But I seem to remember that according to your view, it is not necessary that the entire Torah is from Heaven, only that there is a core that was given by the Holy One, blessed be He.

The assumption is that it is from Heaven unless it is clear that it is not. As it appears, the additions are small and local. But it is true that this possibility cannot be ruled out.

Another point: even if we assume there was an early version of the Torah from the school of Shem and Ever, in order for it to influence other ancient sources it would need “agents” who would spread it. Usually, when there is a large and powerful society like Mesopotamian or Ugaritic society, and their stories are written down, then there is a greater chance that they will influence other cultures. But the early version of the Torah from the school of Shem and Ever lacked both of those factors (a society that would publicize them, and writing them down in a way that would preserve them).

That is, what I wanted to ask in the previous comment is: how could the early version of the Torah from the school of Shem and Ever have influenced other ancient sources under the conditions I mentioned above?

I am not necessarily talking about Shem and Ever. It is a general claim. And even regarding Shem and Ever, who says there were no disseminators?
Notice that you are talking about a particular event or some law that has an ancient source. We are not talking about a book or a long, complete passage taken from an ancient source. So what is the problem with my claim that it is possible that the ancient source also came from the Holy One, blessed be He, in some way. And of course reverse influence is also possible. I do not rule that out.
The Torah and the Sages say that our father Abraham made souls in Haran, and more generally. Adam, Enoch, and Lamech, Noah, and others as well were channels for the appearance of divine information.

For a society to leave a mark that will have literary influence on other societies, it usually needs to be a large and powerful society, and such a society usually leaves archaeological and historical evidence, like Mesopotamian, Ugaritic, Akkadian, Sumerian society, and so on. The society has to produce a group of scribes engaged in learning reading and writing and documenting the society’s “Torah.” To this day, no archaeological or historical evidence has been found for a developed society of our father Abraham or of Shem and Ever. That means that early versions of the Torah, even if they existed, could not have filtered into other societies.

As for the claim that the ancient foreign source comes from the Holy One, blessed be He, in some way, the problem is that sometimes the Torah polemicizes against the ancient foreign source and opposes its conception while adopting certain parts of its conception and rejecting other parts.

The fact that we have not found something is not proof. Beyond that, influences can pass in all sorts of strange ways.

Usually developed societies leave a great deal of archaeological/historical evidence, and the absence of even a single such piece of evidence at least shifts the burden of proof back to the one claiming that such a society existed. Just as the lack of evidence for the existence of Russell’s celestial teapot shifts the burden of proof back to those who claim it exists.

As for influences happening in strange ways, maybe there are such cases, but usually people are influenced by or respond to sources of great importance or wide renown. For example, in your book God Plays Dice, you responded to Richard Dawkins because of his great fame, and you did not respond to many other atheists who are less well known than he is.

And one more point: there are places where it seems that the Torah is not only influenced by an ancient source, but actually polemicizes with it and comes to reject its conception. That is clear evidence of the foreign source’s temporal and causal priority over the Torah.

With God’s help, 28 Adar II 5782

To Oren — greetings,

From your claim that only a large and developed society that left historical and archaeological evidence “on the ground” can influence humanity, I learn that you have apparently not heard of the Jewish people, who bequeathed to idol-worshiping humanity monotheism, the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and the idea of “a weekly day of rest.”

The Jewish people began their great influence on humanity specifically during periods of exile and dispersion among the nations, and without any political power. It was precisely the dispersion of the people to all ends of the earth that intensified this influence. When in every city in the world there is a “strange” community whose members refrain from work every seventh day, gather in their “strange” sanctuary without idol statues, and study there a strange book that all the members of the community know — even simple craftsmen understand that something different is going on here.

Many mock the strange people. Some see them as “atheists” because they worship no recognized idol. Some despise people who spend a seventh of their lives in idleness. But some honor them from afar as “a nation of philosophers.” And many begin to take an interest in this peculiar people and in its modeh Torah, and get excited by it.

Some convert fully, among them princes such as Onkelos, the son of the sister of the Roman emperor, and there was even a royal dynasty, the House of Adiabene, whose rulers Helena and Monbaz conducted all their affairs according to the Sages. And there were also many who, although they did not fully convert, became “fearers of God,” drawing close to Judaism and keeping some of its commandments, until a Roman writer complained that “there is no house in Rome without a Jew in it.”

