Rules of Engagement (1)

Then God spoke all these words, saying,  Exodus 20:1  NASB

All these words – kāl dābārim, “all words.”  But what is the meaning of “all”?  This verse precedes the recitation of the ten commandments.  Are just the Ten Commandments included in “all”?  What about the rest of God’s words to Moses? Orthodox Rabbinic Judaism has a much bigger view than just these ten “words.”  According to Jewish orthodoxy, God delivered both the written and the oral Torah to Moses on Sinai.

“Moses went up the mountain and stayed there forty days and forty nights, without food or sleep, for he had become like an angel. During this time, G‑d revealed to Moses the entire Torah, with all its laws and the interpretations thereof.”[1]

This view supplies the necessary authority for the Talmud, and on that basis, Talmudic explanation of the written Torah is accepted as God’s divine instruction.  Of course, there are detractors.  One Messianic group is particularly brusque:

“Both Israeli Orthodox religious and secular Jews have been greatly deceived by forsaking full attention to God’s divine Written Word given by God to Moses at Mount Sinai; they believe God also gave Moses a divine Oral Law, which can’t be proven from any Scriptures. Orthodox religious Jews have placed a major focus on a supposed Rabbinical Talmud and Mishna Oral Law, which is not from God!”[2]

What is the purpose of such a stern judgment?  Is it to undermine Jewish Rabbinic orthodoxy in order to “prove” that the Torah of Moses is all that is really divinely inspired?  What do we do with the “writings” and the “prophets”?  It appears that this Messianic point of view is intent on dismissing the Talmud, perhaps without realizing that the “Christian” Bible is filled with as many difficulties and subject to as many or more commentators.  After all, neither the Jewish nor the Christian Messianic world could survive based on a strict application of divine instructions given to nomadic people leaving Egypt 3500 years ago.  Adjustments must be made.  As it happens, Rabbinic Judaism made these adjustments by appropriating Mosaic authority in a doctrine that claims both written and oral Torah were given at Sinai.  But Christianity isn’t far behind.  Consider the claim that the Trinity must be true because it is absurd and an absurd view of God must come from God Himself since it makes no sense on the human level (you can thank Millard Erickson for this explanation).  Or perhaps that idea that God dies on the cross.  No, wait, says Christian theology, only the Man part of the God-Man died.  God, of course, can’t die.  Are these explanations any more illogical than the idea that God gave the oral Torah to Moses?  I don’t think so.

Every religion has its shibboleths.  Religion couldn’t function without them.  They are what make it possible for modern believers to claim ancient authority for contemporary applications.  Perhaps the most important question we must ask about our religious convictions is not, “Is it true?” but rather, “Where did that idea come from?”  In the end, academic and scholarly pursuit of the origin of an idea does not (usually) penetrate the spiritual assumptions of the believer because the experience of God is not simply a cognitive pursuit.

An analysis of the historical formation of our Torah can never touch the secret of the encounter between humanity and God. Even after many years in which cultures changed and new scientific tools were developed, the individual who ties his soul to the Torah is able to experience something of this encounter. Biblical scholarship does not impinge on the exalted stature of the Torah, just as the study of art is not able to expose the inspiration behind painting, musical composition, literature, and poetry.[3]

Our Torah is a faithful expression of God’s will, translated into human language, with all that it entails. The process of its creation is complex, and includes different prophetic moments that occur in the wondrous course of communication between God and the human beings created in His image and likenes [sic].[4]

Of course, this does not mean you can believe whatever you wish.  At some point your beliefs will have to make sense.  Just remember.  “There is a difference between truth and fiction.  Fiction has to make sense.”

Topical Index: doctrine, Torah, oral law, Sinai, Trinity, experience, Exodus 20:1

[1] https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2048/jewish/Moses-Receives-the-Torah.htm

[2] https://news.kehila.org/20-scriptures-proving-why-an-oral-torah-could-never-have-been-given-by-god-to-moses-at-mount-sinai/

[3] David Bigman, “I Shall Fear God Alone and Not Show Favor in Torah: A Conceptual Foundation for Wrestling with Biblical Scholarship,” in  The Believer and the Modern Study of the Bible (eds. Ganzel, Brandes, and Deutsch), 2019, p. 317

[4] Ibid., p 318.