Ending the Battle Against Academic Biblical Studies

Cited here by Prof. Aviad Hacohen (Heb.) I heard another version from one of his students, Prof. Moshe Zipor, that Seligman used to say: “I am a plain Jew, who reads every Shabbat shnaim mikra ve’echad Wellhausen…” 

 I’m deliberately using the neutral term “academic biblical studies” and not the more loaded term “biblical criticism”, since the latter (mistakenly) implies to some readers that the scholars are trying to criticize the Bible (as opposed to reading the Bible critically).

Both the Sadducees and the Essenes accepted it, and even the early Christians. So do the Samaritans and the Karaites to this day. It’s interesting to compare it to other principles of belief, like the denial of the corporeality of God or the belief in resurrection and “the world to come”, which were controversial even among the Pharisees themselves.

Prologue to his commentary on Leviticus.

Cassuto was an Orthodox rabbi; Kaufmann was a secular Jew.

Israel Yeverchiyahu, who translated Wellhausen’s Prolegomena into Hebrew, already wondered about the schadenfreude felt by religious Jews after the ‘fall’ of Wellhausen: “What importance does the question whether P preceded D or vice versa have, if we agree that Torah was not heavenly given, but was written by the people?” (Prologue to Wellhausen’s Prolegomena in Hebrew)

A comprehensive exposition of the theory is presented in Shitat Habchinot shel R. M. Breuer (Heb.), 2005. See especially pp. 169-186.

Like Yeverchiyahu (note 6 above), Breuer ironically reacted to religious scholars who based themselves on Cassuto and Kaufmann: “…as if there was the slightest nafka minabetween Wellhausen’s Torah – which was written in Ezra’s days – to Cassuto’s Torah, which was written in the Judges’ days…” (Shitat Habchinot, p. 51).

 Shitat Habchinot, p. 359. See also pp. 349-350 there.

 See here for a comprehensive summary (Hebrew).

A great example is the Mount Sinai/Choreb account itself. It appears in the Torah, but it is not even hinted at from the Book of Joshua on, not in prophecy, nor poetry, nor historiography. Only in late post-exilic works do we read of it again (Ezekiel 20, Malachi 3, Nehemiah 9). We may assume that the need for divine-Torah theology after the exile caused the spiritual leadership of Judea to pour new life (and content!) into the ancient narrative of God’s revelation to Israel from the mountains (Judges 5, Habakkuk 3, etc.).

It should be noted, that the same re-valuating effort was done by the Sages as well, not by changing the sacred texts, but rather by interpreting them (Midrash).