In the end, the empire was forced to defend itself against the “cultural invasion” by decreeing a sweeping ban on circumcision, which led to the Bar Kokhba revolt that was crushed with great force. After some years, “the coin dropped” for the Romans, who understood that they could not destroy Judaism, but they could prevent mass conversion of Romans by banning circumcision for anyone not of Jewish descent.

But even that did not help the idolatrous empire. The “Jewish virus” developed a “variant” of “instant Judaism” that offered the citizens of the empire “Judaism without circumcision and without the 613 commandments,” a variant that spread exponentially among the empire’s citizens until it conquered the heart of Emperor Constantine, who made it the “state religion.”

Two hundred years later, the Jewish tribes in the Arabian Peninsula infected Muhammad with their monotheistic ideas, and he too developed a “variant” of Judaism that stormed through the lands of the East.

You have been shown, then, how a weak and persecuted people, “scattered and dispersed among the nations,” infects humanity with the biblical virus and plants in their minds monotheism, the weekly day of rest, and the idea of a “universal religion.”

***

So what poor and scattered Jewish communities did — could not great spiritual giants like Shem and Ever, Job, Jethro, and Abram the Hebrew, who traveled from place to place and “called in the name of the Lord,” do?

Best regards, Yiftah Lahad Argamon-Bakshi

Even as slaves and captives, the Jews managed to “infect” humanity with their ideas. The great-grandson of Abram the Hebrew, whose name was Joseph, rose to greatness in the court of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and a few generations after him Pharaoh’s daughter “lit up” over a Jewish baby, brought him into the palace, and he rebelled and took his brothers out of Egypt, planting in humanity’s mind the dangerous ideas of “freedom.”

Hundreds of years later, wise Jewish youths were brought to the court of the king of Babylon, and one of them, Daniel, became head of the king’s sages and advisers. Likewise Mordecai the Jew, who reached a position of major influence in the court of the king of Media and Persia.

And the daughters of the Jews were no less dangerous. A little girl taken captive from the Land of Israel turned the commander of Aram into a devotee who brought a kvitel to the prophet in Samaria. And hundreds of years later, a Jewish girl who was forcibly taken to the court of the king of Media and Persia managed to conquer the king’s heart and influence him to cancel the decree against the Jews, bring down the chief minister, and replace him with… Mordecai the Jew, who took over the whole empire.

In short, Mr. Oren, nothing helps: no matter how poor, humiliated, captive, and persecuted the Jews are — they are like oil: wherever you put them, they float to the top and leave their mark on the whole world. What can you do….

In despair, Shamshi Safra

There is a great deal of archaeological and historical evidence for the existence of Israelite and Jewish culture (and Judahite culture), including the monarchy of the House of David and Solomon.

To Oren — greetings,

There are various traces of the existence of the children of Israel in the Land of Israel during the First Temple period, but precisely when they were an independent kingdom, their cultural and religious influence was patently insignificant. All the surrounding cultures remained thoroughly idolatrous. Every external mention of Judah and Israel in the First Temple period is as “vassals” bringing tribute or as captives and defeated people. Spiritual, religious, and cultural influence — nowhere to be seen. On the contrary, the children of Israel in their land, wanting to be “normal,” partly adopted the idolatrous cults of the surrounding peoples.

By contrast, in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, when the Jewish people were for the most part scattered and dispersed and lacked any political or military power — precisely then their influence intensified. And as I explained, it was specifically the dispersion that brought Jewish communities to all corners of the world and exposed the entire world to the unique reality of Judaism: the more physically poor and humiliated it was, the more tremendous and significant its spiritual power was.

It seems that among Jews there is an “inverse relation” between political power and religious-cultural influence on the nations.

Best regards, Yiftah Lahad Argamon-Bakshi

And more generally, cultural influence in the world does not necessarily stem from political success. Take Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle. The first two were exiles and persecuted for a considerable portion of their lives. Does anyone remember the rulers and wealthy men of their generation? In fact, their influence on the whole world grew precisely when the Macedonian barbarian Alexander conquered and crushed the independence of the Greek cities, but took Aristotle as his teacher — so that precisely when Greece became a conquered province, its culture became the ruling culture both in the Macedonian empires and in their successor, the Roman Empire.

Political, military, and economic superiority is really not a recipe for spiritual success!

And so Abram the Hebrew was sent from the capital of Mesopotamia — Ur of the Chaldeans — the political and cultural center of the East, specifically to Canaan, a remote peripheral place, “somewhere” between the center of Mesopotamian civilization and the center of Egyptian civilization.

