Q&A: Hebrews
Hebrews
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Have you heard of the Hebrews? They make the claim that the Book of Deuteronomy is a forgery whose purpose is to destroy the original Torah of Israel. They reject the authority of the Sages because it comes from “according to all that they instruct you,” which appears there. Their argument is that there are contradictions between Deuteronomy and the other books, and that this book came to steer the Jewish people into being servants of flesh and blood rather than of God (for example through the law of the king). Can the Rabbi resolve one of the contradictions they bring:
It has to do with Deuteronomy chapter 12, where the people are commanded to eat the firstborn themselves, instead of giving them to the priests, whereas in Numbers chapter 18 verse 15 we see that the command is for the priests.
In addition, they have a YouTube video that collects all the various contradictions; if that’s relevant, I can send it. a0
Thanks in advance
Answer
I haven’t heard of them. Have you heard of the Exodists? That’s the sect that claims the Book of Exodus is an insertion by slaves who wanted to nullify what is written in the portion of Bechukotai, “and they shall serve forever,” and insert what is written in the portion of Behar, that it is only until the Jubilee?
The contradiction you brought is one of the easiest ones in the Bible, and there are many harder than it. So if you’re building a theory on contradictions in the Bible, you won’t get very far.
The eating referred to in that verse was not said about the sacrifices listed in the previous verse. In any case, in the first verse it says that we bring the sacrifices, and in the verse after it says that we shall eat and rejoice there (but not necessarily those sacrifices, and certainly not all of them). And besides, when the priests eat their portion, that is part of the eating of the public as a whole.
In short, this really is an amusing joke. It reminds me of a chapter I once saw from a book that brought Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda’s notes on the New Testament. It was about on the same level.
Discussion on Answer
Yes, you can try to reconcile them. The Sages already did so regarding most of the contradictions, in my opinion, and the commentators throughout the generations also worked and still work on this. There is also the Documentary Hypothesis and Rabbi Breuer’s approach, among others. In any case, I don’t deal with these topics because they seem to me fairly speculative and not leading anywhere. As I said, I wouldn’t build anything on a biblical contradiction, nor on its solution.
In my opinion, the Rabbi’s reconciliation in the first answer doesn’t really fit the text.
In any case, I wanted to ask: these topics also seem pretty speculative to me, but I heard from one of the researchers who understands the field that, in his view, the academic study of the Bible is no less a science than physics and the natural sciences.
And that he shows that just as a zoologist analyzes animals into families, so too a scholar can analyze the text into documents.
And I’ve heard an astrologer say that astrology is more solid than mathematics and physics put together.
I wouldn’t compare those fields of study. I doubt it’s even possible to do a controlled experiment with predictions in these areas of biblical scholarship. It looks scientific, supposedly, because they collect data without making assumptions about it and try to be empirical, but as I said, in my opinion it’s far from that. Just because it comes from academia, it feels as though it’s scientific.
Haha, it’s all fine, I’m not building any theory. I just brought something that those theory-builders asked me, and little old me isn’t knowledgeable enough to answer questions like these.
In any case, thanks for the reply.
But in principle, if there are contradictions in the Bible, doesn’t the Rabbi think we should try to deal with them?