Nov 12/05 - Shabbat Lech Lecha: Timing Isn't Everything

Commentary by Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles

One of the most passionate divides the separates today’s Jews is the question of the authorship of Torah. According to some groups of Jews, God gave each and every word of the Torah through Moses. Yet other Jews see the Torah as inspired by God’s vision and presence, but with a significant contribution by the people the Torah percolated through. Still others see it as purely a human work—glorious and deep, but human through and through. Different clusters of Jews, organized by denomination and by faith, cling passionately to their take on the Torah’s origin, seeing other views as a deviation from the truth and from the faith.

Today’s Torah portion includes one of the passages that serves as a magnet for this debate. The narrative picks up with the great move of Abraham and his retinue from his home to the Land of Israel. Following God’s wondrous summons, “Abraham picks up and passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem, at the terebinth of Moreh. The Canaanites were then in the land (12:6).”

What does the Torah imply when it notes that “ha-K’naani az ba-Aretz, the Canaanites were then in the land?” It certainly seems to mean that they were in the land then (when the tale took place), but not now (when the book is being written). The challenge to those who hold that Moses literally wrote each and every word of the Bible is that there were Canaanites in the land during his entire lifetime. So what does the word “then” reveal?

According to Rashi (11th Century, France), the word comes to teach us that the Canaanites were in the process of conquering the land from the sons of Shem, who had been given the land lawfully. Because the Canaanites took the land from its rightful owner, it was only proper that descendents of Shem should come and reclaim it from the Canaanites. Thus, for Rashi, the az is an assertion of the propriety of the Israelite conquest in the time of Joshua.

The Radak, Rabbi David Kimchi (12th Century, France) acknowledges Rashi’s interpretation, but he suggests a very different take. He says that the surprising word is to teach us “how God deals with those whom God loves.” In other words, the Canaanites were in the land while Abraham was. And they would have destroyed him if not for the miraculous protection extended by God to Abraham. As Radak notes, the az signifies that “this was proof that God was with him.”

The most suggestive comment is offered by that towering medieval sage, Abraham Ibn Ezra (11th Century Spain and Italy), who agrees with Rashi, “it is possible that the Canaanites seized the land of Canaan from some other tribe at that time (i.e. then, but not prior to this).” So far, Ibn Ezra is simply suggesting the same solution as Rashi. But then he drops his bombshell: “Should this interpretation be incorrect, then this text has a great secret. Let the one who understands it remain silent.”

What secret would be so great that those who understood its meaning were duty bound to maintain silence? Could it be that Ibn Ezra understood that Moses could not have written that verse, so that the dogma of attributing the specific words of the entire Torah to Moses could not possibly be true? That insight would certainly shake the foundations of faith, and one could easily imagine a medieval sage counseling silence in its wake. It does look like Ibn Ezra understood the verse in that way. Another medieval scholar, Joseph Bonfils, commenting on Ibn Ezra’s words, breaks the silence: “Joshua or another of the other prophets wrote it.”

But Bonfils’ shocking revelation simultaneously opens the door to a reconciliation between those whose faith in Torah is dependent on its Mosaic authorship and those whose love of truth prevents them from embracing that claim. He goes on to write: “Since we are to have trust in the words of tradition and the prophets, what should I care whether it was Moses or another prophet who wrote it, since the words of all of them are true and inspired?”

What difference indeed? The wisdom intrinsic to the Torah is the best proof for its divinity. While those who do accept Moses as (human) author may argue with those who accept the documentary hypothesis, with its claim of generations of Israelite schools and sages as the (human) authors, both groups affirm that there has never been a book with the wisdom, depth, insight, and power of the Torah. Capable of inspiring humanity in every corner of the earth, able to mobilize national liberation movements and inspire slaves to reach for freedom, the Torah has been humanity’s link to God from the moment ancient Israel presented it to mankind.

Ultimately, then, Bonfils (and Ibn Ezra) offer us a way to link arms across our respective understandings of who wrote the Bible. The authenticity of the Torah’s contents, the revolutionary assertions of human dignity, of the sanctity of the Sabbath, of a God who liberates slaves, all join to reveal the sweep of God, just under the surface.

Whether God handed that Book to us through a single man on a single mountain on a single day, or whether God handed that Book to us through schools of sages and prophets, in either case, the Torah that we have in our hands is none other than the Word of God.

On that we can agree, and celebrate.

Shabbat Shalom.