How many children did Michal have? Explanation of a Talmudic passage in light of the writings of Josephus Flavius

How many children did Michal have? Explanation of a Talmudic passage in light of the writings of Josephus Flavius[1]
 By Chaim Sunitsky
The following Talmudic passage appears in Sanhedrin 19b (we are using mostly Soncino translation):
R. Yossi was asked by his disciples: How could David marry two sisters while they were both living? He answered: He married Michal after the death of Meirav. R. Yehoshua ben Korha said: His marriage to Meirav was contracted in error, as it is said, Deliver me my wife Michal whom I betrothed unto me for a hundred foreskins of the Philistines. How does this prove it? — R. Papa answered: Because he said, My wife Michal but not ‘my wife Meirav’. Now, what was the error in his marriage [with Meirav]? [It was this:] It is written, And it shall be that the man who kills [Goliath], the king will enrich him with great riches and will give him his daughter. Now he [David] went and slew him, whereupon Shaul said to him: I owe you a debt, and if one betroths a woman by a debt, she is not betrothed. Accordingly he gave her to Adriel, as it is written, But it came to pass at the time when Meirav, Shaul’s daughter should have been given to David, that she was given to Adriel the Meholatite to wife. Then Shaul said to David, ‘If you still wish me to give you Michal to wife, go and bring me hundred foreskins of the Philistines.’ He went and brought them to him. Then he said: ‘You now have two claims on me, [the repayment of] a loan and a perutah’. Now, Shaul held
that when a loan and a perutah are offered [as kidushin], he [the would-be husband] thinks mainly of the loan; but in David’s view, when there is a loan and a perutah, the mind is set on the perutah. Or if you like, I will say, all agree that where a loan and a perutah [are offered], the mind is set on the perutah. Shaul, however, thought that [the hundred foreskins] had no value, while David held that they had value at least as food for dogs and cats. How does R. Yossi interpret the verse, Deliver me my wife Michal? He explains it by
another view of his. For it has been taught: R. Yossi used to interpret the following confused passage thus: It is written, But the king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Ayah whom she bore to Shaul, Armoni and Mephiboshet, and the five sons of Michal, the daughter of Shaul, whom she bore to Adriel the son of Barzillai, the Meholatite etc. But was Michal really given to Adriel; was she not given to Palti the son of Layish, as it is written, Now Shaul had given Michal, David’s wife, to Palti the son of Layish . . .? But Scripture compares the marriage of Meirav to Adriel to that of Michal to Palti, to teach that just as the marriage of Michal to Palti was unlawful, so was that of Meirav to Adriel. Now as to R. Yehoshua ben Korha, surely it is written, And the five sons of Michal the daughter of Shaul whom she bore to Adriel. R. Yehoshua [b. Korha] answers thee: Was it then Michal who bore them? Surely it was rather Meirav who bore them! But Meirav bore and Michal brought them up, therefore they were called by her name. This teaches you that whoever brings up an orphan in his home, Scripture ascribes it to him as though he had begotten him.
The accepted understanding of this passage is that according to Rabbi Yossi David married Michal only after her sister had five children from Adriel and died. Michal later brought up the five children as her own. The commentators[2] ask how Meirav could possibly have five children within just two and a half years of Shaul’s reign and answer that she was pregnant with twins twice, and once with the fifth child.  However, according to the calculation of all the events that had to occur before David married Michal and after he ran away from Shaul, there is not enough time left for three pregnancies of Meirav[3]. We need to look for a simpler understanding of the Talmud.
The difficulty of the Gemara is with the following verse from the end of David’s life (Shmuel 2:21:8): “And the king [David] took two sons of Rizpah daughter of Ayah whom she bore to Shaul, Armoni and Mephiboshet, and the five sons of Michal, the daughter of Shaul, whom she bore to Adriel the son of Barzillai, the Meholatite …” Five children of Michal and Adriel are mentioned in this verse. All the commentators follow the explanation of our Gemara that the children were born to Meirav and Michal only raised them. But a careful reading seems to reveal that R. Yossi is not the one who holds that the five children were Meirav’s. This explanation is provided by the Gemara later according to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Karcha. If so, R. Yossi must hold that indeed Michal was the one to have the five children. Since David only took her back seven years after he became king, there was plenty of time for her to give birth to five children. But Michal was never married to Adriel, she was “married” to Palti. It’s important to understand what Rabbi Yossi is implying by his words “confused passage” (מקראות מעורבין literally mixed up verses). Apparently he means that while Michal married Palti, the verse is using the expression “married to Adriel” to teach us that the marriage of Michal to Palti was just as sinful as the marriage of Meirav to Adriel. Both marriages were based on an incorrect decision of Shaul and his Bet Din. David’s Kidushin with Meirav was declared invalid and his later Kidushin with Michal was declared invalid again[4]. Indeed Josephus Flavius (Antiquities 7:4:3) says that Michal had five children from Palti.
Now we can offer a simple understanding of the entire Talmudic passage. The students asked R. Yossi, how could David marry two sisters? They are obviously assuming that some form of Kidushin was involved when Shaul offered his (presumably older[5]) daughter to the one who kills Goliath[6]. If David was technically married to Meirav he could not marry Michal even if Meirav was incorrectly given to a different man. R. Yossi answered that Meirav died before David married Michal. R. Yehoshua ben Karcha however holds that there was no kosher Kidushin between David and Meirav. He learns it from the words in a verse: “my wife Michal”, meaning only Michal is my wife, Meirav is not. The Gemara goes into the technical explanation of why Michal’s Kidushin was valid and not Meirav’s according to R. Yehoshua ben Karcha. R. Yossi however only learns from this verse that Michal was David’s wife meaning her Kidushin was valid just as Meirav’s, and giving her to Palti was incorrect. He learns that the verse (Shmuel 2:21:8) describing David’s giving five children of Michal and Adriel to Givonim[7] were really Michal’s children from Palti and is using the expression “mixed up verses” to teach us that Michal’s Kidushin with David was valid just like Meirav’s was.[8] R. Yehoshua ben Karcha however says the verse in Shmuel 2:21:8 is not talking about Michal’s children but about Meirav’s children whom Michal raised. The Gemara goes on to give other examples where children raised by someone are considered like one’s own children.

 

[1] Note that this article does not claim to research the words of Tanach but only the Chazal’s explanation of it. In particular we are trying to offer a novel explanation of R. Yossi’s shita in the Gemara. We will use a novel idea supported by Yosef ben Matityahu. While he was a controversial person at best, he had excellent Jewish education and his traditions are largely reliable and generally represent the opinions of Tanaim of his time. He is quoted numerous times in Daat Sofrim and other traditional commentaries.
[2] Yad Ramah, Tosafot Harosh.
[3] See Margoilyot Hayam. He therefore concludes that we must accept the shitah of Rabeinu Yeshaya on Shmuel (1:13:1) that the two and a half years that Shaul had ruled are only considered until the time David was anointed. However this shitah is in contradiction with Seder Olam which is a product of Rabbi Yossi himself. In the commentary of Gaonim on Sanhedrin another possibility is offered that Shaul himself did not realize that Meirav had been married to Adriel when he offeredher to David. Incidentally modern scholarship supposes that Shaul ruled over Israel for more than two years and possibly the word “thirty” is missing in Masoretic text before the word “two” in Shmuel 1:13:1: “[thirty] two years he ruled in over Israel.” Abarbanel has a different explanation of our text according to which Shaul also ruled longer.
[4] It is also possible (though this is not R. Yossi’s shita) that Palti was the same person as Adriel and Shaul first gave Meirav to Adriel and later when she died soon after this marriage and David was running away from Shaul and was considered a rebel, Meirav’s sister Michal was given to Adriel who was now called Palti.
[5] See Tosafot Kidushin 52b.
[6] As to the nature of this Kidushin, we do find some cases where “work” performed is counted as Kidushin as well as saving from danger (see Kidushin 8b, in particular “saving from a dog” in 30:11). Apparently both R. Yossi and his students don’t question that some kind of Kidushin happened here, and if Meirav was no longer minor it must be that she either agreed on Shaul’s proposal or made Shaul her shliach to accept such a Kidushin as saving from a “dog” (incidentally Goliath is in fact compared to a dog, see Sota 42b).
[7] Note that according to David these children were mamzerim.
[8] As mentioned previously neither R. Yossi nor his students had any doubt that Meirav’s Kidushin was valid. Therefore the verse used that Kidushin to compare to Kidushin of Michal and emphasize that giving Michal to Palti was just as sinful as giving Meirav to Adriel. The verse therefore means: “And the king took two sons of Rizpah daughter of Ayah whom she bore to Shaul, Armoni and Mephiboshet, and the five sons of Michal, the daughter of Shaul, whom she bore to [Palti to whom she was given incorrectly just like Meirav was given to] Adriel the son of Barzillai, the Meholatite”. This may be similar to Chazal’s explanation of Zecharia 12:11: “On that day the mourning will be as great in Yerushalaim as the mourning of Hadadrimon in the valley of Megiddo”. There is no known tragic incident in our history that is related to Hadadrimon and the valley of Megiddo. The Talmud (Megilah 3a) quotes the Targum adding a number of words and relating this verse to two different events: “On that day the mourning will be as great in Yerushalaim as the mourning of [Ahab who was killed by] Hadadrimon [and the mourning of Yeshayahu who was killed] in the valley of Megiddo.


