The Bible is Meaningless without
the Talmud (Shabbos 31)
Christians today are some of the
greatest supporters and friends of the State of Israel and the Jewish
people. In many ways, Israel owes its
very existence to Christian political activism over the last century and
change. For over a millennium, however, the
Jewish people suffered from Christian antisemitism. What changed in Christian attitudes towards
Jews? What was the cause of this seismic
shift in perspective?
The story begins with the
Protestant Reformation, when Christians stopped to re-evaluate their beliefs
about the Bible. One of the new ideas
espoused was Sola Scriptura, meaning that, in order to understand God’s word,
one should ‘solely’ examine the ‘scripture,’ without resorting to any
commentary. The closest understanding to
the plain meaning of the text was the correct understanding.
The Jewish people were one of the
winners of that new approach to reading the Bible. Previously, the popular Christian approach
was Replacement theology, which espoused the belief that Christians had
replaced the Jews as the covenantal people.
Such an understanding taught that any time the Bible referred to Israel,
it was understood as referring to Christians.
According to the tenet of Sola Scriptura, however, the literal meaning
of the Bible had to be taken at face value.
If the Bible said Israel, it could
not mean anything other than Israel. Which mortal could suggest that they knew
better than the literal meaning of scripture?
Once such an understanding gained traction, it was not long before many
Christians acknowledged that God had promised the Jewish people that the exile
would be followed by an ingathering and return to the Land of Israel. Christians reading the Bible through such a
lens began to believe that the messianic era could not arrive until the Jews
returned to Israel. Over the course of
the seventeenth through twentieth centuries, many Christians began engaging
politically to assist in the “restoration” of the Jews to Israel.
These Christian Restorationists
later became known as Christian Zionists.
Many twentieth and twenty-first century milestones of the State of
Israel were direct consequences of Christian Zionist efforts, from the Balfour
Declaration to President Truman’s recognition of the UN partition plan. While Christians today support the State of
Israel for a variety of reasons, Sola Scriptura provided the underpinnings for
Christian Zionism.
And so the Jewish people have much
to be thankful for this new way of Christian thinking. Sola Scriptura has been a lifeline for our
nation. The literal reading of the Bible
has played an integral role in the establishment of the State of Israel and the
transformation of the relationship between Christians and Jews. But what does Judaism have to say about
reading the Bible literally? Do we
believe that the precise understanding of the text is the correct meaning?
תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן: מַעֲשֶׂה
בְּגוֹי אֶחָד שֶׁבָּא לִפְנֵי שַׁמַּאי. אָמַר לוֹ: כַּמָּה תּוֹרוֹת יֵשׁ לָכֶם?
אָמַר לוֹ: שְׁתַּיִם, תּוֹרָה שֶׁבִּכְתָב וְתוֹרָה שֶׁבְּעַל פֶּה. אָמַר לוֹ:
שֶׁבִּכְתָב אֲנִי מַאֲמִינְךָ, וְשֶׁבְּעַל פֶּה — אֵינִי מַאֲמִינְךָ.
גַּיְּירֵנִי עַל מְנָת שֶׁתְּלַמְּדֵנִי תּוֹרָה שֶׁבִּכְתָב. גָּעַר בּוֹ
וְהוֹצִיאוֹ בִּנְזִיפָה. בָּא לִפְנֵי הִלֵּל, גַּיְירֵיהּ. יוֹמָא קַמָּא אֲמַר
לֵיהּ: א״ב ג״ד. לִמְחַר אֲפֵיךְ לֵיהּ. אֲמַר לֵיהּ: וְהָא אֶתְמוֹל לָא
אֲמַרְתְּ לִי הָכִי! אֲמַר לֵיהּ: לָאו עֲלַי דִּידִי קָא סָמְכַתְּ? דְּעַל פֶּה
נָמֵי סְמוֹךְ עֲלַי
There was an incident involving a
gentile who came before Shammai. He said
to Shammai: How many Torahs do you have? He said to him: Two, the Written Torah
and the Oral Torah. The gentile said to him: With regard to the Written Torah,
I believe you, but with regard to the Oral Torah, I do not believe you. Convert
me on condition that you will teach me only the Written Torah. Shammai scolded
him and cast him out with reprimand. He then came before Hillel, who converted
him and began teaching him Torah. On the first day, he showed him the letters
of the alphabet and said to him: Aleph, bet, gimmel, dalet. The next day he
reversed the order of the letters. The convert said to him: But yesterday you
did not tell me that. Hillel said to him: Didn’t you rely on my authority (as
to the order of the letters)? Therefore, you must also rely on me with regard
to the matter of the Oral Torah (and accept the interpretations I teach you).
