The school year has begun. Two years ago at this time, I did not know that I was to encounter a grave threat to my soul as a believer. It was September 2008, and I walked in the Public Affairs Center to go to my class—Introduction to the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible.
Jeremy Zwelling, the now-retired professor of that course, has contributed more to Jewish Life at Wesleyan than any other person. He has made significant contributions to the degree that Magda Teter, the new Jewish Studies administrator, was dubbed “The Jeremy Zwelling Professor of Jewish and Israel Studies”.
To this day, I value him as the teacher he was to me, and a guiding light. He was someone who challenged boundaries, and would examine Judaism (and religion in general) by going to its heart as well as to its fringes.
But from the first day on that syllabus, I was told not to look any of texts in any holy light. This is not an actual chronicle of events, said that syllabus, but an imagined history, referring to all of the Five Books of Moses, as well as Joshua and Judges. No Sinai. No Moses. No Exodus. No real reason to celebrate Passover, or any of the holidays. Nothing.
To make matters even worse, there were theories concerning the texts being four different ones, without a cohesive source. Then there was Israel Finkelstein’s notion that it was the Josiah reform that brought the compiled Old Testament into being—that the world’s best-selling book was a righteous forgery.
I was crushed. G-d was no longer in that text. It was entirely a human invention, made by elite humans for humans of lesser castes. How did I recover? I am still trying to find out how to do so…
But by NO means am I discouraging you from registering for classes related to Bible Scholarship (far from it, in fact). The truth be told, many notions of Bible Scholarship will reach many of us eventually, regardless of what courses we take.
But I did discover hope. Last summer, I discovered my notebook from the Introduction to the Old Testament class. The first thing that I was told: “don’t let your religious beliefs be harmed by what you hear”. The second thing, the most telling thing about Biblical Criticism I have heard:
Bible Scholars cannot search for absolute truths. It’s impossible. What this course, Zwelling said, will search for is…”local truths”.
There was only one Rabbi that I had the courage to bring up the question of Bible Scholarship with, and that was Rabbi Bernard Reichmann of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He told me something even more profound.
He said that secular education is indeed important. But no one said that you ever needed to believe everything you hear. Just take it in for the sake of getting the grade. Israel Finkelstein and the entire premise of Biblical Criticism could indeed be wrong. A secular education does not pressure you to believe. It only pressures you to listen, never to forcefully agree.
The more time I’ve had to think about it, the more I realize that we will never fully unveil the truth about any of these texts. The plethora of theories I found both in Zwelling’s class and in other classes made me realize that the absolute truth of the Bible can never come into being. Given that it is as ineffable as G-d Himself, that is enough of a “Divine Origin” for me to have confidence in.
But Biblical criticism can be more holy that it seems. The Rabbi Don Isaac Abravanel came to a conclusion that Deuteronomy was written prior to the other four Books of Moses. He was one who unequivocally espoused Divine authorship of the Bible.
Read the work of Israel Finkelstein and his research partner Neil Asher Silberman ‘72, and they too, come to the same conclusion that Deuteronomy came first.
This is because the line between a clergyman and a heretical Bible scholar is very, very thin.
11 Comments
Jared Gimbel
(1) Gevalt! I have been checkerboarded! Fix!
(2) The title was supposed to be a nod to Thomas Aquinas’ “Summa Theologica”. I wonder if anyone will may the connection…
Michael Roth
Jared,
of course the bible was a human invention. If you want to suggest the divine origins of the old testament, why not the new one as well? Why not the koran?
If you want to attribute holiness to a person, a text, whatever, feel free, but just don’t forget that it is you, and you alone, conjuring meaning and sacredness onto something that would otherwise be completely meaningless.
Jared Gimbel
What an audience I have here! I’m thrilled!
From what I found speaking to Christians and Muslims, a lot of what they struggle with seems to be whether or not Jesus, Paul, or Muhammad said things as they actually said.
Hence, Divine Origin does not really become an issue for the texts that you mentioned as it does for the Hebrew Scriptures. Do the Epistles of Paul actually require a divine element to the same degree that the Five Books of Moses do? Jesus, in that text, is already established as a becoming the primary manifestation of Heaven.
Let’s pretend the Last Judgment/Days of the Messiah/Second Passing/Various End Time prophecies/Divine revelations comes to pass. Right now.
In the light of what has been revealed in this alternate reality, and pretending I’m still writing this column on a weekly basis in said alternate timeline, do I need to affirm any notion that the One God agrees with what I write in the Deuteronomy 4:4 column?
That’s why these religions, focused primarily as Jesus and Muhammad as paragons, do not rely as much on the Divine Origin as a pillar.
