Does Bible Criticism undermine faith? I would argue that, if understood correctly, it has the potential to strengthen it! We can try to peer back into history to see the stages of the Torah’s development without in any way detracting from its divine origin. The idea that the incredibly meaningful work that we have today may have been the end result of centuries of development only heightens the wonder. Certainly it doesn’t lessen it. If anything, it makes it seem even more miraculous, that out of all the possible things that might have gone in, just the right bits did make it into the mix, in just the right proportions to create the multi-layered text that we have today.
Shavuot: What an ancient controversy teaches us about nation-building
Shavuot is one of the three Pilgrimage Holidays mandated by the Torah, and yet the text tells us very little about the holiday or how it is to be observed. Even the date on which it is celebrated is left undefined. Instead, Shavuot is described only by reference to what came before it. The nature of the holiday became the subject of intense debate among rival factions during the Second Temple era.
In fact, this controversy was part of a much larger debate which threatened to split the Jewish nation along sectarian lines. The split hinged on a major difference of opinion over the nature of Jewish society and its foundation texts: Is the Torah a fixed text, unchangeable for all time, or is it a living document meant to be reinterpreted in the light of changing circumstances?
