Discussion between Al Berko and Harel13

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07:53

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Q: Evidence for the king writing his Sefer Torah

One of the most defining characteristics of the Torah's king (Parshas Shoftim) is that he writes himself a Sefer Torah, carries it at all times, is constantly reading it "all the days of his life", constantly re-orienting himself to represent Hashem and his Torah. My son asked me, Do we have any ...

Harel13

"מה אהבתי תורתך, כל היום היא שיחתי"? (David, Tehillim 119:97)

Al Berko

Do we have any indication of Nachic kings observing Biblical Mitzvos? No. Do we have any archeological or paleographic evidence of ancient Judeans being aware of the Torah commandments? According to youtube.com/watch?v=6q80lDYQwtE, no.

Do we have scriptural evidence for widespread observation of [other] Biblical Mitzvos in the Iron Age? No. Do we have archeological or paleographic evidence for that? Also no. youtube.com/watch?v=6q80lDYQwtE

Harel13

To people who may read the comments section, I wouldn't put too much weight on Yonatan Adler's views. He's a good archeologist, and yes, he comes from a dati background, but when he gets down to the historical explanations of his findings, he's the sort of person who shoots the arrow and draws the target. Don't let the kippa fool you. Cf. for example the almost complete lack of non-kosher animal bones in Israelite sites.

Al Berko

@Harel13 It is usually the other way around - till recently most studies aimed at supporting the Tanakh. He writes, "You won't find sheep bones in today's Israeli garbage, does it mean sheep is unKosher for us? No, we simply don't eat it, as we have better alternatives." One of the hardest challenges is to distinguish YHWH/El worshipping settlements from non-"Jewish", Canaanean ones, and AFAIK, no successful findings exist.

Harel13

@AlBerko have you ever read some of Avraham Faust's writings on ethnic identity in Iron Age Israeli sites?

Al Berko

07:53

@Harel13 Yes, some 15 years ago. This is exactly the impression I've got - an institutional attempt to justify the legend. It was times when critical thinking was still endangered. He starts with the scripture and seeks evidence for what he reads.

Harel13

@AlBerko Well, I comend you for being aware of both sides of the argument. Faust isn't the sort of person I would describe as "an institutional attempt to justify the legend", even if he is also from a dati background. And he's since written much more on the topic.

Al Berko

@Harel13 Good point, I've just downloaded החברה הישראלית בתקופת המלוכה: מבט ארכאולוגי and going to reread it from Adler's view. Thank you for pointing out

Harel13

@AlBerko I don't recall that he discusses cult there, but I believe that he does include discussion of ethnic markers (been a little while since I read it). He also very recently published an article on Israelite cult dismissing the notion that there were masses of local public cultic sites in Israel prior to various cultic reforms. I have it scanned if you'd like a copy.

Al Berko

@Harel13 Does he mention evidence for the observance of Mitzvos?

Harel13

08:09

@AlBerko I don't think he does. He talks about the Israelite ethos, Israelite cultic markers, etc. Like I said, he's more like Adler than you may think. He talks the talk (the academic talk, that is). But he's on the other side of the aisle on these issues.

Al Berko

Right, just perused through the book and didn't find anything about Mitzvos.

@Harel13 What I find convincing, is that upon finding the Book of Torah Josiah is mentioned promoting a worshipping reform, but not an educational - he and his followers do not establish a wide system of shuls of schools. IIRC, the first functioning Jewish educational system mentioned is with late Hasmonean kings, so it is reasonable to suggest that it was the time when the Judean/Jewish laymen could know what God wants from them.

Harel13

08:26

@AlBerko however, educational reforms were already instituted in the time of Yehoshafat and Chizkiyahu. Remnants of these systems certainly could have been around Yoshiayahu's time, so not necessarily necessary to start a completely new system.

Al Berko

Where do you see it?

You mentioned that you have theories. What do you think of the [almost] complete lack of the mention of a systematic Torah study in about 1500 years from Matan Torah to the Hasmoneans, from Joshuah to the Pharisees?

Harel13

12:02

@AlBerko I have theories, but I don't have novel chiddushim about every topic. But let's stop and think for a moment. What would evidence of Torah study look like? a. We don't know what ancient batei midrash looked like. So how capable are we of calling one building a house and the other something else?

b. How did the ancients study? In Mesopotamia we have libraries chock-full of cuneiform tablets, and in Egypt we have masses of papyri. In Israel we've found very few of either. Mostly we have ostraca, and of those, most are for trade and military issues. Very, very few are defined as perhaps part of a genre of Nevuah or related to law.

Did the ancient Israelites not philosophize? Did they not tell stories? They probably did, because we do have the Tanach, and we have a little bit of extra-biblical traditions in Chazal that we have no idea where they came from. So that means that we've either not found the big libraries which were the likely foundation of study (entirely possible, and I pray for the day we might stumble upon such a thing),

or they mostly studied orally, or they did write, but on materials that were hardly preserved in the Israeli climate.

These arguments, of course, can work both ways. One could suppose that with all of the Judahite pillar figurines, the Judahites preferred to study Canaanite and Assyrian and Egyptian mythology. But we have no exceptional evidence for that either!

Al Berko

15:29

@Harel13 That's exactly what I do - I stop and think. We all know what an anachronism is - an attempt to attribute contemporary phenomena to ancient times. Is that what the sages do by trying to interpret Iron Age scripture through their Hellenistic values and culture?
The Torah appears to be very true to its time: similar to the Laws of Hammurabi, God demands to pass divine laws onto humans and write them literally in stone. This idea appears over and over - stone tables, obelisks, 12 stones at the Jordan River, etc. I assume that the Torah truthfully relies ancient Middle Eastern traditio…

correction: relays

Harel13

@AlBerko what's your point?

Al Berko

To show that an Iron Age Levantine population used the Socratic method of intellectual philosophizing requires either a miracle or serious evidence.

Therefore I believe that the Torah does not lie - the Israelites were not different from surrounding peoples who had oral traditions and courts of the elders to occasionally nudge it. But the intellectual and theoretical Torah study as we know it, appears only after the exposure to Hellenism and Greek philosophy. That's my theory.

Harel13

17:51

@AlBerko I don't know what you mean by you believing that "the Torah does not lie", but do you really think that the Greeks and Romans invented legal discourse? That no one before them argued about the interpretation of laws?

That no one looked for deeper meanings in religious texts? Much of archeology is, like it or not, dedicated to interpreting perceived symbolism in material finds. Would you say that no such deeper meanings existed, and that the pre-Hellenistic ancients weren't interested in those?

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Discussion between Al Berko and Harel13