The Documentary hypothesis has many problems, but yours hits the nail on the head. Even before we know the Torah is Divine, its wisdom is blatantly clear. Even before we use the multiple layers of TSBP we can see that the Torah is a breakthrough document. If it was written by some wise people, how did they not see the glaring contradictions that waited for Wellhausen? The inconsistencies should tell us that there are deeper layers of meaning, themselves demanding a TSBP to explain them.
I am cutting and pasting a Goyishe joke here to express a point:
Three sons left home, went out on their own, and prospered. Getting back together, they discussed the gifts they were able to give their elderly Mother. The first said, “I built a house for our mother.” The second said, “I sent her a Mercedes with a driver.” The third smiled and said, “I’ve got you both beat. You remember how mom enjoyed reading the Bible? And you know she can’t see very well. So I sent her a remarkable parrot that recites the entire Bible. It took the elders in the church 12 years to teach him. He’s one of a kind. Mama just has to name the chapter and verse, and the parrot recites it.” Soon thereafter, mom sent out her letters of thanks:*
“Milton,” she wrote one son, “The house you built is so huge. I live in only one room, but I have to clean the whole house.”
*“Gerald,” she wrote to another, “I am too old to travel. I stay most of the time at home, so I rarely use the Mercedes. And the driver is so rude!”
*Dearest Harry,” she wrote to her third son, “You have the good sense to know what your mother likes. The chicken was delicious.”
Hashem gave us a Torah with many layers of wisdom and depth. Every contradiction that we see, brings us to deeper understanding and more chidushim. Every time a word seems superfluous, we learn a new Halacha and understand Ratzon Hashem better. Part of the great gift of the Torah is its difficulty.
Then along came Johann Eichorn, Jean Astruc, and other 'scholars' and took the gift and stomped on it, while claiming to be studying it. They ate it like it was chicken.
Biblical criticism relies on it not coming from God, because is it is from Him, these obvious contradictions are nothing but hints and codes to a deeper later. But they use these contradictions as proof that it is man made! In truth what they mean is that it is obviously man made prior and therefore these contradictions continue to bolster their given assumption and show their fallibility.
Even if the Torah was man-made, the contradictions must lead to something deeper. The documentary hypothesis means someone was drunk when they were 'compiling' it. And that is patently impossible.
Plot holes in Shakespeare, the degenerate bard, are answered. Yet they can't find an answer in Torah.
Now that we know that the Torah is Divine, the wisdom is clearer and brighter. But their alternative is the bottom of the pile.
Happy, if I may, I would add to your point (perhaps a כל המוסיף גורע?) what the גר"א says in אדרת אליהו beginning of דברים. He sets up the picture that the Five Books are actually בעיקר three, שמות, ויקרא and במדבר. He explains that בראשית is like the introduction (elsewhere he explains that אדם is the beginning of mankind, נח is the תחילת האומות and the אבות and שבטי קה are תחילת ישראל, with which בראשית concludes). And דברים is like the summary of מרע"ה. In the middle we have these three main ספרים with a ראש, תוך וסוף, as שמות is the beginning and set up of כלל ישראל, through their growth, שיעבוד וגאולה, afterwards מתן תורה and הקמת המשכן. All the מצוות therein are related to this setup (עשרת הדברות are like the beginning of everything, which כולל everything, משפטים are דרך ארץ קדמה לתורה and the setup of the משכן and information about the בגדים are all prior to ויקרא to set up the scene for the עבודה).
ויקרא is עיקר תורה, with the bulk of the מצוות, especially the קרבנות which are the shpitz עבודת השי"ת בעולם הזה. Last we have במדבר which is kind of like a wrap up, with instructions to go to א"י and be the כלל ישראל that we know to keep said Torah in it's proper place.
Point I'm bringing out, is that the story of the building of כלל ישראל as described, in perfect tangent with the מצוות given, each commanded in their proper point of that growth of כלל ישראל and connection to הקב"ה, are one beautiful story of our קשר with Him, and how to continue growing with Him throughout our own lives.
