AND GOD SPOKE. REALLY? HOW?

 Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D.

It was taken for granted in the Ancient Near East that gods regularly spoke with people. For example, “Fear not, Esarhaddon (the king). I, the god Bel, am speaking to you” (ANET, p. 605). Or, “ Be’elshamayn (the god) (said to me): Do not fear, for I made you king” (ANET, p. 655).

In the Hebrew Bible, too, God verbally spoke to Adam (Gen. 3:9), to Noah (Gen. 8:15), to Abraham ( Gen. 12: 1), to Moses (Ex.24:12),  and various prophets, like Isaiah (Isa 38:4).  God even addressed all the Israelites before giving the Torah (Ex.20: 1).

The rationalist in me asks: how did God communicate with the people? In what language? In biblical Hebrew? Did God , through visions, dreams or angelic messengers, address Daniel in Aramaic? Obviously, the answer is not.

Even though a theist who views God in personal terms may struggle to understand the means of communication,  a religious naturalist like me  has no problem saying that these verbal exchanges cannot be taken literally. No, God does not speak like a person in human language. These conversations are figurative.

Even Maimonides, the Aristotelian Jewish philosopher of the medieval times, had to state that when God spoke, the people heard only a voice, “but not the articulations of speech.” (Guide 2: 33).

WE can be inspired by many things and get insights from many sources around us:  the grandeur of nature, the generous acts of our fellow human beings, or the wise sayings of our sages. These are lofty ideas worthy of attribution to the divine.

SONSINO’S BLOG, rsonsino.blogspot.com

THE MEANING OF TORAH IN JUDAISM

 Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D

Torah is one of the pillars of Judaism. In essence, it means, “religious instruction.” However, the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (3^rd cent, BCE)  rendered it as nomos, meaning “law,” thus restricting its scope. The New Testament, using the Septuagint as its source, also translated Torah as law.

In reality, Torah in Judaism is more than law. The  term comes from the Hebrew root Yarah, meaning “to throw.” It has had an interesting development.

In the Hebrew Bible:
The kings of Israel and the priests at the Temple of Jerusalem used various methods to find out the will of God. According to I Sam. 28: 6, “And (king) Saul inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him either by dreams, or by URIM or by prophets.” Here the noun URIM, is short for urim ve thummim. Most likely, these were small stones or sacred lots, each in the shape of  a dice which was cast to the ground. They were placed inside  the “breastpiece of decision” worn by the priests (See, Ex. 28:30,  Lev. 8:8).  They seemed to have disappeared after the reign of King David (c.10^th cent. BCE). According to Ezra 2:63, they were not used during the second temple. Finally, according to the Mishnah (early 3^rd cent. CE, Sot.9:12), “When the first prophets died, the urim ve-thummim ceased to exist.”

In time, the word Torah assumed a  wider meaning, namely “instruction,” such as “The Torah of the  Meal Offering” (Lev. 6:7) or “The Torah of the Nazirite” (Num. 6:21). In the Wisdom literature, Torah is equated with human wisdom (Prov.1:8). And in the post exilic period (6^th cent. BCE),  Torah referred to the substance  of the Pentateuch (Neh. 8:8) .

In the Rabbinic literature, Torah  refers not only to the “written Torah,” but also to “the Oral Torah,” transmitted from one generation of sages to another. The First was accepted by the Sadducees, and the second by the Pharisees. The Mishnah (3^rd cet. CE) and then the Talmud represent a collection of the oral Torah finally redacted in the 6^th cent. CE.

In the present time, the term Torah can refer to the Five Books attributed to Moses, to the entire Hebrew Bible, or even to the entire corpus of Jewish teachings.

SONSINO’S BLOG, rsonsino.blogspot.com

 

 

 

In the beginning- A translation problem

"IN THE BEGINNING" A TRANSLATION PROBLEM

 Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D

How to render the very first verse of the Hebrew Bible has been problematic for a long time. Most translations have it as :“ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Some have it as : “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth..” Everett Fox prefers, “At the beginning of God’s creating of the heavens and the earth.” I like Speiser’s rendition: “When God set about to create heaven and earth…” What is the problem?

The Masoretic text was vocalized between 500-700 CE. So, we do not know how the original scribes read the text. In our Hebrew Bible, the very first word of Gen. 1:1 is BERESHIT. And that is, “in the beginning of,” not, “In the beginning.” The Hebrew word is in construct form attached to a verb, BARA, ”he created.” That is unusual. Because, grammatically speaking,  the construct form should be attached to an infinitive, like BERO, and not to a past tense form, like  BARA, or, it needs to be attached to a noun, such as “ In the beginning (BERESHIT) of the reign of Jehoiakim” (Jer. 26:1).