Review of Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture by Shaye J.D. Cohen

Review of Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture

 

by Shaye J.D. Cohen

Shaye J. D. Cohen is the Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of Harvard University. This is his first contribution to the Seforim blog.

Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture.


Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture. Edited by Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel, and Lawrence H. Schiffman. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, and Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013. xxviii+3361.

These three hefty volumes, comprising three thousand three hundred and sixty one pages, have been a long time coming. Planning began in 1994. We can only admire the editors’ persistence and the publisher’s patience. The volumes show us what the rabbis of antiquity did not want us to read. The Mishnah, the Talmud, and the Midrash jump back to the Bible directly, skipping over the intervening centuries. The rich and manifold literature of the late second temple period, whether in Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic, whether from the land of Israel or the diaspora, no matter the genre, and no matter the social setting – all these works were resolutely ignored by the rabbinic sages of Israel and
Babylonia. Aside from a few scattered citations of Ben Sira and a few references to the Greek version of the Torah (the Septuagint), the rabbinic literature of antiquity does not mention, refer to, or cite any the texts included in these volumes. The rabbis did not read these texts and, we may assume, did not want us to read them either.

Why not? Perhaps because some of these texts emanated from circles that were at odds with the progenitors of the rabbinic sages. Or perhaps because some of these texts were composed in Greek, and the rabbis’ pervasive disdain for Greek literature extended even to Greco-Jewish literature. Or perhaps because some of these texts say amazing, unexpected things. Two texts (Jubilees, the Temple Scroll) seem not to accept the canonicity of the Torah. Any number of texts tell stories about the mysterious giants of Genesis 6:1-4, a race brought into being through the miscegenation of (fallen) angels with mortal women (Book of Enoch, Genesis Apocryphon). Two texts tell stories about Moses’ military campaign in Ethiopia (Artapanus, Josephus), one text tells of the military campaign of Qenaz, father of Othniel (Book of Biblical Antiquities), others tell of the military campaign of the sons of Jacob against the sons of Esau
(Jubilees, Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs). Needless to say, Scripture knows nothing about any of these campaigns. One text attributes to Joseph the institution of Egyptian polytheism and theriolatry (Artapanus). Medieval rabbinic culture was more tolerant of such free invention than was ancient rabbinic culture.

The editors of these volumes are keenly aware of the relative neglect from which these texts have suffered across the millennia. The editors see their task as reclamation, to reclaim these texts for Jewish culture and, dare I say it, for Judaism. Most of these texts were preserved by Christians for Christians, and Christian scholars have studied these texts for much longer, and valued these texts much more highly, than have Jews. Witness the Jewish reception to Wilhelm Bousset’s classic The Religion of Judaism in the Late Hellenistic Period (published in German, first edition 1903). Bousset based his portrait of second temple Judaism on the Jewish texts of the period that had been preserved by Christians, in other words, on the texts presented in Outside the Bible. Bousset more or less ignored rabbinic texts. Jewish scholars were scandalized. Rabbinic texts were written after the second temple period, replied Bousset, and cannot claim to be anything other than the work of a lettered elite, whereas these texts are of “popular” origin. Jewish scholars retorted: these texts are not “Judaism,” because we Jews have abandoned them long since. Nowadays most modern Jews have a more capacious definition of Judaism than did Bousset’s opponents, and it is for them that these volumes are intended. Between the Bible and the Mishnah – the subtitle Ancient Jewish Writings means “pre-rabbinic Jewish writings” – is a rich and fascinating storehouse of Jewish literature.

The collection is called Outside the Bible, that is, outside the Hebrew Bible. The canon of the Hebrew Bible (or Tanak) is a relatively narrow one; all the books it contains were composed and preserved in Hebrew (or Aramaic, a cousin language to Hebrew), and none explicitly acknowledges that it was composed later than the Persian period (5th century BCE). Modern scholars believe that any number of biblical books were either composed after the Persian period (for example, Daniel), or contain sections composed after the Persian period (for example the Psalms), but the key point is that the Hebrew Bible itself does not acknowledge such a late date of composition. Certainly the rabbis of antiquity, and after them traditionalist Jews of our own time, had no doubt that all the biblical books were composed not later than the fifth century BCE. Greek-speaking Jews apparently had no such scruples. Their canon, which forms the basis of the Christian Old Testament, contains many works that do not hide the fact that they were composed after the Persian period (for example, the books of Maccabees) or in Greek (for example, the Greek translation of Ben Sira, or the second book of Maccabees). These books, which are to be found in the Christian Old Testament but which are absent from the Hebrew Bible, are called “deuterocanonical” by Catholics and “apocryphal” by Protestants. Outside the Bible includes them all for the simple reason that these books are outside the Hebrew Bible.

The collection of texts that most nearly approximates Outside the Bible is the two volume set edited by James Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (1985). The collections resemble each other but also differ from each other. The editors of Outside the Bible have wisely chosen not to perpetuate the title “Pseudepigrapha,” which is a perfectly fine description for literary works that bear a false attribution (from the Greek pseud+epigraph) but which is a misleading and useless catch-all heading for ancient Jewish literature. The Old
Testament Pseudepigrapha is arranged by genre, more or less (Testaments, Apocalypses, Rewritten Bible, etc.), while Outside the Bible is arranged by relationship with Scripture. First comes the Greek translation of the Bible, then commentaries on the Bible, then paraphrases and retellings of the Bible (notably the works of Philo and Josephus), then testaments, prayers and psalms, wisdom writings, and philosophical treatises of Philo. By this point the biblical connection has become rather tenuous. The volumes conclude with stories set in biblical times, stories set in post-biblical times, and sectarian texts (from Qumran). Outside the Bible thus includes works omitted by Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (notably excerpts from the Septuagint, Philo, and Josephus, and various texts from Qumran), and omits works included by Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (works that are Byzantine in date and Christian in origin, or that bear scant relationship with the Bible, e.g. the Sibylline Oracles). For the most part the terminus ad quem for Outside the Bible is the destruction of the temple in 70 CE, but a few late-comers are allowed to join the party: the Fourth Book of Ezra and the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch, two works lamenting the destruction of the temple, and Greek synagogal prayers, which admittedly are not directly related to Scripture but which are full of biblical idioms and in any case are of great interest.

As a rule the editors of Outside the Bible did not commission new translations; they were content to incorporate and revise translations that had already appeared in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha or elsewhere. For these texts the novelty of Outside the Bible is the annotation that it provides, which is far more detailed and far more sustained than what can be found in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. For some texts, though, the translations are new; among them are the sermons On Jonah and and On Samson, falsely attributed to Philo, now translated into English for the first time, two unique specimens of Hellenistic Jewish preaching; Philo’s Questions and Answers on Genesis and Exodus, newly translated from the Armenian (the Greek original being mostly lost); the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs; the Genesis
Apocryphon from Qumran; the Temple Scroll from Qumran. Aside from the new translations and the extensive introductions and annotations, there are no novelties in these volumes. No heretofore undiscovered texts. No long lost documents. No secret scrolls. (Contrast Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, volume 1, edited by Richard Bauckham, James R. Davila and Alexander Panayotov [2013] which is full of newly-translated and long-neglected texts, mostly of Byzantine origin.)

The canonization of the Hebrew Bible was an enormous goad to Jewish creativity. Across genres, styles, and languages, the Jews of the second temple period reacted to, interacted with, interpreted and re-interpreted, the words of the Bible, especially the Torah, in an extraordinary variety of ways with an extraordinary variety of results. The words of the Bible, especially the Torah, seem to have consumed the Jews to such an extent that they produced little literature that did not somehow engage the Bible and its concerns. Outside the Bible is a good entry point for the study not just of ancient Bible interpretation but also of ancient Judaism as a whole.

Who will read Outside the Bible? From cover to cover, probably no one. As a work of reference, as an anthology of ancient Jewish Bible interpretation, no doubt scholars will consult it and be grateful for the breadth of its scope and the erudition of its annotations. But who else will read it, and, what is more important for the publisher, who will want to purchase it? I am not sure that there is an audience for this act of cultural reclamation. Traditionalist Jews, beholden to the rabbinic suspicion of all “external” literature, who purchase ArtScroll/Mesorah Publications by the carload, will probably not be interested in these books. Will secular Jews be interested? I hope so, but that seems unlikely. So who is left? Christians interested in Jewish bible interpretation and in the “Jewish background” to the New Testament, and liberal Jews whose intellectual horizons extend beyond the rabbinic corpora. Will these two groups be persuaded to part with two hundred dollars plus for these three weighty tomes? That remains to be seen.



