Torah

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.

Was Abraham the founding father of what became the Jewish people, only the precursor of Moses? Alternatively, does he represent the human ideal, from which his descendants went astray, but that can be partially achieved through observance of the Torah?

To instill Jewish readers with a sense of pride in their religion, Rabbi Joseph Hertz, the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom in the early 20th century, challenged Wellhausen’s Documentary Hypothesis, especially the claim that rabbinic Judaism was a degraded form of Israelite religion. Instead, Hertz went on the offensive, comparing Christian values unfavorably to Jewish values.

Process Theology posits that God is not a static Being but evolves along with the universe and human action. Our ancestors saw the divine light in the Torah, which we can reclaim by continuing reinterpretation.

Pettiness and personal agendas characterize Persian law, called dat in the book of Esther. The Talmud, on the other hand, presents the Torah as ʾeshdat, given with “white fire etched on black fire,” and imagines the Jews in Shushan reaccepting the Torah after being saved from Haman’s dat to destroy them.

For most Second Temple scribes, the Torah’s sanctity did not translate into a requirement to avoid the imprecisions common in all books. The Paleo-Hebrew and Proto-MT scribes were an exception, although the latter were committed to precise copying of all biblical scrolls. Only with the emergence of scrolls containing all five books (2^nd cent. C.E.) did Torah scrolls take on their special level of sanctification.

In Deuteronomy, “these words,” “this torah,” and “this scroll” refer not to a specific delimited text, but point instead to the total revelation of YHWH to Israel that cannot be limited to one set of words or texts.

This fundamental question lies at the heart of two stories: God suspending Mount Sinai over the Israelites to compel them to accept the Torah, and Joshua, with the Jordan River suspended over the Israelites, compelling them to accept mutual responsibility for each other's private sins.

Before the Five Books of Moses were compiled as a complete work, evidence from Deuteronomy as well as from Joshua and Kings shows that Deuteronomy itself was known as “the Torah.”

Traditional and Academic Insights