How does the Rabbi know that the Bible we have was written by Moses?
Hello to the rabbi (or philosopher?)
The people of Israel have a tradition about God’s revelation to them and God’s commands to do certain things and think final thoughts. I must accept this tradition and fulfill (with love, of course…) the commandments.
I also accept the Jewish nation’s commitment to implementing the Talmud (which is an interpretation of the Bible).
But how do you know that the Bible that we have in our hands, and that the Talmudic sages had, was indeed written by Moses, the same Moses who, according to tradition, taught the teachings of God?
thanks
Why do you have to? I don’t understand.
I have faith in our tradition that the Bible we have is some version of what was given at Sinai. To what extent and what was added, I do not know. But it does not matter in terms of commitment. If something was given at Sinai, God’s assumption was probably that the development of the Torah was by His will, and by His will we received the Torah. You can see my general view in the fifth notebook on the site.
Okay, I've made some progress,
Continue to the question:
I accept the following assumptions:
A. There was a revelation from God and a command of some national constitution.
B. The content of the Bible in my home is closest to the book of laws in which Moses wrote down God's commands and delivered them to the leaders of the people during the period of the giving of the Torah (I would like to assume that the version of the Torah we have was written during the time of Moses and by him, but I have no real evidence for this).
Question:
How do I know that the ’obligates me, Shai Zilberstein of Bnei Brak, personally to accept the Talmud because it was accepted by the nation in the early Middle Ages?
Because this is how the Maran, the “Sar HaTorah” and the Maran, the “Rosh HaYeshiva” (the new one) ruled.
It does not obligate you to accept the Talmud, but to accept the Torah. The Talmud is the interpretation of the Torah that has been accepted as binding by the public and the sages. Acceptance by the public has the same binding weight as acceptance of the Torah by the public. See Beit Yishai - Sermons 6:15.
Sorry, but I couldn't find the book Beit Yishai online, and I'm not a rabbi, so it would be difficult for me to read the book in Talmudic style.
I don't understand why accepting the public is as binding as accepting the commandments at Mount Sinai?
Why should public acceptance obligate me? For example, I abide by the laws of the state because I want order to be maintained. They do not really obligate me (if there is a bad law and there is no chance that I will be punished, I will not abide by it).
I am obligated to the status of Mount Sinai not because the public accepted it but because it commanded
A”H,
God commanded the public, not you personally. You were not present at the time of God's revelation and were not obligated to anything, the people of Israel made a commitment.
You are part of the public and when the public has made a commitment, you are a part of it. How can a people make a commitment when each individual can fail to fulfill it? So what is the meaning of the commitment? It's like the Palestinians signing an agreement with us and then Hamas claiming that it was just Fatah and they are not obligated. Also with regard to the law, it doesn't matter at all whether you want there to be order or not, if you don't fulfill the law you will be punished because you are obligated and stand by it even if you declare that you are not interested. This is the nature of any legal system.
I think that things are indeed binding by their very nature (because God commanded and that they are correct). The fact that you made a commitment only means that you have no claims to the punishment if there is none. It is not the binding itself.
Shai, God also commanded those who are not here with us today, and in particular me. You can argue that He commanded everyone and by virtue of this I am also obligated, but there is a difference between that and the “public” (who is this?) deciding to accept a certain set of laws. Rabbi, Hamas can indeed disown the rest of the Palestinians. What is the problem? That is their right and I certainly understand them. Regarding the law, I did not say that only those who want order are obligated. No one is obligated, but that the police use violence to impose the laws on everyone (in this case, fortunately).
Hamas cannot disavow itself if the agreement is made with everyone. If they say in advance that they are not partners, there is no problem (except that I would not enter into such an agreement).
The police do not use violence just arbitrarily. This is a Darwinian view. In the moral view, the police/society have the right to use force because there is an obligation to uphold the law. For example, some authors (such as Haim Cohen in his book The Law) write that there is no prohibition in Israeli law against stealing, since the wording of the law is “the thief is punished in this way”. But this is nonsense, since there is justification for imposing a punishment only if there is truly a prohibition against stealing (there are no such punishments). What's more, he also probably assumes that there is no prohibition because the law does not prohibit it, and it means that if it were prohibited, then there would be a prohibition. In other words, there is no principled prohibition against imposing a prohibition on a citizen.
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