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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Argument is the very life-blood of philosophy and, hence, prima facie one might expect that distinctive phenomenon of the Jewish religious tradition, ‘holy argument’, to be of special interest to philosophers, particularly philosophers of religion. However, there is little to suggest that those engaged in the philosophical approach to religion are even aware that such a phenomenon as a piety of argument exists. But it does. In the philosophical field rational argument conducted according to the established rules of logic is the fundamental tool in the pursuit of truth and understanding or for the clarification of problems, ideas and concepts; in Judaism, rational, legal argument pursued according to recognized principles and processes is the most highly commended path to encounter and engagement with God. Moreover, within this same religious tradition, ‘holy argument’ embraces not only argument about God, about His nature (theology), His ways (theodicy) and His will (halakhah), but also argument with God, putting God on trial and taking Him to task as One who is Himself bound and judged by that same Torah that Israel is obligated to obey. The high value placed upon study and the exercise of the intellect in the Jewish tradition is well known; it is not only a mitzvah and an act of worship but a form of imitatio Dei, for God Himself engages in the study of Torah. But the mode of study in Judaism and the form in which the intellect is exercised is characteristically that of argument and debate, the quintessential activity of philosophy and philosophers.
1 On study as worship see Viviano, B. T., Study as Worship. Aboth and the New Testament (Brill, Leiden, 1973)Google Scholar. Zeitlin, S., Studies in the Early History of Judaism, vol. 1 (Ktav), ‘An Historical Study of the First Canonisation of the Hebrew Liturgy’, pp. 21–2 (= Jewish Quarterly Review 36 (1946), pp. 217–18Google Scholar) states that tefillah in certain contexts in the Pentateuch and the Prophets signifies ‘study’.
2 Torah study thus goes along with graciousness, compassion (Deut. 13), clothing the naked (Gen. 3:21), visiting the sick (Gen 18:1), comforting mourners (Gen. 25:6) and Sabbath observance as activities and qualities wherein humans imitate God.
3 For God as a student in the heavenly academy (yeshiva she/ma‘alah) who is not omniscient but is occasionally defeated in study and argument by outstanding rabbis, see Bav Metz 86a and Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 1, cols. 208–9, ‘The Academy on High’; also Stewart, R., Rabbinic Theology (Nelson and Boyd, 1961), p. 30, citing Ex. R. xi, 1.Google Scholar
4 This passage of the Pentateuch is widely attributed to the so-called J stratum of Genesis, a crystallization of ancient traditions in writing probably from the time of David or Solomon. So, among others, Rad, G. von, Genesis (SCM OT Library, London, 1961), p. 199Google Scholar, and Speiser, R. A., Genesis, (Anchor Bible 1 (Doubleday, New York, 1964), p. 130.Google Scholar
5 For the rîbh in the prophets see Isa. 1:2ff., 3:13–15; Jer. 2:4–9; Micah 1:2–7; Hosea 4:1–4. G. E. Wright, The Old Testament against its Environment (SCM), describes the heavenly rîbh as ‘the conceptual setting of Israel's classical prophecy’. Two foundational studies of the prophetic law-suit which examine the genre in some detail are: Gemser, B., ‘The Rib – or Controversy – Pattern in Hebrew Mentality’, in Noth, M. and Thomas, D. W. (eds), Wisdom in Israel and the Ancient Near East, SVT 3 (1955), pp. 120–37Google Scholar, and Huffmon, H. B., ‘The Covenant Lawsuit in the Prophets’, Journal of Biblical Literature 78 (1959), pp. 255–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 The English is that of the RSV.
7 God appears as the accused rarely in Tanakh but this situation predominates in post-biblical argument with God in the Jewish tradition.
