownership over a burial plot for his wife now. So what could he do if not buy it?
Beyond that, if the Torah promises something then obviously it is supposed to be fulfilled. Do I need to learn that from the Bible? That is what a promise means, isn’t it?

Let me sharpen my claim, because there is a misunderstanding of it in your closing words. I am not talking about the fact that interpretation is not uniform. That is true in halakhah too. My claim is that even for a specific interpreter who forms some particular interpretation of his own, it has no authoritative force for him.

In principle you are right, as I just wrote to Yosef. If, from my perspective, the question is open and I have a reasonable interpretation in the Bible, I will probably adopt (tentatively) the position that emerges from it. But this is very rare.
In the example you brought, it is rather weak. I would not learn from that verse that time was created. It is so weak that it would not even tilt my view if it were open.

First, thank you for the deep engagement. As for the matter itself—
1. Regarding my example from Nehemiah—obviously in the end every value matter, regardless of what exactly the value is, and certainly when values conflict, changes according to specific circumstances. The meaning of every engagement with values is drawing various things into my basket of values, so that in the end some sort of balance among them is created in reality. I do think a direction is given here that I would not have had without Nehemiah (truly, in the situation he describes there, I would have thought this was deferrable; just a moment ago they tried to break into Jerusalem and kill everyone, and they really do set up an endless amount of security).
2. Do you also doubt that it creates an emotional effect in the direction of love of God or concern for the weak? Incidentally, in this context modern Bible study allows, in my opinion, more sharpening of the understanding of what the text is trying to say and what we are merely loading onto it (even though of course these things are not unequivocal and presumably never will be).
(If more examples are needed I can try, but I doubt it really makes a difference.)

1. I did not see anything to draw from there. As stated, everything was clear to me from the outset except for the dosage and the threshold of balance.
2. Love of God and concern for the weak, like many other values, can be drawn from many sources. Is there a lack of literature that teaches and instills concern for the weak? On the contrary, if I understood your point, then the significance of Scripture in terms of section 2 is only where the values are not trivial. Your claim is that if Scripture influences me to formulate some position that I did not know beforehand, that is good because it is probably the correct position (after all, it emerges from Scripture). In this respect it has an advantage over Chippopo, because if Chippopo influences me, that is not necessarily positive. If we are talking about clear values, then as stated they can be instilled no less well from countless other sources. I already noted above that I am not sure the text that most effectively instills in me commitment to acts of kindness is Pirkei Avot (“the world stands on three things”). I can think of many sources much more effective for that purpose, which raises the question why one should study Pirkei Avot.

1. Fine, I will try to see later whether I find a more convincing example 🙂 In any case, I do think that a story present in consciousness can help determine a balance, even if it is not sharp (and as stated, I doubt whether in any value matter one can arrive at something sharp, from any source whatsoever).
2. The claim is that any other text I choose expresses different ideas according to the author’s choice, whereas in the Bible I trust the author that all the ideas he seeks to express are correct. These are literary-educational works created by a source that is authoritative in my eyes, and thus I can learn from it more easily (which would not be the case were I taking stories from any other literature). Is the formulation clearer now?

1. It may be that you are right regarding all texts in the value sphere, but again we have returned to the point that there is nothing to learn from the Bible (except that now something new has been added: so it is with every other source too).
2. The formulation was clear before as well, and that is exactly what I described your remarks as saying. That is precisely why I wrote that you are not right with the examples of compassion and love of God that you brought. As I wrote, the discussion should take place precisely about values that are not already known, and certainly not agreed upon, since the assumption is that in the Torah all the values are correct.

Hello Rabbi, I’ll try my luck:
We see (I Kings 16) that Ahab reigns over Israel and does what is evil in the eyes of the Lord. As a result Elijah decrees a severe drought that lasts three years. Following that, Ahab searches for Elijah, and from Elijah’s conversation with Obadiah we see that Ahab had made all the nations swear that if they saw Elijah they would bring him to Ahab. We understand two things: first, that if Ahab could make all the nations swear, he apparently had immense power (Hazal say he was one of the kings who ruled the whole world); and second, that he understands that Elijah is the one causing the drought—he does not turn to Baal to bring rain.

We can see from the text that Ahab is also not looking to kill Elijah and the worshippers of God; only Jezebel does that. She is the one who brings all the idolatry to Israel, and persecutes all the prophets of God. Ahab does not believe in it. Ahab is the “secular” heretic, who at the moment does not care about serving God, but only about the political condition of the nation. He managed to raise the people from a very difficult condition and establish an empire. His marriage to Jezebel is a political marriage, and he is willing to “put up with” all this Baal worship for the sake of the power that Jezebel brings with her. In response comes Elijah, who is exactly the opposite. Elijah cares only about the service of God and not about the political condition.

