Jrosemary wrote:The Torah is Jewish scripture and absolutely central to Jewish religion--and yet Jews don't feel obliged to follow it in the sense of executing people who violate Shabbat observances! G-d may arguably have given us the Torah, but G-d also gave us brains to help us decide how to interpret it and how to implement its mitzvot (Commandments).
The way to handle difficult and challenging passages is to examine them, argue them, debate them--even argue with G-d about them. We're not passive readers of the Torah; we're to bring the best of our intellect and compassion when we interact with Scripture.
The difficult parts of Scripture shouldn't be brushed over, either. Fortunately, that's pretty much impossible in a syangogue setting, since we read the entire Torah every year, breaking it up into weekly 'Torah portions' or parshas. Also, the rabbis I know don't shy away from difficult passages during Torah study!
I've found the same is true in churches I've visited. Generally the Torah and the larger Tanakh (what Christians call the 'Old Testament') don't get as much attention as the New Testament. And that makes a certain amount of sense in a Christian setting. But most of the ministers and priests I've known (who tend to be of a liberal persuasion) don't shy away from the difficult parts of the New Testament. Many of them, for example, tackle the New Testament passages which seem to be antisemitic head on.
Very well said. The principle, in Jewish law, is based on the phrase "The Torah is not in Heaven." Now that the Torah has been given to humans, it belongs to US; and WE have the authority to determine what it does and does not mean and entail. There is a fascinating story which illustrates this principle and which I have quoted many times.
Short version: A group of rabbis was discussing a point of Jewish law, a rather trivial point as it happens - about whether or not an unkosher oven (they were made of fired clay in those days) could be rendered kosher again. One rabbi maintained, against the opposition of all the others, that it could not. When challenged, he showed several miracles to prove that he was right; a tree uprooted itself and moved, a stream flowed uphill, and the very walls of the
Beit Midrash (the house of study) began to move. The council refused to change its position. Finally, a voice from Heaven proclaimed that the rabbi was right.
The leader of the council stood and
rebuked God Himself with the words, "The Torah is not in Heaven!" and the decision of the council stood.
(Be it noted that no one reads this story as an accurate report of an actual historical event. It is a
teaching story; the point is not that "God makes miracles happen," but that even if He does, they are no longer relevant to our decisions. We are on our own now.)
Here is the point: We are no longer to listen to voices from Heaven or consider "miracles" when reaching a decision; we are, by Jewish law, obliged to use our intelligence and best human judgment, collectively as a community, through the wisest of our people - who are identified by the consensus of the community itself. It is forbidden to regard the Bible as a book of easy, pat answers that must be obeyed without question. That is irresponsible and a betrayal of our nature and our role as intelligent, morally aware human beings, and it inevitably leads to atrocity and absurdity. Believing in God, and even acknowledging the place of the Bible in our religious and cultural history, does not mean we are obliged to kiss our brains goodbye and stop thinking and making moral judgments in favor of mindless dogmatism. That way lies madness and evil.
My own rabbi expressed the principle thus: "If you see something in the Torah that you know beyond doubt is morally wrong, there are two possibilities; either you are not reading the Torah correctly -
or the Torah is in error."
Notice that the third alternative - disregarding established facts and one's own rational judgment in favor of doctrinaire dogmatism - is not available to us. Another principle of Jewish law is that "a well-constructed and logically sound argument has the authority as a Biblical command." We dare not ignore what we know to be true and right in favor of problematic statements in a 3,000-year-old set of documents.
The arguments that take place so often here, about whether or not the Bible should be read and obeyed literally, are only of concern to those who claim that it must be: fundamentalists, as well as - and I have always found this odd - many atheists. I have seen the explicit claim made here that anyone who does NOT read and obey the Bible dogmatically and literally cannot really be religious or even authentically believe in God, and I have seen that claim from both sides. It's ludicrous.
