Why I believe the Torah is True:
Ani Maamin. Plus some evidence.
This post is l’ilui nishmas my grandfather, Dovid Ben Shmuel, who passed away last week. May his neshama have an aliya.
It is a pretty long post, but I think keeping it that way adds to the impact. There’s a good chance it will not appear in full in your inbox - click the link! As always, I’d rather publish it even if it is somewhat haphazard rather than perfect and never publish. Please point out errors in the comments.
This is a post that has been a long time coming. As I am now sitting in the hospital with appendicitis (did you know that you can now treat it with antibiotics instead of surgery?) I have some free time to compose a post elucidating what and why I believe. Many people have asked for this in the past. I believe that all my beliefs are logical and consistent with the scientific evidence. I am not necessarily aiming to convince anyone about the beliefs in this post, but merely that it is a reasonable position that a person can take (reasonable here being consistent with the evidence). I think one can make a strong case for such a Judaism, and I hope to in future posts, but in this post I will be simply giving a short synopsis without all the evidence nor my sources (nor answers to the counterevidence).
The first belief:
Ani Maamin - I believe with complete faith that there is a God in this world. He created the world, he is interactable, and he has some form of omniscience that may possibly exclude humanity’s choices.
The proofs for this position: The proofs for some sort of God needs no elaboration, it is a common and rational philosophical position to take. The harder part is proving that some sort of deism or polytheism is not true and that God cares about and interacts with us.
Personally I find arguments like the fine tuning argument and the anthropic principle convincing. Additionally, while this is an unpopular belief, I don’t think the argument from design is as weak as many make it out to be.1 In my opinion, discounting the argument from design due to evolution is akin to saying one cannot prove an artist exists due to the existence of AI art. Of course that is true regarding the specific piece of art, but the existence of an AI in the first place shows that that a high intelligence exists. The fact that evolution works is just as amazing as the fact an AI works if not more so, and in my mind shows the existence of some sort of programmer.
As far as having a God that interacts with the world, I’d say there are three main lines of evidence: The first is personal accounts. There are many many personal accounts of religious experiences and interactions with God or some spiritual entity. Discounting such evidence just because it is in essence nonprovable scientifically is akin to only searching where the light is while ignoring the dark. I would also add that CS Lewis’s Liar, Lunatic, Lord evidence for Jesus is very important. While I have no problem dismissing Jesus as a lunatic or a liar, I would be very hesitant to dismiss all of mankind as such, and the total evidence of mankind’s interaction with a Deity or deities suggests such a Deity or deities exist. I would include responses to prayer, miracle stories, and personal feelings that a God exists or interactions with such God as evidence.
The second line of evidence would be the Torah and its account of how God interacts with the world and especially in Jewish history (I.e., the return of the Jews to the state of Israel). This would also include Mount Sinai experience. Obviously, one must accept the Torah first for that, which will we discuss a bit later.
The third line of evidence would be the existence of a consciousness and free will. Denying free will, which some atheists choose to do, is a ridiculous violation of Occam’s razor. However, many feel they are forced to it, because there is no real scientific/material viable explanation for free will. The same is true for consciousness. It somehow evolved, despite there being no reason nor explanation for it to do so. Machines do not perceive, nor should we expect them to. We should not have a consciousness that perceives. We should not have a sense of self that appears to exist independently of ourselves. And we certainly shouldn’t have a sense of self that lets us choose! Yet this existence of some sort of unexplainable self seems to imply we are part of something bigger than ourselves.
I would add to these three main lines of evidence other minor things: quantum mechanics, which in some explanations seem to be effected by observation, something which implies the consciousness is more than it perceives, and theweak evidence for reincarnation and the soul surviving that arises from Near Death Experiences and Ian Stevenson’s studies, which, while obviously not independent proof, from a Bayesian perspective become more likely and viable should we grant the existence of God or gods.
That this Divinity exists and that people interacted with him seems more likely in my opinion than proposing mass delusion. Obviously as someone who has personally prayed and seen what I believe to be miraculous results, I am more inclined to believe as well.
The second belief:
I believe that Torah shebechtav is true and was given in some way to Moshe Rabeinu.
What do I mean is True? That the laws therein are divine and given by God. The Torah contains no misinformation or stories that would not have been recognized by the original audience as myth. However, the Torah was given to certain era and place and many of the writing conventions, morals, and even mitzvos were based on that.
