Reason and Mystery in the Pentateuch

Streiter

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781532615610
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Reason and Mystery in the Pentateuch is grounded in the faith that the following related truths are self-evident: God revealed to Moses two works, known together as the Torah. The first work is the Pentateuch (the Written Law), revealed as a book consisting mainly of a sacred history and a codex. The second work is the Mishnah (the Oral Law), an elucidation of the codex transmitted orally through many generations, then redacted as a book. The Torah has never been corrupted; the text read today is identical to the text God revealed to Moses. Because God, who is perfect, revealed the text, it must be perfect. Only in it must intent and execution be identical. And because God is essentially incomprehensible, the Pentateuch must be, at least in part, incomprehensible. The present book will interest traditionalist Christians, to whom, as to traditionalist Jews, the Pentateuch is sacred. It will interest readers not committed to the truths above for the insight it provides about readers for whom those truths are self-evident. For those readers, readers of faith, the Pentateuch must be not merely read, but continuously, intently, and reverentially studied. Reason and Mystery in the Pentateuch demonstrates how such study of the Pentateuch, considered as a literary artifact, may be conducted. In particular, it underscores the limits imposed by its Author upon the capacity of human intelligence to comprehend the plain meaning of its sacred history and its codex, and the linguistic strategy by which those limits are established.

Appendix 1

The position that the Pentateuch traditionalists study today is not essentially the same Pentateuch God dictated to Moses at the Revelation on Mount Sinai is advocated in detail by Marc B. Shapiro.1 In the opinion of the present study, that position is obviated by a survey of relevant biblical history that for traditionalists perforce corroborates a theological axiom.

Between the time God dictated the Pentateuch (the Written Law) and the Mishnah (the Oral Law)2 to Moses3 during the Revelation and the time the First Temple was destroyed, an uncorrupted text of the Pentateuch existed. According to Deuteronomy 31:24-26, Moses wrote it and placed it in, or near, the Ark of the Covenant4 shortly before he died, thirty-nine years after the Revelation. From that time until the First Temple was destroyed, the uncorrupted text remained in the Holiest of Holies. During that period the Pentateuch “must have been in the Ark. Otherwise it could not have come from the destruction of Shiloh to Solomon’s Temple. It was never lost; being in the Ark, in the Holiest of Holies, it was only accessible to the High Priest on Yom Kippur. It simply was not asked for all these centuries.” 5 What happened to it immediately after the First Temple was destroyed is not known. Sometime between when Ezra returned to the land of Israel, and when he died, he presented the Pentateuch again to the Jewish people - the same Pentateuch that Moses had received at Mount Sinai, as the Book of Nechemiah recounts in detail (8:1-38), and as the Babylonian Talmud confirms in asserting that “it was presented to them again in the days of Ezra.”6

From the time of Ezra to the beginning of the Common Era (CE), and for centuries thereafter, scholarly attention devoted to such Pentateuchs as appeared assessed their accuracy by comparison to Ezra’s Pentateuch; until, during the tenth century, a document of the Pentateuch was redacted known as the Masoretic text, the text still accepted by traditionalists as canonical.

The biblical history above supports the conclusion that from the Revelation to about the beginning of the Common Era the Pentateuch that Moses wrote was essentially uncorrupted. That being the case, unless during three subsequent centuries (about 700–1000 CE) evidence of major discrepancies was discovered by Masoretic scholarship, it is reasonable to conclude that from the Revelation to the redaction of the Masoretic text in the tenth century CE—that is to say, through about twenty-three—the Pentateuch that Moses was taught “at Sinai” was essentially uncorrupted.

That during the three centuries of Masoretic editing no major discrepancies were discovered is affirmed even by Shapiro, who grants that “there is no question that it is not improper, to continue to refer to ‘the Masoretic text,’ and in the pages that follow I shall do so. The minor variations simply enforce the fact that there is an overwhelming measure of agreement.”7 And since that is the case, it is reasonable to conclude that, except as regards vocalization, the Masoretic enterprise was remarkably unproductive, because over about three centuries it edited a text that required no significant editing.

That it did not require such editing is demonstrated by the survey of biblical history above. That, as a theological matter, it could not for traditionalists have required such editing is demonstrated by the brief discussion below of God’s intention as regards the Revelation.

