Written in Stone? Writing and Rewriting the Bible

This is the first session of our fall learning series here at JTS. I'm director of community engagement, Rabbi Julia Andelman, and I'm so happy to have you joining us today. Um, special welcome to anyone who is learning with us for the first time, just, uh, this semester. Um, which I should say, for whom this semester is your first time learning with us. So we're very pleased to bring you into our community of learning. Um, we have been eagerly anticipating this particular series for a long time. It's been in the works, really, for quite a while, and I just wanted to give you a bit of background.

So the series, of course, is called "Dangerous Ideas: Censorship Through a Jewish Lens." And just to cover the, um, the logistics, we'll be meeting for an hour and a half, um, pretty much every Monday. And we have one session that's on a Wednesday, that's November 30th. So hopefully that's in your calendar already from when you registered, but we will be reminding you as well. Um, and as you know, Jews are called the people of the book. And, um, we've started to notice a lot of, a lot of discussion, a lot of controversy around books over the last couple of years. I'm sure we've mentioned it before in our Monday learning sessions. Um, we were, we were all aware of the, um, the ban in Tennessee on the book *Maus* by Art Spiegelman, and there have been so many others. And book banning is, um, is really, you know, it's one manifestation of larger efforts to, you know, to enact one's, one's worldview ideology by controlling knowledge.

Um, I just wanted to give you, um, a couple of statistics that are, that are concerning for people who love books and love knowledge. Um, there's a new report just last month by the American Library Association that, um, found that, um, book bans, or attempted book bans, um, have risen across the United States to really unseen levels. Um, just in, in 2022 so far, and we still have a few months left of 2022, there were attempts to ban or restrict access to, um, over 1,600 different titles. Um, 1,600, 1,651, which is already up more than 50 books from all of 2021. And 2021 itself was the year with the highest number of complaints of this kind since the American Library Association began documenting these kinds of challenges. In the last school year, the 2021-22 school year, those 1,650 books were the subject of 2,500 different book bans, um, in 32, um, by school districts in 32 states across the United States. Just in the last school year: Louisiana, Texas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, we mentioned, Oklahoma, Georgia, Wisconsin, um, and many others. And a lot of those books, um, had to do with subjects or sort of made mention, they weren't even always so focused on, but made mention of issues relating to race or sexuality.

And as we said, book banning is kind of part of the larger, um, larger attempts to control, uh, to control knowledge, to control what's taught in schools. There's the, um, the, uh, the new, um, "Don't Say Gay" law in Florida, which, um, right, which it's, I think it's, it's, um, it's a telling example of how different people relate to dangerous ideas. For some, um, making reference to different types of sexual orientation or gender expression in the classroom is a dangerous idea. And for others, erasing mention of those ideas is, that's, that's what's dangerous. So, um, these efforts have just become more and more organized, more, um, charged and divisive and vitriolic. And really, communities and school boards and libraries have been split apart. Librarians and teachers have quit, um, different police complaints against libraries. So that's the setting that we're operating in. And, um, and it's kind of indicative of, of, you know, a world of, um, in which we no longer agree on objective facts. And we know how, um, what that's doing to our society.

So against the background, um, for the backdrop of all of that, we at JTS started thinking about, um, this idea in history, the idea of censorship in Jewish history. Because throughout Jewish history, certain texts and ideas and proponents of ideas, um, have been suppressed or banned in various ways. And so our amazing JTS faculty are going to be looking this semester at a range of different attempts to control knowledge, from, um, really from ancient, starting with today, to contemporary times. Um, how do those, um, how do those bans and and instances of censoring, how do they reflect broader ideological struggles? How do they influence, um, ideological positions? What's motivating people to want to control or revise narratives? And importantly, are there cases where it could make sense to suppress certain ideas? Um, are sometimes the dangers, um, do they warrant, uh, suppression? So we're hoping that that kind of, this, this, um, looking at these issues over the sweep of Jewish history, these cases will, um, you know, will give us, you know, first of all, a more nuanced understanding of those, all of those cases, um, and then also hopefully give us kind of new insights and frames for thinking about the battles over censorship and free expression that are playing out today.

So there's my, um, intro for the series. And we're so pleased that, uh, Professor Benjamin Summer is going to be kicking us off today with, um, a session called "Written in Stone? Written in Stone? Writing and Rewriting the Bible." And looking at how well, I'll, I'll leave it for him to tell us what he's going to be teaching. Um, before we go on, I just want to thank our sponsors for today. And we're so grateful to Yale Aspel, JTS trustee, for sponsoring today's session at the Navi level. And also to George Goldberg, who's sponsoring today at the Tzadik level, in loving memory of Janet Kesselman Goldberg and Max J. Goldberg, MD. Thank you so much, Neil and George, for making this possible. And we want to invite everyone else, if you're feeling similarly inspired by this amazing learning opportunity, which JTS's outstanding faculty, to consider partnering with us by sponsoring a session. We have three sponsorship levels: it's $540 Tzadik, $1,000, and Navi for $1,800. And we will post a link to learn more about sponsorship.

On that note, I want to turn it over to Tani Schwartzman for some additional information. Thank you, Rabbi Andelman. Um, also so pleased to welcome you to the first session in our new series. Uh, just to, I just wanted to go over, uh, some logistical items in terms of the format of the session. Professor Summer will pause for questions periodically throughout the class. We'll also have some time for Q&A at the end of our session. You can use the chat feature to submit your questions to everybody, Julia, and Edelman. And during the Q&A period, Rabbi Andelman will select a few of the questions to present to Professor Summer. For any technical or logistical questions, please initiate a private chat with either myself or Ellie Gettinger. By the sources for today's class, we're in the email that you received earlier today, and we'll be screen sharing them as well. Um, and, um, we'll also share a link shortly in the chat. Um, so please now to introduce Professor Summer. Dr. Benjamin Summer joined the JTS faculty as professor of Bible in 2008. He has written several books which have been the recipients of multiple awards and prizes. His most recent book is *Revelation and Authority: Sinai and Jewish Scripture and Tradition*. You can read more about that in, in the full bio with the sources. Dr. Summer has long been an active lecturer and scholar-in-residence, teaching rabbis, Jewish educators, and lay people in a variety of settings in the United States and in Israel. Um, so please now to turn it over to Dr. Summer.

Thank you. Um, thank you, Julia. Thank you, Tani. Um, thank you to our sponsors. It is a, a pleasure looking through the, um, looking through the screens to see so many familiar faces, uh, to see various friends, acquaintances, uh, former students, uh, and also colleagues. Uh, it's a, it's a pleasure to be back here and, uh, for, for this, it's a pleasure to be part of this series as it's kicking off for this year. Um, so we're going to be talking about censorship. Um, we'll be talking about censorship in the Bible, or censorship in biblical Israel. What's interesting about the topic of censorship as it relates to biblical Israel is that depending on how we define the term, either censorship really did not occur at all, which would make for a short lecture, or censorship happens literally all the time, is pervasive throughout, throughout the Bible.

Uh, I've got up on my screen here the Merriam-Webster definition of the verb "censor," which is to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable, also to suppress or delete as objectionable. Now, I, I think that when we, if we, we take that term, that that definition a bit narrowly, I think that very often, speaking in contemporary English, we think of censorship as something done by an authority, typically by a, by the government or by some governmental agency or body. And in that sense, censorship was impossible in ancient Israel for a number of reasons. There simply wasn't any governmental body that had the ability, or the interest, in censoring texts. In an era in which there was no printing press, in an era in which there were no mass media, all texts were delivered orally, were presented to audiences, um, orally. When people chanted those texts, typically the scribes who chanted them would chant them from memory. They wouldn't necessarily even have a text in front of them. If they did happen to own a text, there was very little the government could do to control what was in that text, since the scribe or other members of the scribal family had probably made that text, that basically made that, that had had themselves written that physical copy of a text. So I think that when the, the first definition that most of us think of for the word censorship doesn't really apply to biblical Israel. There were no governmental bodies that had the ability to censor texts, to, you know, to get rid of some, and to make sure that they were, you know, forever suppressed, or to make sure that they were always changed in a certain way.

