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From: gary@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (gary w buchholz)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: A query to "Dvar Torah"
Message-ID: <1201@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Oct-85 18:42:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: sphinx.1201
Posted: Thu Oct 17 18:42:30 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Oct-85 04:52:26 EDT
Organization: U. Chicago - Computation Center
Lines: 67


First, let me say that I am looking forward to the Dvar Torah project.
My education has been primarily focused on Christian texts and its
exegetical tradition.  In this context references to the Hebrew Bible
and the rabbinic tradition have been both oblique and sometimes skewed
by specifically Christian modes of interpretation.

As of late my interest in Talmud and rabbinic exegesis has been
heightened by an interest in the latest "fad" in secular literary
criticism - Deconstruction.  Talmud and the "rules" of rabbinic
exegesis along with Kabbala serve as a prime exemplar and resource 
for those trying to cut some new paths in the secular literary
criticism (which just may re-emerge as "religious").  

In any case, thats just a little background but not the subject of this
posting.  The subject is more towards the subject of biblical
scholarship and its relation to "Dvar Torah".

Let me preface the rest of this by saying that I do in fact agree with
those critics who launch an attack on historical-critical method saying
that it is NOT the only *valid* way to exegete a text.  As I read the
history of biblical scholarship it is only recently that the "literary"
quality of these texts have been recognized and fully appreciated.

Again, reading the history of biblical scholarship both secular and
nonsecular it might be said that one point of general agreement and 
one thing that is now more or less taken as a "given" is the validity
of source criticism as applied to the Pentateuch.  In short, the
critical result of the Documentary Hypothesis is that Moses did not
write the Pentateuch/Torah.

On the one hand, the rabbinic tradition asserts the Moses gave the
Torah.  On the other hand, the last 80 years of biblical scholarship
has worked out a theory of multiple authorship and redaction.

The two views are antithetical. The former is based on an "unbroken
tradition" as you say.  The latter is based on a secular reconstruction
of the history of Israel and its literary productions.

Can the tradition out of which you(Avi) speak accommodate these results
of biblical scholarship or must they be "banished" on the authority of
the tradition ?  On the one hand, if secular historical/biblical
scholarship is banished then how does the content of "Dvar Torah" ever
"touch ground"(historical assertions of fact are made but can never be
established by the historian).  What keeps "Dvar Torah" from being a
*purely* literary enterprise ?  On the other hand, accepting the
results of critical scholarship puts the "factual" assertions of the
rabbinic tradition in jeopardy.  In effect, you must say that what the
rabbis said (about Moses and the Torah) is "true" but not in the
literal sense.  That is, you can accept the Documentary Hypothesis by
allegorizing what is said about Moses and the Torah in the tradition.

>    In each period, there are issues and problems that may be literally
>    incomprehensible to someone of a far earlier generation.  The
>    strength of the Oral Law is that even if a Moses cannot understand
>    what a Rabbi Akiba is talking about, the principles used and the
>    source of validity of the law is traced back to - 'This is a law
>    given to Moses on Mount Sinai'.

Historical Critical method is "incomprehensible" to the heretofore
rabbinic tradition.  Can the "strength" of the Oral Law, whose source
of validity can be traced back to 'This is a law given to Moses on
Mount Sinai' be used to explicate the hidden truth behind the apparent
historical falsity that "This is a law given to Moses on Mount Sinai" ?
Can a snake devour its own tail  ?

  Gary