Q&A: On the sidelines of your debate with Yaron Yadan – Torah from Heaven
On the sidelines of your debate with Yaron Yadan – Torah from Heaven
Question
Honorable Rabbi,
I listened to your debate with Yaron Yadan. Yaron spoke about the sloppy editing of the Pentateuch, and about strange and immoral passages as a sign that the Torah is not from Heaven. You answered him that your starting point is that (all or most of) the Torah is from Heaven, and therefore his difficulty falls away.
If I understood you correctly, this was your argument:
1: You have good philosophical arguments in favor of the existence of God (especially as Creator of the world)
2: You expect there to be a purpose to creation
3: One component of that purpose is something “beyond creation,” and it is called “religion”
4: You expect God to give us His religious goals (because we have no way to attain them without revelation)
5: We have testimony of revelation at Sinai and the giving of the Torah
Conclusion: There is a high probability that the Torah in our hands is from Heaven
I completely agree with the premises, but I only partially agree with your conclusion.
I think the premises, combined with looking at the text of the Torah, lead to the conclusion that only a small minority of the Torah is actually from Heaven.
If the Torah is indeed from Heaven, then there are difficulties:
1) Since divine revelation is needed in order to know the religious goals, I assume you did not expect anything in particular regarding the content of that revelation. So how do you explain that, by such a huge coincidence, many of the commandments are so similar to surrounding practices (the blood avenger, sacrifices, impurity and purity, etc.)?
2) Why did God reveal Himself only to our nation and say nothing to other nations? Why do we have no role toward the nations of the world?
3) According to the plain sense of the verses, Moses did not write the Torah (except for small parts). Rather, someone wrote that God spoke to Moses, who spoke to the children of Israel. A lot can be inserted into such a text from the author’s own mind.
4) The mess and contradictions in the text show that it is likely a collection of separate writings.
And this is my question: why are you committed to a text that for the most part appears not to be from Heaven?
Answer
I have said and written more than once that I do not claim that the entire text is from Heaven, only that something was given to us from there. What exactly does it include? I do not know. But as long as it has not been proven otherwise, I assume that what reached us is what was given, because that is the presumption.
As for your questions:
- I do not think there is all that much similarity to the surrounding culture, but in any case I do not see what the problem is.
- He did reveal Himself to other nations as well. At Sinai and through Noah. From our point of view, of course. From their point of view, He revealed Himself to them through their prophets and sacred writings. Do we have a role toward them? Simply speaking, yes. To help them observe their seven commandments.
- I do not see that. But in any case, the plain meaning does not determine things.
- Indeed, it is possible that there is a weaving together there of separate sources. So what? The question is who wove them together and how. If it was done by prophets, then I do not see a problem with regard to the text. By the way, I am not really committed to it, since the Bible by itself does not say much without the Oral Torah.
Discussion on Answer
Not at all. I hope you are not expecting me to formulate your question for you and then answer it.
I think you do not feel the problem because you are already religious.
If I came to you and proved to you that there is an amazing person to whom you are obligated, who said something, and I do not know exactly what, but I have a confused book (which to begin with does not fit that person’s amazing stature), and it is likely that what that person said is written in it (but there is a chance that other things got into the book), and the content of the book forbids you to do various things — would you change your life to obey the book?
That is a completely hypothetical question. If that person has the status of God, then yes. That is my claim here. Of course, you described the book in a caricatured way.
Personally, I would not obey that person, even though he has the status of God. If someone wants me to force my life into what he wants, the minimum decency would be for him to be clear about what he wants me to do.
This can also be presented by way of reductio ad absurdum. If God wanted to convey a message to us, He would do it in the clearest way possible (I assume His omnipotence would allow Him to do that). The message we have in hand is quite vague, therefore it must be that it is not from Heaven.
Hello Rabbi,
Do you disagree with my proof by reductio ad absurdum?
Definitely. Why He chose to write this way is a question about Him that I do not know how to answer. So what? I also do not know why one puts on tefillin or does not eat pork.
Thank you for your answer. But something bothers me, and I cannot quite put my finger on what.
In your view, God gave us something at Sinai, but we do not know exactly what, the text is confused, you do not see amazing wisdom or major innovations there (that is what you said in the debate), we do not know who edited the text (maybe prophets, maybe not…), our Jewish laws are too far removed from the text…
Something is not working here. I hope you feel the problem.