On the other hand, though, if by censorship we simply mean altering a text in order to either delete or obscure or relativize something that was deemed not just objectionable, but problematic, um, or prone to misunderstanding, or unclear, well, that was happening all the time in the ancient world as texts were being transmitted, copied, passed on to the next generation. So I want to begin by just talking a little bit about what textuality was like in the ancient world, what authorship did and did not mean in the ancient world, before we go to start looking at a few specific texts.

We need to remember, of course, that in the ancient world, in the world of ancient Israel, actually up through the Middle Ages, every single new copy of a text, every, every single new physical copy of a text was written by hand. And so it was possible always for a scribe to introduce changes into a text, to introduce alterations, clarifications, to cut something out of a text. Um, textuality, therefore, in the ancient world was always fluid in a way that we're less used to in the modern world, or at least, uh, in a way that we used to be less used to in the modern world, up until relatively recently. It's interesting, when I began my career as a university professor, back, what would that be about, 1994? It was a little bit hard to explain to my students that textuality was much more fluid, and, uh, there was no such thing really necessarily as a book that was unchanging, that there were thousands of copies of, that were identical to each other. That's just not how a text worked. It was hard to explain to students that in the ancient world, they, they didn't really have authors the way that we have authors. They didn't have a particular author who wrote a text, and it was then published to a wide public in multiple copies that were identical, and those copies were the product of that one particular author. The ancient world texts evolved as scribes put together already existing texts, as scribes copied but modified a particular text, as scribes not only physically copied texts, but memorized them, chanted them out loud, but sometimes may have chanted them out loud with interesting variations or additions, or possibly even subtractions. That was probably less, less common, actually, um, that subtractions. That is, scribes in this world in which texts were always fluid, and they didn't necessarily have one author, and people weren't really interested in the authorship of a text the way that we tend to be interested, and the idea of copyright and plagiarism simply didn't exist.

It, it was hard for me at the beginning of my career, about 1994, to, to explain this to students. But pretty quickly, I, I began teaching just as the internet was becoming much more of a mass phenomenon, just as it became typical that all students had an email account and were regularly using their email account. Um, and as that happened, it began to be much, much easier for me to describe what textuality was like, what was like in the ancient world, because texts were floating around the internet back then, in the late '90s, and those texts were fluid and could always be changed. In particular, back then, people would sometimes share a text, especially via email. Facebook wasn't a big thing yet when I was beginning, it didn't yet exist, actually. Um, wikis were only, were, I don't know if they existed yet, they weren't widespread. But very, very often in the late '90s, you might see a text, or you might get it in an email from somebody else, and you might pass it on to somebody, somebody else that you thought would find it interesting or amusing, or entertaining, or whatever it happens to be.

So, for example, the year that I came up for tenure, so that would have been, I guess, what, 2000, roughly, the year that I came up for tenure, there must have been 15 different people over the course of that year who sent me an email with, with a text called "Why God Could Never Get Tenure at a University." Um, and it was a list of usually 10, sometimes 12, I know in one case it's 26 reasons that it would be impossible for God to get tenure at a university. God only has one major publication. It was in Hebrew. Uh, it wasn't published in a referee journal. There's some who doubt that I even wrote it himself. There's this whole list of reasons that God couldn't get tenure. Now, by the way, the fact that so many people sent this to me that year, I'm not sure if they were trying to hint to me that they thought I was not going to get tenure, or if they were suggesting that they thought I was like God. Nowhere to know for sure. Um, but what was interesting for me as a Bible scholar getting those emails is that they were never exactly the same. It was basically more or less the same list of 10 reasons or 12 reasons, um, in most cases, but sometimes it was 10, sometimes it was 12, sometimes it may have been some other number, and the reasons weren't always identical. Clearly somebody had said, "Oh, you know, number seven, that's good, but it would be a little better if you phrased it differently." And somebody tweaked the phrasing, which with an email, you could do. So it came into your email box, no one really knew where it came from originally, but before you sent it off to somebody else, you could say, "Yeah, number seven, I think it would be funnier if we phrased it a little differently." Some of these had, a lot of them begin with, "He only had one major publication." Only rarely did it, did it continue with, "It was in Hebrew," as number two. So clearly somebody out there had decided to add that. Maybe a few people thought, "You know, like, I can take a joke as well as anybody, but, you know, number five, that's just sacrilegious. I'm going to take that out of the list." This was a text whose authorship most of us didn't, didn't know. I mean, there may somebody out there might know who who came up with the original list, but most people sending this around to each other, and most people receiving it, had no idea who wrote it. And furthermore, it clearly had many, many authors because all these different, different versions of it were showing up in my email, uh, from, from time to time that year.

Well, in the ancient world, potentially every text was like that email. Every new copy could be revised somewhat. And in fact, we do know that in the biblical period and in the early post-biblical period, the text of the Bible tended to be fluid. As a result, different versions of the Bible, very, usually with fairly small differences, came into existence by the early post-biblical period. When I say the early post-biblical period, I mean, let's say from about, I don't know, 200 BCE onwards. So from the time of, let's say, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the time of early Christianity, getting past the year zero, the time of the earliest rabbis, there were several different versions of the Bible floating around. Some of these have now been rediscovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some of them were preserved in translation, because the ancient Greek translation of the Bible, which is known as the Septuagint, was done by a Jewish community in Egypt, was sponsored and carried out by Jews in Egypt in about the third and second centuries BCE, who were using an edition of the Bible, or editions of the Bible, that are a little bit different than the ones that you know, that most of us have on our, on our bookshelves, or on our, or for that matter, as an app on our phones. That is just a little bit different from the Masoretic text that eventually became the standard version among all Jews.

It's only after the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70, um, and then even more so after the end of the Bar Kokhba rebellion in the year 135, both of those are CE, that, um, that Judaism decided that we don't want to have this plurality of versions of the Bible floating around. We need to have one standard copy that all Jews share. And that's how, at least the textual text that we're familiar with from the, the canonized Bible that we have in Judaism came to be. As other versions of the Bible were suppressed, were put into genizot, were buried, and scribes began to memorize and copy only one particular Hebrew version of the Bible. And that is the Bible that eventually comes to be known as the Masoretic text. The vowels that we have in our printed Bibles nowadays were actually added even later. A system was to actually, several systems were devised for representing the, the vowels. Um, and we're used to those dots and dots, dashes, and squiggles. Those were added a bit later. But it's between the year 70 and 135 that this plurality of Bibles is reduced to there being just one version of the Bible. And that plurality of Bibles that had existed up until about the year 135 CE evolved because as texts were being copied, sometimes there would be some idea that was unclear, and so a clarification might be added. That's not exactly a case of censorship, but sometimes there was phrasing that was considered to be problematic, um, by some scribe or some scribal school, and that phrasing was then, was then removed or altered. And so that happens a whole bunch of times in, in the text of the Bible. Furthermore, sometimes there's a book that already exists, and it probably has too much authority for someone to be able to censor it, that is, for someone to be able to change it. But what people did do is they would write a new text that echoes the language of the older text, alludes to that language, but modifies it in some significant way, so that you end up having two different books in the Bible that have almost the same text, but with some variations.

So what I'd like to do today is I'd like to look at just two cases. That's what I think that we'll have time for, of where a text was, in a way, censored in this sense. The first is a case where a text was suppressed and replaced by another version. The second text, which will, the second case, which will take longer for us to examine, is an example where there was an existing text that must have been well known, and there was a decision of various scribes to write new texts that responded or pushed back to that older text without actually suppressing the text.

