Veda and Torah: Transcending the Textuality of Scripture

CHAPTER 4: Torah and Revelation

CHAPTER 4 Torah and Revelation When the Holy One, blessed be He, gave the Torah to Israel, the earth rejoiced but the heavens wept.... The Holy One, blessed be He, said to the heavens, "You who abide on high should give praise to My glory and My daughter, even more than the earth does." They said to him, "Lord of the worlds, the earth, to whom the Torah is being given, may well offer praise, but we from whom it goes forth, how can we give praise and not mourn?" In discussing the status and role of the Torah in creation in chapter 2, we were concerned primarily with four types of formulations found in rabbinic and kabbalistic texts, in which the Torah is variously represented as (1) the Word of God or Name of God, which participates in the essence of God; (2) primordial wisdom, I:Iolpnah, which serves as the architect of creation; (3) the blueprint containing the elements ofthe divine language that structure creation; and (4) a concrete written text together with an oral tradition of interpretation . Another trend of speculation in rabbinic and kabbalistic sources concerns the mechanisms through which the primordial Torah that served as the instrument of creation came to be embodied on earth in a corpus of texts. The descent of the Torah from its supernal abode to earth is represented as occurring at a particular time and place in history: at the revelation at Mount Sinai in 1447 B.C.E., according to the traditional reckoning, which is considered the central turning point in the salvation history of the Jewish people. Rabbinic and kabbalistic discussions of mattan torah, the giving of the Torah, generally take as their starting point the biblical account of the Sinai revelation in the book of Exodus. The Exodus 253 254 Veda and Torah account depicts the revelation as occurring in two main phases. In the first phase God himself "came down upon Mount Sinai" (Exod. 19.20) and spoke directly to the people of Israel who stood at the foot of the mountain, declaring to them the Ten Commandments, the "Ten Words" ('iiseret ha-dibberot) of the Decalogue (Exod. 20.1-17). In the second phase of the revelation Moses assumed the role of the covenant mediator and made a series of ascents to the top of the "mountain of God" (Exod. 24.13), where God imparted to him the detailed teachings and commandments of the Torah. In his first extended sojourn on the mountain Moses remained for forty days and forty nights (Exod. 24.18), at the end of which God gave him the two tablets of the covenant "written with the finger of God" (Exod. 31.18). When Moses descended the mountain and saw the Israelites reveling in the worship of a golden calf, he cast the tablets out of his hand and broke them (Exod. 32.19). Due to Moses's intercession on behalf of the people of Israel, God conceded to renew the covenant and instructed Moses to cut two stone tablets like the first (Exod. 34.1). Moses then ascended Mount Sinai again for his second extended sojourn of' forty days and forty nights (Exod. 34.4,28). When Moses descended the mountain with the second tablets of the covenant, the skin ofhis face shone and the Israelites were afraid to approach him (Exod. 34.29-30). Moses then assembled all of the people of Israel and imparted to them the teachings that he had received from God on the mountain (Exod. 34.32). In addition to key verses in the Exodus account, Midrashim on the revelation of the Torah regularly invoke a number of other biblical verses that allude to the Sinai event. One of the most frequently discussed verses is Deuteronomy 33.2: The Lord came from Sinai, and dawned from Seir upon them; He shone forth from Mount Paran, He came from the ten thousands of holy ones, at His right hand was a fiery law Ces-diit) for them. Another biblical passage that is often invoked in Midrashim on the Sinai revelation is Psalm 68.18-19: The chariots (relJe~) of God are twice ten thousand, thousands upon thousands; the Lord is among them, Sinai in holiness. You ascended ('iiliih) on high, you took a captivity captive, you took gifts for humanity. Torah and Revelation 255 As we shall see, such verses are often used to...