The primary goal of the Torah is fourfold. The first, and main goal, of the Torah, is to promote monotheism and the existence of one God, Hashem. The second goal is how Hashem chose to do it: By creating a nation that would hold true to monotheism and spread the word. He created a contract - a brit - for that nation forever to that end. That nation is a mamlechet kohanim vegoy kadosh. That nation has to keep laws that were designed to promote monotheism and contradict the principles of polytheism. The third goal is to teach that one’s actions matter and one is responsible for them. The fourth goal is to teach that God involves himself in history in hidden ways (this is also the main focus of Nach).
The Torah constantly and consistently, again and again, uses stories and even (or especially) mitzvos to go against the prevalent polytheistic attitudes, customs, traditions and myths in the world. The text almost never refers to those polytheistic remnants outright, but a careful reader will find them clearly evident. The reader must keep in mind that the Torah was given in an era of myth where writing was extremely rare. All stories and explanations and truths were given over orally. As a result, exaggerations were commonplace and assumed as that way the story would be given over, as the more interesting the story, the more likely it would persist.2 The Torah thus chose to uproot these polytheistic myths and replace them with a monotheistic version. This was not teaching falsehood, as those polemic countermyths would have been immediately recognized as such by the first readers. Hence, the Torah’s stories of creation, flood, and dispersion, on their most basic level, are monotheistic rewritings of ancient polytheistic creation myths and stories.
In fact, if one examines even more closely, almost everything is the Torah is designed towards the goal of ethical, aniconic3 monotheism. The priests are forbidden to interact with the dead because idolatrous priests mainly dealt with the dead. The laws of kings remove the worship of the king as divine. Even weirder rules like the kosher animal signs can be convincingly shown to use analogous thought methods to promote the remembrance of the Sinai event.4
If one accepts this, almost all the questions from science fall away, as well as some of the questions that arise from biblical criticism, as the Torah can report certain stories twice differently to counteract different aspects of polytheism.5
Furthermore, many of the halachos as well are clearly geared to that generation, such as yibbum and onas umefateh. Nowadays, it would be hard to imagine someone marrying her rapist, for whatever reason. Same with marrying ones BIL to extend the bloodline. However, I would be very cautious as automatically assuming all halachos fit in this category. Most of them that do, Chazal already identified for us.
Evidence for this position:
Why, the Torah itself. The Torah clearly comes to teach ethical monotheism and has been incredibly successful at doing so. We don’t realize how much ethics and monotheism come from the Torah because it was extremely successful. I would say the success of the Bible is self-evident and evident.
As far as the divinity thereof, There’s three points. First, the success of the Torah - it is the ONLY ANE text to still be practiced and learned today, and when one reads the other stories one is shocked at the contrast of how they are so forgotten - may show the Divinity therein. Since one of the Torah’s central messages is God’s hand in history, the insane success of the Torah - it is accepted as divine by EVERY monotheistic religion - suggests there may actually be a Monodeity behind it. Second, the success of the prophecies in Devarim, especially the modern day return to Israel.
Thirdly, and most importantly I think that the Kuzari argument, while it fails by itself, is strong enough to grant that some sort of event happened, a divine stamp, as Sam Lebens puts it. While there are many volcano myths, there are no volcano myths that resulted in an ethical monotheistic revolution. Especially once we accept that numbers could be symbolic or exaggerated based on the time, the miraculous escape from Egypt and the Manna plus some sort of divine revelation at Sinai and the other miracles claimed are extremely hard to dismiss as lies, especially once one accepts the existence of a God that interferes with history. It is impossible, assuming that the Torah was written in the generation of the exodus, as Chazal traditionally claim or written or compiled a generation or two later, as the text itself seems to indicate (that it was written in the times of Yehoshua or so) to have made up the story and for it to be accepted or for the myth to have organically evolved in time to encompass the whole story.
