Torah min hashamayim

THE VIEW DESCRIBED in the previous chapter, that revelation has to be seen in terms of divine co-operation with humans, has often been challenged on the grounds that it is contrary to Jewish tradition, especially to the doctrine Torah min hashamayim(the Torah is from Heaven), which objection I have countered by saying: it all depends on what you mean by from. This chapter considers in greater detail how the historical critical method sheds light on this ‘from’ and whether the position I adopt can be considered to be in any way traditional.

What Orthodoxy today seems unanimously to accept is that the doctrine that the Torah is from Heaven means that every word of the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses, was communicated directly by God to Moses during the forty years the Children of Israel journeyed through the wilderness, as were the laws given to Moses during his stay, for forty days and nights, on Mount Sinai. Unless this view is accepted, it is argued, traditionally minded Jews are speaking falsehoods when they sing, as the Sefer Torah is raised in the synagogue, ‘And this is the Torah which Moses set before the Children of Israel according to the commandment of the Lord by the hand of Moses’.

Three separate questions have to be asked. Is this the traditional view? Even if it is, are there now good reasons to reject it? And does it make sense, for those who reject it for good reasons, to affirm that they still believe in Torah min hashamayim?

Honesty compels us to admit that the view expressed above is the traditional one—if traditional means the way in which Maimonides for m ulated the doctrine, as mentioned in the previous chapter, although it has been noted there that some commentators in the Middle Ages did acknowledge that some verses of the Pentateuch must have been added after Moses. That the congregation sings ‘And this is the Torah which Moses set before the Children of Israel according to the commandment of the Lord by the hand of Moses’ is not found in all rites, but those who introduced this practice in the late Middle Ages did, undoubtedly, believe in the Maimonidean formulation and so do presumably many, perhaps most, Orthodox Jews when they sing this today.