was the Torah corrupted?

Evidence

Scholars do not have a precise picture of how the Torah came into being—but we do have enough evidence of the sort that Berman ignores that suggests that the Torah that we have today is not the Torah of the time of Moses—if Moses indeed existed.  And this evidence takes into account the norms of ancient Near Eastern compositional techniques, as Berman correctly insists.

Source critics often begin their analysis by spotting contradictions in the Torah; for example: Must Hebrew slaves be released at the jubilee year (Leviticus 25:40) or may they serve forever (Exodus 21:6 and Deuteronomy 15:17)?^[3]

Earlier Jewish readers, like the ancient rabbis and the medieval interpreters, were very close readers of the biblical text, and certainly noted such contradictions, which they harmonized through interpretation into apparent contradictions.  The scholar of midrash, Isaac Heinemann (1876-1957), brilliantly called their method of resolution “creative philology,” where words of the Torah, as divine speech, need not have their obvious and usual meaning—God’s use of language is privileged, not confined to human norms.  Thus, according to the classical rabbis, “forever” of Exodus and Deuteronomy anomalously means there “until the Jubilee year.”     

The Rabbinic vs. the Scholarly Approach 

To pick up on Berman’s use of Lewis Caroll, the rabbinic method of meaning-making is similar to Humpy Dumpty, who declaims: “‘When I use a word … it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’”  I, as an observant Jew, am not deriding the rabbis, whose legal interpretations of the Torah I follow, but wish to call attention to the nature of biblical language as understood by the rabbis.  But when I interpret the biblical texts as a scholar, I use normal rather than creative philology, and thus view contradictions as real, and use them to identify potentially different sources or authors. To my mind, this is the better model for explaining such contradictions.  

Let me clarify what I mean through two examples of such contradictions.

The Creation Story

The first creation story (ending either in Genesis 2:3 or in the middle of 2:4—but the fact that scholars can’t “even” agree on this doesn’t prove that there is one creation story!) is contradicted by the second. They differ not only in details, but have such different styles that it is difficult for me to see them as the work of a single author (or Author).  Berman mocks and caricatures the use of different divine names as a criterion for distinguishing authorship between these stories—and these two stories do consistently use different divine names—but, contrary to the common claim, this is not the main criterion used in biblical scholarship for such source differentiations.

The Truth is in the Details
Here are three significant contradictions between the two stories:^[4]  

• In the first story, man and woman are created together, after the birds and land-animals, while the second story describes the creation of man, then the birds and land animals, and then woman.

• Each story uses a different verbs—the first uses bara’ for “create,” while the second never does.

• In the first story the world is created (ב.ר.א) in six days, while according to the second in Genesis 2:4b, “in the day the LORD God made (ע.ש.ה) heaven and earth,” it was made (note the different verb!) in one.

The differences and contradictions between these stories have been widely recognized, and indeed been utilized by even the most traditional scholars.  (I am thinking here of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s “The Lonely Man of Faith,” which speaks of Adam I and Adam II [even though the first creation story never calls the male Adam].)^[5]  Unless one comes with strong biases, these look like separate stories by different authors—and often things are what they seem.^[6]

The Blood Plague

The plague of blood is a composite text that can be easily disentangled, as I show in my “Source Criticism: It’s in the (Plague of) Blood.” Among the many differences between these two stories is that in one version the plague affects the Nile only, in the other, it affects all of Egypt; in one, Moses is the protagonist, in the other, Aaron is also involved. The story as presented is choppy.^[7]  Once these two stories are disentangled, however, each story (source) reads as consistent and more or less complete and each may be connected to other pieces of the plague narrative as analyzed through source criticism.

Possible vs. Probable

I completely agree with Berman and others that the Bible must be studied as an ancient Near Eastern Text, considering the literary and other norms of those cultures.  Berman highlights examples of ancient Near Eastern texts that contain contradictions, and thus suggests that such contradictions do not imply multiple authors.  But his analogies are often weak, or at least should be balanced against many counter-examples or more likely probable analogies.  The job of biblical scholars, like others in the Humanities, is not to suggest what is possible, but what is probable; offering a theoretically possible counter-example to the established position carries little weight.

Why Source Criticism Developed

The division of the Torah into sources was not developed by liberals to debunk traditionalism by pulling the Torah apart, but originally by rather religious scholars to explain fundamental difficulties in the text.  And—here is what is more remarkable—once source criticism is applied to the entire Torah it is possible to reassemble several (yes—I am being vague and scholars continue to debate specifics!) more or less complete consistent sources that tell similar, more or less parallel, largely complete stories.  Try doing that with a composition that you know is single-authored!

The Torah is Layered not Scrambled

At one point, Berman criticizes the source critical work of David Carr, a professor of Bible at NY’s Union Theological Seminary, with the quip:  “Eggs cannot be unscrambled,” referring to Carr’s attempt to unscramble the Torah into its constituent sources.  This analogy suggests that the text of the Torah looks like an omelet, with the yolks and whites well-mixed together.^[8] But is this so?  To me, the Torah looks more like a layer-cake.  Or, if we need to stay with eggs, the Torah is a sunny-side up, where it is quite easy to differentiate different strata.

Verification of Sources from the Bible Itself

The idea that the Torah developed over time is confirmed by evidence in the Bible itself.  The Book of Kings, which was completed during the Babylonian exile (see its final verses), never uses the term “Torah” in reference to our Five Books of Moses, though it does in reference to Deuteronomy (see 2 Kings 14:6 and Deuteronomy 24:16), implying that some form of Deuteronomy is the “Torah” for the author of Kings.^[9]

In contrast, the Book of Chronicles, several centuries later, unlike Kings uses the term Torah many times in reference to the Torah as we more or less know it—including what is called the Priestly material (P—large parts of Leviticus, Numbers and smaller sections of Genesis and Exodus, and a snippet at the end of Deuteronomy).  This seems to suggest that the earlier author of Kings did not have our Torah, or consider it authoritative, while the later author of Chronicles did. 

