That the Torah was dictated by God to Moses on Mount Sinai is the foundation belief of Orthodox Judaism. For millennia, there was no room for any other view. Then, in the early years of the 19th century, a German academic, Julius Wellhausen, spearheaded a revolutionary approach to analyzing the text of the Pentateuch.
As Rabbi David Harbater tells us in his new book, In the Beginnings: Discovering the Two Worldviews Hidden within Genesis 1-11, Wellhausen was convinced that he had identified four individual compilers of the Torah, each basing his contribution on four originally separate documents. His work, enthusiastically carried forward by other biblical scholars, is known as the documentary hypotheses (DH) model.
Such apparently evidence-based conclusions, propounded so confidently by respected academics, were widely accepted (some of the original conclusions were subsequently modified or dropped altogether). Some deeply religious Jewish scholars, unable to ignore the impressive scholarship of Wellhausen and his school, attempted to reconcile it with traditional Judaism.
One such, the eminent British rabbi Louis Jacobs, accepted the DH conclusions but maintained his profound belief that the Torah is the word of God. He attempted to reconcile modern scholarship and Orthodox Judaism by proposing that various individuals had indeed compiled the text of the Torah, but they had been divinely inspired. His views, utterly rejected by the Orthodox authorities of his day, nevertheless made sense to a proportion of British Jewry and led to the founding of his non-Orthodox Masorti movement.
Harbater uses the first few chapters of Genesis to tackle the apparent chasm that yawns between Orthodox belief and biblical scholarship. His scrupulous analysis of the text, allied to his deep spiritual insight, results in an astounding resolution of the apparently irreconcilable.
Harbater lists the four sources identified by Wellhausen: J (because in these verses, God is always referred to in the yad-hey-vav-hey form, transcribed as Adonai; E (because in these sections, God is referred to as Elohim); P (because this identifiable text is dominated by priestly concerns); and D (because this text reflects the worldview of Deuteronomy).
The two separate accounts of creation
Examining the early verses of Genesis, Harbater identifies two quite separate accounts of creation, especially the creation of humankind.
He notes that in one version, God is exclusively referred to as Adonai, and in the other as Elohim. So he adapts Wellhausen’s four classifications into just two: J and P. What he most certainly does not do is to conclude that the Torah was therefore pasted together by individuals from ancient texts.
Drawing on his understanding of the nature of the Jewish religion, he writes: “Judaism, from its inception, was a faith and religion that embraced multiple world views and perspectives.” Therefore, he concludes, it is not surprising that the Torah incorporates more than one perspective of the Jewish God, or that at times they are in competition with each other.
In fact, as Harbater explains, In the Beginnings reveals, explores and explains how, “hidden within the text of Genesis are two distinct perspectives on God, humankind, their relationship, and more.” The priestly source or divine voice, P, sees God as omnipotent, creator of an orderly and purposeful world. The other, the J source or divine voice, conceives of a human-like God concerned above all with human beings and earthly concerns.
Harbater does not touch on this duality of the Almighty in Kabbalistic teachings and the entirely different Kabbalistic explanation of its meaning.
In following Harbater’s journey of discovery through the early chapters of Genesis, the reader is very greatly assisted by the device of P material being printed in red and J material in purple.
The two worldviews are so different that when Harbater finally sums up, he says that the Torah could appear to be expounding two different, and seemingly incompatible, religions.
A simplistic observer might assume that if one is right, the other must be wrong; but Harbater entirely rejects this view. Both, he says, “are an integral part of the religious tradition bequeathed to us by the Torah.” Among several approaches to resolving the apparent dilemma, he advances the idea that the Torah provides two paths toward a meaningful religious life because one may suit an individual more than another.
Another explanation calls on the famous verses in Ecclesiastes listing how there is an appropriate time for every experience (“a time to be born, and a time to die”). It may be, says Harbater, that at certain points in any life, one aspect of God may be more relevant than another.
Harbater’s message to us, at the conclusion of his intensive exploration of the first chapters of the Torah, is that “as difficult as it may be, we are all meant to live with the awareness that different conceptions and worldviews engage in a permanent tug-of-war, each competing for our attention,” and that we should view them as manifestations of the “divine symphony of revelation.”
For anyone puzzled by the apparent inconsistencies and complexities that abound throughout the Torah, Harbater shines a great light. The dark places are illuminated, inconsistencies resolved, faith strengthened. In the Beginnings is a work to be treasured. ■
- In the Beginnings: Discovering the Two Worldviews Hidden within Genesis 1-11
- David Harbater
- Gefen Publishing House, 2023
- 280 pages; $29.95