Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ucbvax!ucdavis!lll-crg!seismo!brl-tgr!matt From: matt@brl-tgr.ARPA (Matthew Rosenblatt ) Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish Subject: Re: A query to "Dvar Torah" Message-ID: <2301@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Mon, 21-Oct-85 17:48:28 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.2301 Posted: Mon Oct 21 17:48:28 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 23-Oct-85 08:22:03 EDT References: <1201@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 84 GARY W. BUCHHOLZ writes: > 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. > . . . > 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. No less an authority than Rabbi Meir Kahane points out, in his book "Why Be Jewish?", that the Graf-Wellhausen "Documentary Hypothesis" has long ago been debunked. This hypothesis claimed that parts of the Torah were written by "J," parts by "E" (depending upon which name of the L-rd was used), with later interpolations by "P" (the Priestly code), a whole additional book (Deuteronomy) added hundreds of years later by "D," with the whole thing patched together by some anonymous "Redactor." Even in 5737, when Rabbi Kahane wrote, men had thoroughly discredited this hypothesis by finding "J" words in supposed "E" sections, and vice versa. In the intervening years, scholars in Israel, using computer linguistic analysis, have con- cluded that the entire Book of Genesis was the work of one author. (These scholars, by the way, are not fundamentalists: their computers also tell them that the Book of Isaiah is of multiple authorship.) The fact that the Book of Genesis was the work of one author knocks the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis into a cocked hat. The one who believes such a hypothesis, and teaches men so, will not even be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven -- he is a kofer b'ikar and will lose his share in the World to Come! For he is not just a sinner, but a causer of sin: If the Torah were not what it claims to be, then it would not be worthy of being followed -- each man would do what was right in his own eyes. What is it that so many historians say is the great contribution that the ancient Hebrews made to the world? It is ethical monotheism, the idea that there is one G-d and that He has made known to us how He wants us to live. If this were not so, then the "great contribution" made by the Jews to the world would be a LIE! And what would that say about the Jews? > 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). [G. W. BUCHHOLZ] As I wrote above, "these results" have fallen from the weight of their contradictions with the facts about the text. But Mr. Buchholz should see that NO historical assertion of fact can be "proven," as one proves a mathematical theorem. We "know" that Julius Caesar existed and did what history says he did, not because someone we know witnessed it and told us, and not because of any "proof." We rely on the ancient writings, some of them by Mr. Caesar himself! The same thing goes for the events on Mount Sinai. Moreover, we gotta remember that the classical literature of Greece and Rome were preserved by foreigners (Arabs) because the Greeks and Romans turned into a bunch of illiterates during the Dark Ages, whereas the Written Torah (and, since its codification, the Oral Torah) have been meticulously preserved by the most universally literate people who ever trod the sod, viz., the Jews. So don't worry about D'var Torah not touching the ground -- D'var Torah is a lot more firmly rooted in history than the wishful thinking of Enlightenment types who wish there were (chas v'sholom) no G-d so that they could lie, and whore, and defy the preacher to their heart's content. -- Matt Rosenblatt --------- "Torah tzivo lanu Moshe, Morashah k'hillas Yaakov"