The Yeshivah and the Academy: How We Can Learn from One Another in Biblical Scholarship

Hayyim Angel’s latest book, Peshat Isn’t so Simple,
has just been published. The Seforim Blog is happy to present this excerpt.
The Yeshivah
and the Academy:
How We Can
Learn from One Another in Biblical Scholarship
I
The study of
Tanakh is an awesome undertaking, given its infinite depth. This chapter will
explore the approaches of the yeshivah and the academy to Tanakh study. We will
define the yeshivah broadly to include any traditional religious Jewish
setting, be it the synagogue, study hall, adult education class, seminary, or
personal study. In contrast, the academy is any ostensibly neutral scholarly
setting, primarily universities and colleges, which officially is not committed
to a particular set of beliefs.
In theory, the
text analysis in the yeshivah and the academy could be identical, since both
engage in the quest for truth. The fundamental difference between the two is
that in the yeshivah, we study Tanakh as a means to understanding revelation as
the expression of God’s will. The scholarly conclusions we reach impact
directly on our lives and our religious worldview. In the academy, on the other
hand, truth is pursued as an intellectual activity for its own sake, usually as
an end in itself.
Over the
generations, Jewish commentators have interpreted the texts of Tanakh using
traditional methods and sources. Many also drew from non-traditional sources. To
illustrate, Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra (twelfth-century Spain, Italy) frequently
cited Karaite scholarship even though he was engaged in an ongoing polemic
against them. Rambam (twelfth-century Spain, Egypt) drew extensively from
Aristotle and other thinkers in his Guide for the Perplexed. Rabbi Isaac
Abarbanel (fifteenth-century Spain, Italy) frequently cites Christian
commentaries and ancient histories. In the nineteenth century, rabbinic
scholars such as Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal) and Elijah Benamozegh in Italy;
and Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel (Malbim) and David Zvi Hoffmann in Germany,
benefited significantly from academic endeavors.
Many other
rabbis, however, have opposed the use of outside sources in explicating Tanakh.[1]
These rabbis did not want assumptions incompatible with Jewish tradition
creeping into our religious worldview. This tension about whether or not to
incorporate outside wisdom into Tanakh study lies at the heart of many of the
great controversies in the history of Jewish tradition.
II
In analyzing
the respective advantages and shortcomings of the approaches of the yeshivah
and the academy, it is appropriate to pinpoint the biases of each. The yeshivah
community studies each word of Tanakh with passionate commitment to God and
humanity, and with a deep awe and reverence of tradition. These are biases
(albeit noble ones) that will affect our scholarship, and it is vital to
acknowledge them. Less favorably, it is possible for chauvinism to enter
religious thought, with an insistence that only we have the truth. Our belief
in the divine revelation of Tanakh should make us recognize that no one person,
or group of people, can fully fathom its infinite glory and depth. Finally, our
commitment to Tanakh and tradition often makes it more difficult to change our
assumptions with new information than if we were detached and studying in a
neutral setting. Thus, academic biblical scholarship gains on the one hand by
its ostensible neutrality. It may be able to see things that one in love with
tradition cannot.
However, those
professing neutrality may not always acknowledge that they too are biased.
There is no such thing as purely objective, or infallible, human thought. For
example, Julius Wellhausen, a liberal Protestant scholar of late
nineteenth-century Germany, is often considered the most important architect of
the so-called Documentary Hypothesis. Building on earlier nineteenth-century
scholarship, he asserted that different sections of the Torah were composed
over several centuries, long after the time of Moses. He argued that some of
the narratives comprise the earliest layers of the Torah. Then came the
classical prophets, and only then were most of the legal sections of the Torah
added. These strands were redacted by later scholars, he believed, into the
Torah as we know it today.
Although many
were quick to accept this hypothesis, Professor Jon D. Levenson (Harvard
University) has demonstrated that it is an expression of liberal Protestant
theology that goes far beyond the textual evidence. By arguing that later
scholars and priests added the Torah’s laws, Wellhausen and his followers were
suggesting that those later writers distorted the original religion of the
prophets and patriarchs. According to Wellhausen, then, the Torah’s laws were a
later—and dispensable—aspect of true Israelite religion. Instead of Paul’s related
accusations against the Pharisees, these liberal Protestant German scholars
dissected and reinterpreted the Torah itself in accordance with their own
beliefs.[2]
The foregoing
criticism does not invalidate all of the questions and conclusions suggested by
that school of thought. Many of their observations have proven helpful in later
biblical scholarship. We need to recognize, however, that the suggestions of
Wellhausen’s school reflect powerful underlying biases—some of which go far
beyond the textual evidence.[3]
The traditional
Jewish starting point is rather different: God revealed the Torah to Moses and
Israel as an unparalleled and revolutionary vision for Israel and for all of
humanity. Its laws and narratives mesh as integral components of a
sophisticated, exalted, unified program for life. The later prophets came to
uphold and encourage faithfulness to God and the Torah.
In Tanakh,
people who live by the Torah’s standards are praiseworthy, and people who
violate them are culpable. So, for example, the Book of Samuel extols David for
his exceptional faith in battling Goliath, and then mercilessly condemns him
for the Bathsheba affair. This viewpoint reflects the singular philosophy of
Tanakh—profoundly honest evaluation of people based on their actions. It would
be specious to argue that the first half of the narrative was written by
someone who supported David, whereas the latter account was authored by someone
who hated David. Rather, the entire narrative was written by prophets who loved
God and who demanded that even the greatest and most beloved of our leaders be
faithful to the Torah.
Of course,
truth is infinitely complex and is presented in multiple facets in Tanakh.
Additionally, our understanding is necessarily subject to the limitations of
human interpretation. Nevertheless, the text remains the standard against which
we evaluate all opinions. Religious scholarship admits (or is supposed to
admit!) its shortcomings and biases while relentlessly trying to fathom the
revealed word of God.
III
The ideal
learning framework espouses traditional beliefs and studies as a means to a
religious end, and defines issues carefully, while striving for intellectual
openness and honesty. Reaching this synthesis is difficult, since it requires
passionate commitment alongside an effort to be detached while learning in
order to refine knowledge and understanding. When extolling two of his great
rabbinic heroes—Rabbis Joseph Soloveitchik and Benzion Uziel—Rabbi Marc D.
Angel quotes the Jerusalem Talmud, which states that the path of Torah has fire
to its right and ice to its left. Followers of the Torah must attempt to walk
precisely in middle (J.T. Hagigah 2:1, 77a).[4]
Literary tools,
comparative linguistics, as well as the discovery of a wealth of ancient texts
and artifacts have contributed immensely to our understanding the rich tapestry
and complexity of biblical texts. The groundbreaking work of twentieth-century
scholars such as Umberto (Moshe David) Cassuto, Yehudah Elitzur, Yehoshua Meir
Grintz, Yehezkel Kaufmann, and Nahum Sarna has enhanced our understanding of
the biblical world by combining a mastery of Tanakh with a thorough
understanding of the ancient Near Eastern texts unearthed during the previous
two centuries.
At the same time, it must be recognized that our
knowledge of the ancient world is limited. We have uncovered but a small
fraction of the artifacts and literature of the ancient Near Eastern world, and
much of what we have discovered is subject to multiple interpretations. We
should be thrilled to gain a better sense of the biblical period, but must
approach the evidence with prudent caution as well.[5]
To benefit from
contemporary biblical scholarship properly, we first must understand our own
tradition—to have a grasp of our texts, assumptions, and the range of
traditional interpretations. This educational process points to a much larger
issue. For example, studying comparative religion should be broadening.
However, people unfamiliar with their own tradition, or who know it primarily
from non-traditional teachers or textbooks, will have little more than a
shallow basis for comparison.
Religious
scholarship benefits from contemporary findings—both information and
methodology. Outside perspectives prod us to be more critical in our own
learning. On the other side of the equation, the academy stands to benefit from
those who are heirs to thousands of years of tradition, who approach every word
of Tanakh with awe and reverence, and who care deeply about the intricate
relationship between texts.[6]
The academy also must become more aware of its own underlying biases.
IV
Ultimately, we
must recognize the strengths and weaknesses in the approaches of the yeshivah
and the academy. By doing so, we can study the eternal words of Tanakh using
the best of classical and contemporary scholarship. This process gives us an
ever-refining ability to deepen our relationship with God, the world community,
and ourselves.
Dr. Norman Lamm
has set the tone for this inquiry:
Torah is a
“Torah of truth,” and to hide from the facts is to distort that truth into
myth.… It is this kind of position which honest men, particularly honest
believers in God and Torah, must adopt at all times, and especially in our
times. Conventional dogmas, even if endowed with the authority of an
Aristotle—ancient or modern—must be tested vigorously. If they are found
wanting, we need not bother with them. But if they are found to be
substantially correct, we may not overlook them. We must then use newly
discovered truths the better to understand our Torah—the “Torah of truth.”[7]
Our early morning daily liturgy challenges us: “Ever
shall a person be God-fearing in secret as in public, with truth in his heart
as on his lips.” May we be worthy of pursuing that noble combination.
NOTES

