Q&A: Torah from Heaven
Torah from Heaven
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I have a question that I struggle with a lot.
At the giving of the Torah, the most the people of Israel heard was the Ten Commandments, so how do we know that God really gave the Torah and that Moses didn’t write it on his own?
After all, even if the people of Israel saw that God was speaking with Moses, how do they know He intended to transmit a Torah through him?
Maybe what God meant to convey was only the Ten Commandments, and Moses wrote other things on his own.
Answer
It is always possible to raise all kinds of strange possibilities and lots of “maybes.” The question is what is most reasonable, which claim has the presumption in its favor, and which one requires proof.
If the people of Israel heard the Holy One, blessed be He, give the Ten Commandments (in fact, according to the Sages, it was only the first two), then when Moses comes and says that he also received the rest from the Holy One, blessed be He, there is no reason not to believe him. After all, the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself authorized him and called him to go up the mountain. Moreover, the people themselves asked the Holy One, blessed be He, not to continue speaking to them directly, but to give the rest to Moses. If so, the burden of proof is now on whoever claims that nothing further was given there.
Discussion on Answer
If you liked this, I’m worried I may have gone in the wrong direction. And may the good Lord forgive… 🙂
No, no, no, Michi — now that for once something good, clean, and pure came out of you, I’m prepared to endure on my own head a thousand arrows of cynicism, so long as you don’t spoil it and change something that is true (and perhaps even) the truest truth of Torah. Have you ever thought about the difference between truth and truth in its deepest truth? It’s not just some wordplay of masculine and feminine.
To the questioner himself: indeed, your question has been asked before, and the one who dealt with this topic extensively was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in his books Torah from Heaven: In the Light of the Generations. In our generation it has appeared in a renewed two-volume edition edited by Dror Bondi. I especially recommend looking from the end of the first volume, from the chapter “Moses Did Things on His Own Initiative,” and throughout the second volume, where two possibilities are examined (expansion and contraction) regarding what is defined as Torah from Heaven — although to understand the second volume it is recommended to read from the beginning of the first volume.
As far as I remember, he deals mainly with the Oral Torah, no? The question here was about the Torah itself.
Oh, thank God, finally a comment free of cynicism and Torah-provocation, and without crookedness — simple and straight, something the heart can accept. That’s how I like you, Michi. Go up and succeed.