Food for thought....
So you're a good Modern Orthodox Jew. You've read Rabbi Slifkin and other relatively progressive Orthodox books and you know that a 6 day creation and a world wide deluge is some sort of allegory - not to be taken literally - and definitely not a contradiction to science - because Genesis is not teaching us science. Period.
So you read through Bereishit you sail through Noach - all the time laughing at those dumb Charedim who are so backward and intransigent - unable to resolve the paltry difficulties of reading Genesis with scientific knowledge. Eventually you get to parshat Lech Lecha. Wait a sec? Is this also an allegory? After all Avraham is connected to Noach and even to Adam HaRishon genealogically. At no point is there a red flag that says "oy! time to start taking things literally again, we've left metaphor land and are on to the real historical, national narrative!" No break in the narrative at all.Is Avraham an allegory? Is Yitzchak not science or history but a "spiritual message"? What if we go a little further? Ma'amad Har Sinai! Is that not to be taken literally? The people who stood at Har Sinai are also genealogically linked to characters in "metaphorical narratives"....
True there isn't the same type of scientific evidence against the Avot and Exodus as there is against a literal Genesis but nevertheless one has to ask - when does the Torah leave the world of allegories and "spiritual truths" and enter the world of real historical facts? Where is the line dividing literalism from symbolism and Monotheistic "mashology"? Why is this line so invisible? An untrained eye reading Genesis will miss the line completely. And how do family trees seem to move so easily from the one side of the line to the other without the slightest break or interruption....
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Maybe the whole thing can be read as a metaphor. After all, tanach reads like mythology, and it’s an open question how literally ancient cultures took their mythology. Maybe a form of Orthodoxy could regard the chumash as divinely-inspired and guided myth that reflects higher truths, and the halchic process as a similarly divinely-inspired progression that has led us to where Orthodoxy is today.
Sounds good but it's not Orthodoxy.
Non-orthodox German Jewish Philosophers (like Hermann Cohen, and Franz Rozenzweig) essentially understood the whole "revelation at Sinai" as some sort of allegory/myth with a deeper message, sort of like what you're saying.
The problem for Orthodoxy is that it MUST consider at least ONE part of the Chumash to be more than an allegory or myth i.e. the even at Sinai. So by definition Modern Orthodoxy means picking and choosing what is "mashology" and what is literal.
It's a fair point. Of course, you know how I resolve it.
It's an excellent question. Perhaps we could suggest as follows:
Mythology, it can be argued, represents its own unique genre, somewhere between fact and fiction, in which questions of truth and deceit are not relevant simply because they are not asked or considered. In fact, if anything, it can be argued that the blurring of the lines between fact and fiction is exactly the purpose of the myth as it allows the listener to experience the fanciful and the enchanted while still maintaining an anchor in the real so as to make the story credible. If our modern fiction requires the willing suspension of disbelief, perhaps the pre-modern myth depended on the audiences disregard to questions of fact and fiction altogether to deliver an experience of enchanted reality.
Consider the case, discussed recently on this blog, of the aggadah. Often, a dichotomy is presented as to if the aggadah is fact or fiction. But, is either approach really credible? The stories in the aggadah or so baseless, contrived, and fanciful that it is difficult to believe that the people who invented these stories could have thought of them as factual in the modern sense of the word. Others argue that these stories are simply metaphors, allegories, or intend to teach us a lesson. However, when one reads the actual aggadot, it is often difficult to see how this can be the case. For what, exactly, is the idea that Eliezer went to find a wife for Yitzchak, a metaphor? Is it really plausible that we are to learn a lesson from the fact that Adam was as tall as the Earth is long? Moreover, these stories are intimately woven into the story of the Bible so it is hard to argue that they are to be interpreted as fiction.
Instead, I would suggest that asking this question of the aggadah is simply a misnomer because the aggadah does not care about this issue. The point of the genre is to transmit a feeling of the enchanted anchored in the real so that the connection of these stories to the biblical texts, which were perhaps viewed as factual during those times, is considered an asset, not a liability.
I believe there may be other examples of this as well, within our Jewish tradition, where anchoring the fictitious in the real, is considered admirable. The Pseudepigrapha is an obvious example. According to scholars, the opening lines of most psalms, such as "A song to David as he was running from Absalom his son" were later editions, not part of the original Psalm, and they may have been added in a similar way. Chasideshe maselach and gedolim stories might be another example. I believe a similar case could be made about mythologies in other cultures but I don't know too much about these.
Two other technical notes:
Firstly, if I am not mistaken, many of the histories of Egypt have a similar problem where they present a line of pharaohs, one after another, beginning with the gods who ruled as pharaohs but ending with the real pharaohs from history. I am not sure that this parallel proves anything but I think it's an interesting one nonetheless.
Rabbi Wieder once gave a talk in which he grappled with the question you raise. He concluded that the beginning of the Torah must be metaphorical because it is not true, that the end must be factual because it is one of the fundamentals of our belief, but he is not sure where exactly you should draw the line.
>The point of the genre is to transmit a feeling of the enchanted anchored in the real so that the connection of these stories to the biblical texts, which were perhaps viewed as factual during those times, is considered an asset, not a liability.
The original point of the genre might be at odds with Orthodoxy which requires certain passages to be more than "enchanted anchored in the real" and requires the cold hard fact that God literally appeared at Sinai with Torah in hand.
>Firstly, if I am not mistaken, many of the histories of Egypt have a similar problem where they present a line of pharaohs, one after another, beginning with the gods who ruled as pharaohs but ending with the real pharaohs from history.
Yeah the Babylonian King list with semi-mythical figures like Gilgamesh + other historical figures came to mind or Livy's history of Rome which if I'm not mistaken traces Roman history from Romulus and Remus into his times. I think these parallels merely show that Livy and whoever wrote the Babylonian/Egyptian Kings lists understood their myths as history...
>He concluded that the beginning of the Torah must be metaphorical because it is not true, that the end must be factual because it is one of the fundamentals of our belief,
How convenient ;-)
The original point of the genre might be at odds with Orthodoxy which requires certain passages to be more than "enchanted anchored in the real" and requires the cold hard fact that God literally appeared at Sinai with Torah in hand.
I am suggesting that due to the nature of myth, it may be possible for one book to weave together fact (matan torah) with myth (genesis 1 - 11)
Yeah the Babylonian King list with semi-mythical figures like Gilgamesh + other historical figures came to mind or Livy's history of Rome which if I'm not mistaken traces Roman history from Romulus and Remus into his times. I think these parallels merely show that Livy and whoever wrote the Babylonian/Egyptian Kings lists understood their myths as history...
This is possible but I seem to remember that some scholars do not think this is likely based on the nature of the works in question. I don't recall all the details.
Good point. From a genetic perspective, I'm not sure it's possible for metaphorical people to have physical babies.
the way i understand it is the rambam had no problem with making stuff into an allegory if it was necessary. He said so in terms of creation ex nihilo. He also said Genesis in an allegory--mashal. But he would not do that in places where it was not necessary.
Perhabs read other books and see what other religions has to say. And get lost in knowledge, then reborn again with solid faith.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.” Jalal ad-Din Rumi
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