The essence of our Faith in the sanctity of the Bible is that its words contain that which God wants us to know and to fulfill. How these words were written down is not the fundamental problem. That is why the theme of Biblical criticism is not the theme theme of faith, just as the question of whether the lightning and thunder at Sinai were a natural phenomenon or not is irrelevant to our faith in revelation. The act of revelation is a mystery, while the record of revelation is a literary fact, phrased in the language of man. . . . Granted that the text of Scripture as handed down to us consists of gems of God and diamonds quarried out of prophetic souls, all set in a human frame. Yet who shall presume to be an expert in discerning what is divine and what is but “a little lower” than divine?. . The spirit of God is set in the language of man, and who shall judge what is content and what is frame? … In its present form the Bible is the only object in the world which is not in. need of either praise or sanctification. In its present form the Bible is the only point in the world from which God will never depart. This is the book to which Israel deferred; we must tremble to tamper with it. Abraham Joshua Heschel

Quoted in Or Hadash: A Commentary on Siddur Sim Shalom for Shabbat and Festivals by Reuven Hammer, RA-USCJ 2003

In Heschel's striking sentence: "Judaism is a minimum of revelation and a maximum of interpretation." This interpretation is what is included in midrash and what is included in whatever a diligent student in the future will discover.

From The Meaning of Jewish Law in Conservative Judaism: An Overview and Summary by Seymour Siegel in CONSERVATIVE JUDAISM AND JEWISH LAW Edited by SEYMOUR SIEGEL with ELLIOT GERTEL, THE RABBINICAL ASSEMBLY NEW YORK, 1977