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12. The Pentateuch as Scripture and the Challenge of Biblical Criticism: Responses among Modern Jewish Thinkers and Scholars
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203 Chapter 12 The Pentateuch as Scripture and the Challenge of Biblical Criticism Responses among Modern Jewish Thinkers and Scholars Baruch J. Schwartz Introduction The study of the Pentateuch among Jews in the two centuries following the appearance of modern Pentateuchal criticism had no choice but to cope with the fact that the systematic study of the Torah had become an academic enterprise carried out exclusively by Christian scholars and that its results were diametrically opposed to the tradition of Jewish learning.1 Severe challenges to traditional Judaism emerged especially from what ultimately came to be known as the “Higher” Criticism of the Pentateuch. Higher Criticism, recognizing that the Torah contains the work of more than one author and that it achieved its current form by a process that took place over time, proceeds from the realization that the solution to the exegetical issues that make the canonical Torah so difficult to follow often lies in determining how the text was composed. Several theories regarding the origins of the Pentateuch and the process by which it evolved were proposed by the Higher Critics, each one equally at odds with the traditional Jewish view of the Torah. Best known of all these was a theory that crystallized toward the end of the nineteenth century and came to be known as the Documentary Hypothesis. According to this theory, four independent sources or, better, documents—each containing its own account of Israel’s early history and its own version of the Mosaic laws—were combined to produce what we know as the Pentateuch or (according to many critics) 204 Baruch J. Schwartz to form a six-book work that extended from Genesis to Joshua. Sourcecritical scholars managed, with considerable success, to disentangle these documents (referred to by the abbreviations J, E, P, and D) from one another and to reconstruct their original forms. They then proceeded to assess each document’s unique literary, theological, and legal features and to posit its probable origin, authorship, and historical background. Just about every possible reaction to the challenges posed by Pentateuchal criticism has manifested itself among Jewish scholars who have attempted to respond to it, and this fact alone is enough to indicate from the outset that there is no definitive “Jewish” response to the critical study of the Pentateuch. We shall not attempt to trace the history of Jewish scholarship since the beginnings of Pentateuchal criticism but rather to examine some of its trends, with the aim of demonstrating that Jewish study of the Pentateuch since the onset of the critical approach has been remarkably diverse. Jewish concern with the criticism of the Pentateuch may be divided into two main types: that which has arisen out of religious motives and that which has been primarily academic in character. The crucial difference between the two is that in the former category are Jews addressing the question of the role of the Pentateuch in the Jewish religion, while in the latter category are biblical scholars who happen to be Jews. In practice, however, it was only natural for the two types of concern to merge and for the distinction to become blurred, even in the writings of one scholar. The Challenge of Pentateuchal Criticism The traditional Jewish approach to the study of the Pentateuch, as it developed over the centuries from rabbinic times down to the present, stems from the belief that it was composed by God and verbally revealed to Moses; that its narratives are a factual record of (the world’s and) Israel’s origins and the establishment of its covenant with God and that they exist in order to teach and edify; that its laws are a comprehensive and fully harmonious body of commanded legislation, incumbent on the Jewish people forever; and that the body of rabbinic teaching designed to implement and supplement these narratives and laws is in fact their authoritative and correct interpretation, it too being, in some measure at least, of divine origin. Thus, the “Written Torah” is only a portion of the Torah: it is incomplete in itself and understandable only by recourse to that other body of revelation, the “Oral Torah.” [54.91.19.62] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 12:48 GMT) The Pentateuch as Scripture and the Challenge of Biblical Criticism 205 In Judaism, the Pentateuch (and, to some extent, the whole of Scripture ) came to be viewed as the eternal foundation on which all normative teaching—legal, ethical, ritual, philosophical—must ultimately be based, whether explicitly...