So at this point, what I'd like to do is I'm going to try to screen share. Some of you, you can see that the, the PDF that we'll be looking for, um, is, uh, let's see, why, why isn't that happening? The text that we'll be looking at is available in the chat. If you prefer to just download it, you can do that. But I'm also going to try to screen share. Um, and I'm going to go to, um, just one second, um, to a particular PDF. Is that PDF showing up? Um, Tawny, uh, yeah, okay. We've got the PDF showing up. How do I get it to show up now? More if he's on my own screen. Okay. Is it still showing up, or did I somehow just mess that up? Something looks a little funny now. You see two things open? Yeah. Um, let me do the screen share one more time. Yeah, I don't know why it's not giving me just, maybe I should go to advanced, maybe that'll be it. No. Um, um, do you want me to, if you'd like, I can go ahead and share it for you? Uh, I'll give it one more try. Okay. Is that, uh, is that showing up again? You just have one other thing in the background. Uh, okay. There you go. Now you have it. That's better. Okay. So let me do it one other way. Um, one second. What just happened there? You go. That looks good. Um, okay. So the first case that we're going to look at, um, involves the book of Deuteronomy, a passage from the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 20, chapter 32. Um, sorry to interrupt. I, I've already gotten a couple of requests to enlarge the text. If you go down to the bottom right where it says 80, I think you can probably enlarge it there. If you, okay, one second. Yeah. Um, there you go. Yeah, yeah, thank you. 125. Um, just trying to move this around. Um, okay.

So the first text that we're going to look at is from the end of the book of Deuteronomy. This is from Parashat Ha'azinu. Um, I'm going to start with the version that people might already be familiar with. We, we read this in shul just a few weeks ago. It's chapter 32, verse 8 of the book of Deuteronomy, which in the traditional Jewish text that is used by all Jews, and has been used by all Jews for about the past 1,900 years, this reads as follows: [Music] The new Jewish Publication Society translation renders this: "When the Most High gave nations their homes and set the divisions of man," in other words, set boundaries between the different peoples, "He fixed the boundaries of peoples in relation to Israel's numbers." Now, what in the world does that mean? Um, "He fixed the boundaries of peoples in relation to the numbers of the Israelites." In ancient Israel, and among the ancient Canaanites generally, there was this idea that there were 70 nations. The whole world consisted of 70 nations. Um, so why would you say that that relates to Israel's number? You might recall that at the end of the book of Genesis, and then again at the very beginning of the book of Exodus, there are 70 Israelites, 70 children of Jacob, who's also known as Israel, so 70 children of Israel who go down to live in Egypt. And so that seems to be the idea here. Well, yes, God decided when God set up the world that there would be a number of different nations, speaking their own languages, with their own cultures, with their own piece of land, and the number would be 70, the same number as Jacob's children were when they moved to Egypt. So it's a little bit of a funny phrase because you don't usually think of the number of the children of Israel as being 70 by the time that Moses recites this poem, um, at the end of the, the, the book of Deuteronomy. Um, there are already hundreds of thousands of Israelites. And so it's an odd phrasing.

The truth is, however, that we find, um, we found among the Dead Sea Scrolls a different version of this verse in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls copies of the book of Deuteronomy. So going down just a little further on the handout here, where it says, "Deuteronomy 32:8 in various ancient versions," I give you first, this verse as it appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls. If you're curious, by the way, uh, what's in parentheses there, 4Q3712, 13-14, what in the world does that mean? Let me just explain. Q stands for Qumran. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 11 different caves at a location just on the northwest side of the, of the Dead Sea, a location known in Arabic as Qumran. So 4Q means this is one of the scrolls that was found in cave number four at Qumran. Specifically, this is the 12th, this is the, I'm sorry, the 37th, the number, the 37th text found there. K4 had literally hundreds and hundreds of texts. To be able to refer to them, scholars just gave them all numbers. This is number 37 from cave four at Qumran. We're looking at column 12 of this scroll. There are about, so, columns, and we're looking at lines 13 through 14. And what's written there in this Qumran version of the book of Deuteronomy is a slightly different version of our verse. Most of it is the same, but instead of saying that God assigned the borders of the nations in accordance with the numbers of the children of Israel, this one says that God did so in accordance with the number of children of God. Elohim, over here, um, which means in relation to the number of gods. Instead of Bnei Yisrael, we have a reference here to Bnei Elohim. Bnei Elohim, you could translate literally as "the children" or "the sons of God." Bene in Hebrew can also just refer to membership in a group. If you're a Ben Navi, that doesn't necessarily mean that your father was, was a prophet. It just means that you're a member of a prophetic group. So the Bnei Elohim here are not biologically God's children. It's just the members of this class known as the Elohim. Um, in an ancient Canaanite culture, there was an idea that there were 70 gods and 70 nations. And this seems to be a biblical reflex of that idea. There were 70 gods and 70 nations. And so Elyon, the Most High, one, that is, the God of Israel, who created the world, God decided there would be 70 different nations, and a particular deity would be in charge of each of those 70 nations. And so, um, the idea here is that according to this version of Deuteronomy chapter 32, it's not that there are, that there's only, that monotheism means there's only one divine being. What monotheism means, and this is actually the truth for most of, for, pretty much most of the Bible, or almost all of the Bible, what monotheism means is that there's one Creator God. That Creator God created the whole world, including the other gods. And that Creator God assigned each lower-ranking god, with a small 'g', to a particular nation. And then, for reasons that aren't clear to us, God decided that a 71st group of people, who were from a fairly small, small, insignificant group living up in the hill country of the land of Canaan, would be God's personal property. And that became the nation Israel. Um, but what we're getting a reference here, we're getting a reference to here is the perhaps to us somewhat odd idea of biblical monotheism. The idea of monotheism, which is not denying the existence of the other gods, but is denying the significance and power of the other gods. Yes, we know there are 70 Gods. They're all in charge of other nations. And then the, the omnipotent, all-powerful God is in charge of the whole universe, and also is in charge of the nation Israel. This particular idea is, um, is found in our verse from the Dead Sea scroll version of Deuteronomy. And that, I suspect, is the original version of the verse from Deuteronomy.

If we look not only at the Dead Sea Scrolls, but we look elsewhere in ancient versions of the Bible, this idea shows up elsewhere as well. So, for example, in the Septuagint, remember that's the ancient Greek translation of the Bible that was commissioned and carried out by a Jewish community in Egypt for the Torah, we're talking about roughly the third century BCE. So in the Septuagint, the Egyptian Jews translated our verse. I'll give it to you there in the Greek, but I'll read from an English translation of the Greek. The last part of the verse is that God fixed boundaries of nations according to the number of divine sons. It's exactly the same as what we find in the Dead Sea scroll version. Um, this idea lives on even in Rabbinic Judaism. If we go to the Targum, one of the Targums, we see this showing up there as well. The Targum refers to the ancient Aramaic translations of the Bible that were commissioned by Rabbinic Jewish communities. The Targums were very, very important for ancient and medieval Judaism. They continue to be important nowadays. There's still a custom some people have, I know my son does this every week or every Shabbat, of reading the, the Parsha, the weekly Parsha, twice in Hebrew and once in the Targum, once in Aramaic. If you open up a standard edition of a Rabbinic Bible, or what's known in Hebrew, you'll find at least one Targum right next to the text of the Bible, one Aramaic translation, and sometimes even two or three Aramaic translations, two or three different versions of the Aramaic translation, right next to the text of the Bible in Hebrew itself. In one of the Targums, the Targum that's known as Yonatan, um, if we go to the, the end of this, this verse, and part of Yonatan is not only a translation but a paraphrase, a very expansive paraphrase. So this passage is a bit longer than it is in the Bible itself. But if we go to the very end, we see that we're actually into the middle, we see a reference to the 70 angels who are the princes of the nations. And then at the very end, we also see a reference to the number of the 70 souls of Israel, that is, Jacob, who went down to Egypt. So the Targum Yonatan, the, the translators of Targum Yonatan seem to have known both versions of the book of Deuteronomy. When Yonatan was being translated, both versions of Deuteronomy are floating around, and both versions are seem to be known to this translator. And in his paraphrase, he manages to work both, both ideas in.

