Torah, Historically Not from Sinai, Can Still Be from Heaven

The claims of Torah mi-Sinai (Torah from Sinai) and Torah min ha-shamayim (Torah from heaven) are very different in nature and belong to two different domains.

Torah mi-Sinai refers to the belief that the revealed Torah that we now possess was given to the Israelites through Moses at Sinai;^[1] the rabbis expand this to include the entire Oral Torah as well.^[2] This is an historical claim. While it is often asserted on the basis of faith, such a claim is subject to the academic discipline of history. In contrast, Torah min ha-shamayim refers to the belief that the Torah has its ultimate source in the deity, in the divine. This is a religious belief, not subject to verification or falsifiability.

Torah from Sinai: A Historical Evaluation

The historian constructs a narrative of the past based on evidence that can be examined and tested empirically and by reason. From this perspective, the doctrine of Torah mi-Sinai does not hold up.

Revelation after Sinai—Several injunctions in the Torah are explicitly described as having been revealed not at Sinai but later. Some are unknown to Moses, so that he must consult the deity; Moses, for example, must consult YHWH concerning the inheritance of daughters (Numbers 27:5). The rabbis were well aware of certain laws given to Moses after the revelation at Sinai, which is one reason why Rabbi Yohanan explains that the Torah was given scroll by scroll (תורה—מגילה מגילה ניתנה; b. Gittin 60a).^[3]

The Bible’s Sources—The Torah cites sources such as the Book of YHWH’s Battles (Numbers 21:14), as well as the ostensibly oral source of the ballad singers (ha-moshelim; Numbers 21:27), implying that the author is using earlier documents.^[4] R. Abraham ibn Ezra attributes the Book of YHWH’s Battles source to a pre-Mosaic period.^[5] Modern scholars employ similar methods, and additional ones, to discern diverse sources and traditions in the Torah. I regard every reference to a written document—a sefer—to designate a distinct source.^[6] Similarly, a baraita “Tannaitic teaching” in the Talmud distinguishes the Balaam narrative from the rest of the Torah as a separate work by Moses (b. Bava Batra 15a).

Post-Mosaic Verses—The Talmud (ibid) also records the opinion of Rabbi Judah (or R. Nehemiah) that the final eight verses of the Torah, describing the death of Moses, were written by Joshua (though Rabbi Simon objects, and claims that Moses simply wrote them “in tears”). Traditional biblical commentators, beginning with ibn Ezra and R. Judah He-Hasid (of Ashkenaz), identify further verses in the Torah as stemming from periods significantly later than Moses.^[7] Thus, for some pre-modern scholars, the Mosaic authorship of the Torah and its attribution to a single period are open to question.

Law of the Spoils—Many details in the Torah seem to be influenced by developments in later periods. For example, a historian might link the law concerning the division of spoils between the combat soldiers and those staying back to guard the gear (Num 31:25­–26) to what the book of Samuel describes as an innovation of David (1 Sam 30:21–25). The attachment of this practice to David may itself be legendary, but the story, appearing in a work that dates to the monarchic period, shows that the author thought this rule was unprecedented, i.e., he was unaware of a Mosaic law legislating this practice.

The historian does not assume that the law in Numbers antedates the period of the monarchy simply because it is set in an earlier time. The modern historian dates the material in the Torah based on literary and linguistic evidence, such as foreign influences or the development of the Hebrew language over time. As a consequence, historical critics generally date the bulk of the legal and cultic material in the Torah starting from the monarchic period and extending to the exilic and post-exilic periods.