However, already a medieval Jewish commentator, Ibn Ezra (d. in Spain 1167) pointed out that there are examples in the Hebrew Bible when a construct form is attached to a verb in the past, such as “ When the Lord first spoke to Hosea-TEHILLAT DIBBER B’HOSHEA” (Hos. 1:2) or, “The city where David camped” -KIRYAT HANA DAVID”(Isa. 29:1). So, this is not a mistake in the Hebrew Bible, but a rare yet valid option.

Furthermore, it is interesting to note, as Speiser already indicated, that the biblical creation story, influenced by the Babylonian creation myth, ENUMA ELISH, starts, in fact , as, “When (“enuma”) on high the heaven had not been named…” (ANET, p. 60).

How does a religious naturalist like me deal with the story of creation? I realize that Biblical editors were not astronomers and did not know about the Big Bang. They wanted to say that at the beginning of time, when God was about the create the universe, a supernal light appeared (v.3). The Sun and the moon were created on day 4!  

The ancient Rabbis were aware of the problem and came out with some fanciful explanations. (See, TheTorah.com, Genesis, “If the sun is created on day 4, what is the light on day 1,” by Zev Farber). In reality, in Genesis, we do not have a theory of creation but only a hint that God gave form to what had previously emanated from the divine energy. (See, Ibn Ezra on this). Furthermore, the ancient Rabbis stressed (see Gen. Rab. 1:1O)  that the letter B (in BERESHIT) is closed on three sides but is open in the front, to teach us that we should not look back and speculate on the mysteries of creation that are not available to us. Instead, I would say, we need  to use the light, any light,  to illumine our steps as we forge a path that is based on justice and peace .

SONSINO’S BLOG, rsonsino.blogspot.com

 

JEWS WHO CLAIMED TO BE MESSIAH

 Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D

 The word “Messiah” (mashiah, in Hebrew) means “anointed.” In the Bible, it is often used for kings and priests. The term took on a different meaning later on. According to the ancient Rabbis, it refers to an individual, presumably chosen by God, who will restore the Davidic kingdom, bring back all Jews to the land of Israel, rebuild the temple of Jerusalem and establish peace among the nations. In Judaism we have had a few contenders to this title. Here below are the most important:

 JESUS

In the genealogy of Jesus in Mathew 1:16, we read: “Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of her was born Jesus who is called the Christ (“Messiah”).” It is presumed that Jesus was a Galilean Jew, born in Nazareth around 4 BCE. He probably was a Pharisee, and , like other Jews of his time, spoke Aramaic. He most likely belonged to a group of charismatic visionaries who predicted the end of the Roman Empire, causing the ire of the Roman authorities in ancient Palestine who crucified him around 30 CE.

 SIMON BAR KOKHBA

He was the Jewish leader of what is known as the Bar Kohba revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 CE. Rabbi Akiba considered him the Messiah. Other Rabbis disagreed. Bar Kokhba established an independent Jewish state which he ruled for three years as Nasi ("Prince"). However, his state was conquered by the Romans in 135 following a two and half-year war. He died in 135 CE in battle. After the revolt, Hadrian, the Roman emperor (he died in 138 CE), changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina.

 

SABBETAY ZEVI

A charismatic mystical Rabbi from Izmir, today in Turkey, he was born in 1626 .But he was also a manic depressive. He was declared Messiah by one of his followers, Nathan of Gaza. Because of the attention he gathered, the Ottoman Turks first locked him up in a castle and then when things got out of hand, they offered him to test his vocation by summitting to an ordeal. Instead, he accepted to convert and became a Moslem. His followers, who became known as donmes (“converts “in Turkish) did the same, maintaining a dual life-style, Jewish at home but Moslem in the streets. He died in 1676.

  

JACOB FRANK

His real name was Yakov ben Judah Leib Frankovich (1726-91).  He was born in Podolia (then Poland, now a region of Ukraine), the son of a rabbi.  As a young man he traveled in the Middle East, where the Turks gave him the surname Frank.  On his return to Poland in 1755, he founded the Frankists, a heretical Jewish sect. Subsequently, he claimed to be the recipient of direct revelations from heaven and exhorted his followers to espouse Christianity as an intermediate stage in the transition to a future messianic religion. After his death, leadership of the sect passed to his daughter Eve Frank, but the movement was soon absorbed into the Roman Catholic Church. 

Orthodox Jews today still pray for the coming of the Messiah. Reform Jews, like me, do not. In fact, I consider Messianism as dangerous because it promotes false hopes, in as much as no single individual can solve the world’s problems by him/herself. It is better to affirm good will and cooperation by many people and nations.  

SONSINO’S BLOG, rsonsino.blogspot.com