I have long been aware of Chaim's opinions on this particular topic and my disagreement with them, so I have ignored all such videos/postings up until now. However, this video is wrong at least one account and since I have devoted my life to defending the historicity of all the events in the Torah, I have decided to post a response, though it will doubtless get me labeled "still a Xian" and maybe even banned.
First is the most egregious remark: that "Xianity" interprets the story of Adam and Eve literally. This is plainly not so, as anyone with any experience with Xians knows. All the ancient Xian communions--Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Nestorian, as well as all mainline Protestant denominations, regard the story of Adam and Eve as mythological. How they reconcile their denial of the historicity of the "First Adam" with their insistence on a need for a "second Adam" is beyond me, but they do it.
In the nineteenth common century, liberal Protestants invented something called "higher" or "historical criticism," which posits that the Torah (or at least the early chapters of Genesis) are adaptations of ancient Babylonian and Canaanite mythology. There is one and only one exception to this "de-mythologization"--Fundamentalist Protestants (especially white ones, as Black Fundamentalist Protestants seem to enjoy a status as honorary Profound Marxist-Leninist Intellectuals. Perhaps Chaim only deals with Fundamentalist Protestants, but they are truly an outlier in Xendom, which, after, all, regards the Hebrew Bible as nothing but one big Xological "allegory."
I will mention only in passing the absolute illogic of denying the historicity of Genesis in the name of "science" while absolutely refusing to apply the same stringent standards to their "virgin birth" and other such "miracles," real or imagined.
But there is a second problem: the labeling of the "non-literal" and symbolic interpretation as THE one and only Jewish interpretation. Having been a religious pilgrim for much of my life, I am quite used to the ancient churches claiming not only that they do not interpret Adam and Eve literally now, but that they never have, as well of their placing Darwinian evolution in the "mouths" of their "church fathers." So any and all attacks on me by JTF'ers about my "still being a Xian/Protestant/what have you are nothing I haven't suffered before. The claims are so universal as to be thoroughly predictable. But my thoughts are my own, and were I to claim that I now "see" that the early stories of Genesis are nothing but pedagogic fables, I would be lying. In 62 years of life I have not found anyone who answers my objections to turning these into fairy tales, and since there is actually some question as to whether or not a person can control what he believes (a point raised against Rambam's list of `Iqqarim, I believe), all the hooting and all the insults in the world really aren't going to make any difference.
While Chaim does not commit this particular offense, I point out the hypocrisy of "scientific secularists" who regularly attack Genesis but somehow seem to be nowhere around when pre-scientific, pre-Copernican "indigenous pipples" are around is enough to discredit inconsistent scientism.
Now...to get to my objections, first of all I must ask: WHO ever said that if the stories are true they can't have any other meaning or that they don't contain moral lessons??? Torah is interpreted, after all, via the fourfold method of PaRDeS. The literal truth of the peshat in no way harms or discredits the other senses which are all equally true, or the fact that chiddushot are constantly being found to interpret them freshly.
My next objection is that it is simply illogical and irrational (and certainly unnecessary) to subject the exnihilation process to scientific laws that did not exist. All such "laws" exist **within** the created universe and had to be created along with it. To infer that they pre-existed and governed the Creation is just another form of the "eternal universe" argument. Even the perfectly traditional concept of G-d planting "miracles" so that they happen at just the right moment presupposes a creation in which they are to be planted, and this could not be through a natural process as natural processes *did not exist until afterwards*.
Another obvious argment (and one I hesitate to make since it is so obvious that non-literalists have rejected it out of hand) is simply this: what do you think the word "omnipotent" means??? And if you're going to be embarrassed by the literal truth of a Bible story, **why is it always the first eleven chapters of Genesis?** I never hear many attacks on floating axes or ravens feeding people, and certainly not on the "new testament." But somehow those first two parashiyyot are seen as a unique embarrassment to four fifths of the world. Is it because prior to Genesis 12 the universe as described therein doesn't operate exactly as it does today? Duh. No one denies this. I certainly don't deny it. But to insist on injecting the processes of a fully created universe into the process via which it first came into being is an error of logic.
As to the non-literal interpretation being "THE" Jewish interpretation, I must admit that I am very disappointed to hear this coming from JTF. I do not in the least deny that there are Jews, including great authorities, who are Theistic evolutionists. But the implication that those Jews who *do* interpret it literally are under Xian influence is untrue. I own several ArtScroll works, all of which seem to accept the events described as actual historical events, not to mention the great the position of the great Rabbi Rotenberg (zt"l) as elucidated in Toldedot `Am `Olam. Indeed, it is the Halakhah that this is the year 5780 from creation (more technically from when Adam first spoke).
And even if you want to turn the first three chapters into myth, what of the detailed chronologies given (ten generations from Adam to Noah, ten generations from Shem to Abraham, and six generations from Abraham to Moses)? What of Rabbi Rotenberg's statement that when Noah died in 2006 Abraham was 58 years old? For that matter, what about the chronologies at the beginning of Divrei-HaYamim?
One may disagree with Rabbis Rotenberg, Scherman, and others like them, but that does not render their opinions "un-Jewish," much less as being due to the influence of "inbred rednecks."
Also, while the fact that the Kutim accept the historical truth of all these events may not be used to legitimize a Jewish literalism, it certainly shows that "literalism" was not suddenly invented in Alabama in 1859.
And finally, how could anyone who calls himself a Ben Noah deny the historical fact of Noach and of the covenant G-d made with him after the Flood??? Everything I have ever read on Noahism bases it on the laws G-d gave to Noah at that time. That's like celebrating Purim and reciting the blessings if the Purim story were just a myth.
Well, it's late and I need go to. As I said, I have long been aware of Chaim's (and I assume everyone else here)'s position is quite different to mine. That doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the implication that no one ever believed the stories were true until American hillbillies were sufficiently inbred to reduce their intelligence--and that other miracles, including alleged Xian ones, are never so challenged.
Shabbat shalom to all. Do to my membership here what you will.
Topic: JTF This Week: Differences between Judaism and Christianity on Adam and Eve (Read 2596 times)