BOOK REVIEWS B. Barry Levy, Fixing God's Torah: the Accuracy of the Hebrew Bible Text in Jewish
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BOOK REVIEWS B. Barry Levy, Fixing God’s Torah: The Accuracy of the Hebrew Bible Text in Jewish Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 237 + xii pp. In the midst of reading Barry Levy’s exceptionally learned and well argued book, I began to identify with it personally because of what recently happened in a weekly Talmud study group I lead in Toronto. The group is made up of orthodox Jews who want to combine some of the methods of modern scholarship with the methods with which they rst studied Talmud in yeshivot and day schools. During the course of our study, we came across a Talmud passage dealing with the halakhic implications of the fact that a numbers of words in Scripture are written one way but pronounced a di Verent way. In analyzing this passage and the literary and theological issues it raises, I discussed a medieval gloss of Tosafot (B. Shab. 55b, s.v. me’aviram) and brought in for discussion some relevant responsa of R. David ibn Abi Zimra (Radbaz), who lived and wrote in late fteenth cen- tury Egypt. These responsa deal with problems arising from even greater instances of textual uidity and uncertainty, such as when words in Scriptures are spelled one way by the rabbis but another way in the text of Scripture now read publicly in the synagogue. The analysis of these responsa and their precedents and consequences comprises the heart of Levy’s study, even though I was unaware of his work at that time. At the next session of our study group, a man who had joined us a few months earlier was absent, and then he did not return at all. About a month or so later I met him by chance in the street. Not wanting to make anyone feel guilty about not coming to a purely voluntary study group, I nonetheless did not want him to think I was indiVerent to either his presence or his absence. So, I enquired about his health as a way of leading into my question about his whereabouts. With a certain amount of respectful deference, he told me, somewhat sadly: “I can no longer come to your group anymore because you were destroying everything I believe.” Taken aback at rst, since both my theology and my religious practice are quite ©Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2003 Review of Rabbinic Judaism 6.2-3 372 book reviews traditional, and the medieval texts I brought in for discussion were all from universally accepted traditional authorities, I asked him to elaborate on his rather serious charge against me. (I hadn’t even mentioned, as I sometimes do, the views of such modern critical scholars as Frankel, Ginzberg, Halivni, or Neusner.) He then told me how he came from a nonobservant and largely ignorant Jewish background. Having become dissatis ed with his customary way of life, he sought out Jewish learning coupled with Jewish observance. His rst stop on this journey was a seminar conducted by a Jewish outreach organization called “Aish Hatorah.” This organization is famous for its attempts to convince Jews that from the precise spelling and ordering of words, and especially letters, in our present masoretic text of Scripture, many astounding scienti c and historical facts (even theories) can be deduced. That, of course, means that these facts were already predicted by Scripture and encoded in its immaculate text. From this, one is to be convinced that only God could have written the Torah and, accordingly, we are now bound to keep its commandments and study it for more such information. In their view, the Torah should gain greater stature in our modern eyes because of its mathematical-like accuracy. Obviously, though, if one admits any uidity or uncertainty in the text of Scripture (especially in the Pentateuch), any discrepancies between manuscripts for example, then the whole basis of these so- called “Bible Codes” collapses. Knowing that I could not change my former pupil’s rather skewed view of the revelation of the Torah and the purpose of that revelation, I simply wished him well and urged him to nd another Talmud teacher, one less threatening to him than myself. But, if Barry Levy’s book had been available at the time of our chance meeting, I would have strongly suggested that he get a copy and read it, since it is a book by an Orthodox rabbi who is superbly trained in both classical rabbinics and mod- ern historical-critical scholarship. Maybe Levy’s book would force him to work though these issues. Surely, he is one of the people Levy had in mind in writing this book. What Levy attempts to do is justify the practice of lower textual criticism by Orthodox Jews. As he meticulously shows, even Mai- monides’ famous dogmatic assertion that the Torah we now possess is the same one given to Moses by God does not mean that we can- not recognize important variants between texts. The rabbis them-.