Traditional Judaism believes that
when Moshe stood atop Mt. Sinai, he received both a Written Torah and an Oral
Torah. The latter is the explanation for
the former. Without it, it is impossible
to discern the true meaning of the text.
Even before one wishes to ascertain meaning beyond the text, one must be
able to read the text, which appears with neither vowels nor punctuation. Only with the assistance of the Oral Torah
can one read the words and sentences.
For example, the word for ‘milk’ in Hebrew is chalav. The same word could also be read ‘chelev’,
which means ‘fats’. Without the guidance
of the Oral tradition, we might have thought that we could not mix meat and meat-fats. Only when we read the Divine text with the
direction of the Divine explanation do we know God’s intent. Ultimately, Rabbi Yehuda HaNassi and his
successors redacted the Oral Torah, which became known as the Talmud
(consisting of the Mishnah and Gemara).
Throughout our history, movements
questioning the veracity of the Oral Torah have arisen, from the Sadducees to
the Karaites, and many others. Adherents
of these groups did not practice Judaism homogeneously, as each felt that their
understanding of the meaning of scripture was the most precise. By contrast, traditional Judaism has
maintained a consistency and uniformity across the globe and across history,
such that the differences in religious observance between traditional Jews are
so minor that they have never constituted a fissure in the tradition. A Sephardic Jew can pray in an Ashkenazi shul
and eat in a Yemenite home, with the knowledge and comfort that the prayer
service and the food will meet a familiar and acceptable religious standard.
God appears to have a sense of
humour. At first glance, there is a
certain irony in the fact that many of Israel’s greatest supporters today are
Christians who are committed to reading the Bible literally, a concept that
runs contrary to traditional Jewish belief.
The truth, however, is that nobody reads the Torah literally. The story of Hillel and the convert
demonstrates that it is impossible for anyone to read the Bible without the
assistance of the Oral Torah. The only
way to make any sense of the Written Torah is with the accompaniment of the
guidance and explanation of the Oral Torah, as transmitted via the Sages
through the generations.
Unless one is reading from an
actual Torah scroll, a commitment to a ‘Sola Scriptura’ understanding of the
Bible assumes a text that has been approved by rabbis adhering to the Oral
tradition. If your Bible translates
‘chalav’ as ‘milk’, and not ‘fats’, then you have joined the Oral Torah
club. There is nothing independent of
the Oral Torah that would suggest that the precise meaning should be one or the
other.
And perhaps therein lies the underlying
reason for the intense love many Christians feel for Israel, the land and the
people. As one pastor once commented to
me, without Judaism’s foundation, Christianity would be a cult, a completely
invented religion. The faith of the most
fervently dedicated believer in the literal word of the Bible is rooted in
their belief that the Sages faithfully transmitted the correct interpretation
from Sinai until the time the Torah was translated into Greek, in the form of
the Septuagint.
On a certain level, Christians have
always recognized the need to revert to Jewish tradition and rabbinic guidance
to aid in their understanding of the Bible.
Maimonides writes that we may teach Torah to Christians, as they believe
in the Divinity of the Torah. Other
religions have questioned the truth of the Torah, but even when Christians were
not particularly friendly towards the Jewish people, they always remained
steadfast in their commitment to the Bible’s authenticity as the word of God. Perhaps that was Hillel’s rationale for
teaching Torah to the fellow who claimed to want to hear only the Written Torah. The mere fact that he had sought out the
guidance of a rabbi was sufficient proof of his belief that he could not
understand the Torah by reading it alone, without the advice of an approved
Torah teacher.
The Torah is Hashem’s guide to life
for all humankind. That’s why He
instructed Moshe to translate the Torah into seventy languages. And indeed, three millennia later, no other
Book has had a greater impact on the world than the Bible, from the standpoint
of human morality to the repatriation of the Jewish people to Israel in modern
times. May we continue to see a
flourishing of traditional Torah learning and support for the State of
Israel!
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