Um, the main idea, just going back, if I could go back to the, the, um, uh, to the Masoretic text, is that probably at some fairly late stage in the biblical or early post-biblical period, there were probably some ancient Jewish scribes who were becoming uncomfortable with the way the Bible refers to the existence of other gods. Again, biblical monotheism didn't deny the existence of other gods. It merely put them in their place, which was completely subservient to Hashem, to the God of Israel. But as we get to the very end of the biblical period, there seem to have been some Israelites or some Jews who think that sort of monotheism isn't monotheistic enough. We shouldn't be talking about other gods at all. And so one of those scribes seems to have altered the words Bnei Elohim, the child, the gods, or the, the sons of the gods, to the phrase Yisrael, to the children of Israel. In a way, I suppose we could think of this as an example of censorship. The, the scribes who created the version that we know from the Masoretic text, they were suppressing one version that was out there in order to replace it with something that they thought was theologically more acceptable.

Now, um, I'd like to pause just to take a few questions before we go on to our second case. By the way, we won't spend time looking at it, but if people are interested, they could after the class, they could look at this, um, this second part of example number one, going later in the same passage to Deuteronomy chapter 32, verse 43. We see the same thing happening. There's another reference to various gods in the Dead Sea scroll version, um, that, uh, "all the gods should bow down to Hashem, to the God of Israel." That reference shows up in the Septuagint as well. Um, but this chain, this verse is actually changed very, very significantly in the, in the Masoretic text, so that the reference to these other gods bowing down to the God of Israel is completely removed. Before we go on to our next, uh, our next case, um, I'd just like to see if there's any, um, any questions. Uh, Julia, if people wanna, if you want to read me some questions if those have come in so far.

Sure. We have a couple of questions. Um, a few people asked about, you were speaking at the beginning about the fluid nature of text, um, in the ancient period, especially before the destruction and Bar Kochba. So, um, people were wondering, what about the Greek dramas and histories? You know, folks like Herodotus and Sophocles, um, right, we have kind of authored known texts by them. So, uh, the way you were characterizing ancient texts, is that for religious texts in particular, for Jewish texts in particular? How does it relate to these other pieces we know of?

So, what I was describing was the way textuality and authorship were conceived of, especially in the ancient Near East, especially in ancient Israel, Canaan, Egypt, Sumer, Babylonia, um, and, and Assyria, also the Hittites. What's interesting is that starting in about maybe the eighth, seventh century BCE in Greece, for some reason, a new notion of authorship begins to develop. Um, there are these long poems that are now being attributed to one particular bard whom they call Homer. Now, probably *The Iliad* and *The Odyssey* were actually written by more than one author. They probably evolved over time, and there are some contradictions within *The Iliad* and also within *The Odyssey* that show that at least parts of *The Iliad* and *The Odyssey* are not by a single author. Um, but at some point, certainly by the time we get to about the sixth, fifth century, the idea has developed, those two poems are by one particular author that we can, and we can know something about him. He lives at a certain point in time, he's from a certain place, um, he was blind. Another text that's from about the same time, um, or a little bit later than Homer, is, is, are the works of Hesiod. Um, why in Greece this idea begins to develop where it hadn't developed quite as much in the ancient Near East, I'm not sure. But having developed, it then became much more standard. And so various, um, various playwrights then compose their own particular plays in 5th Century and, uh, and 4th Century Athens, and their names, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, um, their names, Aristophanes, in comedy, their names are attached to those particular texts. And I'm not sure that those texts then remain quite as fluid. They are somewhat fluid, um, but maybe the idea had developed that they had a particular author, and therefore people thought that they shouldn't potchke with them so, so much while they're copying them over and, and passing them on. Once the Greeks extend their cultural and political influence over the ancient Near East, this idea of authorship begins to take hold in the ancient Near East. And then Jews begin to say, um, well, the Torah is specifically by Moses, the Psalms are specifically by David. Those attributions were probably there even before the Hellenistic period, but I think they become much, much more strongly associated. Those books become much more strongly associated specifically with Moses or David, or other books to Solomon. Um, and that's probably when some Jewish scribes begin to think, huh, as we're copying these, maybe we shouldn't feel so free to add our own, uh, to add our own changes, additions, and interpretations. And so we begin to sort of see the variety, some discomfort with a variety of texts. And that discomfort becomes much, much greater, especially after the destruction of the Second Temple, and the idea develops that we should have a standardized text and it shouldn't change at all.

Great, thank you. Um, very helpful. Um, okay, so a handful of people were asking specifically about the text that you just shared with us. And is the, is there any chance that the, that this change is meant to contrast the monotheism of Judaism with Christianity, of this Trinity of Christianity? And one person points out, um, that of course, we have the, we have the phrase "uncensored" elsewhere in the Bible. So, yeah, can we understand more ideologically what was what was pushing this change?

Gotcha. So, actually, pick up first on that second point, and then go to the first question. Um, as somebody points out, this phrase, it's censored out of our version of the book of Deuteronomy, but it does show up elsewhere in the Bible. You get it in, in Genesis chapter 6, verses 1 through 4. You get it in Psalm 29, just to cite two very familiar examples. Psalm 29:9, which we recite on Friday night, and again when we're putting the Torah back into the ark on Saturday morning. So that's a place where the, the phrase wasn't censored out, um, which shows that there were some scribes who seem to be uncomfortable with this, but others seem to have been perfectly comfortable, and they continue passing these texts on. One might have thought, well, you know, maybe in the Torah, they were especially uncomfortable with it. You know, what's going on over in Psalms? Who really cares? It's not as important from a Jewish theological point of view. But, um, but no, we even get it in the book of Genesis. It's right there in Genesis chapter 6, verses 1 through 4. We also get references to, just to Elim, gods plural, who are the same group of beings, uh, elsewhere in the Torah. For example, in, uh, Exodus chapter 15, "Who is like you among the gods," with a small 'g', O Hashem? Um, so some Israelites, some early Jews, find this problematic, but not all of them. Actually, an example also where you see some people have no problem with this, some people do have a problem. You might notice if you're in shul on Friday night, that on the one hand, in Psalm 29, we get the phrase, "Ascribe glory to God, pray to Hashem, all of you gods," with a small 'g'. That shows up in Psalm 29. The exact same line shows up also in Psalm 96 or 97, I can't remember which one, might even be 98, which we recite also on Friday night, a little bit earlier on Friday night in Kabbalat Shabbat. And there, where, where Psalm 29 refers to the gods, the other psalm from the '90s replaces "Bnei Elim" with "families of nations." In other words, instead of saying that the different gods should pray to the God of Israel, um, these other psalms say that the different nations, the human nations, should pray to the God of Israel, to Hashem. So different scribes have different feelings about this.

Um, I don't think that the discomfort results from the rise of early Christianity and the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. I say that for some reason, first of all, the doctrine of the Trinity in Christianity is hard to date. But I don't think that it's quite there already in the first century CE. It's not there in the earliest generations of Christianity. The doctrine of the Trinity does not specifically show up in any clear fashion in the New Testament. It's, it shows up for the first time maybe a century later in the work of the earliest Church Fathers. That's a controversial claim. Some scholars, with some New Testament scholars, might say, well, it's not clearly stated, but it's assumed by the New Testament. But I think most historians of ancient Christianity would say that the doctrine of the Christianity crystallizes a little bit later than the New Testament. So the idea that the one God is a Triune God, is one being who has three manifestations, that shows up a little bit later. That's late enough that that's, that's later than the Masoretic text version of the book of Deuteronomy. In fact, as a general, as a general rule, the Masoretic text of the Torah tends to be fairly old. It tends to be conservative. It doesn't, it doesn't introduce many changes. This is one of the rare places where it does. Um, and so I, I suspect that this is a pre-Christian version of the text. There are different versions floating around in ancient Israel. Um, one of them, probably already before the year zero, is the version that we know from the Masoretic text. That's the one that ends up being canonized. But I don't think that it says, by the time Christianity is already developing, the fluidity of the biblical text is already being, um, already being suppressed. So it's a great question, but I, I don't think that was, I don't think that the Trinity has anything to do with, um, this change in the text.

Maybe one more question, Julie, and then I want to go on to case number two.

