Levite
Higher and Higher
I'm a Jew, and I don't take the Tanakh (OT) 100% literally.
Personally, I think that if you're reading the Bible for a lesson in history, or biology, or cosmology, you're reading it for the wrong reasons. That is not what it was intended to be for.
Second of all, as a Jew, my understanding of the Written Torah is that it cannot be read alone: it is intended to be read alongside the Oral Torah (Talmud, Midrash, and the rest of the body of Rabbinic writings) in order to properly interpret it. One cannot properly follow the commandments without the interpretation of the Rabbis of the Talmud to explain what the actual parameters are. For example, when the Torah says 'ayin takhat 'ayin, "an eye for an eye," one might think if one read only the literal text of the Written Torah, that someone responsible for blinding a person's eye was liable to themselves be blinded in an eye. But the interpretation of the Talmud corrects this misapprehension, and informs us that what the Torah means there is actually the monetary value of the eye and everything that went with it (i.e., damages for pain and suffering, compensation for lost work, etc.), which the blinder owes to the blindee.
Even from a Jewish academic viewpoint, it seems clear that even in pre-Rabbinic societies, there was an expectation that exegetical materials needed to be created in order to understand the text properly. For example, the Dead Sea Scrolls include not only a great portion of the Biblical canon, but also a large amount of what I would term quasi-midrashic exegetical material assembled in order for the members of the Qumran Sect to interpret the scripture according to their rather apocalyptic teachings. Some of the so-called Apocryphal texts seem also to fall into the quasi- or proto-midrashic realm: Joseph and Asenath, Sefer Hanokh (the Book of Enoch), the Martyrdom of Isaiah, Sefer ha-Yovelot (the Book of Jubilees), Susannah, Yehudit (Judith), the Prayer of Menasseh, the Prayer of Azariel, and First Esdras' last four chapters being the works that spring to my mind. We have no extant copy of Sefer Tzadok (the Book of Zadok), which was apparently the central exegetical text of the Tzedukim (Sadducees), but the surviving quotes that appear in Rabbinic anti-Sadducee polemics appear to indicate both a quasi-aggadic (narrative) midrashic element and also a pseudo-halakhic (legal exegetical/jurisgenetive) element. In other words, it seems likely that for the preponderance of Jewish history, the Written Torah was not read literally, in isolation: there was always some oral tradition (some of which eventually got written down) there to interpret it.
In any case, when it comes to the narrative, allegorical, or metaphorical elements in the Biblical text, there is a long-standing principle of interpretation: dibrah Torah ki'leshon b'nai Adam, meaning "the Torah speaks in the way people speak," meaning that some texts are simply not designed to be taken literally. They may be idioms, they may be circumlocutions, they may be metaphorical. This principle has been applied over the centuries to various verses by different commentators. There is no reason for the modern Jew not to apply it in the same way to those verses that trouble us today. Additionally, one is expected to use common sense and reason in the interpretation of the verses; and according to Rambam (Rabbi Moses Maimonides, 12th century, one of the greatest scholars of Jewish law and exegetical interpretation) one must also take into account the evidences of "natural philosophy," which was what they called science in those days. If, he tells us, the Torah appears to contradict what science tells us about the world, then we must not be understanding the Torah correctly: there must be another interpretation that does not force us to negate common sense.
Personally again, I would also want to differentiate between divinely authored text and divinely inspired text. The former-- which would seem to indicate that God literally dictated the entire Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai, and Moses dutifully copied it down word for word, exactly as we have it today-- is not something I can believe in. To me, that is simply not reasonable to accept. However, I can accept the latter concept-- meaning that the Torah was written by a number of people, but that those people were prophets, trying their best to comprehend and transcribe the messages that God gave them; but prophecy is not like a phone call, and when the revelatory visions are experienced by flawed human beings, they can misinterpret what God has shown them, or misremember it, or misunderstand it, and when they compose their experiences into formalized poetry, their own errors and interpretations can hide or twist the message that God intended...which is why, IMO, Judaism teaches us that Torah continues to be made every day, as Jews interpret and reinterpret the laws and the text.
What it boils down to is that the Tanakh was not intended to be taken literally, nor need it be seen as the literal Word of God to be divine and holy in origin. IMO, taking it literally is both erroneous and counterproductive.
