“The chief objective of this essay is to argue that although in historical-critical discourse the notion of Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is indefensible, the underlying and antecedent ideas of the unity and divinity of the Torah must remain relevant considerations for Jewish theologians, and whether these are affirmed or denied makes a larger difference than most of their Christian colleagues wish to concede. In that difference lie the enduring importance of the eighth principle of Judaism, properly understood, and an essential constraint on traditional Jewish biblicists that not all their Christian counterparts will feel….If the interpretation of Maimonides's eighth principle outlined above is taken to its logical extreme, the effect is to separate the question of the legitimacy and authority of the Torah from that of its historical origin. No longer are the circumstances of its composition the factors that determine its transcendent status. What is most important is not the empirical issue of how e several parts of the Torah came to assume their present shape but, rather, the affirmation in faith that they now form an indissoluble unity an indissoluble unity and a revelation from God. The corollary is that the faithful Jew may conduct historical inquiry freely, without the need to allow old dogmatic formulations to predetermine the results. In this model, historical research thus poses no threat to the religious life so long as it restricts itself to the reconstruction of the past and avoids prescribing present practice. In Rosenberg's words, biblical criticism would exceed its legitimate role "only if there would be built upon the 'scientific' theory a theology that, by relying on this theory, would justify the nullification of the commandments [mitzvot] or changes in religious law [halakhah]." If critical study refrains from endorsing those two agendas (represented typologically by Christianity and Islam), Rosenberg suggests, it should elicit no quarrel among traditional religious Jews….

“The form of biblical scholarship that would incorporate these reflections is one like that of Brevard Childs, which, in the words of James L. Mays, "holds a series of moments [in the history of the biblical text] in perspective, primarily the original situation, the final literary setting, and the context of the canon." In this form of scholarship, traditional doctrines have no authority over historical reconstruction or the exegesis of passages in their more limited contexts, and the historical-critical method must be allowed free rein. For this there is an interesting precedent in the bolder forms of medieval pashtanut, or plain-sense exegesis. Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam), the great pashtan of Northern France in the twelfth century, provides an instructive example. A Talmudist of great erudition and prodigious industry, Rashbam's commitment to the halakhic system is beyond doubt. Yet in his commentary on the Torah he was prepared to deny that the exegesis on which the rabbis of the Talmud based a halakhah was valid as the plain sense (peshat). …. The Jewish Bible is now no longer limited to the Bible of the talmudic rabbis. For Rashbam pashtanut means the pursuit of the meaning of a text within its most limited context, the minimal sense unit. The larger, rabbinic context, which is based on the written Torah as an indissoluble whole (as well as on the oral Torah), remains normative for behavior, but it is not permitted to silence or marginalize the more limited context of the peshat. The authority of the Torah does not require faithful exegetes to deny the contradictions within it, but the frank recognition of the contradictions does not allow them to base religious life and practice on something less than the whole. I argue that if either of the two halves of this paradox is omitted, something essential in the heritage of medieval Jewish biblical study will be lost.

“On this pursuit of the historical and literal senses of scripture, Jews, Christians, and others can work in tandem, and the broad ecumenical character of critical biblical scholarship can and should continue. Of these more limited literary and historical contexts of a passage, there can be no privileged interpretation, no uniquely Jewish or uniquely Christian form of biblical scholarship. Just as in medieval Europe there could be inter-religious agreement on the sensus literalis, so in modem biblical criticism there will continue to be a broad base for agreement on the meaning of textual units in their most limited literary or historical settings. But when we come to "the final literary setting" and even more so to "the context of the canon," we must part company, for there is no non-particularistic access to these larger contexts, and no decision on these issues, even when made for secular purposes, can be neutral between Judaism and Christianity…..

“The Pentateuch, on which Maimonides and his talmudic antecedents rest so much weight, is itself a post biblical construct, despite the biblical attribution of the highest prophetic gifts of Moses alone. The idea of five books is unknown in the Hebrew Bible itself, and deference to Moses is not widespread therein …. Chronologically and literarily, the analysis of biblical texts through the lenses of these larger units, the canon, the Torah of Moses, or whatever, is no longer biblical studies proper but the study of post-biblical Judaism. For the traditional Jew, however, this post-biblical lens has its own normative character and may not be disregarded simply because it distorts the peshat. What I believe I have here demonstrated is that no Jewish theology consonant with the classical rabbinic tradition can be built on a perception of the biblical text that denies the unity of the Torah of Moses as a current reality, whatever the long, complex, and thoroughly historical process through which that Torah came into being. In insisting that the supreme document of revelation is the whole Pentateuch and that the whole Pentateuch must ultimately (but not immediately or always) be correlated with the oral Torah of the rabbis, Jewish thinkers will separate themselves not only from those who absolutize the historical-critical perspective but also from their Christian colleagues in the field of "biblical theology." Only within the limited area of the smaller literary and historical contexts is an ecumenical biblical theology possible, and only as awareness grows of the difference that context makes shall we understand where agreement is possible and where it is not, and why.”

From The Eighth Principle of Judaism and the Literary Simultaneity of Scripture in The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism; Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies by JON D. LEVENSON, Westminster, John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky

“Historical criticism has indeed brought about a new situation in biblical studies. The principal novelty lies in the recovery of the Hebrew Bible as opposed to the Tanakh and the Old Testament affirmed by rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, respectively. Jews and Christians can, in fact, meet as equals in the study of this new/old book, but only because the Hebrew Bible is largely foreign to both traditions and precedes them This meeting of Jews and Christians on neutral ground can have great value, for it helps to correct misconceptions each group has of the other and to prevent the grievous consequences of such misconceptions, such as anti-Semitic persecutions. It is also the case that some of the insights into the text that historical criticism generates will be appropriated by the Jews or the church themselves, and they can thereby convert history into tradition and add vitality to an exegetical practice that easily becomes stale and repetitive. But it is also the case that the historical-critical method compels its practitioners to bracket their traditional identities, and this renders its ability to enrich Judaism and Christianity problematic. There is, to be sure, plenty of room in each tradition for such bracketing. There are ample and long-standing precedents for Jews to pursue a plain sense at odds with rabbinic midrashim and even halakhah and for Christians to interpret the Old Testament in a non-Christocentric fashion. But unless historical criticism can learn to interact with other senses of scripture - senses peculiar to the individual traditions and not shared between them - it will either fade or prove to be not a meeting ground of Jews and Christians, but the burial ground of Judaism and Christianity, as each tradition vanishes into the past in which neither had as yet emerged. Western Christians are so used to being in the majority that the danger of vanishing is usually not real to them; after all, the post-Christian era will still be post-Christian, not post-something else. But Jewry, none too numerous before the Holocaust, has now become "a brand plucked from the fire'" (Zech 3:2). And most Jews with an active commitment to their tradition will be suspicious of any allegedly common ground that requires them to suppress or shed their Jewishness.

“Bracketing tradition has its value, but also its limitations. Though fundamentalists will not see the value, nor historicists the limitations, intellectual integrity and spiritual vitality in this new situation demand the careful affirmation of both.

From Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies in The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism; Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies by JON D. LEVENSON, Westminster, John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky