1 - Introduction: The ‘Jacobs Affair’

Summary

IT IS NOW WELL OVER FORTY YEARS since my book We Have Reason to Believe was published, during which time the views on the nature of revelation expressed there have been criticized again and again; by the right for alleged heresy and by the left for failing to go far enough in the direction of liberalism. My aim in writing yet another book on the subject is to try to meet the arguments against a position I still maintain after all these years and which I now seek to defend in a systematic manner. It is for readers of this book to decide whether I have presented a case ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.

The central thesis of this book is that traditional Judaism can be interpreted so as to render it compatible with the findings of modern research on how the Jewish religion has come to be. The application, by a host of scholars, Jewish as well as non-Jewish, of the historical critical methodology to the classical sources of traditional Judaism (particularly the Bible and the rabbinic literature) has demonstrated to the satisfaction of many believers that the Torah did not simply drop down, ready packaged, so to speak, from Heaven but has evolved over the ages, partly, at least, in response to, and influenced by, external conditions. Many religious Jews still hold fast to belief in the Torah as the word of God but have come to realize that the whole idea of divine revelation must be understood to mean, in the light of our present knowledge, that, while there is a divine element in the Torah, there is also a human element, in that God gives the Torah, as it has often been put, not only to the Jewish people but through the Jewish people. As I once formulated it, it is still possible to accept the dogma ‘The Torah is from Heaven’ provided one understands the meaning of ‘from’ in a more sophisticated manner than is commonly done.

The above brief statement hardly does justice to a very complex re ligious position, one which demands the more thorough investigation upon which this book embarks with trepidation.