[1] See, for example, the essays in Judaism’s
Encounter with Other Cultures: Rejection or Integration? ed. J. J. Schacter
(Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1997). See also the survey of opinions in
Yehudah Levi, Torah Study: A Survey of Classic Sources on Timely Issues
(New York: Feldheim, 1990), pp. 257-274. This survey includes traditional
approaches regarding exposure to sciences, humanities, and other disciplines.
[2] Jon D. Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, the Old
Testament, and Historical Criticism (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox
Press, 1993), pp. 1-32. See also Levenson, Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the
Jewish Bible (San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1985, paperback
edition), pp. 1-4, where he shows how many prominent Christian Bible scholars
after Wellhausen continued with these Pauline doctrinal biases in the name of
“objective” scholarship.
[3] For a thorough discussion of the Documentary
Hypothesis, critiques of that theory, and traditional responses to the genuine
scholarly issues involved, see R. Amnon Bazak, Ad ha-Yom ha-Zeh: Until This
Day: Fundamental Questions in Bible Teaching (Hebrew), ed. Yoshi Farajun
(Tel Aviv: Yediot Aharonot, 2013), pp. 21-150.
[4] Introduction to Exploring the Thought of Rabbi
Joseph B. Soloveitchik, ed. Marc D. Angel (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1997), p.
xvi; Loving Truth and Peace: The Grand Religious Worldview of Rabbi Benzion
Uziel (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1999), pp. 69-70.
[5] For a discussion of the broader implications of this
issue and analysis of some of the major ostensible conflicts between the
biblical text and archaeological evidence, see R. Amnon Bazak, Ad ha-Yom
ha-Zeh, pp. 247-346.
[6] Cf. the observation of William H. C. Propp:
“Generations of Bible students are taught that the goal of criticism is to find
contradiction as a first not a last resort, and to attribute every verse, nay
every word, to an author or editor. That is what we do for a living. But the
folly of harmonizing away every contradiction, every duplication, is less than
the folly of chopping the text into dozens of particles or redactional levels.
After all, the harmonizing reader may at least recreate the editors’
understanding of their product. But the atomizing reader posits and
analyzes literary materials whose existence is highly questionable” (Anchor
Bible 2A: Exodus 19-40 [New York: Doubleday, 2006], p. 734). At the
conclusion of his commentary, Propp explains that he often consulted medieval
rabbinic commentators precisely because they saw unity in the composite whole
of the Torah (p. 808). See also Michael V. Fox: “Medieval Jewish commentary has
largely been neglected in academic Bible scholarship, though a great many of
the ideas of modern commentators arose first among the medieval, and many of
their brightest insights are absent from later exegesis” (Anchor Bible 18A:
Proverbs 1-9 [New York: Doubleday, 2000], p. 12).
[7] R. Norman Lamm, Faith and Doubt: Studies in
Traditional Jewish Thought (New York: Ktav, 1971), pp. 124-125. See also R.
Shalom Carmy, “To Get the Better of Words: An Apology
for Yir’at Shamayim in Academic Jewish Studies,” Torah U-Madda
Journal 2 (1990), pp. 7-24.


Torah mi-Sinai and More

Torah mi-Sinai and More
by Marc B. Shapiro
1. Some people have requested that I do more posts on theological matters, as I have done in the past. So let me begin with what I think will be a three-part series on Torah mi-Sinai.
In a previous post, available here, I mentioned R. Shlomo Fisher’s rejection of R. Moshe Feinstein’s view that R. Yehudah he-Hasid’s “biblical criticism” was not authentic. As R. Fisher put it, R. Moshe assumed that even in the past everyone had to accept Maimonides’ principles, but that was not the case, and when it came to Mosaic authorship R. Yehudah he-Hasid disagreed with Maimonides. R. Uri Sharki has apparently also discussed this with R. Fisher, as he cites the latter as claiming that the issue of whether post-Mosaic additions are religiously objectionable is a dispute between the medieval Ashkenazic and Sephardic sages. See here. 
What this means is that in medieval Ashkenaz it was not regarded as heretical to posit post-Mosaic additions, while the opposite was the case in the Sephardic world (and this would explain why Ibn Ezra could only hint to his view). I am skeptical of this point, particularly because Ibn Ezra’s secrets are, in fact, explained openly by people who lived in the Sephardic world.[1] Yet Haym Soloveitchik has also recently made same point, and pointed to differences between Jews living in the Christian and Muslim worlds. His argument is that since medieval Ashkenazic Jews were not confronted with a theological challenge of the sort Jews dealt with in the Islamic world, where Jews were accused of altering the text of the Pentateuch, there was no assumption in medieval Europe that belief in what we know as Maimonides’ Eighth Principle was a binding doctrine of faith.
Here is some of what Soloveitchik wrote (the emphasis does not appear in the original):
One tanna had stated, simply and with no ado, that the last eight verses were of Divine origin but not of Mosaic authorship, and R. Yehudah he-Hasid added that there were several more verses that were not penned by Moses. Was such a position seen as being thoroughly mistaken? Most probably. Was it viewed as odd and non-conformist? Undoubtedly; though hardly more eccentric than R. Yehudah’s view that King David, to flesh out his book of Psalms, lifted from the text of the “original” Pentateuch many anonymous “psalms” that Moses had penned! Were these strange and misguided views, however, perceived as being in any way heretical or even dangerous? At that time and place, certainly not. They contained no concession to the surrounding culture, opened no Pandora’s Box of questions. Indeed, one can take the religious temperature of R. Yehudah he-Hasid’s explanation by the matter of fact way European medieval commentators (rishonim) treated the passages in Menahot and Bava Batra where the tannaitic dictum of Joshua’s authorship is brought.[2] In their world, these words did not abut any slippery slope of a “documentary hypothesis” or of “Jewish forgery”. No need, therefore, to reinterpret this passage or to forfend any untoward implications. What concerned R. Yehudah he-Hasid’s contemporaries, the Tosafists, in this statement were its practical halakhic implications for the Sabbath Torah readings, not its theological or dogmatic ones, for to them, as to R. Yehudah, there were none.[3]
Sharki, who is a leading kiruv figure in the Religious Zionist world, adds something quite amazing. From the standpoint of Ibn Ezra and R. Yehudah he-Hasid, which he sees as an acceptable approach, he writes that what is important is the belief that the Torah is true and from God.
 עיקר האמונה הוא להאמין שכל דברי התורה אמת ושהם מפי ה’
In other words, Mosaic authorship is not something people need to put such a focus on.
Sharki goes even further, stating that according to the Kuzari, post-Mosaic prophets could add to and delete material in the Torah. As support for this viewpoint, he cites an article by R. Yosef Kellner in Tzohar 22. (Kellner is a leading interpreter of R. Kook from the hardali camp.) I looked at Kellner’s article and found nothing that says this explicitly. However, I did find an interesting statement in Kellner’s article, and presumably this is what Sharki was referring to (although it still doesn’t say what Sharki claims it does):
אך לכוזרי, כמו לבה”ג, לא כל התרי”ג מצוות התגלו בסיני ההיסתורי, אם כי כולם דברי קבלה ממשה בסיני-הפנימי-נשמתי
This could be a very radical statement, depending on how it is interpreted. On the one hand, it could mean that some mitzvot in the Torah were actually established in a post-Mosaic era, but that is OK since these mitzvot arose from the spiritual wellsprings of Sinai. This is how Sharki must understand the passage. But I think it is obvious that Kellner doesn’t mean this at all, and the reference to the Halakhot Gedolot is the give-away. As is well known, the Halakhot Gedolot counts among the 613 commandments certain rabbinic laws. What the logic of this position is is not our concern at present. For our purposes what is important is that the Behag, and Kuzari, never say that  there are mitzvot in the Torah that are post-Mosaic, only that post-Mosaic mitzvot can be counted as part of the 613. There is an enormous difference between this understanding and the following, which is Sharki’s formulation:
לפי שיטת הכוזרי שגם הנביאים יכולים להוסיף או לגרוע בתורה, בניגוד לדעת הרמב”ם
David Halivni, Breaking the Tablets: Jewish Theology After the Shoah, p. 99 (called to my attention by Cemmie Green), states that according to R. Saadiah Gaon, “certain areas of the Law were originally more complete and more explicit in the Torah given by Moses to the people.” Here is the text he bases this statement on, found in Lewin’s introduction to Iggeret R. Sherira Gaon, p. X:
שבתורת משה אנו מוצאים הרבה ענינים הכתובים באריכות כמו למשל מעשה משכן, פרשת מלואים, פקודי ישראל וחנוכת המזבח. ובנגוד לזה כתובים בקצור נמרץ חוקי הזיבות, וחוקי עבור השנה נכללים רק במלת “אביב” גרידא, מה שהוא תמוה מאד אם לא נניח, שגם החוקים הללו היו כתובים באר היטיב אלא שאינם אצלינו בכתב אלא מסורים בעל פה.
It certainly does seem as if R. Saadiah is saying that some laws were removed from the Torah. Yet I also see how someone can argue that, contrary to Halivni, it does not say anything about these laws originally appearing in the Torah. It could be that he is only telling us that part of the “Oral Law” was written down in Moses’ day.
Assuming the latter explanation is what R. Saadiah means, there is good reason to assume that he was not being frank here. At a lecture at the University of Scranton, Prof. Daniel Lasker memorably stated that “all is fair in love and polemics.” If R. Saadiah issaying that part of the Oral Law was written down in Moses’ day, I believe he was twisting the truth as part of his battle with the Karaites. The Karaites were arguing that the Oral Law was not authentic, and R. Saadiah replied that not only was it authentic, but at least some of it was even written down in Moses’ day, thus precluding the sorts of errors that would arise from an oral tradition. R. Saadiah’s approach here would thus be no different than his claim that the calendar was the original way to determine the new moon, with sighting a later innovation. Already Maimonides declared that R. Saadiah did not really believe this, but found it useful to argue this way in the midst of a polemic against the Karaites.[4]
R. Yuval Sherlo was recently asked if it is acceptable to posit post-Mosaic authorship of passages of the Torah, following in the paths of R. Judah he-Hasid and Ibn Ezra.[5] Rather than reject the latter viewpoint, he claims that it is important to stress the ikkar ha-ikkarim, namely, that the authority of the Torah does not depend on who wrote it. What is crucial is that it was given by God. Even if there are verses that were written by someone else other than Moses, as was held by R. Judah he-Hasid and Ibn Ezra, this is not heresy, unless one assumes that these portions were not written through Divine Inspiration. Sherlo himself acknowledges that there is a good deal of evidence apparently pointing to the fact that some verses are post-Mosaic.
ישנם סימנים רבים בתורה שלכאורה מעידים על כך שחלק מפסוקי התורה נכתבו לאחר משה רבינו
 He concludes:
על כן, בשעה שמאמינים במוצא העליון המוחלט של כל פסוקי התורה אין איסור להרחיב את מה שאמרו חכמינו על הפסוקים האחרונים בתורה לעוד מקומות בתורה, בשל העיקרון הבסיסי הקיים בדברים אלה – התורה היא מוצא “פיו” המוחלט של ריבונו של עולם.
Needless to say, this is in direct contradiction to Maimonides’ Eighth Principle, and is an opening for Higher Biblical Criticism to enter the Orthodox world. For those who don’t read Hebrew, what Sherlo is saying is that Mosaic authorship does not matter, as long as one accepts that the Torah is divine. This is a huge theological step (a “game changer”), which for those who accept it entirely alters the playing field. This is such a break with the standard Orthodox view that I don’t know why Sherlo’s position has not received any publicity. Let me say it again, in case people haven’t been paying close attention: Sherlo’s argument permits Higher Criticism, as long as one asserts that the entire Torah is divinely inspired.
Sherlo is not some fringe figure. He is Rosh Yeshiva of the Hesder Yeshiva in Petah Tikva and a major personality in religious Zionism. (In the next installment of this series I will present further evidence that in some parts of the Modern Orthodox world the old taboo against Higher Criticism has begun to fade.)
Not surprisingly, Sherlo’s position was challenged by some commenters and he in turn defended what he wrote. Interestingly, one of the commenters writes about Ezra editing the Torah, and Sherlo does not reject this. Instead, he asserts that whoever arranged the Torah did it with prophecy that was the equal of Moses’ prophecy.
מי שסידר את התורה אף הוא עשה זאת בנבואה [!] התורה ולא בנבואה שהיא פחות מנבואת משה רבינו
In other words, Sherlo has adopted Rosenzweig’s point that “R”, instead of standing for “Redactor”, really means “Rabbenu.”[6]
When this formulation was challenged, since how could there be prophets of the level of Moses as this would contradict the Seventh Principle, Sherlo was unperturbed.
[שאלה] מה פירוש נביא שסדר את התורה עשה זאת בנבואת משה רבינו. האם היו עוד נביאים כמשה? הלא מעיקרי הדת שלא היו.
[תשובה] לפי הרמב“ם אלו עיקרי הדת. ברם, אפילו אמוראים סברו אחרת לגבי הפסוקים האחרונים בתורה
In other words, since there are amoraim who disagree with Maimonides’ Principle, it is not binding.[7]
In speaking of the Torah, Sherlo uses this provocative formulation (emphasis added):
ניסוח התורה הוא ניסוח שאנו מתייחסים אליו כולו כאילו כולו יצא מרבונו של עולם בדרגת “תורה” ולא בדרגה נמוכה ממנה.
One of the commenters asks as follows (and both of the possibilities he suggests are far from traditional):
הרב כותב כי “ניסוח התורה הוא ניסוח שאנו מתייחסים אליו כולו כאילו כולו יצא מריבונו של עולם”. האם זהו רק יחס שלנו, והיינו שיש לכתוב סמכות של תורה, או שבאמת אלוקים דיבר וסיעתו של עזרא כתבה?
Sherlo replies that he simply does not know, and that we don’t know what the Torah looked like in the years after it was given (until the days when the Torah she-ba’al peh was written down, and quotations of the Torah are found there). In other words, it might be significantly different than the Torah we have today:
אנחנו לא יודעים. יש חור שחור בתולדות מסירת התורה, כי אין לנו בדיוק מושג מה היה באלף השנים שבין מתן תורה לבין כתיבת התורה שבעל פה. לכן התנסחתי בנוסח זה.
In a previous post I already called attention to a comment by the great R. Solomon David Sassoon, who wrote as follows (Natan Hokhmah li-Shelomo, p. 106 [emphasis in original; I learnt of this passage from  R. Moshe Shamah]):

