כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל יֵשׁ לָהֶם חֵלֶק לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: "וְעַמֵּךְ כֻּלָּם צַדִּיקִים לְעוֹלָם יִירְשׁוּ אָרֶץ נֵצֶר מַטָּעַי מַעֲשֵׂה יָדַי לְהִתְפָּאֵר". וְאֵלּוּ שֶׁאֵין לָהֶם חֵלֶק לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא: הָאוֹמֵר אֵין תְּחִיַּת הַמֵּתִים מִן הַתּוֹרָה, וְאֵין תּוֹרָה מִן הַשָּׁמַיִם…
7:
I think that the textual phenomena – observed and interpreted by scholars during the past 250 years – that have culminated in what is loosely called the "Documentary Hypothesis" are very well-known and I shall not give them too much space here. Most people know that scholars have perceived two versions of the Creation story; three accounts of a Patriarch's wife narrowly escaping impregnation by a man other than her husband through her being termed sister instead of wife; and two different accounts of Noah's flood. And I also think that most people know that the varying Names of God supplied a clue to unraveling the "documents". The number of further examples is legion. In this week's Torah reading there is an excellent example: the account of Moses smiting the rock in order to bring forth water [Numbers 20:1-13] has already been told in its essential details [Exodus 17:1-7]. And yet there are sufficient differences to suggest that these are two versions of the same story – or rather, two traditions: according to Exodus the incident took place in the area of Refidim (just to the east of what is now the Suez Canal in its northern sector); according to Numbers it took place at Kadesh in the North-Western part of the Negev. In the Exodus version Moses acts alone, whereas in Numbers he acts in concert with Aaron. In the Exodus version Moses is the hero of the incident, in Numbers he and his brother are condemned to the most severe punishment imaginable for a minor infringement.
8:
Modern scholarship sees in the above example an attempt to preserve two different traditions of the same incident. In Exodus we have the story as told and retold among the faithful in the "Rachel" tribes and their satellites – Efrayim, Menasheh, Binyamin etc. In Numbers we have the same story but as recounted by the Zadokite priesthood of Jerusalem, with the special emphases and alterations that were important to them. The former account probably pre-dates the establishment of the monarchy, the latter was probably compiled some 350 years later.
9:
The inclusion of two versions of the same story is not seen as being due to carelessness or bad editing. It is seen as a deliberate attempt at inclusivity: not an "either/or" choice of traditions, but "both are the words of the living God" as it were. There certainly are many instances of what might be considered appalling editing; but they are so obvious that there must have been a deliberate decision to preserve two versions of even the most insignificant details. For instance, in the famous story recounted in Genesis 37, in verses 25-27 his brothers plan to sell Joseph to an Ishmaelite caravan; but verses 28 and 36 speak of Midianite merchants.
10:
Our sages were not ignorant of these "problems", but it never occurred to the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud that the Torah was not unitary. Since the Torah is the revealed word of God, every difference must have a reason, and these observed differences gave rise to many wonderful midrashim. The Mosaic authorship of the Torah was never challenged because it never occurred to any sage that it needed to be challenged. That Moses wrote the five books ascribed to him was a given fact, an unassailed assumption based upon religious conviction. It was not until the Middle Ages that the truth dawned to at least one great rabbi, but by that time he was only prepared to make allusions to the problem and to leave the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. More of him later.
11:
This understanding of the composite nature of the Torah requires for the modern Conservative Jew some underpinning, for it presents a view of Torah that is different from the one naturally assumed by the sages. We can now see that the Written Torah [Torah she-bikhetav] is not so very different from the Unwritten Torah [Torah she-b'al-peh]. Not only does the Written Torah itself represent constant forward development, but also the Oral Torah is an organic continuation of the Written Torah. The difference is that the Written Torah offers a new revelation for each new understanding, while the Oral Torah offers a new interpretation [midrash].
12:
The proceeding of Torah from God to man is called revelation. What is the difference between the mechanics of revelation presented here and the more traditional view? For those who have no conceptual problems with a God that is quasi-human and is really possessed of personality, there is nothing untoward or problematic in the Deity having a will and informing mankind of that will. When I play my CD or my VCR too loudly my neighbour has a will and informs me of it quite clearly. So, too, for our ancestors in the past and for many contemporaries today, God may be understood as revealing His will – either by theophany as at Mount Sinai or by inspiration as with the classical prophets. I would imagine that most thinking Conservative Jews might find it difficult to accept such a conceptualization, it being too simplistic. It is easier to consider man as constantly reaching upward, striving to understand what the moral, ethical and practical implications of the very existence of the Deity are for him. According to this view, instead of a quasi-human God reaching down to man, man – constantly trying to be more Godlike – reaches upwards towards God, trying to achieve a more perfect apprehension of the implications of the divine for man; trying to understand more clearly, more perfectly, what exactly is being imposed upon us as an absolute "thou shalt". The former view (in which God leans down from His heaven, as it were, and announces His will) is theocentric; the latter (in which man tries to pierce through to make intellectual contact with the divine) is anthropocentric. In the former the impetus is deemed to come from God, whereas in the latter the impetus comes from man. According to this latter view man has a new perception of what God demands of him, a new revelation, from time to time. When scholars perceive within the text of the Torah several recensions, each having a different origin and emphasis, it is merely a reflection of this concept.
13:
According to this view not all the Torah was produced at once in the time of Moses, but some of it is the result of several different 'revelations', each at a different time. Such a view, which today is considered heterodox in some quarters, was not considered exceptional in the past. The great medieval commentator Abraham Ibn-Ezra [Spain and North Africa, 1089-1164 CE] several times in his classical commentary on the Torah makes veiled innuendoes that the text of the Torah (as opposed to its historical kernel) postdates Moses. One such place is his comment on Genesis 12:6. At this point the Torah has described how the Patriarch Abraham arrived in Canaan from Mesopotamia, and traversed the country in a symbolic act of taking possession, despite the fact that "the Canaanite was then in the land". Ibn-Ezra comments:
What Ibn-Ezra leaves looming in the air, his glossator, Rabbi Yosef Bonfils [Eretz-Israel, fifteenth century CE] makes explicit:
Please note how simple it was in pre-orthodox ages: if Ibn-Ezra were writing today he would have been dubbed "Reform"; and who knows what would have been said about Bonfils. Thus we have arrived at one of the most meaningful differences between orthodoxy and Conservative Judaism. Orthodoxy sees Torah as a document delivered from Heaven on a once-only basis whose validity is unchangeable for all time. Some Conservative Jews share this view. Many other Conservative Jews see Torah as a document in which is revealed for us the practical results of the ongoing attempt to ascertain the divine behest over a long period of time.
To be continued.