Yes, you need to affirm things such as the Davidic Dynasty in order to allow some things to pass. If the Davidic Dynasty never existed, Jesus has no real claim to power. But Jesus and Muhammad complete past messages. Why try to rectify or defend these things in their incomplete state?
Knowledge of the Divine grows as time goes on. Revelation of the Divine shrinks as time goes on. Or at least, it becomes significantly less ineffable and more human. The world becomes more human over time. The grand revelations at a Sinai then would be more divine than any grand revelations at Sinai now.
I see cleverly that you have a scriptural source for what you are saying, even though you did not cite it directly:
“The Torah that Moses commanded us is the teaching of the congregation of Jacob”
In Hebrew this would be:
תורה צוה לנו משה מורשה קהילת יעקב
(Deuteronomy 33:4)
It’s not actually the Almighty that acts as the primary intermediary between his word in this regard. This is a verse that Jewish children are taught to recite on a daily basis.
Do you see “G-d” anywhere in that sentence? I did not think so. But yet it affirms with such confidence that the Torah exists for all time.
When you say “of course the Bible was a human invention”, it seems that this verse affirms it. MOSES and JACOB are the reasons that this is important.
A primary rule of mysticism and of G-d in general:
The Almighty CANNOT exist without picking certain gifted humans.
For me, the one who received the best such gift would be Moses, also revered by Christians, Muslims, and no doubt even pantheists. Other prophets, Jesus, Muhammad, Joseph Smith, seem to resonate with other people just as equally.
People don’t exactly need to assume that believing in the Divine Origin needs to endorse all types of unthinkable phenomena.
Robert Crumb, in his introduction to the Book of Genesis, writes that he believes the Book to be the words of men, but writes that many people believe it to be written by G-d or inspired by G-d.
I say, why can’t all of these views coexist?
The Ramayana, an Indian epic that you very well may know, notes that certain gods picked humans to express their will on earth. I believe that Moses was picked by G-d in a very similar regard, to express this divine truth.
Even if Moses did not actually exist, the Kaballah notes that his soul root exists in everyone who reveals divine secrets (a-ha!)
What’s the opposite, the view I do not endorse? The JEPD documentary hypothesis notes that the Priests wrote one document to express their will and their political, for a selfish agenda.
That is a view I cannot endorse.
Koran
was written by humans, actually the Jews wrote a good part of it
Jared Gimbel
Another famous commenter! Yay!
But what’s your proof? Or are you unsuccessfully trying to vent anti-Semitic propaganda?
Ron Medley `73
Early Christians certainly grappled with issue of Christ’s divinity. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Jesus refers to himself as the son of G-d only once in any of the Gospels and, according to Mark, his death by crucifixion is the end of story (although, one can argue about the meaning of the empty tomb.) But, I if I understand your point correctly, Christians are less concerned with whether The Law was inscribed in G-d’s own hand on Mt. Sinai. I’m not sure if that’s true. I know a lot of Christians, including quite a few Indiana Jones fanatics who would be very disappointed were it ever proven otherwise.
Jared Gimbel
Another important thing to note is that the law written with G-d’s hand…was broken, at the Golden Calf Incident.
The second pair of tablets Moses was asked to carve by himself.
Do you see the loophole where I see it?
Ron Medley, `73
Certainly the language of The Law becomes less poetic by the time Moses is done transcribing it. And, Leviticus and Deuteronomy (ah! the light switches on!) seem to carry on with this “letter of the law” approach. To me, it just seems to illustrate how simply and abstractly G-d would speak if we had the capacity to hear and to listen properly.
Richard
any one can take the time to hear and listen one can always find it, no matter the faith.
or perhaps one could just catalog all of religion into the subclass ‘BS’ classification of the library shelf (as librarians have done) or one could just accept the G-d you knew as a child and believed in then, before you got to wesleyan and became all skeptical. questioning everything. If Atheists as a group have the highest IQ, i would rather be “#2 and try harder”.
Jared Gimbel
Dear Richard:
Humans mature.
Humanity as a collective race matures and gains knowledge over time.
It’s the same with the Almighty.
Maimonides notes that old conceptions of G-d are merely incompatible with what we know now, if you spend your time thinking. That’s why the deeper truth of G-d is revealed in the texts of thinkers and mystics. And it cannot be readily understood by everyone.
Given that Carl Sagan, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, the director of the Human Genome project, and many, many other scientists and thinkers from across fields accept the condition of a Divine Being, I heavily question the idea that belief in G-d relegates one to a second tier.
As I explain to my friends and acquaintances often:
Everyone worships something, whether we like it or not. I choose G-d. Thereby, I include humanity, the greater world, and reason all in one, and give my soul to that.
Richard
Im not sure exactly what i read but
also i might add that people who pray and hooked up to biometrics report higher scores!