moses wrote: ↑Sun Nov 18, 2018 8:48 am
For inquire now regarding the early days that preceded you, from the day when God created man on the earth, and from one end of heaven to the other end of heaven: Has there ever been anything like this great thing or has anything like it been heard: Has a people ever heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire as you have heard, and survived?” (Deut. 4:32-33)
This is the evidence Jewish apologists use to beat Jesus' resurrection. They say that we are the only nation which says God spoke to us publicly, no other religion can claim what we claim.
Jewish people take the highlighted words in deut 4:32 as prophecy and challenge. What is the scholarly opinion on the high lighted parts?
This seems to be analyzed mostly by theologians. Of course, it would be difficult to find any academic observer who would be convinced that revelation (which, after all, didn't actually happen) proves that Judaism is the best religion.
Revelation and Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition (The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library)
https://www.amazon.com/Revelation-Autho ... +authority
seems to have gotten a lot of attention.
Here is an article by Dr Sommer himself -
Revelation at Sinai in the Hebrew Bible and in Jewish Theology -
https://www.academia.edu/1818778/Revela ... h_Theology
However much one reveres it, one is aware of its human side-not only because of its patent multiple authorship and its striking resemblances
with other ancient Near Eastern texts, but because of those of its passages that cannot be reconciled with a God who is merciful or just: its brutality, its commandments to kill innocents, its sexism. How, then, can a contemporary Jewish theology come to terms at once with obedience to the tradition based on this text and the need to construct correctives to it? How can a theology express both love of Torah and readiness to study it critically and with an open mind?
One influential attempt to answer these questions is found in a stream of twentieth-century Jewish thought associated especially with Franz Rosenzweig and Abraham Joshua Heschel. These thinkers have suggested that all of Jewish tradition is a response to the act of revelation, which did not itself convey specific content. Thus Heschel states that the Bible is a midrash on the event of revelation. According to Rosenzweig, "The primary content of revelation is revelation itself. 'He came down' [on Sinail-this already concludes the revelation; 'He spoke' is the beginning of interpretati~n."~ For thinkers such as these, the Bible remains holy as a response to God's self-manifestation, but its wording is the product of human beings. Is this view so radical that it goes beyond the bounds of authentically Jewish discourse on the sacred? I hope to show that it does not, for the model of revelation this line of thinking entails has very deep roots...
Here is a review of the book by Dr. Paul Sanders, a Christian theologian
Review of: Benjamin D. Sommer, Revelation and Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition (2015) -
https://www.academia.edu/29491675/Revie ... tion_2015_