Great. Um, the last question for now is, where do you draw the line between, um, censoring and editing? Or is that, is that, or is that not a meaningful distinction in the, in the context that you're, that you're teaching about today?

I would say this is all editing and revising. I mean, as I said at the beginning, the word "censor" in modern American English has a very negative connotation and also a very political connotation. And as I said at the beginning, in that sense, there really wasn't any censorship in ancient Israel, because in ancient Israel, there just wasn't anybody who had the authority or the ability to censor text. The way the texts work, you just couldn't do that. Um, so I would tend, mostly, mostly I would tend to say that this is sort of revision, interpretation, editing. Probably the only context where it would occur to me to call it censorship would be if somebody comes to me and asks me to give a class on censorship in the Bible. On the other hand, if, if you look at the dictionary definition of censorship, I mean, the one that I was looking at was from Merriam-Webster. Whoever changed Deuteronomy 32, verse 8, and Deuteronomy 32, verse 44, was in fact, um, suppressing something objectionable, um, was deleting something objectionable, or maybe objectionable is too strong a word, but at least deleting something problematic and replacing it with something less problematic. Um, so I guess you, you could call that censorship, right? Maybe that's the meaningful distinction then, in this context, what the motivation for the change is. Is it, is it, "We want to take this idea out of circulation," or "I want to clarify this for the reader," which are, which are different motivations?

Okay, great. I think maybe perhaps this one scribe did want to take that out of circulation. Um, but it was in censorship in the sense of somebody, you know, powerful, some king, some high priest, um, some bureaucrat said, "Make sure that this idea is taken away, and that, you know, get rid of all the other texts." No, there is one scribe, we don't know when, we don't know where, who made this alteration for the book of Deuteronomy. This alteration made it into the version that that survived. But in plenty of other places in the Torah, the other, uh, the other idea does remain in circulation. Um, and it's still there today in the Masoretic text.

Thank you. Yeah, insofar as we, we associate in our culture's censorship with power, yeah, in that sense, this isn't really censorship, because these, these scribes didn't have the kind of power that, you know, uh, that a government censor has. Um, so, so in that respect, I think this is, this is different from the way that we tend to think of censorship.

I'll only respond to that by, by noting how, um, how so many, um, efforts that censors now are very grassroots, bottom-up kind of thing. So maybe there's an interesting parallel there.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah. So let's return to your, your material. Okay. So let me go back to screen share. Uh, let's see if I can do this. Um, share. Sorry about the dog barking in the background there. Um, okay. So I'd like to go to another case, uh, um, of editing, um, or, you know, in some sense, censorship. Actually, I'd like to start by quoting from Jewish liturgy. I'd like to, um, quote something very.

Familiar from Jewish liturgy, uh, we just said it dozens of times, uh, in the holiday season, especially on Yom Kippur. "Hashem, Hashem, the Lord, the Lord God, who is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in kindness and truth. He preserves kindness for thousands of generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and cleansing." Cleansing, that is presumably cleansing the penitent.

We say this over and over again on Yom Kippur. We would say this in these prayers that precede. We also say this when we take the Torah out of the Ark on holidays, um, and in the Tahanun prayers that are recited on most weekdays in the morning and the afternoon. These are also recited as part of the talking service by, uh, by Edot Yemenite and Italian Jews. We don't do it in the, in the Ashkenazi tradition. But this is one of the most familiar passages in the siddur, and it's actually simply a word-for-word quote from Gen, from Exodus chapter 34.

But the end of the passage in Exodus 34 is actually quite different from what we get in, um, what we get in the siddur. Because it doesn't end with the word "vinakeh" and cleansing, that is cleansing the penitent. Rather, the phrase keeps on going, and the phrase there reads, "And it's certainly the case that God does not cleanse the penitent. God does not remit all punishment, but visits the iniquity of parents upon children and grandchildren, upon the third and the fourth generation."

Um, well, so in the version that we recite in, um, in the siddur, we say that God does cleanse, and we say that God is forgiving. The word there is "lo say" in Hebrew. But in the, the source from the book of Exodus, the phrase keeps on going, and it includes the word "lo," that is to say, um, it says that God does not forgive while sin or cleanse all, all penitent people, but rather visits the iniquity or the guilt of the parents upon later generations.

Um, and so when it says that, so when the passage in Exodus says that God is "lo say," it doesn't exactly really mean that God is forgiving. JPS, in the JPS translation we've got here on the handout, does translate the word "lo say" as forgiving, but that's not exactly the right word if it goes on to say that God punishes somebody, just not the sinner.

So I've gotta, I want to ask two questions about the passage. Number one, what does the passage actually mean if God, when God is "lo say," if God's not exactly forgiving, well, what is God doing according to Exodus 34? And number two, what do we think about the way that the siddur alters or censors this passage, um, from the book of Exodus, in such a way as to really drastically change the meaning? I mean, when you quote something and you leave out the word "not," the word "lo" in Hebrew, that's a pretty major sort of misquote. Um, what do we think about the siddur doing this? Is the siddur being intellectually dishonest? Is the siddur guilty of censorship and of misrepresenting the Bible?

So let me answer the first question first, and the second question second. So the first question I want to address is, why does it say that God is "lo say," forgiving is a mistranslation, um, why does it say that God apparently forgives the sinner but then punishes the children? Um, what's, what's going on there? Um, I, the, the right answer, or the beauty, the really sensitive and beautiful answer to this question was given actually by another JTS professor, uh, who preceded me at JTS. I was retired already by the time that I joined the faculty. Uh, a great, great biblical scholar named Yohanan Muffs. Professor Muffs wrote a beautiful article, a famous article about this passage. And he suggests that in, in biblical Israel, we can sort of distinguish, we can distinguish among three different ideas about divine punishment and divine mercy. There's sort of stage one, stage two, and stage three. Let me first describe stage one and stage three, which are easy to understand, then I'll come back to stage two.

According to Professor Muffs, stage one is a stage, and it's really the pre-biblical stage. We see echoes of it in the Bible, um, but it's not really the, the main idea that shows up anywhere in the Bible. In the pre-biblical stage, if you sin, you have to be punished. Sin is something you put out there into the universe. It's an action, and there has to be, there inevitably will be a reaction to sin. Sin produces guilt, and guilt has to be cleansed away, burned away by the suffering or possibly even the death of the sinner. So if you sinned, according to stage one thinking, you will inevitably, sooner or later, be punished. So in stage one, there's a tremendous influence, tremendous emphasis on divine justice, really, not just divine justice, but you might say cosmic justice, that sooner or later in the cosmos, justice will be done. Um, and there really is no room for divine mercy in stage one.

Stage three, however, emphasizes divine mercy. Stage three, which we see referenced in many parts of the Bible, in the book of Deuteronomy, we see it referenced in the parts of the prophets, we see it referenced in the Psalms. We'll get to some of these passages in just a little bit. In, according to stage three, God is powerful, God is omnipotent, God is also free. God can do whatever God wants to do, and therefore God has the right and the ability and the desire to forgive punishment. So at least in some cases, um, there might be sin and guilt that does not end up getting punished. In particular, according to stage three thinking, if a person regrets having committed a crime or regrets having sinned, if the person confesses and apologizes, if the person repents, if the person does teshuvah, God can simply decide to wipe away the punishment. So in stage three thinking, it still might be the case that a sinner suffers, but the suffering that God sends to the sinner might not actually be the punishment. It may be that the suffering is God's way of hinting to the sinner, you should think about what you've done because there's something that you need to be punished for. And if the person gets that memo, so to speak, if the person realizes, I'm suffering because of what I did, and then apologizes and repents, then the suffering can come to an end. So stage three thinking, which shows up in the Bible, is a type of thinking that emphasizes divine mercy. Yes, there's such a thing as sin and guilt. Yes, there's such a thing as divine justice and punishment for guilt, but what God really wants to do is not to punish, but to forgive. And God might send a small amount of punishment your way as, as an, um, as a prompt to suggest to you that you should repent, so that God can do what God really wants to do, which is forgive. So stage one thinking emphasizes justice, there's no such thing as forgiveness. Stage three thinking, which is common in the Tanakh, in the Bible, emphasizes divine mercy, emphasizes that repentance can lead God to forgive a sinner.

