Answer

I’m not familiar with him, nor with biblical commentators in general. The field doesn’t speak to me, and it seems to me neither important nor useful. Biblical commentators hardly ever add anything for me. At most, what they say may be novel in understanding the verses, but it won’t add anything new to me about the issue itself. “I was young and now am old, and I have not seen even one person change his position on anything because of something he learned from verses in the Bible.”
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Questioner (another):
“I was young and now am old, and I have not seen even one person change his position on anything because of something he learned from verses in the Bible” — so what does cause a change of position?
Isaac
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Rabbi:
That’s a general philosophical question. What causes a person to change his basic assumptions? A person changes his mind for some reason, just as in the initial stage when he forms his original positions. But in my experience, verses and their interpretation don’t do that. People interpret verses according to their positions, at least when they already have a position on the subject. I once said that the difference between a homiletic exposition and casuistry is that a homily is a bad inference that leads to correct conclusions. You build an edifice on midrashim and verses, and the conclusion is that one should be God-fearing and humble. Who is going to check the argument if the conclusion is so obviously right? (That is why one does not refute a homily.) Casuistry is a kind of puzzle: an inference that looks correct at every stage, but the conclusion is clearly not correct. The puzzle is to find the bug in the inference. Biblical interpretation is usually a kind of homily, not necessarily in the bad sense (that the reasoning is faulty), but in the sense that everyone already knows the conclusion in advance. As I wrote, sometimes there is novelty in the interpretation of the verses (I wouldn’t have thought that was their meaning), but the value-content of the interpretation is always agreed upon in advance. Obviously this is stated somewhat extremely, since people do change positions in various ways and under the influence of various things. Verses are no worse than other things. But usually that is an incidental result, not because the verses compel it (that a person bends himself to what he found in the Torah), but because they caused him to see things differently and understand that this is the truth).
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Questioner:
I get the impression that the field of the Oral Torah does cause a change of position, and I’m simply asking: what is the essential difference between the Bible and the Oral Torah regarding changing one’s position? If you say that the Oral Torah is a partnership of man and a human creation, the same is true of biblical commentators as well.
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Rabbi:
I think that the Oral Torah also does not cause value-based change in people (and that’s a good thing). But it is still worth studying because it causes halakhic change. If you don’t study it, you won’t know Jewish law. But if you don’t study the Bible and its interpretation, you will still know your values. See column 15, where I distinguished between the two planes. In truth, on the value plane one can usually coordinate things, and especially if one accepts my sharp distinction, then there is no connection at all between the halakhic conclusion and my values. Admittedly, the interpretation of Jewish law can be influenced by my values, in cases where there are several legitimate interpretive options. There I am permitted to choose the one that fits my values. But that is not an influence of Jewish law on my values, but the reverse (an influence of my values on Jewish law).
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Questioner (another):
If so, how does the Rabbi understand the significance of the sanctity of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), which is an inseparable part of Judaism, if it is a book without purpose?
Rafi Diamond
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Rabbi:
The sanctity of the Bible is sanctity in the object itself, that is, the sanctity of the book and not the sanctity of the content. That is why it matters how it is written (on parchment and in ink), and that is also why even the margins have sanctity (see Sabbath 116). By contrast, the sanctity of the Oral Torah is the sanctity of the content. It makes no difference how it is written, and the sanctity belongs only to what is written, not to the object on which it is written (that object is only an accessory to a commandment, because it serves Torah study, and not an accessory of sanctity. On this distinction see Megillah 26).
The practical meaning is that studying the Written Torah consists in articulating the exact words with one’s mouth (provided one is precise in its letters). A translation has no sanctity, because those are not the same words but at most the same content (if the translation is completely accurate, in which case it may perhaps have the sanctity of content of the Oral Torah). Such study is a connection to the Holy One, blessed be He, but the intellectual value added to us is negligible in my opinion. Therefore I prefer to study the Oral Torah, where there is both connection to the Holy One, blessed be He, and added intellectual value. That is why on the Tikkun night of Shavuot and on Hoshana Rabbah one can recite the Bible and that counts as Torah study, whereas reciting the words of the Talmud does not. There, without understanding, you have not studied Torah at all.
True, the Maggid Mesharim told Rabbi Joseph Karo to recite Mishnah passages, and there the assumption is that the words of the Mishnah have sanctity in the object itself. I wonder whether that really has any basis (there are other very puzzling things in the book Maggid Mesharim as well).
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Questioner:
I think Rafi meant to ask about what you said above (that apparently the Hebrew Bible is empty of Torah content): how can that be reconciled with the accepted view that the Hebrew Bible (and its content) is on the highest level of sanctity (even more than the Oral Torah)? I have a possible explanation to suggest: that the Bible (and especially the Torah) is a kind of encrypted text, and the key to decoding it is knowledge transmitted by tradition from Sinai that was lost over the years, and what was preserved is the text after its decoding = the Oral Torah (because once it has been decoded there is not much further need for the key). If so, nowadays the Written Torah no longer has Torah significance in terms of content in the way the Oral Torah does.
Oren
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Rabbi:
I do not think the Hebrew Bible is on a higher level of sanctity. That is a common mistake. The book is holier than books of the Oral Torah, but that is self-evident. My claim is that in the Oral Torah there is primarily sanctity of content, and that is no less elevated, and perhaps more so, than that of the Written Torah.
Admittedly, there are suggestions to give some dimension of book-sanctity to the Oral Torah as well: both in the Rosh, who wrote that one may write the Oral Torah as a substitute for the commandment of writing a Torah scroll, and in the medieval authorities (Rishonim) who wrote regarding rescue from a fire on the Sabbath that one may also rescue books of the Oral Torah and printed Pentateuchs.
Beyond that, your suggestion is certainly possible and interesting. I would very much like to think it is also true (but I do not know).
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Questioner:
Does the meaning of the Rabbi’s words imply that the value of the Written Torah lies in something unrelated to us (as follows from Nachmanides’ statement that the entire Torah is the names of the Holy One, blessed be He), and the content is only the medium through which that passes? Since to understand that something without content has sanctity sounds very strange indeed. If there were a religion whose sacred codex was the complete collection of jokes, would it make sense to say that this is the religion that fulfills the world’s vision, or would we dismiss it and erase it?
Rafi Diamond
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Rabbi:
Indeed, it is not related to our lives. But not necessarily unrelated to the world. It is hard to deny that the sanctity attaches to a very specific wording of the verses, and not to every translation of the Torah’s content. So how would you explain that if the sanctity lies in the content? If the complete collection of jokes were something that truly had sanctity in it (that it effects something), I would accept that.
The question is what the world’s vision is. You assume it is supposed to be some kind of rectification of humanity, and therefore you would erase such a religion. But I’m not sure of that. After all, the prohibition against eating pork is also strange, isn’t it? And the red heifer? Are there not enough strange and unusual things in the world of Torah sanctity?
And beyond all that, you must distinguish between evaluations and conjectures on the one hand and facts on the other. Even if you were right in all your arguments, the facts teach otherwise. Look at the implications I brought, and you will understand that the sanctity of the Bible is sanctity of the wording and the object itself, not sanctity of content. In my opinion this is a fact, and all that remains now is only to try to explain it. That is also what emerges from looking at what people get out of studying the Bible (= mainly what they already knew in advance).
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Questioner:
I think the two of you are talking about two different kinds of sanctity. The type of sanctity Rafi is referring to is not the halakhic aspect of sanctity, but the way an ordinary person understands the concept of sanctity — namely, content that came from a divine source. According to that understanding, even a translation of the Torah has “sanctity” (because the content of the translation came from a divine source). In that conception, the main sanctity comes from the content, not from the wording. Maybe that is also why it is permitted to recite the Shema in a foreign language and not only in the holy tongue. 
In the halakhic aspect of the concept of sanctity (for which there are practical ramifications, such as whether genizah is required, for example), only the original wording in which the Torah was given has sanctity, and not its translations (this is the sense the Rabbi was referring to). 