אבל אם יאמר פסוקים אלה נביא אחר כתב אותם מפי הגבורה ומודה שקטע זה הוא מן השמים ומפי הגבורה, אדם שאומר כך אינו נקרא אפיקורוס, מה שהגדיר אותו כאפיקורוס אינו זה שאמר שלא משה כתב את הקטע אלא בזה שהוא אומר שדבר שזה מדעתו ומפי עצמו אמרו ושאין זה מן השמים

This too can provide a religious justification for Biblical Criticism.

Let me make one more comment relating to Biblical Criticism. (There is, of course, more to say, but this can wait until the next installment.) Those who have read my posts know that I find it very interesting when Orthodox figures attack a position as foolish or heretical not knowing that this very position was stated by a great sage. If one was dealing with a detached academic, obviously heresy wouldn’t be a concern. And as for regarding a position as foolish, even if it is pointed out to the detached academic that, for example, Aristotle held this view, he would not retract from his statement that the position he criticized was foolish. It would just be an example where the great Aristotle adopted a foolish position. But in the Torah world, this sort of attitude is improper, so people are in a bind when they learn that the position they thought was foolish was actually held by a great sage.[8] In many cases I assume the people cannot change the way they think. They still think the position is foolish, but they can’t say this publicly anymore. Let me given an example of this relating to Biblical Criticism.