(One last point: the storyline which begins with מעשה בראשית is how השם sets up the world with all the history of ספר בראשית, all in order that when the time is ripe, כלל ישראל can step into the picture and conquer א"י and become the center of the world as they are supposed to be. כח מעשיו הגיד לעמו isn't just an answer to one specific question, why "בראשית" over "החדש הזה לכם." It is the answer to explaining the very question of why is the Torah presented as a story if it is indeed a book of laws, and the answer is that the world is setup to be anti-God, with the אומות in charge, and then we, כלל ישראל, step in and perfect it through following His laws. The split between us and the אומות and our role in that is wonderfully interwoven into the fabric of the Torah, that we end up battling and conquering the עובדי ע"ז, those who fight Hashem, and take over and establish Him as the true King whom He really was the whole time, along with His רצון, the עשיית המצוות, the center of the whole תורה.)
"But in the opinion of the Bible critics, Moses is a mythological figure who never spoke with God, never issued any commands, never wrote anything, and didn’t exist. The customs and rituals of the Torah developed over many centuries among a group of indigenous Canaanites who called themselves Judeans and Israelites, and who developed fanciful myths about their own origins."
I don't want to cite Bible criticism here, nor defend it, but this is a minority position.
There are many who believe it happened, and the Torah collected the different stories much later. Irrelevant but it was grating on me.
I was referring to this part: "The customs and rituals of the Torah developed over many centuries among a group of indigenous Canaanites who called themselves Judeans and Israelites, and who developed fanciful myths about their own origins.""
"The customs and rituals of the Torah developed over many centuries among a group of indigenous Canaanites who called themselves Judeans and Israelites, and who developed fanciful myths about their own origins."
Speaking for myself, what got me interested in Judaism was that I could no longer buy this line of thought. When I started researching biblical archaeology, I went into it with the assumption that the Exodus was a myth and that the Tanakh was historically unreliable. As a then secular Zionist, I wanted to believe that the ancient Israelites were indigenous to Canaan, but when I examined the evidence I was far from convinced. There were a few problems that I saw:
1. As staunchly atheistic Isaac Asimov pointed out, there is no chance that an ancient people would make up being slaves. It isn't like today where having your people have been oppressed is seen as some sort of badge of honor, back then to be descended from a slave was more shameful than to have been born out of wedlock. And it was a really big deal back then. Josephus was so ashamed of the Israelites past as slaves that, in his own account of events, he changed the story making the Jews into the former rulers of Egypt. Literally the only reason an ancient people would have a tradition of having been slaves is because they actually had been.
2. Moses is an Egyptian name. Yeah I guess a theoretical story teller could have just given his fictional character an Egyptian name but the simplest explanation would be that it was a real guy and that was his name. Most historians think that Romulus and Remus were literal historical characters using the same logic
3. The Merneptah Stele shows that Israel existed as an established people in Canaan by 1207 BCE. This really screws up all the secular timelines for the origin of ancient Israel, although this handwaved away by secular historians. However, an Israelite confederation settled in the Canaanite hill country at this time is perfectly consistent with the account of Judges
4. Jericho was destroyed exactly as was described in Joshua (walls fell down flat, everything was burned, happened in the spring) although there is dispute about the dating (secular historians say Jericho was destroyed somewhere around 1550 BCE whereas the Tanakh was Jericho falling over 100 years later)
Critics of the biblical account point out that there was no change in the material culture of ancient Canaan, so it couldn't have been conquered by a people from outside the region. But this doesn't work as Judges makes it clear that the Israelites did not kill or expel the Canaanites, rather they absorbed them. The Israelites were semi nomads, only adopting a sedentary lifestyle at ~1200 BCE, of course by then they would have adopted Canaanite material culture. The Canaanites don't disappear from the historical record* until after the United Monarchy split. It's even possible that the Israelites circa ~700 BCE had more Canaanite ancestry than Israelite ancestry, although we certainly hope that that is not the case.
If we are going to exit the realm of religion and go purely by archaeology, I don't think there is enough information to make firm conclusions about who the ancient Israelites were and where they came from. I do think, however, that the biblical account of Israelite origins is the most likely to be correct.
The problem, from a secular view, is that if there really was an Exodus then what do you do with all the stuff that happens before Exodus? The stories of the Patriarchs can fit into secular history but Abraham isn't many generations before Babel and Babel absolutely cannot be reconciled with secular history.