8 The literature on the problems of Job is vast but particularly germane to this paper are: Patrick, D., Arguing with God. The Angry Prayers of Job (Bethany Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Gowan, D. E., ‘God's Answer to Job: How is it an Answer?’, Horizons in Biblical Theology 8, 2 (1986), pp. 95–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rowley, H. H., ‘The Book of Job and its Meaning’, in From Moses to Qumran (Lutterworth, 1963), pp. 141–86.Google Scholar
9 I have in mind the works of such as A. Cohen, Cohn-Sherbok, Fackenheim, Maybaum, and Rubenstein. The Holocaust debate is related to the whole tradition of Jewish protest against God in Sherwin, I., ‘The Impotence of Explanation and the European Holocaust’, Tradition 12, 2 (1972), pp. 99–167Google Scholar and ‘Wiesel's Midrash’ in Rosenfeld, A. and Greeberg, I. (eds), Confronting the Holocaust (Indiana University Press, 1978)Google Scholar. As extended arguments with God these are all epitomized in ‘Yossel Rakover's Appeal to God’ in Friedlander, A. H., Out of the Darkness (UAHC, 1968), pp. 396–7.Google Scholar
10 See especially Neusner, J., Torah. From Scroll to Symbol in Formative Judaism (Fortress Press, 1983).Google Scholar
11 Cf. Kidd 40b; Shab 31a; Shmot Rabbah xvii, 7, ‘It is written “Write thou these words…” (Ex 34:27)…what the Holy One, Blessed be He, meant was, “Write thou Torah, Nevi'im and Ketuvim and they shall be in writing (shebiktav), but halakot, midrash, haggadot, mishnah and talmud shall be by mouth (be‘al peh)”’.
12 Kidd 49b, ‘What is Torah? It is the interpretation (midrash) of Torah’.
13 Kidd 40b. According to Neusner (‘Two Pictures of the Pharisess: Philosophical Circle of Eating Club’, Anglican Theological Review 67, 4 (1982), p. 538, n. 15)Google Scholar the ‘Judaism of the study of Torah’ is characteristic of the Amoraic rather than the Tannaitic era.
14 Neusner, J., There We Sat Down (Ktav, 1972), p. 77.Google Scholar
15 These are the three classical forms in which the oral tradition may be found. Halakhah and Haggadah describe the content of that tradition.
16 Codes appear much later (twelfth to sixteenth centuries) in the history of Judaism. They were not generally well-received precisely because their form changed the nature of the tradition from recorded debate and citation of authorities to simple recommended decisions (posekim). Even Shulchan Arukh needed Bet Yosef as its forerunner to gain the acceptance of scholars.
17 See Avot 1, 6; 4, 15, 18.
18 Rabbinic studentship/discipleship involved both limmed Torah and shimmesh rabbi, academic learning and learning a way of life. What some students got up to in order to learn the most intimate details of the rabbinic life did not always win them the approval of their tutors!
19 One thinks particularly or works such as Paley's Evidences of Christianity. On the rejection of proof by miracles in the story of R. Eliezer see Jacobs, Louis, A Tree of Life (Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 26–7.Google Scholar
20 Ex. 23:2. Other examples of the application of this rule are given in Maccoby's, HyamThe Day God Laughed (Robson Books, 1987), pp. 111–12Google Scholar. Additional reasons for adopting this rule are discussed in Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 11, ‘Majority Opinion’, cols, 864–6.
21 Wouk, H., This is My God (Collins, 1972), p. 275.Google Scholar
22 The paradigm figure in this respect was Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, cf. Dresner, S., Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev (Hartman House, 1974)Google Scholar.
23 Newman, L. I., A Hasidic Anthology (Aronson, 1988)Google Scholar, draws attention to this connection (p. 23, n. 3) although it should be noted that in Micah God is the plaintiff and not the accused.
24 Holt, Rhinehart and Winston (1966), p. 197.
25 From the side of Judaism it has to be admitted that until the present century philosophical thought has been regarded with suspicion by the mainstream tradition. The rabbinic attitude is reflected in Bay Kam 82b. In fact, in Jewish history before Emancipation, the fortunes of those who sought to bring philosophical insights into the service of the faith are epitomized by (a) the total neglect of first-century Philo for around 1600 years, (b) the twelfth-century Maimonidean Controversy, and (c) the excommunication of Benedikt Spinoza in the seventeenth century. Notably, all three figures belong to times when Judaism was more than usually open to the world beyond the voluntary ghetto. See Halkin, A. S., ‘The Attitude of Normative Judaism to Philosophy’, Perspectives in Jewish Learning, vol. 4, ed. Friedman, M. A. (Chicago, 1972), pp. 1–10.Google Scholar
26 Cf. Luhman, R., The Search for Understanding. A Course in Philosophy and Religion (Westcliff High School for Boys, 1992), p. 27.Google Scholar
