The Torah As a Unique Text

A post from our friend in the IDF, on a different topic

We have been privileged to have several posts from a frum soldier who has been serving in the ongoing war, being mechazek us in emunah, explaining the proper Torah hashkafah during wartime, and encouraging us to recognize Who truly fights our battles. They are A Voice From the Frontlines, A Voice From the Front 2, Voice From the Front 3, Before the war as well, this person submitted an article about the difference between Secular Zionism and Judaism. This time, we present an essay from him on a different subject, that of Biblical Criticism, in which the author explains how Bible critics ignore the very nature of Torah as understood by our sages and commentators over the millennia, and it is this difference in starting assumptions that inevitably leads these critics to their strange conclusions:

I would like to compare and contrast the documentary hypothesis to the traditional understanding of the nature of the Chumash. Before doing so I would like to give a brief overview of what people typically include when they use the term biblical criticism. One can divide the topic of biblical criticism into three general areas, that while they do interact with each other, they remain distinct.

The first area consists of arguments that much of what is stated in Tanach, and in the Chumash in particular, is factually not true. This is not an argument that Tanach in general, and Chumash in particular, are inconsistent or does not contain a holistic message. Technically it is not even an argument against the divine origin of Tanach. It is the argument that much of what is stated is factually false, regardless of whether it is holistic or divine. It is based on archaeological findings or extra biblical historical sources that are believed to objectively demonstrate this point. While there is good reason to be skeptical that these sources do, or even can, demonstrate what they allegedly do, one needs real expertise in these fields to address them intelligently. Skepticism, however justified, is not a replacement for expertise, so I shall not discuss this issue other than to acknowledge it’s existence.

The second field is that of comparing Tanach culturally and linguistically to other ancient near eastern cultures and languages. The essential argument that this field makes is that Tanach is not unique, that there are cultural and theological similarities to other peoples in the ancient near east, and that it is therefore reasonable to presume that Tanach is not of divine origin, at least not in the way it presents itself as being, ie direct prophetic revelation. Any serious dissection of the linguistic arguments requires a degree of expertise regarding language in general and Hebrew in particular, that I lack, placing them beyond my ken. None the less, the cultural, and even more so theological arguments are based on two factors that render them difficult to take seriously. The first is that they are based on a superficial and ideologically driven reading of Tanach. The second is the presumption that it is possible for a modern scholar to understand long dead ancient near eastern cultures based on translating the tiny fraction of their literary output that has survived to this day. Try using google to translate a complex document from one language to another, the results are quite humorous. Yet what google is doing is far more sophisticated than what scholars are doing using a Rosetta stone or similar device, and that's without even taking into account that the modern scholar does not, and cannot, have any insight into the cultural significance of the text that they are reading. This is for the simple reason that they are dealing with a culture that has long since died out and for which there is no modern equivalent to compare it to. Having said that, it is not my purpose in this essay to discuss this aspect a biblical criticism.

The third area, of which the documentary hypothesis is a prominent component, is literary criticism. I am using the term literary criticism in it's broadest sense, and mean it to be similar to higher textual criticism, only broader. It is the contention that by examining the text of Tanach one can decipher that it is not the holistic text that the tradition presents it as, but is rather a redacted text with multiple origins that are not consistent with each other. In other words, the various books of Tanach are not only inconsistent with each other, they are internally inconsistent as well. The documentary hypothesis sets out to demonstrate this specifically in the Chumash. Before we can discuss the documentary hypothesis, we should review how traditional Judaism understands what the Chumash is. Sam Harris, a prominent critic of religion, has argued that if the bible is truly the word of God, then we would expect it to have extraordinary qualities, to be unlike any other book that was ever written. Jewish tradition essentially agrees with him, and in the traditional view, the bible is a text that accomplishes something that is unique in the annals of world literature.