As for the sanctity of the content of the Written Torah in the halakhic aspect of the concept of sanctity: because the Written Torah is written in a very vague way and is open to many different interpretations, without the explanation we received by tradition for the Written Torah, its dry content has no sanctity-meaning (in the halakhic sense). For example, the verse “an eye for an eye,” in terms of its content, without the added explanation of the Oral Torah, is not sacred (halakhically), because it does not express a command of the Holy One, blessed be He. But in the non-halakhic aspect of the concept of sanctity (the ordinary person’s understanding), even that has sanctity.

A side comment on this statement of the Rabbi: “Your suggestion is certainly possible and interesting. I would very much like to think it is also true (but I do not know).” If I’m reading between the lines correctly, this is what you meant:
In your view, the key to decoding the Written Torah is not only a tradition from Sinai, but also a significant addition of human interpretations. You would prefer a situation in which the interpretation were only a tradition from Sinai and not a human product (because then there would be greater certainty regarding its correctness), but you recognize that this is not the case (to your regret). Did I understand correctly?
By the way, I agree with that understanding. What I meant above was that the core of the key is a tradition from Sinai, but there is probably also much beyond that core that originates with human beings.
Oren
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Rabbi:
Indeed, you understood correctly. I have no problem with human interpretation; I would just like there to be some truth here that the interpretation is striving toward, and that the Sages knew how to do this and only from us has it been lost. And not that interpretation invents its own product (deconstruction), and that even the Sages did not know, but simply did things and we are simply afraid. That is the scenario I would very much like to believe is not true.
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Questioner:
Following what you wrote:
“The practical meaning is that studying the Written Torah consists in articulating the exact words with one’s mouth (provided one is precise in its letters)”
Does it follow from this that someone who studies the Hebrew Bible mentally does not fulfill the commandment of Torah study?
In addition, is it permitted to think verses in a bathroom?
Oren
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Rabbi:
Why not? If he is mentally reviewing the exact words, then it depends on the question whether mental reflection is equivalent to speech. And if not, then he studied an explanation of the Bible — that is, the Oral Torah.
It seems to me that I already answered here somewhere about thinking verses in a bathroom. The question is whether it is intentional or comes up incidentally. I’ll add that instinctively it nevertheless seems problematic to me.