Personally, I think that if you're reading the Bible for a lesson in history, or biology, or cosmology, you're reading it for the wrong reasons. That is not what it was intended to be for.
Second of all, as a Jew, my understanding of the Written Torah is that it cannot be read alone: it is intended to be read alongside the Oral Torah (Talmud, Midrash, and the rest of the body of Rabbinic writings) in order to properly interpret it. One cannot properly follow the commandments without the interpretation of the Rabbis of the Talmud to explain what the actual parameters are. For example, when the Torah says 'ayin takhat 'ayin, "an eye for an eye," one might think if one read only the literal text of the Written Torah, that someone responsible for blinding a person's eye was liable to themselves be blinded in an eye. But the interpretation of the Talmud corrects this misapprehension, and informs us that what the Torah means there is actually the monetary value of the eye and everything that went with it (i.e., damages for pain and suffering, compensation for lost work, etc.), which the blinder owes to the blindee.
Even from a Jewish academic viewpoint, it seems clear that even in pre-Rabbinic societies, there was an expectation that exegetical materials needed to be created in order to understand the text properly. For example, the Dead Sea Scrolls include not only a great portion of the Biblical canon, but also a large amount of what I would term quasi-midrashic exegetical material assembled in order for the members of the Qumran Sect to interpret the scripture according to their rather apocalyptic teachings. Some of the so-called Apocryphal texts seem also to fall into the quasi- or proto-midrashic realm: Joseph and Asenath, Sefer Hanokh (the Book of Enoch), the Martyrdom of Isaiah, Sefer ha-Yovelot (the Book of Jubilees), Susannah, Yehudit (Judith), the Prayer of Menasseh, the Prayer of Azariel, and First Esdras' last four chapters being the works that spring to my mind. We have no extant copy of Sefer Tzadok (the Book of Zadok), which was apparently the central exegetical text of the Tzedukim (Sadducees), but the surviving quotes that appear in Rabbinic anti-Sadducee polemics appear to indicate both a quasi-aggadic (narrative) midrashic element and also a pseudo-halakhic (legal exegetical/jurisgenetive) element. In other words, it seems likely that for the preponderance of Jewish history, the Written Torah was not read literally, in isolation: there was always some oral tradition (some of which eventually got written down) there to interpret it.
In any case, when it comes to the narrative, allegorical, or metaphorical elements in the Biblical text, there is a long-standing principle of interpretation: dibrah Torah ki'leshon b'nai Adam, meaning "the Torah speaks in the way people speak," meaning that some texts are simply not designed to be taken literally. They may be idioms, they may be circumlocutions, they may be metaphorical. This principle has been applied over the centuries to various verses by different commentators. There is no reason for the modern Jew not to apply it in the same way to those verses that trouble us today. Additionally, one is expected to use common sense and reason in the interpretation of the verses; and according to Rambam (Rabbi Moses Maimonides, 12th century, one of the greatest scholars of Jewish law and exegetical interpretation) one must also take into account the evidences of "natural philosophy," which was what they called science in those days. If, he tells us, the Torah appears to contradict what science tells us about the world, then we must not be understanding the Torah correctly: there must be another interpretation that does not force us to negate common sense.
Personally again, I would also want to differentiate between divinely authored text and divinely inspired text. The former-- which would seem to indicate that God literally dictated the entire Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai, and Moses dutifully copied it down word for word, exactly as we have it today-- is not something I can believe in. To me, that is simply not reasonable to accept. However, I can accept the latter concept-- meaning that the Torah was written by a number of people, but that those people were prophets, trying their best to comprehend and transcribe the messages that God gave them; but prophecy is not like a phone call, and when the revelatory visions are experienced by flawed human beings, they can misinterpret what God has shown them, or misremember it, or misunderstand it, and when they compose their experiences into formalized poetry, their own errors and interpretations can hide or twist the message that God intended...which is why, IMO, Judaism teaches us that Torah continues to be made every day, as Jews interpret and reinterpret the laws and the text.
What it boils down to is that the Tanakh was not intended to be taken literally, nor need it be seen as the literal Word of God to be divine and holy in origin. IMO, taking it literally is both erroneous and counterproductive.
x ten quintillion
