Revelation Restored: Divine Writ and Critical Responses

by David Weiss Halivni

Modern critical scholars divide the Pentateuch into distinct components, identifying areas of unevenness in the scriptural tradition, which point to several interwoven documents rather than one immaculate whole. While the conclusions reached by such critical scholarship are still matters of dispute, the inconsistencies which it has identified stand clearly before us and pose a serious challenge to the believer in divine revelation. How can a text marred by contradiction be the legacy of Sinai? How can there be reverence for holy scriptures that show signs of human intervention? David Weiss Halivni explores these questions, not by disputing the evidence itself or by defending the absolute integrity of the Pentateuchal words at all costs, but rather by accepting the inconsistencies of the text as such and asking how this text might yet be a divine legacy.Inconsistencies and unevenness in the Pentateuchal scriptures are not the discovery of modern textual science alone. Halivni demonstrates that the earliest stewards of the Torah, including some of those represented in the Bible itself, were aware of discrepancies within the tradition. From the Book of Chronicles through the commentaries of the Rabbis, sensitive readers have perceived maculations, which mitigate against the notion of an unblemished, divine document, and have responded to these maculations in different ways.Revelation Restored asserts that acknowledging and accounting for human intervention in the Pentateuchal text is not alien to the Biblical or Rabbinic tradition and need not belie the tradition of revelation. Moreover, it argues that through recognizing textual problems in the scriptures, as well as efforts to resolve them in tradition, we may learn not only about the nature of the Pentateuch itself but also about the ongoing relationship between its people and its source.

Genres: Judaism, Jewish, History

144 pages, Paperback

First published September 18, 1997

Reviews

[Liz]

In so many ways, this book is more interesting for what Halivni thinks he is doing and the meta-conversation about how religious academics grapple with the conclusions of academia than his argument itself which, while it gets the job done and gets us from there to here, is more about what he needs from revelation.
Which, yes, is how this whole thing works. And Halivni has more of a knack than other people for identifying lacunae and reconstructing them in a manner not merely defensible, but later corroborated. And also, this book is fundamentally a theological argument for how to believe in Torah MiSinai after biblical criticism couched in academic language.
And that theological work and the drive he feels is far more interesting than the results.

[Mindy Schaper · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first of my books seriously exploring Jewish academics.

I thought the first chapter featured good arguments, or more accurately, compiled traditional sources showing that Ezra played an important role as editor and teacher of the Torah after the Babyloniam exile. HaLivni brought out interesting internal contradictions, especially those with attempted reconciliations in Chronicles. I thought his theory of Chatu Yisrael was reasonable, though what exactly Ezra inherited was unclear, and HaLivni, in this book at least, was deliberately vague as to his thoughts on documentary hypothesis.

It was fascinating to read about how the practiced halacha by the time of the Mishna was in cases not aligned with the explicit Biblical text. I don't know if HaLivni's explanation of Chatu Yisrael is the best explanation for this seeming contradiction. I think something like ancient texts having specific meaning in their context that modern minds understand differently could account for some of it, though HaLivni does make a good case for the necessity of oral law.

I'm not sure why the second chapter is there. It doesn't relate to his first argument that the Biblical text is maculated, and in fact just presents an array of opinions contradicting HaLivni's point. It sort of relates to his central argument in the series as a whole which is that Jews took their text very seriously, but it's basically a compilation of commentators throughout history on Halacha L'Moshe M'Sinai, which weakens HaLivni's claim simply by the sheer mass of people who go against his first point. It's definitely related to the topic at hand, I just don't see how it relates to his argument. And it's also too exhaustive, imo.

The third chapter is the weakest. It's pretty conjectural and theoretical. It's certainly interesting but isn't supported and doesn't add anything.

That being said, it's clear HaLivni has an incredibly broad knowledge of Jewish sources, and I thought his first chapter was in general very sound. I will definitely be reading more of his work, specifically Pshat Udrash.

[P. Es · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better than not; an anomaly among [or formerly of] the Rightwing faction within Conservative Judaism Movement, he believes in an Urtext of the Torah (primal text from which various versions sprung; something for which there is physical evidence), not FIRST in Ur-'sources' (something for which there is no physical evidence). Many in the RW Conservatives/Masorti simply accept to varying degrees BibCrit, etc, w/o recourse to his position. Funny thing is...an Urtext from at least the time of Ezra is a well-accepted academic position - and the stated position of Tanach!