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18 - A Defense of Verbal Revelation

from Part V - Analytic Philosophy and Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2020

Steven Kepnes
Affiliation:
Colgate University, New York
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Summary

Does the idea that a text might express God’s will make any sense in the modern world? Modern Jewish theology, in part under the impetus of modern biblical criticism, has overwhelmingly moved toward a view of God as beyond speech, and of the Torah, correspondingly, as the record of various human beings’ attempts to figure out what God might want of them, rather than a divine intervention into human affairs. If any human/divine encounter lies behind the Torah, it is thought, that encounter can be conceived only as a silent, ineffable I-Thou moment. The Torah cannot literally be God’s word; that is at best a rough metaphor.

This essay attempts to bring out the motivations for the above view and then, wholly, to upend it — from a perspective as committed to the accuracy of modern Biblical criticism, and to a progressive understanding of God and halacha, as that of those who uphold it. Maimonides says that we should see every verse and every letter of the Torah as “contain[ing] within it wisdom and wonders to whomever the Lord has granted the wisdom to discern it” — as, in a robust sense, divine. “In Defense of Verbal Revelation” recuperates a modern, progressive version of Maimonides’ view.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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References

Selected Further Reading

Buber, Martin. I and Thou. Translated by W. Kaufmann. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970.Google Scholar
Cohen, Hermann. Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism. Translated by S. Kaplan. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Fishbane, Michael. Sacred Attunement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fleischacker, Samuel. Divine Teaching and the Way of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Fleischacker, Samuel. The Good and the Good Book. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillman, Neil. Sacred Fragments. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990.Google Scholar
Gillman, Neil. The Way Into Encountering God in Judaism. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2000.Google Scholar
Held, Shai. Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Levenson, Jon. The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Rosenzweig, Franz. The Star of Redemption. Translated by B. Galli. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Rosenzweig, Franz. “The Unity of the Bible.” In Scripture and Translation. Edited by Buber, M., and Rosenzweig, F.. Translated by L. Rosenwald with E. Fox. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Sommer, Benjamin. Revelation and Authority. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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