Q&A: Biblical Criticism
Biblical Criticism
Question
Hello Rabbi. Regarding the biblical criticism point that the Rabbi brought in the fifth booklet—about the verses that seemingly show the Jewish people forgetting God and His commandments. 1. The Rabbi argued that if this is a case of forgetting, then what is the reason for the great divine anger? Can one argue that the distinction in the Torah between inadvertent and intentional sin was added later, and then there would be room for that anger? (And also, one who sins inadvertently still violates the Torah just like one who sins intentionally.) And it would come out that the Jewish people forgot God and His deeds intellectually? 2. The Rabbi argues that knowledge means connection, and therefore the Jewish people are described as having “strayed from the way,” and not in terms of intellectual knowledge. What about “and you shall know that I am the Lord who brings you out…” — is that not knowledge of His deeds?
Answer
That is a conceptual distinction, and it is not reasonable that the Holy One, blessed be He, who gave it to us would Himself ignore it.
It is enough for me to show that both meanings exist. Beyond that, there is a connection between them: knowledge in the intellectual sense expresses connection.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t understand the question. Apparently it’s too sophisticated for me.
Forgive me for making things complicated for the Rabbi…
“And another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel.”
Do the biblical critics claim from this verse that there was no tradition and that we invented the Torah?
If so—
can one say that the Torah “that we invented” initially had a cruel god in it (who does not distinguish between inadvertent and intentional sin—and then the divine anger is understandable), and later narratives of a merciful God were added to it (who does distinguish, etc.)?
The Rabbi answered me that it is impossible that the Holy One, blessed be He, ignores the distinction (between inadvertent and intentional sin)—and that is understandable according to the Torah—but if the people invented the Torah, then perhaps at first the attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He, were different, and over the years more attributes were added and they crystallized into the Torah we have today?
And that is how the claim of biblical criticism would make sense to me?
It’s also possible that once they invented a three-horned demon that went around murdering everyone it saw, which later turned into the angel Gabriel, and in the end evolved into a merciful God who, in His abundant mercy, demands that we place black cubes on our heads. I really haven’t grasped what you’re getting at in this pseudo-historical hair-splitting. Are you sure there’s actually something here worth discussing? Or maybe you’re suggesting rewriting Chariots of the Gods and alien escapades.
Thank you to the Rabbi for the answer. If I understood correctly, biblical criticism claims that the forgetting indicates that there was never any tradition at all (in the Book of Joshua), and thereby they compare us to the other religions, whose peoples invented the religion on their own. So the question is whether there are other religions that do not distinguish between inadvertent and intentional sin? (Like cruel gods and so on.) If so, then it would be understandable that there is such an option—that there could be a god that a people made up out of their own hearts, with the excuse that they forgot his Torah and the god got angry with the people.