The hard part is stage two, the middle stage, according to Professor Muffs. In stage two, as Professor Muffs wrote in his article, [Music] um, the divine attribute of justice demands what it has coming to it, and the divine attribute of mercy requests something as well. The divine attribute of mercy says, look, the guy repented, the sinner repented, he's no longer a sinner at all, so he shouldn't be punished. But the divine attribute of justice says, yeah, but there's a debt out there in the world, there's there's guilt out there in the world, it has to be cleansed. And so in stage two, we get this weird idea that shows up in Exodus chapter 34, in the Yud Gimel Middot, in the 13 attributes passage of Exodus chapter 34, in which God proclaims this theological statement that says that God is compassionate and gracious, that God extends kindness, forgives iniquity, but doesn't remit all punishment. Instead, he punishes the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren of the sinner. The idea here is that, well, the sinner has repented, so the sinner shouldn't be punished, but somebody's got to be punished. So later on, it's the sinner's children who are going to get the punishment. And bizarrely, from our point of view, in this stage two thinking, the fact that God punishes the children or grandchildren is thought of as an example of God's mercy. In what ways is God compassionate and gracious? Gracious in what way does God forgive iniquity, transgression, and sin? God expresses God's mercy by not punishing the sinner, but God can't get rid of the punishment altogether. So God punishes somebody else later on.

Now, in this case, the verb that JPS translates as forgiving iniquity, "nosay avon," it would be better to say, Professor Muffs suggests in his article, that "nosay" means God holds it in abeyance. The verb "nosay" or "nasah" in Hebrew literally means to, to take something up, to hold something, to lift it up. And the idea here is that, well, because the sinner repented, God holds up that sin or that guilt. But eventually, God does put it back down. God puts it back down on the children, the grandchildren, the great-grandchildren. Um, and this was actually, for people who were devoted to stage two thinking, this was actually an example of divine mercy. They thought of this as an example of divine mercy.

There are other references to this idea elsewhere in the Bible. So let's go to text number four on the handout, from Psalm 99. From Psalm 99, familiar to many of us from Friday night, from Kabbalat Shabbat. Um, Psalm 99, and in verse 8, it says that God answered Moses, Aaron, Samuel. God answers prayer. And then it says, "You were a forgiving God for them, but you extracted retribution for their misdeeds." Again, from our point of view, well, if God extracts retribution, then God isn't really forgiving them. It would be better, Professor Muffs suggests, to translate "nosay" here as, "You held their guilt in abeyance, and later on exacted retribution for the misdeeds." Out of your mercy, you answered them, and you didn't punish them, but you didn't hold on to that, um, that guilt forever. You eventually put the punishment onto later generations. Um, the idea shows up in Psalm 100, in a number of other parts of the Bible as well. I didn't put this one on the handout, but I'll just mention it, uh, quickly in Second Kings, um, chapter, I believe this is 18, but I want to go double check. Um, King Hezekiah, I don't know, I'm sorry, Second Kings, I think it's 22, and it's King Josiah, excuse me, King Josiah, um, realizes that the Israelites have inadvertently been sinning in certain ways. That the details don't have to, um, the details don't concern us right now, um, but he puts on sackcloth, he repents on behalf of the Israelites, and a prophet tells him, okay, the, the punishment isn't going to happen now. God will be "lo say," God will hold the punishment in abeyance. And a few generations from now, um, there's going to be a terrible thing that, that will happen. And Josiah says, that's great. Um, I'm happy to hear that I was successful. It seems very, very odd to us, but from Josiah's point of view, he, he was used to this stage two thinking. This was divine mercy. This was as good as it gets. That's stage two thinking.

Um, now, I think a lot of us find that very, very theologically problematic. It's theologically problematic for one thing because it's unfair to, to punish the innocent, to punish later generations. It's also theologically problematic from another point of view, which, which is that it seems to imply that God is not omnipotent, that God is not completely free. In other words, stage two thinking shares enough stage one thinking to think that if there's punishment out, if there's, I'm sorry, if there's guilt, if there's sin out there in the cosmos, if there was that action, there has to be a reaction. And God is powerful enough to hold that reaction in abeyance, to hold that reaction back, to delay it some generations, but it seems that God isn't powerful enough to, um, simply eliminate the reaction. And so, not only in terms of God's fairness, but even more fundamentally, I think in terms of God's freedom and God's omnipotence, uh, stage two thinking is really problematic thinking.

The core of Israelite monotheism, as I mentioned when we were looking at case number one, is not that there aren't other gods, but rather that the God, Hashem, the God of Israel, the Creator God, is completely free and completely unbounded and completely omnipotent. Well, if that's the case, then if you really think through monotheism's consequences, God should be able to simply forgive people, period. End of discussion. Um, God should be able to simply eliminate punishment when God wants to do that. And in fact, there are later biblical authors who assert that that is actually what God does. That is, there are later biblical authors who enunciate a stage three point of view. And when they do so, it's interesting, is they echo and rewrite the 13 principles from the book of Exodus. Now, this is not a case of censorship in which they suppressed, um, the 13 principles from the book of Exodus. Instead, they're echoing them, but writing them in a new way, in a better way.

So let's take a look at a few examples of this happening elsewhere in the Bible. One example happens in Psalm 103. So this is text number five on our handout. Um, in verse 8 and verse 9, Psalm 103 basically quotes Exodus 34 almost word for word, and then diverges at the end. "Hashem, the Lord, is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. He will not contend forever, nor nurse his anger for all time." Um, the first part, the first two poetic lines in verse 8, are simply quoting Exodus 34. But then when they get to the part where they should go on to say, um, but God doesn't remit punishment altogether, God punishes the grandchildren, instead of saying God punishes the grandchildren or the great-grandchildren, it very pointedly says the exact opposite. God doesn't contend, or God doesn't stay angry forever. God doesn't fight forever, and God doesn't nurse his anger for all time. So the first part, verse 8, quotes Exodus 34, and then the second part, verse 9, overturns Exodus 34. It's as if though Psalm 103 is kind of saying, I know you've heard this text, I know, I know you know this, let me tell you what it should really say. Day. It quotes and then it reverses.

We get the same thing going on in the Book of Jonah, chapter 4. This is text number six, and on the handout. Jonah says to God, "Is Job says, I know that you are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, and renouncing punishment." Again, we just, Jonah is simply quoting Exodus 34. Those are words taken directly out, just copied and pasted from Exodus 34. But then when it gets to the phrase, Jonah uses a similar sounding word, but a different word. Instead of "vinakeh," God certainly never remits punishment, um, Jonah says the, the word starts with the letter "vav," then the letter "nun," then the letter "kuf," which is made, kind of especially in ancient times, in the back of the throat, the "kuf," as opposed to the "kaf." I don't know if this is coming, oh, through over the, over the microphone. The "kuf" is made in the back of the throat. And Jonah puts the word "v'hanak" made with the letters "vav," just like in Exodus, "nun," just like in Exodus, and then instead of the "kuf," we get a "het." Again, the "het," especially as was pronounced in ancient times, and it's still pronounced by Jews from, from Arab countries, the "het" is made in the, in the back of the throat. I think that this is a deliberate pun. Um, when Jonah is doing the same thing that Psalm 103 is doing, doing is overturning the meaning of, of Exodus 34, and it's doing so with a pun, with a lang, with a sound play or word play. It's using a similar sounding word to replace the offensive phrasing back in Exodus chapter 34.

