Torah Authorship, Part Two!

“Of course I believe in Torah Min Hashamiyim, the same way I believe that God is  Hamotzi Lechem min Ha’aretz.” -- Rabbi Daniel Vaisrub.

 

 

And now that we have the Torah, what do we do about it?

The earliest versions of the books of the Torah that exist are around 2000 years old, with only minor differences between those editions and our scrolls.  That means the Torah that we have today has been the Torah of the Jewish people for two millennia.  People get so wrapped up in  the question of “who wrote this?” that they wind up never studying the Torah itself! They run out of time to study how to live Jewishly and acting according to it’s laws!   In fact, no matter who wrote the Torah, its sanctity and power still mandate we study its words in order to find how best to live as Jews. Why?  let's work it out: 

… if I am an/a	And Human beings created the  Torah,	And God is the author of what is in the Torah,
Atheist  (I think there is no God)
Agnostic (I am unsure/ I just can’t make up my mind)
Theist (God is real)

 

WHY DOES IT ACTUALLY MATTER WHO WROTE THE TORAH?

This topic is a huge big deal for  Conservative Jews, far more of an issue than  f0r Jews in any other denomination.  Reform Jews are not as concerned just how involved God was with authorship, and the Orthodox assume God is the author. Meanwhile,  Conservative Jewish groups often spend  so much time on the Torah’s origins and theories related to it that it takes them a lot longer get around to actually studying the Torah and what it says!

What everyone asks is: “Because if God didn’t write the Torah, then….” And then they chicken out and don’t ask the second half, either “then why I  have to bother being Jewish?” OR “can I finally quit going to Hebrew School?”

1.     The first  answer is another question:  What do the terms “God”, “Torah”, and “Write” mean in your question?  

2.    If people wrote the Torah, then why should it matter to me? Well, people wrote the US Constitution. Doesn’t The Constitution matter to you?

3.    “Does it really matter to you if God wrote the Torah?”  You can’t justify that question if you don’t care about the answer, or if you don’t believe in God. 

4.    But if you believe in God, what are the consequences if God did not write the Torah? ( Rabbi Roth’s Axiom: The Torah we have is the Torah God meant for us to have.)

5.    What people forget: Because if God and people wrote the Torah together,  then…?

6.   And just as difficult and important-  what are the consequences if God actually did write the torah??!?  This is the converse to the original question no one asks : Because if God did write the Torah, even in part, then… (don’t we have to live our lives according to what it says?)

 

 

 

Heschel, “God in Search of Man”

The essence of our faith in the sanctity of the Bible is that its words contain that which God wants us to know and to fulfill. How these words were written down is not the fundamental problem. This is why the theme of Biblical criticism is not the theme of faith, just as the question of whether the lightning and thunder at Sinai were a natural phenomenon or not is irrelevant to our faith in revelation.

 The assumption of some commentators that the Decalogue was given on a rainy day does not affect our conception of the event.

 The act of revelation is a mystery, while the record of revelation is a literary fact, phrased in the language of man.