Which obviously leads to the next point: I believe the Torah is saying the truth when it says it was written and who wrote it. While I hope to have a longer post on this, the biblical critical position is essentially a giant conspiracy theory that in the preexilic or exilic era someone composed a text or texts that was later retrojected to being the lost Mosaic origin story. It requires the authors to have almost consciously and expertly excised almost every anachronism and every reference to the Davidic kingdom from the text. And it assumes some sort of mysterious unknown redactor. (The conspiracy required is actually bigger than what I wrote here) . And of course, this text had to have been accepted as authorized by all Jews - something which did not happen to the rest of Tanakh.6
Now, the alternative to this is not necessarily the one held by almost all frum Jews today - that every word is written by Moshe via prophecy. (Although I personally believe that, because that is what Halacha requires). It is that the Torah is essentially saying the truth - it was compiled in the times of Moshe or Yehoshua, that the commandments therein were hence thought to be dictated by God, and that it stems from that era and not a later forgery. If that is true - and there is much internal evidence that that is indeed the case7 (and is the position of some Bible scholars like Cassuto or Kaufman), even when we allow for later editing and redaction of errors (all positions allowed by and taken by a few scattered rishonim) the Kuzari proof ends up being very strong, as it stems from the generation immediately after the exodus, and the primary reason of proof of the Torah is because as Hashem repeats again and again, Yetzias Mitzrayim, and it is unlikely that all these miracle stories such as the Manna, Splitting The Sea, Rock Giving Water, Sinai, and more would be accepted as true only a generation or two later, and there is not much time for the myth to evolve. In contrast, minor issues such as the size of the populations could either have been allegorical, mythical, or interpolations of a later scribe, and the scientific issues with the creation narrative evaporate as they would have been understood by the very first generation as theological countermyth.8
The third belief:
Ani Maamin that there is a Torah Shebaal Peh - that Moshe and his heirs were given permission to interpret the Laws, that certain explanations accompanied the original laws, and that the laws were originally intended to be interpreted via exegesis as sometimes the original law was written in a way to promote monotheism (mythically, in a sense), and not the way Hashem meant it to actually be kept.
So, before we talk about Torah shel Baal Peh (TSBP) we need to talk about Torah Shebechtav, and how it was compiled. As should be obvious from all that was written until now, the Torah was not given in a vacuum. The Jews certainly had traditions that predated the Torah. Some of them made it into the Torah, such as Mila and Gid Hanasha, which from the text itself makes clear, predated the actual Torah. And certain traditions made it into Torah Shel baal Peh but were never written down. And certain traditions, the Torah modified and changed, or gave an explanation for that taught monotheism. Other Laws, the Torah innovated out of whole cloth or modified a neighboring countries tradition, or more commonly warned against another country’s tradition.9
For example, it is possible that when the Torah gave the mitzvos of Sukkos or Pesach, the Torah was consciously taking the ancient harvest festivals of yore and changing it to be a remembrance to Yetzias Mitzrayim. When the Torah takes the laws of Hammurabi, it modifies some and keeps some, because the main point is that there is an ethical justice system, and it removes the unethical parts while keeping the ethical ones. In contrast, when it comes to polytheistic or cruel traditions, the Torah fights tooth and nail against them, warning not to sacrifice to Moloch or to shave in a idolastic way.
Once we realize that Torah Shebichtav is based in many ways on ancient codes and laws (and the Rambam says this explicitly, we can now talk about Torah Shebaal Peh.
One thing one has to know when it comes to ancient law books is that many times the penalty or the law was flexible or changing. (R Joshua Berman discusses this at length in his Inconsistency in the Torah). This was understood by the original readers of the document. In fact, many times the punishment listed would not be the punishment given, and the punishment written was more of a moral force (mythical if you will). If that is the case, one needs a tradition to know which is which - which ends up being Torah shel Baal Peh, which tells us for example when it says Yisakel Baal Hashor it means pay. Of course, the original receivers may have known this intuitively due to their mythical mindset, but when it gets passed on to later generations, that information became TSBP.10
This explains two of the issues common with Torah Shel Baal Peh: Why the Torah didn’t write it straight out: Many ancient law books didn’t either, and the original audience knew that. And why the Torah wrote it differently: Often what is written in the text is meant to be countermythical or a moral lesson, and hence an oral tradition is required as to what is actually the law.
In other areas of TSBP, it may be the opposite: at times the Torah may be giving an explanation for an ancient tradition, and later on the ancient tradition was forgotten and then read into the text. For example, it seems to me that not mixing milk and meat was an ancient tradition, and the Torah’s pasuk is coming off of that to explain the ancient tradition and give it a moral underpinning. In time, the tradition was forgotten, and the TSBP had to be re-read into the text. This is more likely when the TSBP explanation has no real moral meaning and seems forced, as if the Torah’s explanation is the moal reason. .11
A third aspect of TSBP is that, sometimes, laws were given generally, and over time needed refinement. For example, a Sukkah may have just been a hut, but over time, more explanations were needed. This happens to many laws and lawbooks, even man made. (For example, see the Constitution or the Yad Hachazakah) This is nowadays the main function of TSBP, and most of Chazal’s exegesis is doing this. A likely reason that this blew up immediately after the second Temple period is that once the super-specific temple rites stopped being practiced, and the religion slowly transformed from a temple-based one to a personal one, new rites for everyday people started gaining new significance.