The traditional understanding of the purpose of creation posits that God's goal was that we should partner with him in revelation. The challenge is that if God did not intend a particular concept, then to espouse it is not revelation but rather a corruption of revelation, megaleh panim batorah shelo khalacha in the words of Chazal. Yet if God did reveal a concept, then we can be no more than the passive recipients of that revelation, we are not partners. Therefore, God dictated to Moshe a precise text, that contains all of what God wished to reveal, but in a manner that is not accessible except via being sought out. The Hebrew term for that which is sort out is nidrash or the drasha, and therefore the law is always in accordance with the sought out meaning even if it contradicts the plain sense of the text. The Torah is written in such a way that it contains repetitions, apparent contradictions, and textual anomalies, that force us to seek out the intended meaning that is not obvious in the plain reading of the text. In this way, what is revealed in the Chumash is God's will, while simultaneously our contribution to the revelation is real and meaningful, rendering us true partners. Many of the textual anomalies can only be appreciated in biblical Hebrew.

Likewise, all words in Hebrew that share a root are conceptually related, often revealing a sub context that is not otherwise self-evident. That is why the Torah is revealed specifically in Hebrew and the intended meaning is lost in translation. Chazal say that when the Torah was first translated into Greek, darkness descended upon the world. Translating the Torah is not an act of enlightenment, it serves to obstruct its true meaning, it is darkness. In and of itself this may not be so extraordinary. After all human beings can also write in code, where the intended message is not contained in a simple reading of the text, and can be understood only after it is deciphered.But the Chumash has another property as well, Chazal state ein mikrah yotseh miyday pshuto, a verse never leaves its simple or obvious meaning. So even as the intended revelation is encoded in the text through the many anomalies that we discussed, the simple reading of the code even before it is deciphered is also coherent, absolutely true, and is itself an intended revelation. Such that in fact there are two simultaneous revelations, one of the plain meaning of the text of which we are passive recipients known as Torah shebichtav, the written Torah. The other is the encoded message in which we are active partners in revelation via decoding it, known as Torah shebaal peh, the oral Torah. In fact, the Chumash is also written in other languages, remez, the hints to things that we ought to be able to know on our own, and sod, the concepts that God placed beyond language, such that even when they are described via language the listener must be able to re-create the concept in their own understanding. In other words, sod is those ideas that are so profound that language can only take the listener to the edge, he must then fall in on his own. The tradition then is making an extraordinary claim for the Chumash, that it can be read as four different texts simultaneously, and that each text is coherent and true in its own right. This of course explains the extreme importance that tradition places upon the text being preserved precisely. A Sefer Torah that is off by a single letter, even if that letter doesn't change the simple meaning of the text, is invalid. The loss or addition of even a single letter might not change the Torah in the context of one of the intended messages, but can do great damage in one of the other messages encoded in the text.

 There is a great controversy among the traditional commentaries as to what is the precise relationship between the pshat, the obvious understanding of the text, and the drush, the sought out meaning of the text. Ibn Ezra and those who share his approach are of the opinion that the Chumash is read in each of these intended languages independently of each other. In my metaphor it is as though someone wrote a computer program in code such that it is a perfect operating system, while the exact same text can also be read as prose in which it tells a coherent and meaningful story. That is quite an extraordinary property, but nonetheless, each language, that is, the computer code and the prose, must be read independently of each other. What a particular sentence means to the computer has no bearing on what it means when read as prose. This explains an interesting phenomenon. In his introduction to his commentary Ibn Ezra lauds the extraordinary understanding of Chazal in interpreting the text of the Chumash, and notes how everything that they write is true. Yet, frequently in his commentary itself, he will reject Chazal's interpretation in favor of his own understanding. His point is that Chazal are engaged in seeking out the drasha, and they are absolutely correct in their findings, but that does not affect his seeking out the pshat.

On the other hand, Rashi and those of like mind, are of the opinion that the drash is actually the deeper meaning of the pshat itself. The anomalies of the text force a different understanding of the pshat, and that deeper understanding is the sought-out meaning, the drash. That's why Rashi, despite insisting numerous times that he is only coming to explain the pshat, will frequently make use of midrash. His point is that midrash can give us a hint as to the proper direction in which to seek the pshat. Malbim, following the lead of Rashi, demonstrates that all midrash is simply the pshat understood correctly. And yet extraordinary as it may be, nonetheless ein mikrah yotseh miyday pshuto, the simple, less sophisticated reading of the verse is still true, and also contains an intended message.