*Of course the Canaanites did continue to exist in Lebanon, and still do to this day. There is no such thing as "Phoenicians". That was just what the Greeks called Canaanites. The reason that the Lebanese are even more vile than their Arab brothers is likely due to their garbage lineage.
Did you go out of your way to find that needle in a substack?
I know all about Walls of Text and the type of people who write them. If someone doesn't like Vox Day, just don't read him. She (or he, as seems more likely to me) is not going to change any minds with one wall of text, let alone dozens or hundreds.
It is not just that the backdrop of the legal content is the historical narrative, rather the legal content is itself nothing more than narrative. "God spoke to Moshe Saying" is a narrative. The Laws are not set forth in a codex but in a story form of Hashem's conversations with Moshe.
True, but I think it's clear from the peshuto shel mikra that the "Book" is very much meant to be used as a codex (along with the interpretation of the Torah sheBaal Peh, as it says ובאת אל הכהן ואל השופט). The laws are not meant as a nice story, or even as a moral lesson, but to teach us the laws.
"The very fact that the TSBP manages to holistically incorporate and homogenise all of these issues into a synthesised whole, based on a strict system (i.e 13 middos of drosho plus more), and that this system has stood up to 2000 years of intensive critical analysis by the greatest intellects of the Jewish people, is proof positive that the Mesorah was given at Sinai."
If I would be a critic I would say nonsense. Every point has 1,000 people arguing over it. We don't know what set of shofar blowing is d'oreysoh. We don’t know what a teruah is. We don't even know what the halachik definition of a day is. Minhag and halochoh is confused in a big cholent. We don't whether Yisro came before or after Matan torah. Basically, we know nothing for sure about anything - all a machlokas. We are not sure whether the parshious in our teffilin are ordered correctly. Tosfos states clearly Amoraim didn't know pesukim!
Absolutely everything is a machlokas. Shas is full of contradictory sugyos. Millioind of copyist errors permeate our books.
That is positive proof that everything is a hodge podge and there is no mesorah.
Be intellectualy honest and don’t try that argument. There is no synthesised whole. It's only 'stood up to 2000 years of intensive critical analysis' because there is an axiomatic belief it is divine. You are putting the cart before the horse.
The genius of the system is that dealing with all these difficulties (which, in a divine system shouldn't be there, or at least a fraction of what there is) has itself become part of the mitzah of talmud torah. I have always doubted whether a three hour debate in seider over peshat in three words in tosofos is in fact the mitzvoh of talmud torah, when it is clear that a few words dropped out or are distorted due to copyist errors.
Wow! I have been wondering for months why your ideas are so distorted, and you finally have revealed the secret. This diatribe against gemara sounds like it was written by a modern othodox amhaaretz, whose exposure to gemara ended thirty years ago in his twice weekly class at Yeshiva of Flatbush. Sorry, testie, if anything, your childish ideas only prove to those who are immersed in learning why superficiality is so damaging to Talmud study.
You say, "It's only stood up to 2000 years of intensive critical analysis because there is an axiomatic belief it is divine."
This is close, but oh so very horribly far.
Its stood up to 2000 years of intensive critical analysis because it IS divine, and we as a nation experienced that revelation.
Your picture of the state of the mesorah is horribly distorted as well.
Truly mastering the Torah is the hardest thing in the universe that is possible. It is very difficult. Don't misrepresent that for there being something wrong with it. Chas v'Shalom.
If the Torah was man made over the course of centuries as the critics assert, then it would be impossible to retcon such a comprehensive hoax, without it being obvious to any motivated investigator. [citation needed]
Besides for the fact I know many people who do think its obvious to any motivated investigator.
None of this stuff is taught or even discussed in a typical chareidi yeshiva! That's half the problem. Muchtav M'eiliyohu is about the maximum that is tolerated.
Dude this is the message you clearly missed. This is the message behind every shach, behind every taz, behind every rashba, behind every blessed word of gemara that we were zoche to. The fact that they were greater than us and that we struggle with our little minds to understand their every word because they were holding so much better - yes, for some, this was never expressed clearly (though I'm not sure why not and which yeshiva your went to) but it is the attitude behind every first and second seder
I challenge you to approach any rosh yeshivah and ask why it is reasonable to kvetch, for example, the first mishnah in shabbos to be talking about dwarves or how reliable canour mesorah be in the chain of transmission where nearly each braisoh quoted seems to have corrupted text in one way or the other (Its hilarious how practically every time the notes in Artscroll flag 'chas v'sholom the amora is not changing the text of the braisoh, it's just a 'reinterpretation'. Yeah, right.)