A good case study of how TSBP developed is Chanukah. Chanukah, as even Chazal tell us, was started by everyday Jews who wanted to commemorate a miracle.12 It was grounds up as they say, it was not started by the rabbis. Yet Chanukah has hundreds of halachos. What happened was as the tradition became more and more significant and more and more things were clarified, the halachos became more and more clarified - but also more and more ossified. What started off as a tradition became law. This was intended to add to the significance of the chanukah miracle and tradition - just as the Thanksgiving rituals do to thanksgiving.13
And finally, the fourth and most controversial part of my understanding of TSBP: The Torah clearly has morals and mitzvos that were geared for its time. At the time they were revolutionary, and designed to make the Jews more ethical.14 But at times, while the morality behind it will never be outdated, the practice of the laws could. (For example, slavery, marrying one’s rapist, yibum, underage marriage, yiud, and many more). We need to have an authorized system that could interpret the central values of the laws in every situation. Of course, one can never override a mitzva - merely reinterpret - and one must make sure it doesn’t become a slippery slope which is often inevitable - which is why one needs a Sanhedrin to ensure this becomes the one authorized law interpretation and the Torah doesn’t become a joke and that everyone with an agenda cannot change the Torah.15 (There are also limits to this reinterpretation, such as Avoda Zara can never be approved in any way, and that should the original moral situation return, the law would return). As of now, due to the failure of the Reform and Conservative movements, it is clear that any attempt to touch halacha that doesn’t happen organically from people fully committed to halacha is doomed to fail (compare to Chasidim davening late, which did end up being defended in halacha). However, that doesn’t erase the truth that the halacha does have the ability to update within limits.
The evidence for the existence of some sort of TSBP:
Why, read the Torah. It clearly is given and meant to be read in a certain cultural context with certain cultural backgrounds. The TSBP is designed to provide that background, understanding and clarification. The Torah was clearly meant to have some sort of interpretation, in fact the text screams it.16 Furthermore, since the mythical mindset allows for contradictions or laws being followed not as written, one needs some sort of group tradition to know how to implement the laws, especially in an Era where writing was rare. This was true of all such ancient societies, not just the Torah’s. Finally, it needs some way to update the law for modern day contexts.
Of course, this third belief is a bit of a trojan answer, as it doesn’t explain how we get to following Chazal, which is the modern day understanding of TSBP, especially in Chareidi communities. And it doesn’t explain drashos. But that is for a different post.17
Neither did renowned philosopher Anthony Flew who accepted the argument of design after many decades of atheism and wrote a great book!
There’s an Indian tribe that passed down a volcano myth for almost 10000 years and thus managed to survive the eruption of Mount Washington, because of a myth’s truth working properly. See one of my favorite books, When They Severed Earth From Sky.
having no idol, figurine or picture.
I don’t want to go into detail here, but there’s a great book “Leviticus as Literature” that goes through this one point by point.
The mythical mindset is also evident in other areas of the Torah as well, such as the ages of the Avos, the etiological nature of certain stories, and way the laws are written, as will be explained in the TSBP section below.
The Samaritans only accept the 5 books of Moses plus a sixth book. If the five books postdate some other books of Tanakh, as is claimed by scholars, it seems odd why they wouldn’t accept the other ones.
I am aware of most of the evidence claims to later authorship and multiple documents. I hope to address them at length in a later post. In brief, Joshua Berman’s Inconsistency in the Torah is invaluable in explaining why the evidence is faulty, and that the Torah having a palimpsest quality may be due to megillos megillos nitna, relating to the mythical mindset of stories having different perspectives, or what I personally believe is that it provides depth and mystery to figure out, especially to an early audience. The Torah reminds me of ASOUE in that regard, in that it looks like a palimpsest like other texts of that era but actually has one author. Obviously, as stated, I am ok with scribes editing, fixing or adding asides.
