Q&A: The Authority of the Sanhedrin and Biblical Criticism
The Authority of the Sanhedrin and Biblical Criticism
Question
In your second book in the trilogy, you explain that for you it is enough to know that the revelation at Mount Sinai took place in order to accept the truth of the Torah.
What about the authority of the Sanhedrin? If the verse “and you shall do according to what they instruct you” is a human addition, then seemingly the entire formal authority of the Oral Torah is nullified.
Answer
If you read it, then you surely saw that I explained there that I am also committed to the additions that came later (almost all of the Oral Torah was added later). The commitment does not depend on authenticity.
Discussion on Answer
My assumption is that there was no deception here, nor some meaningless act. If things were added later, then apparently already at the giving of the Torah permission and a method for adding were given. Otherwise it really is all just inventions, and that’s that.
The Oral Torah is temporary, for the period of exile.
You write on p. 531:
“The additions that were added… can receive their status by virtue of the covenant made at Sinai… The Torah was given to us on that understanding: that we would observe it as we find it proper and correct to interpret and formulate it, and according to the version that has come down to us in the tradition from Sinai.”
That passage is not clear to me.
If, for example, we say that what was given at Sinai was only the Ten Commandments, there is no reason that human beings should have the ability to add further commandments. Why say that the Ten Commandments were given on the understanding that additional commandments would be added to them?
Unless you are in fact claiming something about the content of the revelation at Mount Sinai. And according to your approach, the core that was given at Sinai must include authority granted to the sages.