Q&A: The Actual Occurrence of Events in the Hebrew Bible
The Actual Occurrence of Events in the Hebrew Bible
Question
Good afternoon,
In God Plays Dice, evolution is transformed from an attack on religion into an argument for the existence of God in a beautiful and enjoyable-to-read way. Still, the question arises regarding the mismatch between the creation story as written and evolution.
The common answer to this is that the things are described allegorically, and many fine thinkers indeed took that route.
What bothers me is that there seems to be no limit to it—what if the revelation at Mount Sinai is an allegory? Or the Exodus from Egypt, or any other foundational event?
I’ll divide the question into a normative part and a methodological part. First of all: in your opinion, is belief in the concrete, actual occurrence of these events a necessary condition for belief in God? And second, isn’t there a flaw in the allegorical answer insofar as it can be extended infinitely, as I said?
Thank you, and have a pleasant day.
Answer
Hello,
I don’t think that belief in anything from the entire biblical corpus is indispensable, perhaps with the exception of the revelation at Mount Sinai. And even there, we are talking about an interaction with God, whose nature is open to discussion.
The question of what in Scripture is myth or allegory and what is a historical description is an interpretive question, not a normative one (that is, not a question of what is binding and what is not). On the interpretive level, descriptions of ordinary events are presumably history, but events that are not taken from the fabric of our everyday life are also open to another kind of interpretation.
Yedaya HaPenini and his allegorist students took this quite far. In their view, Abraham and Sarah were matter and form, not flesh-and-blood people. Rashba was very angry with them, and as a result even placed under ban those who studied philosophy at a young age (under 25), but it is a possible interpretation. I do not know how to set a boundary for allegorical interpretation, and I also do not think there is a boundary or that there is any need for one. Everything depends on interpretive considerations. In light of the knowledge we have today, we definitely need to reexamine various interpretations, and even what used to be accepted in the past as historical may turn out to be allegory. After all, if you had asked the medieval authorities (Rishonim), they would have set a boundary far beyond what we are willing to do today. So today as well there is no reason to set such a boundary a priori. Each time a question arises, it should be examined on its own merits, and we should not bind ourselves in advance. It depends on the information that accumulates and on the quality of the interpretive considerations.