Beyond question, because He has always loved the Jewish people unfathomably, God erupted into human history at Mount Sinai to give to them alone the most precious of His gifts: a document in two parts—the Pentateuch (the Written Law) and the Mishnah (the Oral Law)—that is to say, the Torah—that alone can teach only them how to effect a transcendent aspiration: how to cling to Him in love. In that clinging alone, Deuteronomy 4:4 asserts, is life: “Only you, the ones who remained attached to God your Lord, are still alive today.” And the Jewish people can achieve life only in measure as they obey the commandments stipulated, often, perhaps even for the most part, cryptically in the Written Law, and explained in minute detail in the Oral Law; and they are therefore commanded in Leviticus 18:5 to “Keep My decrees and laws, since it is only by keeping them that a person can [truly] live.”

That the statement above describes God’s intention is demonstrated by Deuteronomy 7:6-8,11. As Moses informs the Jewish people,

[6] You are a nation consecrated to God your Lord. God your Lord chose you to be His special people among all the nations on the face of the earth. [7] It was not because you had greater numbers than all the other nations that God embraced you and chose you; you are among the smallest of all the nations. [8] It was because of God’s love for you and because He was keeping the oath that He made to your fathers . . . [11] So safeguard the mandate, the rules and laws that I am teaching you today, so that you will keep them.

Because the statement above describes pellucidly God’s intention as regards the Revelation at Mount Sinai, that He would not permit the document—the Torah—His sole guide to its implementation to become corrupted is axiomantic. That is to say, as the present study shows, both the Pentateuch and the Mishnah often, perhaps even typically, confound intellection by underscoring mysterium. But mysterium and corruption are different matters. A God who loves his people profoundly may, for reasons that cannot be known, promote incomprehension. But that He would not permit corruption to infect the document indispensable to the transcendent aspiration of His chosen people is self-evident.

In the opinion of the present study, the essential proof that the Torah Moses received at Mount Sinai is essentially the Torah redacted about twenty-three centuries later is contained in the theological statement above. The relevant biblical history merely corroborates the statement, because for traditionalists it must. That is to say, the Torah has passed uncorrupted through history from the Revelation at Mount Sinai to the present day, and will continue to pass uncorrupted through history until history ends, because God intends that it should, and therefore it must. To secular scholarship that is obscurantism. To traditionalism it is faith.

1. The Limits of Orthodox Theology (Portland, OR: 2005), pp. 91-121.

2. That during the Revelation at Mount Sinai God taught Moses the Oral Law is axiomatic for traditionalists. Opinions vary, however, regarding how many of the mishnayot contained in the written text, known as the Mishnah, redacted from a text transmitted orally for centuries constitute the Oral Law. (For a minimalist opinion formulated by Maimonides, see pp. 118-121, above.)

3. As Deuteronomy 31:9 indicates, Moses wrote the Pentateuch, and assembled the Mishnah, only a short time before he died, and in the land of Moab (32:49), rather than at Mount Sinai. Nevertheless, on the authority of the Mishnah (Pirke Avot 1:1), traditionalism asserts that Moses “received the Torah at Mount Sinai,” perhaps on the understanding that God dictated the Pentateuch to him during the eighty (or one hundred and twenty) days he spent with Him on Mount Sinai; and that during that time He also taught him those mishnayot that constitute the Oral Law, and that were transmitted orally until the time of the “Great Assembly,” or Sanhedrin, a judicial institution that persisted into the Common Era (CE), when Rabbi Yehuda ha’Nasi compiled the Mishnah, a volume that contained both those mishnayot that constitute the Oral Law, and others.

4. Whether the scroll was placed in the Ark itself or in a container adjacent to the Ark is disputed in Bava Basra 14b. That it was in one of those places is not disputed.

5. Heinrich W. Guggenheimer (email communication dated September 8, 2015, to the author)

6. Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin, 21b. For traditionalism, that the Talmud acknowledges that the letters in Ezra’s Pentateuch were different from those in Moses’ Pentateuch, and nonetheless maintains that the two Pentateuchs were the same confirms that the change in letter...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Reason and Mystery in the Pentateuch
• Appendix 1
• Bibliography