About the “Torah and Torah Study” lesson series

Hello Rabbi, I have been listening to your series of lessons recently, “Torah and Torah Study.”
I must say that I really enjoy the lessons, which are well-organized and very well-reasoned, and thank you very much for uploading them and helping to bring order to this subject.
There are a few comments I wanted to make and also ask in order to refine my understanding:
The first comment is regarding the definition of “Torah” – I didn’t fully understand why it would have seemed logical to you in the first place to narrow the definition of “Torah” to a source of authority, and in our case, a source of religious authority. I ask this because in my opinion the simplest definition of Torah study is – the word of God and its interpretations.
Additionally, according to how I understood your words [in lesson 8], when you qualify the method, you more or less arrive at this definition with the addition of another layer that you call “Torah in the gabra,” which I personally tend to agree is not called Torah study but is something else of value (but I am not familiar with all the halachic sources).
I think you may have defined the “Torah” from the beginning as a source of authority and not in the above manner, because from the beginning you did not see what value there is in a type of study like the Bible (which is the word of God and therefore falls into the second category), because this Torah study seems to be a study that has nothing real in it (no authority and often not even study), therefore you do not see it as something for the first time.
But isn’t it better to stick with the definition of Torah study, which is more logical and impossible not to return to in the end (after all, it would be absurd for the Bible not to be Torah study), and to emphasize more that it is necessary to study the Bible seriously (for the study to be considered study), and that it is not so clear why one should study the Bible, but since it is Torah study, then one should?
By the way, there are thinkers like Rabbi Kook, for example, who spoke about the matter of studying the written Torah, and if someone connects to it, then what good is it (for Rabbi Kook, this appears in Chapter 1 of Orot HaTorah).
The second comment is about “conversion of texts” – during the lessons you said that you don’t understand why it is relevant who wrote a certain text. I think the relevance of this is a substantive relevance and not an “ethnic” one as you suggested.
The relevance is that when we read the words of Maimonides and the rest of our rabbis, we believe that they wrote their writings for the sake of heaven (a belief that I assume stems from the logic that people who are committed to halakha and on a religious level, to the level that we know they were, are, by and large, people who fear heaven), and therefore also aim their writings for this purpose.
Therefore, it is easier to read compositions written by our rabbis in which the need to “filter out” things that are not aimed at the same goal that a person who is aiming for the name of God wants to achieve is much smaller.
Of course, you can ask me why anyone would need “filtered” texts, since the truth is the truth, and the answer to this question is that a person does not always trust his mind in distinguishing between the true and the false, and sometimes prefers to trust people who have more knowledge and higher intellectual abilities on these subjects and are also aiming for the same goal as him (for heaven’s sake).
And even if it were exactly the same text in Maimonides as in Aristotle, or in Rav Kook as in Hegel or Kant, or exactly the same move, it is clear from what I said that this is not an argument, because while there are excellent things in all of them, the question is whether that person who reads will have the ability to distinguish between this page (which Maimonides copies word for word) and the page after it (which he does not copy).
Of course, all of this does not relieve the person who is studying of the obligation to be critical if he wants to stick to his goal, but it is clear that there will be less to filter in Jewish thought than in philosophy when a person is aiming for the name of Heaven.
In addition, in my opinion, for the same reason, texts of Jewish thought have more value than philosophical texts for a person who wants to adhere to God, and this is only because of the technical matter that you know that the writers of the texts have the same goal as you. Of course, if any person is convinced that Rosenzweig had no less fear of God than Rihal and that he leads him even better to his goal, Rosenzweig’s texts will also receive higher value for him, but at least initially Rihal’s texts have higher value for a person with this goal.
This is also the reason, in my opinion, that Ramim initially aim to study these thinkers.
There is another reason, perhaps, which is also related to the Haggadah, and it is that, as you have often claimed, trivial conclusions arise from these things, and therefore for students who are beginning to learn these things, they are the best because for those who have no basis, they give it, and for those who have a basis, they establish it with steps, showing the way to it (something that in my opinion really needs to be improved, but that is not the issue), and this is important in my opinion. I have personally had the opportunity to discuss with people about beliefs that contradict the most trivial opinions.
Note – I assumed in the second comment that the goal of those who talk about “converting texts” is to learn for the sake of heaven, which means building a worldview on Torah topics, seeking closeness to G-d, etc., etc.
Third comment – During the lessons you brought Midrashim / Aggadot, sometimes as part of the process and sometimes naturally as evidence against an argument made against you. I think it could be said that the most prominent Aggadot is the one with Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua. What was the value in bringing the Midrashim? Are they not an authority or reinforcement for the meta-halakhic view you presented?