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In “Who Wrote the Torah?” I presented a religious humanist perspective on the nature of revelation as a human desire for connection to the divine, and in “Fundamental Blasphemy,” I wrote about the blasphemy inherent in a fundamentalist, literalist approach to the Bible. I would like to expand these ideas and demonstrate that the whole idea of a “Bible” is, from a certain perspective, fallacious. This assertion goes beyond the understanding that the Bible is a pluriform collection of different writings from different times reflecting multiple voices with multiple perspectives on the nature of divinity, the divine/ human connection and the character of the covenant community. The entire notion of a Bible as a collection of sacred writings is, itself, post-biblical. The gathering together of these pluriform writings takes place in a secondary post-biblical stage of development. It is in that secondary stage that a Bible emerges.
There is no Bible in the Bible. The multiple biblical
writers were not setting down a series of sacred texts reflecting the word of a
transcendent deity. The identification of these texts as such is a
retrospective identification. Internally, there a few references to any
collection of sacred writings that could be identified as the sacred writings
we identify as biblical. Except for the Book of Deuteronomy, nowhere does the Torah
call itself the Torah. As noted in “Who Wrote the Torah?” the Book of Exodus
refers to The Ten Utterances, The Tablets of the Covenant, The Book of the
Covenant, The Tablets of the Testimony, but never the Torah. As for the Torah
mentioned in the Book of Deuteronomy, there is no indication that it refers to
any body of writing beyond Deuteronomy itself, which is almost universally
identified by biblical scholars as the scroll discovered in the Temple during
the reign of King Josiah at the end of the 7th century BCE as
described in II Kings 22.
The so-called Deuteronomic History, also known as the Former Prophets—Joshua Judges, Samuel and Kings—rarely mentions the Torah. It appears a few times in Joshua and a few times in II Kings, the latter in reference to the scroll discovered in the Temple—as though it had not been known before being discovered. In Judges, I and II Samuel, I Kings, there is no reference to a Torah. Indeed, the Deuteronomic History includes few references to any of the instructions of the Torah. There are a couple of references to new-moon festivals, but Sabbath and other festivals seem absent. In reaction to the discovery of the scroll under Josiah, the king invites the entire nation to
“‘offer the Passover sacrifice to the Lord your God as prescribed in this
scroll of the covenant.’ Now the Passover sacrifice had not been offered in
that manner in the days of the chieftains [i.e., the judges] who ruled Israel,
or during the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah” (II Kings 23:21-22).
This event is said to have occurred some 500 years after the
early settlement of the Israelite tribes in Canaan and some 300 years after the
building of Solomon’s Temple. During this entire time, the Passover “had not
been offered in that manner”? In which manner was it offered?
Contrary to the portrayal in the Torah and in the Book of
Joshua of a unified nation under a unified political and religious leadership
overwhelming the land, the Book of Judges reveals a loose collection of tribal
groups with no centralized, institutionalized religious or political
leadership—tribal groups that frequently war with one another. Samuel, from the
tribe of Ephraim, assumes the duty of a priest, and upon bringing the Ark to
Jerusalem, King David, from the tribe of Judah, appoints his sons as priests. Both
of these events violate the Torah injunction that only descendents of Aaron,
from the tribe of Levi, can serve as priests (Numbers 18).
In the beginning was the Bible. And the Bible was with God. And the Bible was God.
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Steve,
DeleteThanks so much for your comment. I apologize that it didn't get posted sooner. I changed my e-mail address and wasn't getting notices of comments posted, so I assumed I wasn't getting any. Please feel free to comment some more and let other interested people know.