Revelation and Authority Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition

REVISED PAGES The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library Revelation and Authority Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition Benjamin D. Sommer New Haven S and N A YBRL London L iii 00a_FM_fn.indd 3 09/02/15 7:35 AM REVISED PAGES “Anchor Yale Bible” and the Anchor Yale logo are registered trademarks of Yale University. Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of James Wesley Cooper of the Class of 1865, Yale College. Copyright © 2015 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. The author gratefully acknowledges permission from Schocken Publishing House Ltd. of Tel Aviv to quote several lines from the poetry of Yehuda Amichai at the end of the last chapter of this book and permission from Hana Amichai and the Estate of Yehuda Amichai to provide his own translation of those lines. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail sales.press@yale .edu (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Adobe Caslon type by Newgen. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sommer, Benjamin D., 1964– Revelation and authority : Sinai in Jewish scripture and tradition / Benjamin D. Sommer. pages cm. — (The Anchor Yale Bible reference library) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-300-15873-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Revelation on Sinai. 2. Bible. Old Testament—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 3. Rosenzweig, Franz, 1886–1929—Influence. 4. Heschel, Abraham Joshua, 1907–1972—Influence. 5. Rabbinical literature—History and criticism. I. Title. bm612.s66 2015 296.3′115—dc23 2014032429 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). S N 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 L iv 00a_FM_fn.indd 4 09/02/15 7:35 AM REVISED PAGES Contents Preface, ix Acknowledgments, xiii List of Abbreviations, xvii Introduction: Participatory Theories of Revelation, 1 1. Artifact or Scripture?, 11 2. What Happened at Sinai? Maximalist and Minimalist Approaches, 27 3. Command and Law in the Participatory Theology of Revelation, 99 4. Scripture as Tradition, and Tradition as Scripture, 147 5. Event, Process, and Eternity, 188 6. A Modern Jewish Approach to Scripture, 209 Conclusion: Innovation, Continuity, and Covenant, 241 Notes, 253 Bibliography, 365 Subject Index, 403 Index of Ancient and Medieval Sources, 000 S N L vii 00a_FM_fn.indd 7 09/02/15 7:35 AM REVISED PAGES Preface In this book, I address several audiences at once: biblical scholars, specialists in modern Jewish and Christian thought, theologians, clergy, religious educators, and—not least—lay readers who wonder about the place of the Bible in their lives and in the life of their com- munities. I hope my close readings of biblical texts show scholars of theology that the Bible is more subtle and more interesting than they may have realized, or interesting in ways they never considered. By drawing at once on studies of the Bible’s ancient Near Eastern context and on constructive theology, this book should convince religious Jews and Christians that biblical criticism need not be hos- tile to religious readings of scripture, and that attempts to see the Bible in its own cultural setting equip the theologian and the person of faith with important tools. Conversely, many biblical critics shun Jewish thought and Christian theology as irrelevant to their area of study. I intend the chapters that follow to demonstrate to my col- leagues in the guild of biblical studies that sensitivity to the concerns of later religious thinkers enriches our understanding of the biblical texts themselves. I focus on two modern Jewish thinkers, Franz Rosenzweig and Abraham Joshua Heschel, but the suggestion that interaction between biblical scholarship and theology will be fruitful for both applies to many other thinkers as well. Striking a balance between providing necessary background and moving new arguments forward is an elusive goal. This is all the more the case in a book that draws on several disciplines and speaks to varied audiences. At times I pause to explain matters that some readers already have studied, and I hope these readers will be forbearing as they skim the relevant paragraphs. Where necessary I refer readers to useful overviews of scholarship in the endnotes. S N L ix ix 00a_FM_fn.indd 9 09/02/15 7:35 AM REVISED PAGES x Preface Otherwise the endnotes are intended for academic specialists in one field or another. I use them to respond to potential objections to my argument that involve technical issues that are specific to particular academic sub- disciplines. Many readers will prefer not to look at the notes at all, and even specialists will look at some and not others. It