See how far you get and what looks you receive.
Do that too often and the mashgiach might suggest 'this yeshiva is not for you'.
You could take a set of secular legislation and say exactly the same thing. Far more integrated than our torah, so clearly mi hashomayim, right? And when their are contradictions the courts are there to find a logical synthesis, so no problems there either.
The difficult with your argument is there should not be any contradictions to start off with, should there? Yet practically every line of gemorroh has difficulties. Go open a msivta gemoroh to see. And that's before you get on to anything else.
I'm afraid emunah peshutoh is the only way to go here, that is for the intellectualy honest anyway.
PS our nach is full of contradictions too. Go reconcile Divrei Hayomim with Melochim.
A perfect system would not allow any machlokasim to develop, no? Hardly 'eternal divine wisdom' to allow the mess we are in to develop, is it?
See my comments above. You are viewing and interpreting everything in the framework of the axioms you have been brought up with (unless you are a BT in which case it is whatever they taught you in kiriv school). But it makes no sense, and it is all emunah peshutoh.
Legislation is interpreted and reconciled both by an arbitrarily framework and also logic. It's not all arbitrary.
The very existence of a clear halacha on TSBP (such as chanukah, brachos, or megilla - both manmade - seems to refute this argument, as apparently a consistent system can be made on manmade halacha as well.
"which would sooner assert that a Mishna is only applicable in the most extreme edge case, then engage in intellectual dishonesty."
That's funny because many would say that the amora that kvetches the braisoh to that bizairre okimto is engaging in the peak of intellectual dishonesty rather than conceding his point.
PS It's generally a named amora that does that to defend his position, not the anonymous and whimsical 'the gemorroh". Let's learn properly. Or is my point just now to academic?
I know that’s your opinion. The point here is that you need to look at this coldly from a professional outsider's view to determine whether it is any sort of support for divinity in our legal texts.
I am not sure how you define 'blatantly dishonest' here, other than in a way that suits you.
And what the Christian apologists do is completely irrelevant. It has no connection with your point as to the divinity of our legal texts
Your mistake in citing this link is that blog is meant for people who are already inclined to reject Chazal and the TSBP, so for them it is is sufficient to just mock something as "ridiculous" or "outlandish" in place of arguments. But the people you are responding to here accept Chazal and the TSBP, so they will just think the author of that post is a ridiculous and outlandish kofer.
I've seen enough times where I thought something was a dochek gadol and as I got more into the sugya it became clear that it was actually the best pshat in the words. Only in the beginning when I was an outsider was it a dochek. And even those times where it never came to fruition, there was a gaon or shach or a rashash who did explain it beautifully, sometimes mamash al derech pshat, sometimes more al derech sod. But to dismiss chazal as "pushing it" is usually missing the boat.
The other message is that we at least see how hard they tried to be answer the words of their predecessors, which is also a huge message
Very well written!
The Documentary hypothesis has many problems, but yours hits the nail on the head. Even before we know the Torah is Divine, its wisdom is blatantly clear. Even before we use the multiple layers of TSBP we can see that the Torah is a breakthrough document. If it was written by some wise people, how did they not see the glaring contradictions that waited for Wellhausen? The inconsistencies should tell us that there are deeper layers of meaning, themselves demanding a TSBP to explain them.
I am cutting and pasting a Goyishe joke here to express a point:
Three sons left home, went out on their own, and prospered. Getting back together, they discussed the gifts they were able to give their elderly Mother. The first said, “I built a house for our mother.” The second said, “I sent her a Mercedes with a driver.” The third smiled and said, “I’ve got you both beat. You remember how mom enjoyed reading the Bible? And you know she can’t see very well. So I sent her a remarkable parrot that recites the entire Bible. It took the elders in the church 12 years to teach him. He’s one of a kind. Mama just has to name the chapter and verse, and the parrot recites it.” Soon thereafter, mom sent out her letters of thanks:*
“Milton,” she wrote one son, “The house you built is so huge. I live in only one room, but I have to clean the whole house.”