Law of the Servant—Many laws in the Torah, some of them influenced by Babylonian law, undergo evident revisions as they appear and reappear in the Torah. For example, whereas Exodus 21:2–5, treats the female slave (more properly, an indentured servant) as chattel, belonging either to her husband or her master, Deuteronomy 15:12–17 treats her as an autonomous person.^[8]

Ancient Near Eastern Treaty Formulae—Passages in the covenant curses of Leviticus (chapter 26) and Deuteronomy (chapter 28) betray the clear influence of Neo-Assyrian treaty formulations from no earlier than the ninth century B.C.E., three centuries or more after the time that a historical Moses would have lived.^[9]

Akkadian Terms—Words in the Torah such as sanverim (“glare,” Genesis 19:11) and miskenut (“deprivation,” Deuteronomy 8:9) were borrowed from Assyrian in the Neo-Assyrian period, when the original consonant sh in Akkadian was changed to an s in Assyrian, from which it was borrowed into Hebrew.

There is clearly a literary history to the Torah, and scholars have developed different hypothetical models for reconstructing it. The documentary theory, which posits three or more parallel documents which were spliced and edited together, is one model that explains this, but it is no longer dominant. A stronger and more complex model posits series and layers of editorial supplementation and revision.

The proliferation of competing scholarly models to explain the current form of the Torah text does not mean that they are all wrong, or that the traditional approach is somehow equally defensible. Whichever model one prefers, it seems clear that the formation of the Torah was a process taking centuries to complete.

Torah from Heaven: A Religious Belief

The belief in Torah min ha-shamayim does not depend on the ascription of the Written or Oral Torah to any particular time or place. It is a religious, or theological, belief that obtains in what the scholar of religion Mircea Eliade called “a sort of eternal mythical present.”^[10]

An individual may believe, to a greater or lesser degree of conviction, that the Torah is a, or the, source of Godly guidance, instruction, commandment, beliefs—no matter how the text came to be composed. It is the complete Torah as we now possess it, and not any hypothetical document or tradition within it, that provides a resource of spiritual or moral understanding.

The relevant meaning of the Torah will be derived by different individuals in different, though possibly overlapping, ways. One may apply interpretive methods of contextual (or peshat) reading or midrashic reading or allegorical or mystical reading. The Jewish tradition includes all of these. Some of these methods are current in the academy, and some are not employed there in and of themselves but are the object of academic study.

Hearing God’s Voice in the Text

Whereas in the past, readers believed that behind or within a text they were reading the ideas and voice of another personality, such as God, these days many readers believe there is no inherent meaning in a text. Rather, a reader brings to the act of reading one’s background, personality, expectations, and conventions of how to read and produces meaning in the course of the reading act. Either way, whether the religious reader hears the voice of God or understands that he or she is reading it within (or along with) the text, the act of reading will inspire or arouse the person, who will draw out of that experience meanings with respect to content and values.

The individual who engages in the act of reading and/or studying Torah with the expectation or purpose of finding inspiration, or even revelation, may well emerge from that experience inspired and enlightened. He or she may feel commanded to behave according to what they understand of that experience.^[11] This process of making meaning need not be trammeled by any historical notions of how the text being read was composed—any more than one’s experience of a great novel, symphony, or painting is dependent on the history of how that novel, symphony, or painting was produced.

Myths: Truth in Narrative Form

Regardless of their historicity, the narratives of the Torah may serve as myths for the believer. Not myth in the sense of fiction, but myth in the sense of a story that conveys a truth in narrative form, that describes a perceived situation in the world not as a static image but as a story.

Thus, for example, the story of how the Israelites descended from a single family may not be historical, but as myth it conveys the sense of bonding and dependency of one part (“tribe” or “clan”) of the people on the others. A historical Jacob may not have been actually injured in a struggle with a divine being (Genesis 32); but as myth, the idea that Jacob, who is Israel, must repeatedly come to grips with God and with other nations, limping but surviving, is a meaningful characterization of the people Israel from then until now.

A myth is true just as a metaphor is true. The sun doesn’t rise and set from a scientific point of view. But that is what we see, and that is what moves us. It is not the business (or the capacity) of religion to establish the historical. And it is not the business (or capacity) of historical criticism to challenge religion. They ought to be complementary. Neither depends on—or warrants—the other.