Academic Biblical Scholarship

In a 1927 speech at the inauguration of the Hebrew University’s Institute for Jewish Studies, Dr. Rabbi Felix Perles called on Jewish scholars to be on the forefront of critical Bible study. He compares this effort to how Maimonides, even though he was accused of abrogating the Torah, incorporated philosophical study into Judaism.

Israelite religion developed from a revolutionary idea: monotheism. And religion alone, not external factors, accounted for the remarkable preservation of Jewish national identity and consciousness in exile.

TheTorah.com engages the Documentary and Supplementary Hypotheses, source, redaction, and textual criticism, and even offers moral critiques of Torah laws and narratives, but what is Steinberg really trying to accomplish?

In the second century C.E., 4 Ezra and Irenaeus tell a story of how the Torah was burned by Nebuchadnezzar and reconstructed by Ezra through divine inspiration. Rabbinic texts know of this tradition, but in their version, Ezra’s contribution is changing the Torah into Aramaic writing, or even Aramaic language.

Dismayed by claims of modern scholars that the Book of Daniel’s historical survey of the Seleucid era was written post-facto by a Hellenistic author, Chaim Shvilly (1907–1974) composed a ritual confession that Bible critics would be required to say at Daniel’s grave.

At the heart of the life and career of Moshe Greenberg, z”l, was a search for spiritual meaning through the scholarly study of the Bible.

The Hebrew book of Esther was translated into Greek and expanded in the 1st century B.C.E. It was then revised and contracted in two further textual forms. A fourth version preserved only in a late first-millennium Old Georgian translation combines all three Greek texts, using a conservative redaction approach, similar to what scholars posit happened with the Pentateuch.

How do they differ? What are their respective goals? And why the two should not be confused.

The generative relationship between ancient texts and later interpretation can illuminate and revitalize the study of these texts, including the Bible.

Decades before Facebook, blogs, and the Internet, at a time Orthodoxy was trying to distinguish itself from the Conservative movement, ten Orthodox thinkers responded to the question of what the divine revelation of the Torah meant in Orthodox Judaism. Did they meet the challenge of Biblical Criticism?

A classic example of source criticism applied to Torah legislation.

An introduction to the Diatessaron, and its significance to biblical studies, particularly the Documentary Hypothesis.

An analysis of why the approach taken by TheTorah.com has found such a large audience among the Orthodox at this time.

Illustrating four aspects of Shavuot from critical and traditional perspectives.

Na’aseh Ve-Nishma

The joy of unraveling the Torah’s mysteries

Reflections on teaching biblical criticism in the classroom; a talk given at the Edah conference (2005).

The works of medieval exegetes such as Maimonides, Rashbam and Ibn Ezra demonstrate that Judaism has a long-standing tradition of studying the Torah critically.