*“Gerald,” she wrote to another, “I am too old to travel. I stay most of the time at home, so I rarely use the Mercedes. And the driver is so rude!”
*Dearest Harry,” she wrote to her third son, “You have the good sense to know what your mother likes. The chicken was delicious.”
Hashem gave us a Torah with many layers of wisdom and depth. Every contradiction that we see, brings us to deeper understanding and more chidushim. Every time a word seems superfluous, we learn a new Halacha and understand Ratzon Hashem better. Part of the great gift of the Torah is its difficulty.
Then along came Johann Eichorn, Jean Astruc, and other 'scholars' and took the gift and stomped on it, while claiming to be studying it. They ate it like it was chicken.
איזהו שוטה המאבד מה שנותנים לו
Great joke to bring out the point.
Biblical criticism relies on it not coming from God, because is it is from Him, these obvious contradictions are nothing but hints and codes to a deeper later. But they use these contradictions as proof that it is man made! In truth what they mean is that it is obviously man made prior and therefore these contradictions continue to bolster their given assumption and show their fallibility.
Even if the Torah was man-made, the contradictions must lead to something deeper. The documentary hypothesis means someone was drunk when they were 'compiling' it. And that is patently impossible.
Plot holes in Shakespeare, the degenerate bard, are answered. Yet they can't find an answer in Torah.
Now that we know that the Torah is Divine, the wisdom is clearer and brighter. But their alternative is the bottom of the pile.
Happy, if I may, I would add to your point (perhaps a כל המוסיף גורע?) what the גר"א says in אדרת אליהו beginning of דברים. He sets up the picture that the Five Books are actually בעיקר three, שמות, ויקרא and במדבר. He explains that בראשית is like the introduction (elsewhere he explains that אדם is the beginning of mankind, נח is the תחילת האומות and the אבות and שבטי קה are תחילת ישראל, with which בראשית concludes). And דברים is like the summary of מרע"ה. In the middle we have these three main ספרים with a ראש, תוך וסוף, as שמות is the beginning and set up of כלל ישראל, through their growth, שיעבוד וגאולה, afterwards מתן תורה and הקמת המשכן. All the מצוות therein are related to this setup (עשרת הדברות are like the beginning of everything, which כולל everything, משפטים are דרך ארץ קדמה לתורה and the setup of the משכן and information about the בגדים are all prior to ויקרא to set up the scene for the עבודה).
ויקרא is עיקר תורה, with the bulk of the מצוות, especially the קרבנות which are the shpitz עבודת השי"ת בעולם הזה. Last we have במדבר which is kind of like a wrap up, with instructions to go to א"י and be the כלל ישראל that we know to keep said Torah in it's proper place.
Point I'm bringing out, is that the story of the building of כלל ישראל as described, in perfect tangent with the מצוות given, each commanded in their proper point of that growth of כלל ישראל and connection to הקב"ה, are one beautiful story of our קשר with Him, and how to continue growing with Him throughout our own lives.
(One last point: the storyline which begins with מעשה בראשית is how השם sets up the world with all the history of ספר בראשית, all in order that when the time is ripe, כלל ישראל can step into the picture and conquer א"י and become the center of the world as they are supposed to be. כח מעשיו הגיד לעמו isn't just an answer to one specific question, why "בראשית" over "החדש הזה לכם." It is the answer to explaining the very question of why is the Torah presented as a story if it is indeed a book of laws, and the answer is that the world is setup to be anti-God, with the אומות in charge, and then we, כלל ישראל, step in and perfect it through following His laws. The split between us and the אומות and our role in that is wonderfully interwoven into the fabric of the Torah, that we end up battling and conquering the עובדי ע"ז, those who fight Hashem, and take over and establish Him as the true King whom He really was the whole time, along with His רצון, the עשיית המצוות, the center of the whole תורה.)
Happy, 10 points for this one!!
"But in the opinion of the Bible critics, Moses is a mythological figure who never spoke with God, never issued any commands, never wrote anything, and didn’t exist. The customs and rituals of the Torah developed over many centuries among a group of indigenous Canaanites who called themselves Judeans and Israelites, and who developed fanciful myths about their own origins."
I don't want to cite Bible criticism here, nor defend it, but this is a minority position.
