On the edge of your mouth with the wise man – Torah from heaven
Your Honor,
I heard your debate with Yaron Yadan. Yaron spoke about the negligence of compiling the Pentateuch, and about strange and immoral passages as a sign that the Torah is not from heaven. You replied to him that your starting point is that (all or most of) the Torah is from heaven, and therefore his question falls apart.
If I understood you correctly, this was your argument:
1: You have good philosophical arguments in favor of the reality of God (especially as the Creator of the world)
2: You expect there to be a purpose to creation.
3: One of the components of this purpose is “beyond creation,” and it is called “religion.”
4: You expect God to give us His religious goals (because we have no way to achieve them without revelation)
5: We have evidence of revelation at Sinai and the giving of the Torah
Conclusion: There is a high chance that the Torah we have is from heaven.
I completely agree with the assumptions, but I only partially agree with your conclusion.
I think the assumptions, combined with an examination of the Torah text, lead to the conclusion that only a small minority of the Torah is indeed from heaven.
If the Torah is indeed from heaven, then there are difficulties:
1) Since the revelation of God is necessary to know the religious purposes, I assume you did not expect anything about the content of this revelation. Therefore, how do you explain that in such a great case, many of the commandments are so similar to the surrounding practices (blood atonement, sacrifices, impurity and purity, etc.)?
2) Why did God reveal only to our people and say nothing to other nations? Why do we have no role towards the nations of the world?
3) According to the simplicity of the verses, Moses did not write the Torah (only small parts). Rather, someone wrote that God spoke to Moses who spoke to the Israelites. It is possible to insert many things into such a text from the author’s own knowledge.
4) The confusion and contradictions in the text show that it is likely a collection of separate writings.
And this is my question: Why are you committed to a text that most of it seems to be out of the blue?
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- I don’t think there’s that much similarity to spin, but in any case I don’t see what the problem is with that.
- He did reveal himself to other peoples. At Sinai and with Noah. From our perspective, of course. From their perspective, he revealed himself to them through their prophets and scriptures. Do we have a role to play toward them? Simply put, yes. To help them fulfill their seven commandments.
- I don’t see it. But simplicity doesn’t matter anyway.
- It is indeed possible that there is an interweaving of separate sources. So what? The question is who interweaved and how. If it was done by prophets, then I see no problem with the text. By the way, I am not really committed to it, since the Bible itself does not say much without the Toshabah.
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Thanks for your answer. But something bothers me, and I can't quite put my finger on what.
In your opinion, Hashem gave us something at Sinai, but we don't know exactly what, the text is confused, we don't see amazing wisdom and great innovations there (that's what you said in the dibyat), we don't know who edited the text (maybe prophets, maybe not…), our laws are too far from the text…
Something isn't working here. I hope you feel the problem.
Absolutely not. I hope you don't expect me to formulate your question and then answer it.
I think you feel the problem because you are already religious.
If I came to you and proved to you that there is an amazing person to whom you are obligated who said something, and I don't know what exactly, but I have a confused book (which in the first place does not correspond to the amazingness of the person) and it probably says what this person said (but there is a chance that other things got into the book) and the contents of the book forbid you from doing all sorts of things, would you change your life to obey the book?
A completely hypothetical question. If that person is in the position of God, then yes. That's what I argued here. Of course, you described the book in a ridiculous way.
Personally, I wouldn't give that person a chance, even though he's in the position of God. If someone wants me to force my life to do what they want, the least they can do is be clear about what they want me to do.
This can also be presented through the absurd. If God wanted to convey a message to us, he would do it as clearly as possible (I assume that all his power allows him to do this). The message we have is quite vague, so it must not be from heaven.
Hello,
Do you disagree with my proof by absurdity?
Absolutely. Why he chose to write like that is a question about him that I don't know the answer to. So what? I also don't know why people wear tefillin or don't eat pork.
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