Other evidence from comparing Kings and Chronicles substantiates this. 2 Chronicles 6 and 1 Kings 8 both record Solomon’s prayer upon inaugurating the Temple. Both texts refer back to God’s message to his father David, that his descendants must follow God, but they do so using different language:

2 Chronicles 6:16	1 Kings 8:25
רַק אִם יִשְׁמְרוּ בָנֶיךָ אֶת דַּרְכָּם לָלֶכֶת בְּתוֹרָתִי כַּאֲשֶׁר הָלַכְתָּ לְפָנָי.	רַק אִם יִשְׁמְרוּ בָנֶיךָ אֶת דַּרְכָּם לָלֶכֶת לְפָנַי כַּאֲשֶׁר הָלַכְתָּ לְפָנָי.
if only your children will look to their way and walk in the path of My Torah as you have walked before Me.	if only your descendants will look to their way and walk before Me as you have walked before Me.

If the author of Kings had the Torah, why did he not frame his comment, like Chronicles, using the term “Torah”?  The evidence seems to strongly imply (note—I am not using the word “prove”)—that the earlier author of Kings did not know the Torah as we have it, while the later author of Chronicles did.

Near Eastern Analogies

Much of Berman’s work is centered on using ancient Near Eastern analogies to “prove” the Torah’s antiquity and unity.  This was not the focus of his essay, so I will touch on it only very briefly.  Other scholars have debated his specific analogies, especially how tight and compelling they are, and have pointed out that he often ignores counter-analogies.  Instead of asking which analogies might explain the Bible, scholars must ask which analogies best explain the Bible. 

Thus, the Mosaic piece never refers to a well-known fact, amply attested in ancient Near Eastern studies, that some ancient Near Eastern texts were edited and re-edited over time,^[10] and that sometimes two pre-existent texts were combined to form a new text; the inclusion of the originally independent story about the slaying of the monster Huwawa in the Gilgamesh epic is a single example of this.^[11]  In a later period, the four gospels were combined into a single composition, the Diatessaron.^[12] For most scholars, these cases offer an important analogy or model for how the Torah was composed.^[13]

Biblical Scholarship
Within the Humanities

Biblical scholarship is a discipline of the Humanities, where we must (proudly) acknowledge that we deal with likelihoods rather than scientific proofs.  Like many academic fields, we collect evidence, debate what is evidence, debate how evidence should be interpreted, and consider how different pieces of evidence should be weighed—all the time trying to factor in our own biases, our own humanity. 

We must each be honest about our presuppositions, and less certain that we have discovered thecorrect answer, though we must present the most likely solution.  We must be civil.  And most importantly, for those of us who care about the Bible, its original meaning, and its composition, we must acknowledge that, as we try our best to find the most plausible answer, we will never answer such questions with certainty.   

footnotes

[3] See discussion in Zev Farber, “The Law of the Hebrew Slave: Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy,” TheTorah.com (2015); Aaron Koller, “The Law of the Hebrew Slave: Reading the Law Collections as Complementary,” TheTorah.com (2015); Marvin Sweeney, “The Bible’s Evolving Effort to Humanize Debt Slavery,” TheTorah.com (2016).    

[5] For another approach to the distinctive approach to adam in each story, see David Frankel, “Rosh Hashanah: Celebrating the Creation of the Individual or the Community?” TheTorah.com(2013). 

[6] Furthermore, each creation story is continued separately later in Genesis. See, for example, the different images of God and God’s relationship to humanity in the Noah story, when divided into J a P versions: TABS Editors, “A Textual Study of Noah’s Flood,” TheTorah.com (2014).   

[7] See especially the change mid-verse from two actors to one in Exodus 7:20:

וַיַּֽעֲשׂוּ־כֵן֩ מֹשֶׁ֨ה וְאַהֲרֹ֜ן כַּאֲשֶׁ֣ר ׀ צִוָּ֣ה יְהוָ֗ה וַיָּ֤רֶם בַּמַּטֶּה֙ וַיַּ֤ךְ אֶת־הַמַּ֙יִם֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר בַּיְאֹ֔ר לְעֵינֵ֣י פַרְעֹ֔ה וּלְעֵינֵ֖י עֲבָדָ֑יו וַיֵּהָֽפְכ֛וּ כָּל־הַמַּ֥יִם אֲשֶׁר־בַּיְאֹ֖ר לְדָֽם׃

“Moses and Aaron did just as the LORD commanded: helifted up the rod and struck the water in the Nile in the sight of Pharaoh and his courtiers, and all the water in the Nile was turned into blood”

[8] I wish Berman had properly acknowledged the source of this image and phrase—the British social anthropologist, Edmund Leach.

[9] See discussion of this in, David Glatt-Gilad, “Deuteronomy: The First Torah,” TheTorah.com(2015); Itamar Kislev, “Understanding Deuteronomy on Its own Terms,” TheTorah.com (2015).     

[10] See Jeffrey H. Tigay, The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic (Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1982).

[11] See Daniel E. Fleming and Sara J. Milstein, The Buried Foundation of the Gilgamesh Epic: The Akkadian Huwawa Story (Cuneiform Monographs 39; Leiden: Brill, 2010).

[12] See Naomi Koltun-Fromm, “The Diatessaron and Its Relevance to the Study of the Pentateuch,” TheTorah.com (2014). 

[13] For additional models for source-criticism, see Jeffrey H. Tigay, Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985).