There are many who believe it happened, and the Torah collected the different stories much later. Irrelevant but it was grating on me.
Minority? The majority believes that Moshe commanded the Korban Pesach in Mitzrayim? You're joking.
I was referring to this part: "The customs and rituals of the Torah developed over many centuries among a group of indigenous Canaanites who called themselves Judeans and Israelites, and who developed fanciful myths about their own origins.""
This is a minority position.
It's called the minimalist position, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_minimalism
I'm not sure that's a minority position
Also see here
https://www.daat.ac.il/daat/tanach/maamarim/heker-eli-1.htm
"The customs and rituals of the Torah developed over many centuries among a group of indigenous Canaanites who called themselves Judeans and Israelites, and who developed fanciful myths about their own origins."
Speaking for myself, what got me interested in Judaism was that I could no longer buy this line of thought. When I started researching biblical archaeology, I went into it with the assumption that the Exodus was a myth and that the Tanakh was historically unreliable. As a then secular Zionist, I wanted to believe that the ancient Israelites were indigenous to Canaan, but when I examined the evidence I was far from convinced. There were a few problems that I saw:
1. As staunchly atheistic Isaac Asimov pointed out, there is no chance that an ancient people would make up being slaves. It isn't like today where having your people have been oppressed is seen as some sort of badge of honor, back then to be descended from a slave was more shameful than to have been born out of wedlock. And it was a really big deal back then. Josephus was so ashamed of the Israelites past as slaves that, in his own account of events, he changed the story making the Jews into the former rulers of Egypt. Literally the only reason an ancient people would have a tradition of having been slaves is because they actually had been.
2. Moses is an Egyptian name. Yeah I guess a theoretical story teller could have just given his fictional character an Egyptian name but the simplest explanation would be that it was a real guy and that was his name. Most historians think that Romulus and Remus were literal historical characters using the same logic
3. The Merneptah Stele shows that Israel existed as an established people in Canaan by 1207 BCE. This really screws up all the secular timelines for the origin of ancient Israel, although this handwaved away by secular historians. However, an Israelite confederation settled in the Canaanite hill country at this time is perfectly consistent with the account of Judges
4. Jericho was destroyed exactly as was described in Joshua (walls fell down flat, everything was burned, happened in the spring) although there is dispute about the dating (secular historians say Jericho was destroyed somewhere around 1550 BCE whereas the Tanakh was Jericho falling over 100 years later)
Critics of the biblical account point out that there was no change in the material culture of ancient Canaan, so it couldn't have been conquered by a people from outside the region. But this doesn't work as Judges makes it clear that the Israelites did not kill or expel the Canaanites, rather they absorbed them. The Israelites were semi nomads, only adopting a sedentary lifestyle at ~1200 BCE, of course by then they would have adopted Canaanite material culture. The Canaanites don't disappear from the historical record* until after the United Monarchy split. It's even possible that the Israelites circa ~700 BCE had more Canaanite ancestry than Israelite ancestry, although we certainly hope that that is not the case.
If we are going to exit the realm of religion and go purely by archaeology, I don't think there is enough information to make firm conclusions about who the ancient Israelites were and where they came from. I do think, however, that the biblical account of Israelite origins is the most likely to be correct.
The problem, from a secular view, is that if there really was an Exodus then what do you do with all the stuff that happens before Exodus? The stories of the Patriarchs can fit into secular history but Abraham isn't many generations before Babel and Babel absolutely cannot be reconciled with secular history.
*Of course the Canaanites did continue to exist in Lebanon, and still do to this day. There is no such thing as "Phoenicians". That was just what the Greeks called Canaanites. The reason that the Lebanese are even more vile than their Arab brothers is likely due to their garbage lineage.
Chapters 1-11 of Genesis can probably be categorized as "myth" even for a frum person.
That depends on your definition of "myth"
Ignorance is bliss, Ash.
Since you hate ignorance, check out this substack: https://addiegodslayer.substack.com/p/coming-soon
I don't hate ignorance, Ash.
Did you go out of your way to find that needle in a substack?
I know all about Walls of Text and the type of people who write them. If someone doesn't like Vox Day, just don't read him. She (or he, as seems more likely to me) is not going to change any minds with one wall of text, let alone dozens or hundreds.
