Q&A: Yaron Yadan – How Plausible Is the Reliability of the Torah?
Yaron Yadan – How Plausible Is the Reliability of the Torah?
Question
In the debate with Yaron Yadan, the Rabbi argued that first one assumes the tradition is correct, and only then resolves the contradictions in the text. But how can one accept that approach when it seems more reasonable to examine the two components in parallel:
1. The reliability of the tradition itself — that is, whether it is plausible that it was transmitted accurately over the generations
2. The content of the tradition — whether the content itself seems credible and fits what we would expect from a divine text
Especially when:
– there are many contradictions and problems in the content of the tradition
– in the tradition itself there may be possible “gaps” in the chain of transmission
– just as many details in the Torah were changed
just as would plausibly happen, as we find in other texts, so too they changed the fact that Moses gave the Torah at Mount Sinai into God gave the Torah to Israel at Mount Sinai, in order to strengthen the Torah tradition. And you can find plenty of such lies meant to strengthen a tradition even nowadays, so that too is something that could plausibly happen.
So wouldn’t it make more sense to examine all these aspects together, instead of assuming in advance that the tradition is true?
Answer
This question has already come up here many times. I don’t have the energy to go over it again.
Discussion on Answer
Among other places, in response to questions that followed this very debate.
I’ll briefly repeat it, because I don’t have the energy to go looking. I don’t know what it means to check everything all at once. Contrary to what you say, I do not assume the giving of the Torah; I infer it. But that inference is not based on the content, rather on the tradition that accompanies it and on a priori philosophical conclusions. I reach that conclusion even independently of the content of the text itself. The arguments are very strong, and that is enough. Once I have reached the conclusion that something was indeed given at Sinai, from that point on the burden of proof is on whoever claims that this is not correct, whether based on the text or on other arguments.
Clearly, if severe and unequivocal problems emerge in the text, that could indeed call into question the belief in the divine origin of the Torah — that is, my conclusions above. But in my view there are no such problems, and almost everything can be resolved in a reasonable way. Especially since I do not insist that this entire body of material was received at Sinai, but only that there was some kind of interaction that developed over the generations into the Torah we have in our hands.
The problem is not only the severity of the problems.
It is also the number of problems, some of which really do carry significant weight in the text, and also in the content, in the Written Torah and the Oral Torah, as well as in the way the Torah was transmitted through the chain of generations.
How can it be that God gave a Torah with so many problems? Isn’t that difficult?
And by checking everything all at once I mean not being locked into the option that the Torah is true and then trying to solve the problems in a way that fits with that inference, but rather taking all the evidence for and against, of all kinds, all at once, and checking whether it is convincing or not.
I understand, and as I explained, that is what I did.
Could you maybe at least say where you wrote about it?