Either way, whether per Ibn Ezra’s understanding or that of Rashi, in the view of the tradition the Chumash is indeed an extraordinary text, revealing multiple layers of truth simultaneously. Although the primary reason that a person would accept this reading of Chumash is that he finds the tradition convincing, a secondary reason to accept this way of reading Chumash is the internal consistency and depth that it reveals. Of course, to appreciate this consistency and depth one must develop a great deal of scholarship, particularly in how Chazal understood Chumash and how the Rishonim understood Chazal. For this reason, one generally finds an inverse relationship between one's degree of Torah scholarship and one's engagement with literary criticism of Chumash. Even from a completely secular perspective there is an advantage to this understanding, as Occam’s razor prefers a single overarching explanation that renders all of Chumash’s anomalies as features rather than bugs, to other explanations.

The precise origins of the documentary hypothesis is not that relevant to how it is understood today, so I will not go into it in detail except to note two facts that are germane. If the tradition perceives Chumash as having unique properties, that is only true in the Hebrew original. That implies that there is something special about the Hebrew language that makes it uniquely suited to be the language of revelation. That also assumes that the specific words used in the Chumash, down to unique peculiarities of spelling, are direct expressions of divine revelation, not the result of a human prophet putting his own words to his experience of divine revelation. Christianity, although it claims to accept the Chumash as authoritative, cannot accept the Jewish tradition's concept of what Chumash is. This is because their own New Testament was originally written in Greek, not Hebrew, and does not even claim to have the extraordinary properties that the Jews claim for the Chumash. As such, even if one was to accept the New Testament as being divinely inspired, it would still only be equal to the writings of the latter parts of Tanach, but qualitatively vastly inferior to the Chumash. Therefore, it is no accident that the documentary hypothesis originally arose among Christians, and specifically among protestant Christians, who reject even the mild form of exegesis practiced by the Catholic church. The second fact of interest is that secular Jews, who by definition deny any type of direct divine revelation, were uniquely attracted to the documentary hypothesis since it allowed them to relate to the Chumash as culturally important while denying its theological significance. Some of the early reformers rejected the documentary hypothesis because they were offended by it’s antisemitic origins as well as it’s intellectual lightness. But in recent times with the antisemitic overtones having faded into history and intellectual lightness being all the fad in secular circles, it has become more or less universally accepted among secular Jews, including all of the movements in favor of reforming Judaism.

The Documentary Hypothesis' essential argument is as follows. Judaism, with its firm theological basis and specific practices did not exist until at least the late biblical period, and maybe not until well into the post biblical era. Prior to that time there were numerous different theologies among the ethnically related peoples that would later become the Jews, that slowly evolved through stages into the Judaism that we are familiar with today. During this long period of time numerous texts were produced by different groups with different political interests and diverse theologies. Eventually, perhaps beginning towards the end of the period of the monarchy and coming to full fruition during either the Babylonian/Persian exile or during the first half of the second temple period, a united religion espousing full-fledged monotheism emerged and was widely adopted. Either because of this or to facilitate it, a redactor or redactors combined many of the earlier texts into a single document and it soon came to be perceived as a holistic whole.

 In order to make sense of this hypothesis one must make numerous assumptions regarding how the redactor related to both the earlier theologies as well as how he related to earlier texts. More modern versions of the documentary hypothesis contend that the texts that were finally redacted to produce the Chumash were themselves the result of the redaction of earlier texts over a period of at least several hundred years. This adds numerous other layers of assumptions that must be made. As we pointed out earlier, Occam’s razor prefers a single overarching explanation that requires no additional assumptions, to an explanation that requires many layers of assumptions. Yet if one is committed, as the modern secularist is, to a priori rejecting prophetic revelation and the ancient origins of Judaism, there remains little choice. The Documentary Hypothesis argues that the redactor combined the texts in such a manner that a careful reading of the resultant document shows the original seam lines. That it is not only possible to tease out which parts of the Chumash came from where, but also to appreciate the theological and political interests of the source documents (Redactor’s note: I would add that there is no consistent story to these theories and no evidence for them. They are just fanciful conjectures, with practically the only point of agreement being that the Torah is not Mosaic in origin.) Of course, the questions being asked, and the points being made are not new. Few, if any of the anomalies being addressed failed to be noticed and commented on by the generations of Jewish commentaries ranging from Chazal all way down to modernity. But if one is committed to a Christian or secular reading of the Chumash, then one needs to seek other explanations for these phenomena, hence the Documentary Hypothesis.