But in any case, afterward, when Ben-Hadad king of Aram lays siege to Samaria (following the drought the empire fell), and tells him to surrender—and not just submit to his rule, but actually let him enter and take the property and the women—the prophet tells Ahab that he will succeed in the war, and that he will lead the army. Seemingly this is absurd, for we consistently see in the Bible that once the people sins, God does not help them in wars and they lose! Rather, the reason God does help them is because Ahab is wholly devoted to love of Israel, and he truly cares about the people (when there is drought, he himself goes to look for food). And we see that in fact, after the incident of Naboth the Jezreelite’s vineyard—which is really a sin at Ahab’s strongest point, concern for the citizens—Elijah rebukes Ahab, Ahab admits he sinned, and he indeed dies in the war that comes after that.

And in the end we see that God tells Elijah to anoint another king in place of Ahab, but God also tells Elijah to appoint another prophet in his place, so that in effect God “fires” them both (following lessons by Rabbi Winer, may he live long).

One could say that in any case there are commandments of man to his fellow and “love your neighbor as yourself,” so of course Ahab would have certain merits that help him in war. But I think the question asked here in the Bible is whether what Ahab did was “legitimate”—that is, whether one may neglect the dimension of the service of God in the nation for the sake of strengthening the political power of the people of Israel (this could connect to secularism in our generation). To be honest: I have not managed to draw a clear yes-or-no answer. But there is an ethical issue here that one can (and should) discuss in depth from within the text itself, and not just interpret however one likes.

I am not speaking about a new message. I am speaking about emotional internalization and inspiration for clear messages. In another literary text these will be given to me not necessarily in the right value direction. You are responding as though I am talking about new content, and therefore I tried to explain myself again 🙂

If so, I really do not understand.
Are you speaking about internalization in wrong directions of correct values? That is mere semantics. Call such a direction a value.

No, I am talking about internalization of incorrect values. Every text that is not the Bible (and perhaps Hazal’s aggadah) contains within it a wide variety of values, more conscious and less so, whereas the Bible is only the word of God (I am not saying there are no qualifications to this, but as a rule this is true). Therefore, when I study Bible, I want to subject myself to its emotional-educational-inspirational effect, which is not the case with other texts.

Regarding Abraham, I am fairly sure the claim is not against judging the whole city together, since he stopped the discussion with the Holy One long before reaching the individual. The discussion was about the size of a community of righteous people that can transform the whole city from wicked people into a public.

As for the matter itself, after all you agree that there is a flat or simple reading, and that one can depart from it by means of interpretation according to one’s wishes. If you assume מראש that there is too much literary raw material from which one can produce anything by means of derashot, then you have begged the question—and you are asking the readers to perform an impossible task. Moreover, such moves can be made with any text, including Gemara and halakhah.
Certainly on the more principled level—after all, every text is always interpreted in accordance with the limits of the reader’s language and knowledge (Wittgenstein), and within the limits of meaning that we are capable of and accustomed to loading onto the text in order to stabilize it (Derrida). Also, every decision we make ultimately stems from an initial acceptance that we accepted the source of authority, and not really from compulsion.

If you assume that the authors of the text and/or its editors over the generations nevertheless have clear conceptions and values (for example, even if one can sustain a literary interpretation that the Bible allows some form of idolatry—it would be a mistake to accept this for one who understands the whole), those values have authority in themselves.
Also in The Guide of the Perplexed, had Maimonides not presented the internal contradictions in the text (corporeality versus non-corporeality) and claimed in his interpretation a general argument about the whole array of texts, namely that it contains a coherent position of the authors and that all apparent deviations are only apparent and fit this position of the authors, it seems to me he would not have been accepted.

It amazes me how many people are trying to meet an impossible challenge, and that’s even without a prize.
A friend of mine wrote me: “He reminds me of something I saw many years ago in some Haredi leaflet, claiming that it is obvious a wig is forbidden by Torah law, and if there is anyone who thinks he can prove otherwise, here is a phone number; on the other end sit Torah scholars who will discuss it with him, and if he convinces them he’ll get a prize of $18,000.”
I think there one had a better chance of persuading the person on the other end (here by definition it is impossible).
This story also illustrates my earlier point about the ability to learn even in halakhic matters.