Um, one more example of this. There actually are a bunch of other examples, but I'm just giving you a few of them. It actually appears in the Torah itself, in Deuteronomy chapter 7, where we read, um, again, the quotation language, "God is a God, steadfast God, who keeps his covenant faithfully, is the thousandth generation of those who love him and keep his commandments, but instantly requests with destruction those who reject, who reject him, whom is, um, uh, God directly, "el panav," instead of instantly, more literally, it really means directly, pays back those who hate him, never slow with those who reject him, but requiting them instantly." Again, in Deuteronomy 7, uh, our verse is at first paraphrasing or echoing Exodus 34, and then in the last part, completely overturning it. So here we see that, um, some biblical authors do want to, um, to reply to, to push back against stage three thinking, and they replace it with stage, I'm sorry, some biblical authors want to reply to, want to push back against stage two thinking, and they replace it with stage three thinking, using the same language.

Now, we don't know for sure whether they intended in a strong sense to censor, that is, do they want to suppress Exodus 34? Um, it's possible that they did. If so, nonetheless, Exodus 34 survived. It actually still made it into the Bible. And so, in the end, whether they wanted to suppress Exodus 34, they wanted to replace it or not, they ended up create helping to create a Bible that contains more than one theological idea. In other words, it's what we end up with is a non-censored version of a biblical or ancient Israelite discussion about, um, about divine punishment and divine mercy. We end up getting both points of view preserved in the Bible.

I'd like to take some questions, but before I take a question, I'd like to also ask a question of you to mull over, and I'll come back to this at the very end. I think all of us agree that stage three is preferable. Stage three is a theological advance over stage two. Um, I want to pose the question: Does anyone out there want to make an argument for stage two? Is stage two in some way religiously preferable to stage three thinking? Is stage two thinking somehow able to produce a better religion than stage, than stage three thinking? Um, because the fact is that it wasn't suppressed. Stage two thinking does still make it into the Bible, and therefore, I think for religious Jews, it, it's there to teach us something. Even if we don't fully accept it, it's there to teach us something useful. What might the useful function of stage two thinking be that led to its being included in the Bible? I'm putting that to you as a question, and you can, maybe you should, if you've got a thought on this, put it into the chat to Julia, and Julia will curate. But now, let me take some questions from, from Julia.

Oh, actually, before I do the Julia one, other thing I want to go back to the siddur. Sorry, I forgot about this. Um, I wanna, I wanna come back to my second question. What do we think about the way the siddur alters, modifies, edits, or censors Exodus chapter 34? Is the siddur, is our rabbinic liturgy disloyal to the Bible? Intellectually dishonest? I think what we've just seen is that, no, no, our siddur is actually quite loyal to the Bible. Yes, the siddur overturns Exodus 34, even as it quotes Exodus 34, but it overturns Exodus 34 the exact same way that Psalm 103 and Jonah chapter 4 and Deuteronomy chapter 7, uh, overturn Exodus chapter 34. In other words, the siddur is actually loyal to the Bible because in overturning Exodus 34, the siddur does to the Bible what the Bible itself does to the Bible. And therefore, I think it's not intellectually dishonest for this siddur to do what it does. It's not wrong or intellectually dishonest for us to recite this on Jewish holidays or in this. We're simply continuing to do to the Bible what biblical scribes, including the author of Sefer Devarim, did to the Bible.

Okay, so, um, Julia, what, what do we have?

Okay, first, just a clarification. The, um, the stages that you're talking about, are those chronological stages? I think people understood the, the different orientations you were talking about, but we're just unclear why, why we're calling them stages.

So, probably, I suspect Professor Muffs probably intended to say that they were more or less chronological. Certainly stage number one is the oldest. It's one that I think underlies some of what we find in the Bible, but it's never really actually stated in the Bible. So, so stage number one, chronologically, is pre-biblical. That's maybe more of an ancient Near Eastern point of view than it is specifically a biblical point of view. Um, I think that probably stage two tends to develop next, as people are removing themselves or moving away from stage one. And stage three probably develops even later than that. So, yes, they are more or less chronological. Having said that, though, they're probably also overlapping. That is to say, there are probably Israelites living simultaneously who have both, you know, who have different points of view. They're probably, in the pre-exilic period, there are probably some Israelites who believe in stage one, some believe in stage two, some believe in stage three. And I should make clear, what many of you who have studied with me before, who know me, um, know I'm assuming, but, but some of you might not, might not know, that I'm assuming I should just make this clear, um, that like almost all modern biblical scholars, I don't believe that the five books of Moses actually go back to the time of Moses. I believe, like most scholars, um, that the five books of Moses, the Homage, the Torah, was put together from several originally independent documents. There are a few different theories. I, I believe in the theory that there were basically four originally independent documents written by four different groups of scribes and sages. They were then put together, some additional materials probably added, and that produces our Torah. So these are different documents. I think that they're all from the pre-exilic era, they're all pre-586 BCE, but each of the four documents was evolving for centuries prior to 586 BCE. Sometime after the Exile, they're put together to create the Torah. Sometime after probably the 530s BCE, they're put together to create the Homage. And this is why in the Torah, we can find both stage two and stage three thinking in it, in us, what we think of as a single document, because the author of Exodus 34, I'm pretty sure, actually lived before the author of, of the book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy reacts to the authors, uh, who are responsible for do, for Exodus chapter 34.

Thank you. So a lot of people were, um, were chiming in with citations of different places where it says, no, we, you're not supposed to visit the sins of the of the fathers on the children. So, um, I think you just, you just addressed that.

Yeah, I know two things. First, first, the book of Deuteronomy is very clear that human courts, human judges, human political figures or judicial thinkers or police should never punish the children for the father's sins. That doesn't mean that God isn't allowed to do so. However, God can do all sorts of things that are forbidden to us. Um, we're also, we're not supposed to put an end to human life. God does it every day. Um, so that's number one. But, but also two other classical places clearly Jeremiah chapter 18 and Ezekiel chapter 18. These are chapters that that insist, no, no, God, God works the same way that a human court works. God never punishes the children. Uh, those, those are, I didn't put them on the, I didn't put them on the handout because they are not quoting Exodus 34 as much, but those are two of the classic places. Luckily, Ezekiel 18 is the classic place for Ezekiel insists, no, no, is always effective. Repentance is effective. God doesn't even want to punish you. God wants you to, to repent so that God can forgive you. Jeremiah 18 is a little more complicated. Jeremiah 18 admits that, well, in the world that we live in, unfortunately, God does punish the children, but there's going to be a future world where things will be better, where that does, where God will not do that anymore. So Jeremiah 18 is a little more complex.

There were a lot of answers to your question. I would, um, regret, uh, oversimplifying anything, but I would say they fall into three general categories. So, your question being, is there some, um, is there some reason that that the stage two thinking, meaning that deferring punishment to a later generation, is for some reason we should like the concept? So the three general responses were: most people just talked about the reality of, you know, that what we do as consequences, including on, on later generations. And someone mentioned the example of climate change, but also intergenerational trauma in families, that that, that misdeeds don't actually just, you know, stop at one generation. Another view, um, that several people expressed, was this idea is a disincentive to sin. If you know that, you know, you might get off scot-free, but your, um, your children may suffer the consequences, that that's a disincentive. And then the third view that was expressed was about, um, the idea of taking responsibility for past sins in previous generations. You know, the idea of reparations was raised, or, you know, sort of official apologies for things that were done by previous generations, and that perhaps there's repair or healing that can be taken on if, if the later generations sees, sees the sin as sort of still being, that they bear responsibility for in some way. So, three pretty distinct, um, and of course, you know, more nuanced individual responses, but answers to your questions that I thought were, I thought were very interesting.

Yeah, if I just comment on those. Yeah, I think that an advantage of stage two, as, as the first of those responses, especially was pointing out, is that it is realistic. We know that in the world, children do suffer consequences, and even grandchildren, great-grandchildren do suffer consequences. And ethically, um, that might be something that is useful, um, in a way for us to keep in mind. Like, in other words, you know, people might be willing to take risks with their own life that they're not willing to take with their children's life. Um, that first time driving home from the hospital with a newborn, you're a whole different driver. Um, and you might remain a different driver. But what's true about, you know, I remember driving north on Lake Shore Drive, you know, with Avi. What's useful for us when we're driving our kids, it's probably useful for us in almost all the rest of our life. There's certain things that we can do that aren't only damaging to ourselves that we're willing to risk, but we should remember the way that they affect our children. So ethically, there is, in spite of the unfairness, there is something useful in stage number two thinking.

