Divine Inspiration

[Sariel]

I'm curious how do Conservative and Reform view the divine inspiration of the Tanakh? To my knowledge, they reject the "pious assumption" of God dictating the books verbatim and the texts being "perfect" revelations of God, ex: contradictory ideas like God regretting decisions, etc.
One explanation I've heard is it that the scriptures are a record of the author's response to Israel's relationship to God and can be subject to scrutiny and/or disagreement. Is this a fair assessment?

 

[Akivah]

The rabbis that I listen to, tell me that the five books of Moses were dictated to Moses by G-d. I don't recall any rabbi using the term "perfect revelation". The meaning of the texts have to be teased out of the text. And there are many lessons that we can learn from the text. The "contradictions" are typically viewed as reader misunderstandings. Certainly the text is scrutinized and discussed.

 

[RabbiO]

The rabbis that I listen to, tell me that the five books of Moses were dictated to Moses by G-d.....

Such as?

 

[Akivah]

??? I don't understand your questioning phrase.

 

[RabbiO]

??? I don't understand your questioning phrase.

You have identified yourself as a Conservative Jew.

Perhaps I made an unwarranted assumption that, "The rabbis that I listen to, tell me that the five books of Moses were dictated to Moses by G-d." are rabbis within the Conservative movement. Under that assumption, I was asking which Conservative rabbis have espoused that position.

If I was unclear, I apologize.

 

[Akivah]

Yes, I am Conservative. We are enough of a minority that I don't feel the need to subdivide further on my title.

The "such as" was unclear, I could see several possible questions from it. Apology accepted. It happens.

Anyways, I've heard it stated from some seminars I've attended in the past (don't remember the speaker's names) and from at least one of my local rabbis. One former rabbi said that he believed the entire bible was midrash with nothing coming from G-d.

One of them is Rick Sherwin. Rabbi Rick | Congregation Beth Am

 

[Levite]

I'm curious how do Conservative and Reform view the divine inspiration of the Tanakh? To my knowledge, they reject the "pious assumption" of God dictating the books verbatim and the texts being "perfect" revelations of God, ex: contradictory ideas like God regretting decisions, etc.
One explanation I've heard is it that the scriptures are a record of the author's response to Israel's relationship to God and can be subject to scrutiny and/or disagreement. Is this a fair assessment?

I don't know that there is anything like a consensus about revelation in the Conservative movement. There are those who see the Torah and other prophetic texts as being of divine source, though filtered through the lens of the human prophets' understanding. There are those who see such texts as being of divine inspiration-- that is to say human authors inspired to create sacred text by a prompting of some spark of holiness within or without. And there are those who see such texts as entirely human productions created from our yearning to reach out and hear the voice of God-- or concepts similar in one sense or another. And each of these different ways to see it have varying nuances represented in different schools of thought.

It is worth noting, by the way, that even amongst the Orthodox and the very few Conservative Jews who take a literal approach to the divine origins of Torah, Christian-style literalism is not the approach used, as the Rabbis teach us that Torah uses human language to speak to human beings (i.e., Torah uses idiom, metaphor, literary devices, allegory, etc., in various places and in various ways, in addition to more literal or directly executed methods of imparting information). Thus, even quite traditionally, we understand that when the Torah depicts God, it uses anthropomorphic imagery which is not necessarily to be taken literally.

Personally, I believe that Torah and the prophetic texts do represent divine revelations, albeit filtered heavily through the lens of the understanding of human prophets, and then further subject to redaction and alteration by later authors both prophetic and non-prophetic. Thus I see Torah as being both imperfect and containing human flaws and at the same time containing divine revelation and being infinitely interpretable to produce holy understandings and laws.

 

[RabbiO]

I don't know that there is anything like a consensus about revelation in the Conservative movement....

Although the OP asked about Reform views, the post is in the Conservative DIR and I am constrained from commenting, because I am not a Conservative Jew, by the rules of the sub-DIR.

 

[Akivah]

I'm willing to cut you some slack on this RabbiO. You could simply present the Reform POV and then not debate on it or contrast it to the Conservative POV. Then we could compare both POV in one place on our own.

 

[Akivah]

I don't know that there is anything like a consensus about revelation in the Conservative movement. There are those who see the Torah and other prophetic texts as being of divine source, though filtered through the lens of the human prophets' understanding. There are those who see such texts as being of divine inspiration-- that is to say human authors inspired to create sacred text by a prompting of some spark of holiness within or without. And there are those who see such texts as entirely human productions created from our yearning to reach out and hear the voice of God-- or concepts similar in one sense or another. And each of these different ways to see it have varying nuances represented in different schools of thought.

It is worth noting, by the way, that even amongst the Orthodox and the very few Conservative Jews who take a literal approach to the divine origins of Torah, Christian-style literalism is not the approach used, as the Rabbis teach us that Torah uses human language to speak to human beings (i.e., Torah uses idiom, metaphor, literary devices, allegory, etc., in various places and in various ways, in addition to more literal or directly executed methods of imparting information). Thus, even quite traditionally, we understand that when the Torah depicts God, it uses anthropomorphic imagery which is not necessarily to be taken literally.