As is well-known, one of the arguments of early Biblical Criticism was that the “Book of the Law”, found by Hilkiah and given to Josiah (see 2 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 34), was actually the book of Deuteronomy, which the Critics assume to be the latest of the books of the Pentateuch.[9] They regard it as a pseudepigraphical document, attributed to Moses. In other words, it was a pious fraud created to provide the basis for Josiah’s reform. Readers can correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think that this theory has many advocates in recent scholarship. In any event, what concerns me here is that when rabbis and polemicists argue against Biblical Criticism, they often tear part the claim that Deuteronomy is the subject of the Josiah story. One can find lectures online where the speaker will mention this notion, and then reject it with great contempt. The attitude expressed is that anyone with any understanding of the Torah, or even of simple peshat of the relevant verses, would realize that Josiah story must be dealing with a complete Torah, not one book of the Pentateuch. Some go so far as to make it seem that only an idiot could conclude that Josiah is dealing with the book of Deuteronomy. For a traditionalist, this would appear to make perfect sense, since who ever heard of dividing the Torah into separate scrolls?[10]         
Yet if the people arguing so strongly against the Josiah-Deuteronomy connection would look at the version of the story in 2 Chron. 34, they would find something that would shock them. While verses 14 and 15 speak of finding ספר תורת ה’ ביד משה  and ספר התורה, the commentary attributed to Rashi understands this to mean משנה תורה, i.e., the book of Deuteronomy! In other words, the position of the Bible Critics as to which book was “found”,[11] and the position attacked so mercilessly by the opponents of the Biblical Critics, is in fact held by a rishon! I am not saying that this rishon is a proto-Biblical Critic, or that he denies the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy. But he does say that the book found, and which was read to Josiah and so affected him, was not the Torah itself, but only the book of Deuteronomy. I grant that this is an unusual position, but now that we have seen what this rishon holds, does this mean that this viewpoint now has to be treated with more respect, as opposed to the current treatment it gets at the hands of Orthodox polemicists?[12]
This notion, that the book Hilkiah found was Deuteronomy, is also advocated by R. Elijah Benamozegh. [13] Benamozegh states that if this viewpoint is correct, it means that from early on there was a practice to write the book of Deuteronomy separately from the rest of the Pentateuch. He also cites a rabbinic view that the Torah that the king carried was only the book of Deuteronomy.[14] Based upon this, he explains why the book found was brought to the king, since it was precisely this book that the king was obligated to write and carry with himself. Benamozegh concludes:
סוף דבר קרוב ונראה שהיו מעתיקים ס’ מ”ת בפ”ע כמו שנוכיח להבא בע”ה כי ספר תורת משה נכתבה בימי קדם חלקים ונתחים כל א’ בפ”ע, ובראש כל אתוון מה שהעידו רבותינו באומרם: תורה מגלה מגלה נתנה
2. Since in the previous section I referred to Ibn Ezra’s view on post-Mosaic additions to the Torah, let me say a little bit more about this. At the beginning of his commentary to Deuteronomy chapter 34, Ibn Ezra states that the last twelve verses of the Pentateuch were written by Joshua. The Talmud only offers this possibility concerning the last eight verses. The Kol Bo, Seder Tefillat ha-Moadot (ed. Avraham [Jerusalem, 1992), vol. 3, p. 220) writes:
ושמנה פסוקים אשר בזאת הברכה שהם מויעל משה עד ויהושע בן נון, יחיד קורא אותם.
The problem with this formulation is that there are twelve verses from ויעל משה (Deut. 34:1), not eight. I presume that instead of ויעל משה  the text should read וימת משה (Deut. 34:5), which is the eighth verse from the end and what the Talmud refers to. It is also possible that instead of stating “eight verses” it should read “twelve verses,” and the Kol Bo would then be agreeing with Ibn Ezra.[15]
In The Limits of Orthodox Theology I referred to Avat Nefesh, an anonymous medieval commentary on Ibn Ezra, as one of those who understood the latter as positing post-Mosaic additions. I had access to the Genesis portion of the commentary which appeared in William Gartig’s 1994 Hebrew Union College doctoral dissertation. A typescript of the complete commentary is now available on Otzar ha-Hokhmah, and this typescript pre-dates 1994. (In the preface to the typescript, the transcriber presents evidence that the author is R. Yedayah ha-Penini [ca. 1270-1340].)[16] In his commentary to Gen. 12:6, Avat Nefesh states that according to Ibn Ezra “many verses” in the Torah were only added after Moses’ death. He also notes that this is the focus of most of Ibn Ezra’s “secrets”.
כי כונתו שזה לא כתב משה אך נכתב אחר שנכבשה הארץ וכן דעתו בהרבה פסוקים ורוב סודותיו סובבים בזה כאשר אמר בראש אלה הדברים.
With the complete commentary we can also see what he says in Deut. 1:1. Here again he explains Ibn Ezra’s secret to be referring to post-Mosaic verses. Yet he also expresses his disagreement with Ibn Ezra and defends Mosaic authorship, although it is not clear if he is disagreeing in general or only with regard to the example he is discussing, where he explains why the expression בעבר הירדן is not an anachronism.
The principle by which Ibn Ezra determined that certain verses are post-Mosaic is if they contain what he regarded as clear anachronisms. All of the examples he gives in his commentary to Deut. 1:1 fall into this category. R. Joseph Bonfils famously argues that while Ibn Ezra acknowledged post-Mosaic additions of individual words and verses, which function as explanatory glosses, Ibn Ezra did not believe that there could be entire sections that are post-Mosaic. This is how Bonfils explains why Ibn Ezra, in his commentary to Gen. 36:31, responded so sharply to Yitzhaki’s suggestion that Gen. 36:31-39 is post-Mosaic:
וחלילה חלילה שהדבר עמו . . . וספרו ראוי להשרף
The problem with these verses is that they begin with the following: “And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel.” Some viewed it is an anachronism to speak of the Israelite monarchy when still in the desert. As mentioned in The Limits of Orthodox Theology, R. Judah he-Hasid, R. Avigdor Katz, and according to one Tosafist collection also Rashbam identified these verses as post-Mosaic. As far as I can tell, there is no evidence to support Bonfil’s supposition that Ibn Ezra, for dogmatic reasons, denied that there could be post-Mosaic additions of entire sections. In the case of Gen. 36:31-39, there are internal reasons why Ibn Ezra would not see it as problematic, as he explains in his commentary.
Returning to Avat Nefesh, there is something else noteworthy in the commentary. He mentions that Ibn Ezra believes that “many verses” are post-Mosaic. Although Ibn Ezra himself doesn’t supply us with that many verses, once we assume that Ibn Ezra was guided by what he viewed as anachronisms in pointing to post-Mosaic additions, there is no reason to conclude that the examples he gives in his commentary to Deut. 1:1 exhaust the list. In support of Avat Nefesh’s point, let me mention the following: Ibn Ezra lists Gen. 12:6, “And the Canaanite was then in the land,” as one of the post-Mosaic additions. Understood according to their simple sense, these words can be seen as anachronistic as the Canaanites were still in the Land of Israel in the days of Moses. In other words, the words are written from the perspective of one living in a generation when there were no longer Canaanites in the Land of Israel. If these words are post-Mosaic, then the second half of Gen. 13:7 must also be post-Mosaic, as it says, “And the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelt then in the land.” Just as Ibn Ezra didn’t feel it was necessary to spell out his view with regard to Gen. 13:7, so too, Avat Nefesh believes, there are other similar cases.
Avat Nefesh provides an example of this in his commentary to Num. 13:24, where he writes that according to Ibn Ezra (see his commentary, ibid.) at least some of what appears in this verse was written in the days of the Judges.
ר”ל שוירדוף עד דן נכתב לפי דעתו בימי השופטים שאז נקרא שם העיר דן כשם דן אביהם, כן כוונתו בנחל אשכול שנכתב אחרי כן בשמו שקראו הקורא
3. Let us now return to R. Shlomo Fisher, with whom we began this post. Despite coming from a very haredi background, he has close ties with the religious Zionist world. You can see many of his shiurim on www.yeshiva.org.il and here is his picture.
It is because of his ties with religious Zionists that R. Shach criticized him in conversation with R. Mordechai Elefant, late Rosh Yeshiva of the ITRI yeshiva, presumably as a way of pressuring R. Elefant to fire R. Fisher.

Here is how R. Elefant told the story, in his own words:

Rav Shlomo Fisher is a member of my faculty and one of the most brilliant talmudists of this generation. He was born and raised in the heart of Meah Shearim, but he has connections with religious Zionist institutions. I once came into Rav Shach, and he started calling Rav Shlomo a kalyekker [someone not firmly devoted to the purest Torah ideals]. I was annoyed, but I didn’t say anything. This happened a second time. I said to myself then, “If this happens again, I have to do something about it.” It happened again. So I went into Rav Shlomo’s room here in the yeshiva, and I took out a letter written by the Steipler in which he calls Rav Shlomo “pe’er ha-dor” (glory of the generation). Next time I went to Rav Shach, he said again that Rav Shlomo is a kalyekker. I said, “Rav Shach, listen to me. The Steipler is also a kalyekker.” He looked at me like I was crazy, but then I showed him the letter. I never heard any more complaints about Rav Shlomo. I told this to Rav Shlomo and it didn’t mean a thing to him. The only thing he cares about is understanding the Torah.
R. Elefant continued with the following story:
Then there was a time when a member of my own staff came to me with similar objections. He wanted me to get rid of Rav Shlomo. He quotes Bialik, Nietzsche, and all sorts of other things that are generally unacceptable in yeshivot.[17] I told him, “You’re right, but I’ve got one problem. You and me, we can teach these boys here how to understand Talmud. But there’s a lot more to education than that. Who’s going to teach these kids about purity, humility, and integrity? You? Me? That’s what we need Rav Shlomo for.” The guy chuckled and agreed with me.
I have previously mentioned that R. Fisher is, to my knowledge, the only gadol be-Yisrael who is also an expert in medieval Jewish philosophy. Many are disappointed that he does not take a public profile and express his views on issues of the day. If you are part of the group that studies with him every week, then you are fortunate to hear his views (which sometimes filter out). But what about the rest of the world?
A couple more stories R. Elefant told of his relationship with R. Shach are worth repeating. The two of them were close friends for decades, from before the time when R. Shach was recognized as the leader of the Lithuanian Torah world. That is why R. Elefant was able to speak to him in a way that others would never have dared.
Once R. Elefant was in Bnei Brak to give a shiur, and he went to visit R. Shach.
I went into Rav Shach’s room. He greeted me and asked what my lecture was about. I said, “Rav Shach, let’s be frank with each other. You don’t want to know what I lectured about, and I don’t want to know what you lectured about. I came here because you want to shoot the breeze.” His laugh was worth a million bucks to me.