I'd like to point out one other aspect of stage two that I think is religiously superior to stage three, though not theologically superior. By religiously superior, I mean in terms of what sort of religiosity does it inculcate in us? What kind of religious behavior or attitude does it inculcate in us religious people? If we really think that stage three is a hundred percent true, and we see a person suffering, we could be led to think that person must deserve it. Whenever a person's suffering in the world, well, if God is always there, and if God is always compassionate to people that God should be compassionate to, then whenever I see suffering, I can just, you know, say, yeah, this person somehow must deserve it. I don't know how, but I know they must deserve it. That's actually exactly what Job's friends do to Job in the Book of Job. You know, if stage three is really the way the world works, if we're 100% sure of that, then when we're teaching our rabbinical students and cantoral students, clinical pastoral education here at JTS and at lots of other seminaries all around the country, I guess we could tell them that when they go into a hospital room to visit a patient, when they're doing their CPE training, um, that they should just look at the patient and say, gosh, you must have done something really awful. I see you're in a lot of pain. That's not the right way a religious person should act. A religious person should act with compassion. And the advantage religiously, if not theoretically or theologically, a stage of stage two is that if stage two is at least for the time being, as Jeremiah says, the way the world really works, then whenever we see suffering, we should realize the person didn't necessarily deserve it. It may be that this person's great-grandfather did something, and that's the cause of the, of the suffering. But the right way as a religious individual to respond to suffering should always be compassion. The default value should be compassion. Um, so, um, I, I think that in a strange way, it's good that stage two thinking is there in the Bible, that it wasn't censored out, that it wasn't removed, because stage two, stage three thinking is theoretically more advanced, but stage two thinking may actually nurture a different kind of religiosity, which is more of a religiosity of compassion as opposed to a religiosity of constant judgment. I think that we do see in the world, both in Jewish spaces and in non-Jewish spaces, the terrible cost of a religion that is always judgmental. Stage two reminds us, I have the right to be judgmental because you actually don't know what's what's going on here. You don't know what's behind the suffering you see. And so compassion has to be the default value anyway.

Maybe we have time for Julia for, for one more question. I suppose, um, well, that was a lot just now. So I, um, clearly this particular change, there's some, there's there's a lot of depth to the different worldviews being expressed. I guess, um, and in a sense, you know, it's good to remember theological progress. It's not always progress in every respect. Yeah, yeah. And views that we want to kind of just, you know, battle by, we should stop and think about them because maybe there's really great value and we're just unable to see the value. Um, so I have to, oh, well, just actually very quickly, um, people were interested to know which, which book of Yohanan, um, you, we, we should be sending them to.

Ah, gotcha. Let me just look this up on my, uh, the old bibliographic manager here. So the, uh, the art, it's actually three articles that appeared in various obscure journals that were then put together, uh, to form one essay that appeared originally in Hebrew in a volume called, which, um, was edited by, I don't remember the name of the person who edited it, but it, but it also appeared in Hebrew in the book, um, and if anyone who reads Hebrew, was published quite recently, um, it's by Yohanan published quite recently by the Hartman Institute. There's also an English translation called Love and Joy. And interestingly, that was published by JTS many years ago. So it's, it's Muffs, M-U-F-F-S, first name Yohanan, published in 1992. It's the, um, the collection Love and Joy: Law, Language, and Religion in Ancient Israel, published by JTS and a Harvard University Press together. Um, and it's the, it's the name of the essay is "Prophetic Prayer." There's several different essays in the Love and Joy volume. You're looking for the one that's called "Prophetic Prayer," where in the Hebrew version, it's "Tefillah Nevi'it." Professor Muffs wrote a beautiful, beautiful Hebrew. So if you can read the original, I would recommend you read the original. But JTS also did arrange many years ago for this to be translated into English and together with Harvard University Press put out the English version.

Okay, great. So I, I did want to get one more content question, but maybe you could give us the, the 60-second version of this, because since we're at the end of our time, the question was, is there, we know that the, the Talmud explicitly wants to preserve different sides of a disagreement or multiple, multiple views on a question. Is, would you say that the Bible is kind of consciously doing that, or is it, is it more just a result of how things worked with with ancient texts and, and how, how we might have ended up with with a range of different attitudes across different parts of the Bible?

I think that, yeah, that's a great question. Basically, that's pretty much the question, um, to which I have devoted my career. Um, I've written at least two books that are really directly on that question, lots and lots of articles. Um, and the answer is, I, I think yes. The Bible so consistently is rabbinic in this respect. That is, the Bible so consistently preserves multiple voices commenting on a particular issue, often commenting very specifically to each other. I'm picking up the language of an older text and taking it in a new direction, or alluding specifically, as we thought today, to language in an older text in order to disagree with that older text. That happened so, so often in the Bible that I tend to think that that is, that's that's not a bug, that's a feature. That's a feature of biblical literature. Um, and even the Torah itself, I think that what happened when an, uh, an editor or a compiler put together these four different source documents, these four different source documents were often preserving different historical memories of specific events, like different versions of a specific event. They often have similar laws that have important differences, differences that result from slightly differing values, theological statements. Um, also they address the same theological issues, but sometimes they address them in different ways. The, the compiler who puts them together into one document didn't do anything to try to soften this, the contradictions between these different documents. That the compiler created a text that is blatantly self-contradictory. I mean, literally within the first page, in the first two pages or first two columns of text, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 is blatantly and obviously self-contradictory. I think the pilot was, the compiler was doing that deliberately in order to foster some sense of a, um, some sense of, um, in order to foster a theological debate within certain boundaries within Judaism, um, or within Israelite religion, and maybe even to foster a particular theory of truth that says, um, um, that says human beings can't ever know the whole truth, but we can have different versions of it, and we can sort of triangulate among them to get a sense of what is really true. Um, my own ideas on this about about this theory of truth that is implied by the way that the, the, the five books of Moses have been edited together, I actually explain them at greater lengths. As long as we're doing bibliography, in a book that was just published by Hebrew Union College Press. Hebrew College Press just published a book of of essays called "We Hold These Truths." If you go to Amazon or you go to the HUC, uh, website, you can probably find it. I have no idea how much it costs. It only just came out. My own, my own free copy hasn't even arrived yet. Um, but I talk about, I have an article in that collection of essays in which I talk about the theory of truths that is behind, um, the way that the Torah has been edited. And I think it's the same exact theory of truth that we find in Midrash. The way that Midrash gives us multiple interpretations of a given verse, and that we find in the Gemara, and even in the Mishnah, as the Mishnah and Gemara often give us multiple rulings on a particular point of law. Another way of putting it, and I, I put it this way in that essay, um, the, the rabbis don't invent rabbinic, uh, the rabbis don't invent rabbinic Judaism. The compiler of the Pentateuch invented rabbinic Judaism. Um, so very much, I think the answer to that question, uh, is, is a, is a yes.

Great. So that's a perfect, um, a perfect note to end on. I mean, you leave us wanting more. We're gonna look for your article, um, in the newly published volume. But I think, oh, and oh, yeah, and Ellie put it into the chat. Thanks, Ellie. Um, thank you very much. I think, um, it kind of, you know, that sharing this, this view that, right, that we get at truth from a multiplicity of human perspectives, I think, uh, you know, it's kind of a powerful statement on these questions of censorship. Censorship of the series is here, supposed. So thank you so much for kicking us off in this amazing way today. Um, thank you for teaching. Thank you very much to our sponsors once again. Um, yeah, I'll ask about, and, um, and George Goldberg. And I hope everyone will return next week. Professor Rabbi Elias or Diamond will be teaching us, and he'll be looking at, um, at suppressed texts about Jesus in, um, in the Talmud, especially in medieval texts as well. So our chronological journey will continue. Um, and thank you so much once again, Professor Summer, for kicking off our series today. Thank you.