August 22nd: Re’eh
THIS WEEK IN THE TORAH
Rabbi David E. Ostrich
Theologically, this is a pivotal week in the Torah/Judaism dynamic. Whereas the Torah and the rest of the Bible are based on the belief that God speaks to humans, this week’s Torah portion contains the “cut-off valve” for Revelation and sets up some interesting developments in the ways we Jews determine God’s Will for us.
The passage seems simple enough:
“If there appears among you a prophet or a dream-diviner and he gives you a sign or a portent, saying, ‘Let us follow and worship another god’—whom you have not experienced—even if the sign or portent that he named to you comes true, do not heed the words of that prophet or that dream-diviner. For the Lord you God is testing you to see whether you really love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul. Follow none but the Lord your God, and revere none but Him; observe His commandments alone, and heed only His orders; worship none but Him, and hold fast to Him. As for that prophet or dream-diviner, he shall be put to death…thus you will sweep out evil from your midst.” (Deuteronomy 13.2-6)
If we accept the Biblical chronology—that the Book of Deuteronomy was written/transcribed by Moses around 1400-1200 BCE, then this is just a cautionary warning about potential false prophets. However, if we accept the Documentary Hypothesis and its attendant theories, the passage has a vastly different implication. The term Documentary Hypothesis generally refers to a group of theories about the origin of the Torah, theories teaching that the Torah is not a single document, written/transcribed by a single individual and promulgated at the end of Moses’ leadership and the beginning of the Conquest. The Hypothesis/hypotheses suggest that the Torah is a composite work, woven together from several pre-existing Israelite documents that were composed/compiled between 1000 BCE and 600 BCE—that these tribal traditions were put together and edited around 500 BCE when many Jews returned from the Babylonian Exile. These returning Judeans reconstructed Judaism and built the Second Temple, and, scholars theorize, uniting behind a sacred text that represented the many Hebrew and Israelite traditions was an important part of that reconstruction.
Scholars identify four basic pre-existing documents, and the latest of them is the Book of Deuteronomy. The theory is this book was written around 620 BCE during King Josiah’s religious revival and “found” in a storage shed around the Temple. It purports to be the final message of Moses, but, curiously and suspiciously, it gives advice that resolves several current (circa 620 BCE) issues and challenges—among them, the proliferation of “prophets” who advocate a variety of different national and religious policies.
In a tradition that believed in revelation—that God communicates mitzvot/instructions to N’vi’im/Prophets who then bring the words of God to the population, the proliferation of many and conflicting prophetic views was both unsettling and disruptive. How could the leadership or populace know what God really wanted them to do when lots of different “prophets” were coming in from the wilderness and opening their proposals with, “Thus saith the Lord?”
As Dr. Ellis Rivkin used to observe, the Deuteronomy 13 False Prophet passage effectively eliminated all prophecy. If some felt that God has spoken to him/her, either (1) the “prophet” could give a message that went along with the ways things had been done—a message that was therefore unnecessary, or (2) the “prophet” could give a message that deviated from the tradition and therefore risk execution. The passage was intended to calm things down and prevent prophetic cacophony, but the Deuteronomy’s influence was interrupted and delayed when, some thirty years after it was “found,” the Babylonian Empire attacked Judah and Jerusalem. In 586 BCE, the Temple and Jerusalem were destroyed, and a good portion of the population was exiled to Babylonia.
When, some fifty years later, many of the Judeans returned from Babylonia, they began to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple, but they were faced with lots of different proposals for reconstruction—proposals that claimed to be prophecies from the Lord. This is where the False Prophet/anti-prophecy passage found its purpose, as the leadership struggled to solidify plans and quell alternatives. Though we moderns may think in terms of democracy and free speech, the conditions of the return involved unswerving loyalty to Cyrus, the Shah-en-Sharan/Emperor of the Persian Empire. He allowed the Judeans to return, but they were “on a short leash” and the leaders (perhaps Ezra and Nehemiah) realized that anything perceived as rebellious or too independent could endanger the rebuilding project and their lives.
Some of these alternative proposals (different priestly leadership, a restoration of the Judean monarchy, questions about the necessity of sacrificial worship) still have remnants in some books of the Prophets, but the leadership felt the need to squash them, and the False Prophet passage seems to be part of the strong hand that they felt was necessary for Jewish survival.
So, around 500 BCE, Prophecy stops. The traditional/Orthodox explanation is that God simply stopped speaking: all relevant instructions are written in the Torah, and there is no need for additional mitzvot. However, the view of modern scholarship is that Prophecy was squashed by the leadership and that they used Deuteronomy’s False Prophet passage in their unification efforts. Rather than jeopardize Judea’s and Judaism’s future, the leadership made Prophecy either unnecessary or dangerous, and this venerable institution of Israelite religion faded away.
How do we know what God wants from us? Tradition insists that all of God’s instructions (mitzvot!) are in the Torah. Though the Rabbis of the Talmud insist on the non-admissibility of Heavenly intrusions into Rabbinic deliberations (“Lo bashamayim hi. It is not in the heavens!” from Deuteronomy 30.12 and Bava Metziah 59b), the fact is that the Rabbis’ Oral Torah offers significant enhancements and expansions of what the Torah prescribes. Then there is the Reform Jewish notion of Progressive Revelation, the belief that God “speaks” to us through the ongoing development of Judaism. It is not the same as literally hearing a voice from Heaven, but Liberal Judaism believes that study of Tradition and some accommodation to the modern world can help our ancient and continuing relationship with God thrive and prosper. Modern Judaism (Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist) holds that Tradition and modernity can enform each other—as can faith and science. We can live piously in all of these worlds, walking with God and cleaving to holiness.