is for this reason that I have made them endnotes and not footnotes. Although the endnotes are lengthy, taking up about a third of the book, they are quite selective in their references to secondary literature. The topics I address are fundamentally important and also quite broad; they invoke scholarship from several areas of specialization, one of which has flourished since the early nineteenth century. Consequently, they have generated an enormous amount of secondary literature in a variety of languages. For most of the items in the bibliography, specialists can immediately think of several additional articles or books I might have cited. I make no attempt at being comprehensive in my references to these literatures. Translations are my own, unless I specifically indicate otherwise in an endnote or in the bibliography. I refer to biblical verses using the number- ing system found in the Hebrew (Masoretic) text. On occasion, the num- bering in some English translations varies by one or two verses. Some issues of terminology: The God of ancient Israel, like all deities of the ancient Near East, has a personal name, spelled in Hebrew with the four letters yod, hey, waw, and hey. Most translations render this name in English as “Lord,” in uppercase letters, to differentiate it from the noun “Lord,” but by rendering a personal name with this noun, these translations miss something crucial in the original text. I prefer simply to trans- literate this name. Following Jewish tradition, however, I never pronounce this name out loud, instead substituting some other Hebrew word, such as Adonay or Hashem, wherever the four-letter name appears in a text, and as a sort of precaution I do not spell it with its vowels, either. Therefore, this name always appears as “Yhwh” in this book, even when I am citing the title of an article or book that spells it with the vowels. The term “Israel” in this book always refers to the whole nation that goes by that name—that is, to the Jewish people, and not to the northern kingdom, to the character Jacob, or to the modern state. I discuss various terms with which Jews, Christians, and academics refer to Hebrew scripture in chapter 1, and various meanings of the word S “Torah” in chapter 4. To anticipate my comments there, I can note that “the N L x 00a_FM_fn.indd 10 09/02/15 7:35 AM REVISED PAGES Preface xi Bible” in this book refers specifically to Jewish scripture and not to the New Testament. In the fourth chapter, I discuss the various conceptions of To- rah in classical rabbinic literature. When I want to refer to the Five Books of Moses, I usually employ the term “Pentateuch.” I use the term “Torah” more broadly, to refer to Judaism’s religious teachings through the ages. S N L xi 00a_FM_fn.indd 11 09/02/15 7:35 AM REVISED PAGES Revelation and Authority 00a_FM_fn.indd 19 09/02/15 7:35 AM REVISED PAGES Introduction: Participatory Theories of Revelation The relationship between revelation and authority in Judaism has been dis- cussed by scholars, preachers, philosophers, and mystics throughout Jewish history. It has been the subject of commentaries and treatises, poems and sermons, discussions and debates. The chapters that follow examine this relationship from a vantage point that is surprisingly rare. I focus on the biblical texts themselves, especially ones that raise the issue of religious authority while narrating God’s act of revelation, and I connect those biblical texts to later Jewish understandings of lawgiving at Sinai. My thesis is a simple one. Many biblical texts that describe the giving of Torah move simultaneously and without contradiction in two directions: they anchor the authority of Jewish law and lore in the revelation at Sinai, but they also destabilize that authority by teaching that we cannot be sure how, exactly, the specific rules found in the Pentateuch relate to God’s self-disclosure. On the one hand, these biblical texts insist that duties emerge from the event at Sinai: the religious practices performed by members of the nation that witnessed revelation are matters not of choice but of obligation. These texts ground the law’s authority in the divine will, which God deliberately made known to a group of human beings. On the other hand, these texts also problematize the notion of revelation by making their readers unsure as to precisely what occurred at Mount Sinai. These narratives provoke their audience to wonder, did the teachings and laws that result from the event at Sinai come directly from God’s mouth, or are they the product of human intermediation and interpretation? These biblical texts suggest that revelation involved active contributions by both God and Israel; revelation was S collaborative and participatory.

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