27 Ibid. p. 30.
28 One of the major weaknesses of a philosophical approach to a religious tradition is its inevitable elitism. In the case of a Jewish religious philosopher this elitism is particularly marked in Maimonides' Guide. See the concluding Kafka-like castle image. Pt. III, chap. li. For a penetrating criticism of Maimonides' ‘philosopher's God’ see Haberman, J., Maimonides and Aquinas. A Contemporary Appraisal (Ktav, 1979)Google Scholar, and Silver, D. J., Maimonidean Criticism and the Maimonidean Controversy (Brill, 1965).Google Scholar
29 Luhman, op. cit. p. 28.
30 Shab 17a; and TJ Sanh 64b; also Maimonides, Guide, Pt. 1, chap. xxvi. According to R. Sh. 27a and Makk 22b God affirms: ‘Not I in my high realm but you with your human needs fix the form, the measure, the time and the mode of expression (my italics) for that which is divine’.
31 Shulman, S., ‘God in Words’, Manna, No. 35 (Spring, 1992), p. 25.Google Scholar
32 Theology has gained prominence in Judaism in the present century through such works as Jacobs's, LouisA Jewish Theology, (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1973)Google Scholar, and Kohler's, K.Jewish Theology (Ktav, 1968) (Macmillan, 1918)Google Scholar. However, both authors stress the historical, individual and non-dogmatic nature of Jewish theology. The response to earlier attempts to produce a set of Principles (Ikkarim) of Faith that might prove universally acceptable to world-wide Jewry underlines the very flexible attitude to doctrine within Judaism and the great variety of opinion as to what might constitute a Jewish ‘creed’. Despite the 'ani ma'amin form, Maimonides' 13 Principles in the Authorised Daily Prayer Book do not function as an official standard of orthodoxy in any variety of Judaism.
33 The most well-known example of rabbinic paradox is Avot 3, 19, ‘Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is given; and the world is judged by grace, yet all is according to the amount of work’.
34 There is a fine article on Process Theology by David Pailin in Richardson, A. and Bowden, J., A New Dictionary of Theology (SCM, 1983)Google Scholar, replacing the older article by Pittenger, Norman, A dictionary of Christian Theology (SCM, 1969), pp. 275–7Google Scholar. The seminal works in Process Theology are Whitehead, A. N., Process and Reality (1929)Google Scholar, Cobb, J. B., A Christian Natural Theology (1966)Google Scholar and Ogden, S., The Reality of God (1967)Google Scholar. See also Cobb, J. B. and Griffiths, D. R., Process Theology. An Introductory Exposition (1976).Google Scholar
35 On rabbinic thought and Process Theology, see especially Ochs, P., ‘Rabbinic Text Process Theology’, Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy' 1, 1 (1991), pp. 141–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In this respect, amongst other features, the notion of the dipolar nature of God and the concept of God as ‘at once supremely relative and supremely absolute’ (Ogden, op. cit. p. 48) could be describing certain aspects of the rabbinic understanding of God equally as much as they describe aspects of the understanding of God in Process Theology.
36 Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 7, ‘Hasidism’, col. 1404.
37 Stewart, R. A., Rabbinic Theology, refers to the rabbinic idea that God fills the Universe as the soul fills the body, citing Lev R. iv, 8 and Ber 10a.Google Scholar
38 Mullen, Peter, Beginning Philosophy (Edward Arnold, 1977), p. vii.Google Scholar
39 Cf. Hyam Maccoby, op. cit., pp. 116–17 for examples of ‘Arguing for Pleasure’. This may also be one reason why Avot recommends the study of ‘the laws concerning the sacrifices of birds and the purification of women’ as being ‘ordinances of moment’ (Avot iii, 23), the one (kinnin) being obsolete after 70 C.E. And the other (niddah) having no relevance for men who alone were obligated to study.
40 Op. cit., p. 129. He explains this concept as religious experience arising from the strenuous exercise of the mind.