Yaron Yadan
In your debate with Yaron Yadan
He asked that there are great difficulties in the Bible. I heard you answer that your persuasion to accept the book is not from the book.
This certainly answers the question, why accept the book even though it does not show great wisdom?
The problem is that he doesn’t seem to be divine.
Like the examples he gave, a lot of repetition about the work of the Mishkan and a complete silence about the laws of Shabbat.
There are often strange duplications and omissions of key themes in the Bible, as well as unclear errors.
And I haven’t heard a response to that at all.
For example, it is written in the Bible that God says to Abraham, “Know for certain that your seed will be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and they will enslave them and torture them for four hundred years, without any explanation as to why exactly people should suffer.”
I know you have no way of messing with the Bible.
But still when I read the Torah I feel like it’s a strange, confused, and not really edited book.
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Your answer would only answer a question like
that they don't see it as divine
but the issue of seeing it as not divine in a positive way is something I haven't heard an answer to.
What answer do you expect? I said that I don't think the difficulties are that troubling, certainly to the point of proving that it is not divine. Do you expect a more precise quantification?
A. The Torah was not spoken all at once but over the years (even the Torah was given to the sealed Torah, see Rashi in Gittin S.), so it was not written as an organized book from Risha to Gemira.
B. The style of writing in the past was different, as can be seen from many books written over the years. It clearly seems that the Torah was written in a style appropriate to that period, perhaps so that they would connect with it better (see the commentary of Ral’g at the end of Parshat Pekudi regarding the repetition of the work of the Mishkan).
C. Almost everything in nature is structured in a way that appears to be disorderly: the movement of the heavenly bodies, the human body, the topography of the Earth, the animal and plant world, many natural laws, the system of justice and judgment in the world (the righteous and the wicked), and the way of life. On the other hand, they exhibit an immense genius that dwarfs all the human wisdom accumulated over thousands of years, which still only touches the edge of the wisdom hidden in nature. This means that the seemingly disordered structure of a system does not negate its origin, which is above human comprehension.
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