The End of the Beginning (3)

For Ezra had set his heart to seek the law of YHWH, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and ordinances   Ezra 7:10  JPS 1917

To seek – Judaism and Hellenism, Martin Hengel’s magnum opus, might at first glance appear to be a study of the difference between these two streams.  At least that’s what we have been taught, that is, that Judaism represents an alternative to the present worldview of the Greco-Roman West.  However, Hengel’s work shows that Hellenism thoroughly  saturated Judaism in politics, society, economics, and finally religious thought.  Only some “radical” sects seem to have resisted its encroachment, and only through withdrawal from ordinary Israelite life.  Qumran is an example.  Rabbinic Judaism is not.  Moses and Alexander squared off in civilization’s epic battle.  Alexander won.

All of this leaves us with a critically important question.  If the Torah as we understand it today is the product of interpretative paradigms infected with Hellenistic philosophy, then what good is it?  Heschel replies:

“Would you like to know the real value of the Torah for the world?  Consider this.  The world is an amalgam of good and evil, of light and darkness.  There is no ready way to know whether the evil or the good predominates, whether the darkness or the light is primary.  With all the books in the world, with all the cultures human history has produced, there is no answer to the question of whether there is a judgment and a judge.  Does the Highest Being seek justice?”[1]

“The human soul is inundated with temporal concerns, benighted by its drives, and in all of its longings, it vacillates, unable to distinguish between holy and profane, between bondage and freedom, between temporal concerns and that which transcends time.  It is the receiving of Torah that enables the soul to overlap two domains: the domain of nature and the domain of Torah, like the spirit of God that hovers just above the deep waters.  In the domain of Torah, a person can be seen through a heavenly lens, as God conceives of us.”[2]

Does this help?  Perhaps Torah is merely an heuristic tool good for society and justice, but nothing more.  Nachmanides counters such an objection:

“ . . . the great principle about which we are admonished in Deuteronomy is that we not forget the standing at Sinai. ‘But take utmost care and watch yourselves scrupulously, so that you do not forget the things that you saw with your own eyes . . . the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb’ (Deuteronomy 4:9-10).  And one of these commandments, according to Nachmanides, is ‘that we not forget the standing at Mount Sinai . . . and the utility of this commandment is enormous.  For suppose Torah had come to us only through Moses.  Even though his prophecy was confirmed by signs and miracles, had another prophet arisen, commanded us something contrary, and performed some sign or miracle, people would have entertained doubt.  But since Torah reached our ears directly from on high, before our very eyes, with no intermediary, we can refute anyone who deviates or seeks to implant doubt, and no sign will help such a person . . . and when we rehearse this for our children, they will know that it is indubitably true, as if all generations had seen it.’”[3]

Notice, if you will (and this is critically important), that Nachmanides’ claim is not based on Torah itself.  It is based on the experience of receiving Torah.  Yes, the commandments might be the basis of a just society.  They might need to be emblazoned above halls of justice, but they are not there because they are right.  They are there because they come from God!  And Sinai is the critical moment in human history when God revealed His instructions to men.  Not to a prophet who relayed them to men, but directly, experientially, in their ears and in their eyes.  God spoke.  Let us not forget.

This is the basis of Torah, the reason for obedience.  Not rabbinic commentary.  Not Christian exegesis.  Not the Talmud or the Institutes.  Those, all of them, are subject to interpretive paradigms, as we have discovered.  What matters is that a group of people stood before a mountain and God spoke.  What matters is the experience—and Torah is a recounting of that experience.  We adopt Torah as a way of living because of the experience of the original audience.  We don’t read that account to pry out hidden meanings and celestial secrets.  We read because we want to remember what it was like to be there.  Moses matters, but not because he was a prophet.  He matters because God used him in order to speak to the people, and it is speaking that makes all the difference.

Topical Index: Torah, Moses, prophet, Nachmanides, experience, Sinai, Ezra 7:10

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[1] Abraham Heschel, Heavenly Torah as Refracted through the Generations (Continuum, 2007), p. 668.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid., p. 669.