Among the wild barbarians of Canaan, the prophet and preacher would specifically be received with honor as “a prince of God,” but in the end the Lord made clear to Abraham that salvation for the world would not sprout from there. His seed would go down to Egypt, come to know deeply the wickedness of idolatrous civilization, and return in order to establish “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

But even that did not really succeed. True, great thinkers and prophets arose for Israel, but political normalcy strengthened the thought that it was worthwhile spiritually too “to be like all the nations.” Only when the Jews were thrown out of their land did they realize that the prophets were right, and that they must “take responsibility for their lives” and be influencers rather than dragged along.

Let us hope that today too, as we are once again in a state of political revival and economic prosperity, we do not lose the insight that “not by strength shall man prevail.” Let us learn from the nations what is fitting for the building of a state and the arrangements of government and society, but let us keep “a finger on the pulse” so as to be leaders and not followers in the spiritual and moral sphere.

Best regards, Ami’oz Yaron Schnitzler

I’ll give an example to sharpen my claim:
In the biblical creation story, everywhere there is creation of a group of biological things, they are mentioned generally as a kind:
Fruit tree bearing fruit after its kind
And the earth brought forth grass, herb yielding seed after its kind, and tree bearing fruit, whose seed is in it, after its kind
Every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, after their kinds, and every winged bird after its kind
Let the earth bring forth living creature after its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after its kind
And God made the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after its kind

The only place where, in addition to the creation of the kind, a particular within that kind is mentioned is the sea monsters:
And God created the great sea monsters, and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, after their kinds
Apparently the mention of the sea monsters is unnecessary, because they are included in the general category mentioned afterward. In biblical scholarship, the accepted hypothesis is that the mention of the sea monsters comes to polemicize against ancient creation stories like Enuma Elish and the Baal and Anat cycle, which mention the sea monsters as a mythical sea creature participating in a struggle that precedes the creation of the world. The explicit mention of the sea monsters in the biblical creation story comes to disabuse those who think there could be a battle between the Creator of the world and some creature, since He is above the rank of all creatures because He created them, including the sea monsters, and therefore such a battle cannot be.

It is clear that if the polemical hypothesis is correct, then the Bible is the thing influenced by the creation stories that preceded it, and not vice versa. Likewise, it is clear that the source of the foreign creation stories is not from the Holy One, blessed be He, because the biblical story comes out against those stories.

With God’s help, 28 Adar II 5782

To Oren — greetings,

Polemics with ideas or stories are the complete opposite of being influenced by them. Would you claim that Putin is influenced by Ukraine, since he is fighting against it? Maybe Eisenhower was influenced by Hitler because he fought against him?

Obviously, when the Lord sends His prophets to change and repair the world, He addresses the beliefs, values, norms, and stories current in the world and says: this is right and this is wrong, this is completely absurd and this is only partly correct. That is why the faithful testimony of the Lord is needed — to bring order to the chaos, and at last distinguish between good and evil and between truth and fantasy.

The “great sea monsters” are not a Babylonian invention, but an existing fact. Some of them are present in the Nile, and Pharaoh king of Egypt compares himself to them, and therefore the prophet announces the calamity destined for “the great monster that lies in the midst of his rivers.”

But the Creator of the world also knows even greater and more terrifying sea monsters — ancient dinosaurs or distant whales. And He proclaims and says: “They exist, but they are My creatures. They are not My rivals but My toys,” as it is written: “This leviathan, whom You have formed to play in it” 🙂

And as I wrote to you elsewhere, the sun and moon too, which appear superior to the earth and therefore were considered in all mythologies to be chief gods in the pantheon, become in the creation story…

Best regards, Yiftah Lahad Argamon-Bakshi

It is worth noting that there is a parallel between the Torah’s creation story and the theory of the Big Bang. In both, everything begins with “Let there be light.” Is there a parallel to this in ancient stories?

Best regards, Y.L. A.B.K.

There is of course a great deal of literary similarity (beyond the issue of polemic) between the biblical creation story and other creation stories. For example, a few points:
The first verse in Enuma Elish:
When above the heavens were unnamed, and below the earth had not yet been called by name (mention of heaven and earth in the first verse)

A little later it says this:
Field was not yet found and marsh was not seen when the gods had not yet been created (compare: “And every shrub of the field was not yet in the earth, and every herb of the field had not yet grown”)

And many more besides. I’d be glad to hear the Rabbi’s opinion on this matter.