A little. I thought it would be funny to link to, tbh.
I love gamma anklebiting.
Shtusim Alert.
Kefirah Alert.
1) Kefira? I can hear that though I don't believe it is.
2) Shtusim? citation needed.
Terrific article! Even your title, why it's not written like the Rambam is a great way to bring out the point!
Gee, thanks!
The picture is wrong (as are all the kiddy pictures) . Per the Mechilta, the blood was on the inside of the doors.
No. I just read a lot.
It is not just that the backdrop of the legal content is the historical narrative, rather the legal content is itself nothing more than narrative. "God spoke to Moshe Saying" is a narrative. The Laws are not set forth in a codex but in a story form of Hashem's conversations with Moshe.
True, but I think it's clear from the peshuto shel mikra that the "Book" is very much meant to be used as a codex (along with the interpretation of the Torah sheBaal Peh, as it says ובאת אל הכהן ואל השופט). The laws are not meant as a nice story, or even as a moral lesson, but to teach us the laws.
"The very fact that the TSBP manages to holistically incorporate and homogenise all of these issues into a synthesised whole, based on a strict system (i.e 13 middos of drosho plus more), and that this system has stood up to 2000 years of intensive critical analysis by the greatest intellects of the Jewish people, is proof positive that the Mesorah was given at Sinai."
If I would be a critic I would say nonsense. Every point has 1,000 people arguing over it. We don't know what set of shofar blowing is d'oreysoh. We don’t know what a teruah is. We don't even know what the halachik definition of a day is. Minhag and halochoh is confused in a big cholent. We don't whether Yisro came before or after Matan torah. Basically, we know nothing for sure about anything - all a machlokas. We are not sure whether the parshious in our teffilin are ordered correctly. Tosfos states clearly Amoraim didn't know pesukim!
Absolutely everything is a machlokas. Shas is full of contradictory sugyos. Millioind of copyist errors permeate our books.
That is positive proof that everything is a hodge podge and there is no mesorah.
Be intellectualy honest and don’t try that argument. There is no synthesised whole. It's only 'stood up to 2000 years of intensive critical analysis' because there is an axiomatic belief it is divine. You are putting the cart before the horse.
The genius of the system is that dealing with all these difficulties (which, in a divine system shouldn't be there, or at least a fraction of what there is) has itself become part of the mitzah of talmud torah. I have always doubted whether a three hour debate in seider over peshat in three words in tosofos is in fact the mitzvoh of talmud torah, when it is clear that a few words dropped out or are distorted due to copyist errors.
Wow! I have been wondering for months why your ideas are so distorted, and you finally have revealed the secret. This diatribe against gemara sounds like it was written by a modern othodox amhaaretz, whose exposure to gemara ended thirty years ago in his twice weekly class at Yeshiva of Flatbush. Sorry, testie, if anything, your childish ideas only prove to those who are immersed in learning why superficiality is so damaging to Talmud study.
You say, "It's only stood up to 2000 years of intensive critical analysis because there is an axiomatic belief it is divine."
This is close, but oh so very horribly far.
Its stood up to 2000 years of intensive critical analysis because it IS divine, and we as a nation experienced that revelation.
Your picture of the state of the mesorah is horribly distorted as well.
Truly mastering the Torah is the hardest thing in the universe that is possible. It is very difficult. Don't misrepresent that for there being something wrong with it. Chas v'Shalom.
"You say, "It's only stood up to 2000 years of intensive critical analysis because there is an axiomatic belief it is divine."
No I don't say. It's a quote from somebody else. Do you know what quotation marks are?
Nitpicker par excellence.
And nobody knows how majy words there are in talmud anyway. Depends on girsaos, doesn't it 😀
Hate to be the devil's advocate here but:
If the Torah was man made over the course of centuries as the critics assert, then it would be impossible to retcon such a comprehensive hoax, without it being obvious to any motivated investigator. [citation needed]
Besides for the fact I know many people who do think its obvious to any motivated investigator.
This was an insider's comment, Ash. It would not convince anyone who is unaware of the simplicity behind the intricacy.
Great comment! אין להקב"ה בעולמו אלא ד"א של הלכה
None of this stuff is taught or even discussed in a typical chareidi yeshiva! That's half the problem. Muchtav M'eiliyohu is about the maximum that is tolerated.