This also resolves the common objection of “maybe Har Sinai is a myth too”. Sure, it could be, but there’s no known countermyth to the exodus narratives at all. Also, even if we allow for exaggeration of details (something common in myth), the very fact that the Jews escaped Egypt miraculously and survived for 40 years miraculously is enough to demonstrate some sort of Divine involvement in my book, even if done naturally, as God can be seen hrough history.
One of the first things that made me investigate Judaism further was when I was learning mesechet Kiddushin. It was clear that marriage was a gezerat hakasuv. But when learning the sugya more closely, I stumbled on something that is immediately obvious but revolutionary to me at the time (and something which caused my-then chavrusa to call me a kofer and break up with me): The Torah did not invent marriage. Marriage always existed. What the Torah did was add conditions to the contract and how it can be entered: Kiddushin - that a person takes a person home. Ki Yikach Ish Isha - and only then - Ubaala. There was clearly an ancient tradition (Torah Shel baal peh) that when the Torah said Yikach, it meant there is a stage before bi’ah. What that stage was could be Shtar. Or kesef. Or Maybe Chalipin. But it didn’t matter, once a person did that and was considered married, he would be killed. Therefore, Kesef could even be dirabbanan, (as many rishonim hold) as it doesn’t matter - the concept of marriage predates the Torah and having relations with a married woman gets you killed regardless of how. It is also possible that is why one has to say Kedas Moshe Veyisrael, as there is another type of marriage, and that civil marriage would work according to halacha, as the torah never eliminated the other type, just added new ones, and for a non-Jew, civil marriage does work. And I realized that just as the Torah modified marriage, and didn’t invent it out of whole cloth, very likely many other mitzvos as well - and that is what Torah Shel Baal Peh is.
For example, if I would make a law that required eating cereal, tuna sandwiches, and a pot roast every day, an American would intuitively know which one is for breakfast lunch and supper. But should that law enter some other culture or times change, you’d need some sort of TSBP.
Alternatively, the Torah wrote it one way to teach the moral lesson of not being cruel, but the oral law was the true implementation - something often found in other ANE cultures, as per the first example.
You can decide which miracle depending on how maskilish you are.
But once one focuses overly on the law and ignores the miracles, traditions, and point of the rituals, one has missed the boat. And that is what has happened in todays Chareidi communities, and the point I was trying to make in my infamous post:
While this is not the mainstream understanding nowadays, both the Rambam and Rav Kook make this clear, among others. This often happens naturally, without anyone pushing an agenda.
This paragraph may strike one as anachronistic, and it is. I wrote it that way because it makes it clearer. More accurately, in the mythical mind, law was much more fluid and hence automatically updated itself as the law itself was naturally flexible and oral. There was no need for “updating” because it was fluid in nature as it was given over orally.. The orality always overrode the text, as it was self-understood the text was static vis a vis tradition, and that is the way it is understood today. However, once TSBP started being written down and the text of the Torah became more static and traditions became lost, it lost its vitality and the text itself started needing reinterpreting and updating as the original mythical understanding of the text became forgotten as the mythical mindset fell out of use.
Note that I am not saying that TSBP is needed to resolve the contradictions. The contradictions are often resolvable because they are there to teach two different perspectives, and in the mythical mindset, that is ok. Itis for the implementation of said laws some sort of system is needed. And I certainly don’t think you need a TSBP to explain extra letters or so. That seems ridiculous to use as a proof, and even in implementation, the drasha system was almost certainly merely mnemonic.
But if you want a preview of how I answer that, read the previous two footnotes!
I feel funny agreeing with all the atheists here. This post has many good things in it. You did an excellent job of weaving together many strands of what makes the Torah and Judaism compelling and connecting them to what the Torah itself teaches in philosophy and practice. Almost a miniature "theory of everything" about the Torah. There are a bunch of things I disagree with, or that I believe are false and kefira, but they don't detract from the good parts.
First off - I hope you feel better and that your grandfather's Neshama should have an Aliyah.
Second - This is a great post. It should be read by nearly everyone at least semi-familiar with the arguments against Judaism and revelation. This is an appropriate understanding. While I have some very minor disagreements, this take is fantastic. I do think evolution is a bit of a bigger problem but ultimately reach the same conclusion. Same goes for the age of the universe, though I think in a traditional Jewish lens the age of the universe is not a focal point.
Just as an FYI - pretty sure you called me conservative for mentioning some of the same points in my Is the Torah True series 🤣.