The other story relates to a conflict between R. Shach and R. Yehudah Zev Segal of Manchester. R. Shach was upset with R. Segal because the latter didn’t accept R. Shach’s views which were creating great conflict between the yeshiva world and the hasidim.

Rav Shach heard that I was a friend of Rabbi Segal’s, so he told me he wanted to talk with me about him next time I was in Bnei Brak. It wasn’t too long before I was there, and Rav Shach asked me what I knew about Rabbi Segal. I told him, “I’ll tell you the truth. Rav Shach, you are the most powerful man in this world. You build governments, you break governments. What you say goes. People say about you “kocho ug’vuraso molei olam.” But Rabbi Segal is different. His opinion counts over there in the other world.Rav Shach’s attendants were dumbstruck. They couldn’t believe I had the nerve to say that to his face. But I didn’t meant to insult Rav Shach and he wasn’t fazed. He asked, “Do you really mean that?” I said I did, and after that he left Rabbi Segal alone.
Here is some of what R. Elefant said about Saul Lieberman.

When Lieberman came to Israel, the Brisker Rav acted like he was his best friend. They asked him why, and he had a one-word explanation, “mishpochoh.” They were cousins.

One of the Rav’s sons, I think it was Meir, got engaged to a girl from a family called Benedikt. I was invited to the engagement party. The Brisker Rav was sitting next to Saul Lieberman. I saw it. On Lieberman’s other side was the Mir Rosh Yeshiva, Reb Leizer Yehudah Finkel. That time Lieberman was persona non grata.
Here is another story from R. Elefant.
Lieberman was good friends with Rav Hutner. They were both students of Rav Kook, and they palled around in New York back in the fifties. They both used to go to the 42nd Street Library because there were lots of seforim there. Rav Hutner had a beard as black as coal back then. He wore a short jacket. Lieberman was once standing there in the library and who should come in but his friend, Rav Hutner. Lieberman says in Yiddish, “Here comes God’s dog.” Rav Hutner retorted, “Better to be a dog of God than to be a god to dogs.” Rav Hutner told me that one himself.
4. In a recent post on his blog, R. Daniel Eidensohn refers to my comment in this post where I suggested that the lenient attitude towards pedophilia in much of right wing Orthodoxy is due to the fact that the real trauma of sexual abuse is not something that one can learn about in traditional Jewish sources but comes to us from psychology, and as such is suspect in those circles that see psychology as a “non-Jewish” discipline. Let me offer another example that illustrates how today we take sexual abuse much more seriously than in previous years. Here is a responsum no. 378 from R. Joseph Hayyim’s Torah li-Shemah.

As you can see, the sexual abuse of a child under nine years old was not regarded by him as an earth-shattering violation (certainly not at the level of violating Shabbat or eating non-kosher food). While we regard child sexual abuse as one of the worst things imaginable, it is easy to see how someone whose only exposure to these matters would have been through traditional sources would not see it as such a terrible offense, namely, an offense that would require one turn the person into the police. In another responsum, Torah li-Shemah no. 441, R. Joseph Hayyim writes as follows regarding one who has sex with a child under nine years old:
והרי זה הבועל כמי שמשחית זרעו ע”ג עצם ואבנים
In other words, he sees this as an issue of wasting seed, without any cognizance of the terrible damage done to the child.[18] Responsa like this are important in showing how, with increased knowledge, attitudes have changed. What our generation regards as the most vile behavior was often seen in a very different light in previous generations. This is the only limud zekhut for those who in past years did not take sexual abuse seriously.
R. Ysoscher Katz also called my attention to a relevant discussion on a Yiddish site. See here. One of the matters discussed is a responsum of R. Yair Hayyim Bacharach, Havot Yair no. 108.

I think any modern person reading it will be surprised to see that there is no emotion shown, no reflection on the difficult circumstances of the girl. Everything is examined from a halakhic standpoint. But this again shows how differently we approach these sorts of matters than was the case years ago.
If sexual abuse is treated just like another sexual transgression, then the lenient approach some rabbis have adopted towards it makes sense. After all, shouldn’t a rabbi want to give a sinner the opportunity to repent? Sexual sins have always been regarded differently than kashrut or Shabbat violations. If a rebbe was seen eating a hamburger in McDonalds or driving on Shabbat he would immediately be fired, without any opportunity to repent. But more leeway is given when it comes to sexual sins, the reason being, no doubt, that everyone understands the power of the evil inclination in this area. A good illustration of my point is seen in R. Aaron Walkin, Zekan Aharon, vol. 2, no. 30.

The responsum deals with a shochet who was seen entering the home of a “loose” woman. R. Zalman Sorotzkin didn’t know what do about it and wrote to R. Walkin. R. Walkin refuses to disqualify the shochet, and tells R. Sorotzkin that even if there were two witnesses testifying to the matter it would not change his mind, since this would only turn the shochet into a mumar le-davar ehad! It is true that not all rabbis would have been as lenient as R. Walkin,[19] but the fact that this great posek ruled the way he did is quite significant.[20]

Finally, I am curious to hear what some of the lawyers reading this post have to say about the following: Some time ago, I was contacted by a man who wanted to talk to me about being an expert witness for the defense in the appeal of a sexual abuse conviction. The case is actually one of the worst we have seen. I was told that my role would only be to answer questions about sexual mores in the hasidic world, in particular, how they understand tzeniut. While I am far from an expert on this, not being from that world, the defense team wanted an academic on the stand. (Needless to say, there are academics who would also be much better choices than me.) .

Nothing came of this discussion, and I myself decided that I would have nothing to do with the case after learning the particulars, which are indeed sickening. My question is as follows: We know that defense lawyers are not personally tainted even if they represent horrible people. We recognize that this is their job. My sense is that people would not give the same leeway to an expert witness, and he would be viewed very negatively, as one who was helping to free a sexual abuser. Yet I would like to get some feedback from the lawyers. If I would have agreed to be called to the stand to answer general questions about halakhah and tzeniut, does the fact that I was part of the defense team’s strategy mean that I would be “helping” the defense? It was made clear to me that my role would be to simply to answer general questions and I would have nothing to do with the defendant per se. Another way of framing the question is, would it have been immoral for me to agree to this role if, after having examined the evidence, I was convinced that the defendant committed terrible crimes and  should remain in jail?  

5. For the runoff quiz I asked the following:

A. What is the first volume of responsa published in the lifetime of its author?
B. There is a verse in the book of Exodus which has a very strange vocalization of a word, found nowhere else in Tanach. (The word itself is also spelled in an unusual fashion, found only one other time in Tanach). The purpose of this vocalization is apparently in order to make a rhyme. What am I referring to?
Some got the answer to the first question, and others got the answer to the second question. But only one person, Peretz Mochkin, got the answers to both.
The answer to the first question is the responsa volume Binyamin Ze’ev (Venice, 1539), by R. Benjamin Ze’ev of Arta.
The answer to the second question is the word אתכה in Ex. 29:35. It is spelled and vocalized the way it is in order to rhyme with the word ככה that appears earlier in the sentence.
וְעָשִׂיתָ לְאַהֲרֹן וּלְבָנָיו, כָּכָה, כְּכֹל אֲשֶׁר-צִוִּיתִי, אֹתָכָה
One of the sources that refers to this text is Zev Grossman, Darkhei ha-Melitzah be-Sefer Tehillim. This is a very interesting book on aspects of grammar in Tanach. Here is the title page, with an approbation of sorts from William Chomsky. I don’t know of any other book that puts the approbation on the title page, and in this case the approbation is in English. (William Chomsky, incidentally, is the father of Noam Chomsky.)

One of the things Grossman points out in his book is that there are many examples of verses where we find words in non-grammatical forms in order that they rhyme. Here is just one example, from Psalms 5:8:
וַאֲנִי–בְּרֹב חַסְדְּךָ, אָבוֹא בֵיתֶךָ;    אֶשְׁתַּחֲוֶה אֶל-הֵיכַל-קָדְשְׁךָ, בְּיִרְאָתֶךָ
In context, the final word, ביראתך, means “in fear of you”, even though this is not grammatically correct. This form is used to make the rhyme, because if one were applying grammatical rules it would not be spelled this way.
At the end of the Hebrew section of the book, Grossman has a page listing his published books.

As you can see, he also produced a set of gedolim cards. When I was young, in the 1970s, there were gedolim cards. I know this because I collected them.[21] But I never imagined that they existed already in the early 1950s.
6. In my post of January 13, 2013, I wrote: “R. Meir Schiff (Maharam Schiff) is unique in believing that one without arms should put the tefillin shel yad on the head, together with the tefillin shel rosh. This is the upshot of his comment to Gittin 58a.” I saw this comment of Maharam Schiff many years ago, and unfortunately did not examine it carefully before adding this note. As R. Ezra Bick has correctly pointed out, Maharam Schiff is not speaking about wearing tefillin shel yad on the head to fulfill the mitzvah, but only stating that this is a respectful way to carry the tefillin shel yad if you have to remove it from your arm. This has no relevance to what I wrote about someone without arms (unless he has to carry the tefillin shel yad).