It's mostly glorified self-congratulating the-world-survives-because-of-us pomp.
Dude this is the message you clearly missed. This is the message behind every shach, behind every taz, behind every rashba, behind every blessed word of gemara that we were zoche to. The fact that they were greater than us and that we struggle with our little minds to understand their every word because they were holding so much better - yes, for some, this was never expressed clearly (though I'm not sure why not and which yeshiva your went to) but it is the attitude behind every first and second seder
I challenge you to approach any rosh yeshivah and ask why it is reasonable to kvetch, for example, the first mishnah in shabbos to be talking about dwarves or how reliable canour mesorah be in the chain of transmission where nearly each braisoh quoted seems to have corrupted text in one way or the other (Its hilarious how practically every time the notes in Artscroll flag 'chas v'sholom the amora is not changing the text of the braisoh, it's just a 'reinterpretation'. Yeah, right.)
See how far you get and what looks you receive.
Do that too often and the mashgiach might suggest 'this yeshiva is not for you'.
Discussed, my foot.
That point is not the topic of discussion right now. Dude.
You could take a set of secular legislation and say exactly the same thing. Far more integrated than our torah, so clearly mi hashomayim, right? And when their are contradictions the courts are there to find a logical synthesis, so no problems there either.
The difficult with your argument is there should not be any contradictions to start off with, should there? Yet practically every line of gemorroh has difficulties. Go open a msivta gemoroh to see. And that's before you get on to anything else.
I'm afraid emunah peshutoh is the only way to go here, that is for the intellectualy honest anyway.
PS our nach is full of contradictions too. Go reconcile Divrei Hayomim with Melochim.
A perfect system would not allow any machlokasim to develop, no? Hardly 'eternal divine wisdom' to allow the mess we are in to develop, is it?
See my comments above. You are viewing and interpreting everything in the framework of the axioms you have been brought up with (unless you are a BT in which case it is whatever they taught you in kiriv school). But it makes no sense, and it is all emunah peshutoh.
Legislation is interpreted and reconciled both by an arbitrarily framework and also logic. It's not all arbitrary.
Based on my experience with Christian apologetics, it is trivially easy to harmonize even the most blatant of contradictions
The very existence of a clear halacha on TSBP (such as chanukah, brachos, or megilla - both manmade - seems to refute this argument, as apparently a consistent system can be made on manmade halacha as well.
"which would sooner assert that a Mishna is only applicable in the most extreme edge case, then engage in intellectual dishonesty."
That's funny because many would say that the amora that kvetches the braisoh to that bizairre okimto is engaging in the peak of intellectual dishonesty rather than conceding his point.
PS It's generally a named amora that does that to defend his position, not the anonymous and whimsical 'the gemorroh". Let's learn properly. Or is my point just now to academic?
I know that’s your opinion. The point here is that you need to look at this coldly from a professional outsider's view to determine whether it is any sort of support for divinity in our legal texts.
I am not sure how you define 'blatantly dishonest' here, other than in a way that suits you.
And what the Christian apologists do is completely irrelevant. It has no connection with your point as to the divinity of our legal texts
http://ajewwithquestions.blogspot.com/2016/10/why-does-gemara-give-outlandish.html
Your mistake in citing this link is that blog is meant for people who are already inclined to reject Chazal and the TSBP, so for them it is is sufficient to just mock something as "ridiculous" or "outlandish" in place of arguments. But the people you are responding to here accept Chazal and the TSBP, so they will just think the author of that post is a ridiculous and outlandish kofer.
I've seen enough times where I thought something was a dochek gadol and as I got more into the sugya it became clear that it was actually the best pshat in the words. Only in the beginning when I was an outsider was it a dochek. And even those times where it never came to fruition, there was a gaon or shach or a rashash who did explain it beautifully, sometimes mamash al derech pshat, sometimes more al derech sod. But to dismiss chazal as "pushing it" is usually missing the boat.
The other message is that we at least see how hard they tried to be answer the words of their predecessors, which is also a huge message
They don't believe in TSHP. they claim that it was fabricated (ח"ו) to reform the תורה or other such claims.
They don't believe in תורה מן השמים, so they deny everything.
that's how כופרים work.