[1] In The Limits of Orthodox Theology I listed numerous rishonim and aharonim who understood Ibn Ezra’s hints to mean that there are post-Mosaic additions the Torah. I have added to this list in various blog posts, and we are now up to around thirty-five different sources. Yet until now I overlooked an important text, namely, a comment by Tosafot. See Tosafot ha-Shalem, ed. Gellis, to Gen. 12:6 (p. 14):
זהו אמרו ואם איננו כן יש לו סוד, כי כוונתו שזה לא כתבו משה אך נכתב אחר שנכבשה, וכן דעתו בהרבה פסוקים
Tosafot rejects this opinion, stating:
 ואנחנו לא ניאות בזה הדעת שכל התורה כתבה משה מפי ה’ בלא חילוק ושנוי.
It is significant that Tosafot does not refer to Ibn Ezra’s interpretation as heretical. For another source that assumes that Ibn Ezra believes that there are post-Mosaic additions in the Torah, see R. Aharon Friedman, Be-Har ha-Shem Yeraeh (Kerem be-Yavneh, 2009), p. 30.
[2] I am aware of no evidence that the rishonim in the Islamic world interpreted these passages in a fundamentally different way than the Ashkenazic rishonim. As noted in The Limits of Orthodox Theology, R. Joseph Ibn Migash openly accepted the viewpoint that Joshua wrote the last eight verses of the Torah.
[3] “Two Notes on the Commentary on the Torah of R. Yehudah he-Hasid,” in Michael A. Shmidman, ed. Turim (New York, 2008), pp. 245-246. In his just published The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz (Detroit, 2013), p. 32, Ephraim Kanarfogel writes: “The availability of this kind of interpretational freedom and variety also allowed Hasidei Ashkenaz to be comfortable with Ibn Ezra’s stipulation of verses that may have been added to the Torah after the revelation at Sinai.” 
[4] I deal with this in my forthcoming book, where the relevant citations will be found.
[5] See here
http://www.moreshet.co.il/web/shut/shut2.asp?id=68707
[6] Rosenzweig wrote: “We, however, take this R to stand not for Redactor but for rabbenu [our rabbi]. For whoever he was, and whatever text lay before him, he is our teacher, and his theology is our teaching.” See Dan Avnon, Martin Buber: The Hidden Dialogue (Lanham, 1998), p. 50.
[7] Sherlo’s answer is not clear. He was asked about the Seventh Principle, that Moses’ prophecy is superior to all others. Rather than replying to this, he answers that there were amoraim who did not think that Moses wrote the last verses of the Torah. This, however, relates to the Eighth Principle, not the Seventh. None of the amoraim who thought that Joshua wrote the last verses assumed that he was on Moses’ prophetic level, so Sherlo’s answer is really a non-sequitur.
[8] In recent years I have seen many examples of this. Some extreme statement or ban is attributed to a haredi gadol, and commenters on haredi news sites declare that Gadol X could never have made such a hurtful and counterproductive statement. These commenters argue that it must be the “askanim” who are responsible for this. (I specifically remember such arguments in the first few days after the ban on Making of a Godol was announced.) When a few days later it becomes clear that the statement is accurate, and was indeed made by the gadol, what then are these people to do, people who just a few days prior were so adamant in rejecting the position? 

People convincing themselves that their leaders could not really mean what they say is obviously not merely a haredi issue. Here is what Paul Veyne writes: “Under France’s Old Regime, people believed and wanted to believe in the king’s kindness and that the entire problem was the fault of his ministers. If this were not the case, all was lost, since one could not hope to expel the king the way one could remove a mere minister.” See Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths (Chicago, 1988), p. 91.

[9] Regarding the Sefer Torah found by Hilkiah, R. Jacob Emden, Birat Migdal Oz (Zhitomir, 1874), p. 152a, claims that Josiah was unable to read the old Hebrew script in this Torah, and that is why it had to be read to him. For a rejection of this view, see R. Jacob Bachrach, Ha-Yahas la-Ketav Ashuri u-le-Toldotav (Warsaw, 1854), pp. 47-48.
[10] The division of the Pentateuch into different books is itself quite ancient. See R. Hayyim Hirschensohn, Seder la-Mikra (Jerusalem, 1933), vol. 1, p. 52.
[11] As mentioned already, the Bible Critics of whom I speak don’t really believe that it was “found”.
[12] There is another unusual tradition that appears in Yemenite texts according to which the entire Torah (and also the rest of the Bible) was forgotten by the Jews during the First Exile, and Ezra later reconstituted it from memory. See R. Saadiah ben David, Midrash ha-Beur, ed. Kafih, vol. 2, p. 676. See also here.
[13] Mavo le-Torah she-Baal Peh, ed. Zini (Jerusalem, 2002), pp. 25-26.
[14] See also Bezalel Naor, The Limit of Intellectual Freedom (Spring Valley, 2011), pp. 77, 253. In Deut. 17:18 it says about the king: וְהָיָה כְשִׁבְתּוֹ, עַל כִּסֵּא מַמְלַכְתּוֹ–וְכָתַב לוֹ אֶת-מִשְׁנֵה הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת
For a rejection of the view that the words “Mishneh Torah” refer to Deuteronomy, see Bachrach, Ha-Yahas la-Ketav Ashuri u-le-Toldotav, p. 70.
I have often heard the notion expressed, in line with Ibn Ezra to Deut. 4:14, Nahmanides to Lev. 8:38 and in his introduction toDeuteronomy, and Abarbanel in his introduction to Deuteronomy, that all of the mitzvot were given at Sinai or soon after. I don’t think this is the simple meaning of the Torah. After all, there are loads of mitzvot in the book of Deuteronomy, and this was years after the revelation at Sinai. Apparently, Nahmanides’ viewpoint was motivated by his dogmatic assumption. R. Bahya ben Asher, Commentary to Gen. 24:22, and Radbaz did not share Nahmanides’ outlook, with Radbaz writing: ודברי [הרמב”ן] תימה הם בעיני. See She’elot u-Teshuvot ha-Radbaz, no. 2143. Radbaz has a very provocative formulation in this responsum, and I am not sure what to make of it.
אין הכי נמי שצוה במצוות רבות בערבות מואב וכמה מצוות מצינו שאמרן משה לישראל ולא נאמר בהם צו את בני ישראל או דבר אל בני ישראל אלא משה יושב ודורש והכל יודעין שהכל מפי הגבורה
The words משה יושב ודורש are found in Bava Batra 119b where it means that Moses was expounding on a certain biblical law. As these words are used here, however, they appear to mean that Moses generated new mitzvot by means his יושב ודורש. This is not the same as God directly informing Moses of these new commandments, and I don’t know any earlier source that portrays mitzvot as originating in this fashion. It is also contradicted by how Maimonides describes the revelation of the Torah in his Eighth Principle.
               
Yet I am not certain about this, since the passage immediately following the one quoted above seems to offer a different perspective: 
וכל המצוות המחודשות אשר במשנה תורה הקב”ה אמר למשה בערבות מואב ומשה אמרן לישראל בכלל שבאר להם המצוות אשר כבר נאמרו וכל מה שנתחדש בהם מפי הקב”ה הוא ומשה לא דרש דבר מדעתו.
[15] See R. Eliah Shapiro, Eliah Rabbah 669:17.
[16] Avat Nefesh is discussed here.
[17] One student told me that he would often cite Kierkegaard.
[18] Both of these responsa, and others as well, are analyzed by Dr. Yitzhak Hershkowitz in a forthcoming article. I thank him for sharing his article with me prior to publication.
[19] For more stringent rulings, see R. Yekutiel Yehudah Greenwald, Ha-Shohet ve-ha-Shehitah ve-Sifrut ha-Rabbanut (New York, 1955), pp. 86ff.
[20] In Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy, p. 211 n. 172, I refer to R. Walkin as R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg’s “short lived successor to the rabbinate of Pilwishki.” Some have wondered how I know this information, and indeed there is nothing about this in Eliezer Katzman’s articles on R. Walkin in Yeshurun vols. 11 and 12. That R. Walkin was rav of Pilwishki is found in R. Weinberg’s article about the town in Kitvei R. Weinberg, vol. 2, p. 390. In a letter to R. Kook, R. Walkin asks his advice on whether he should accept the rabbinate of Pilwishki. See Iggerot la-Reiyah (Jerusalem, 1990), no. 151. The date given in R. Walkin’s letter to R. Kook is Heshvan 5684 (1923), but this can’t be correct, as by this time R. Walkin was the rav of Pinsk. The original must say תרפ”ב not  תרפ”ג.
[21] A few readers might remember my bar mitzvah party, where some of these gedolim pictures were turned into posters. Also, smaller blow-ups were placed on each table as the table identifier. While most of the posters were thrown out, I saved one. When I attended JEC in Elizabeth for high school, I brought in the poster made from this picture of R. Elchanan Wasserman, and hung it on my classroom wall..

Everyone in the class thought this was very nice. One day I came to school and the poster was gone. Someone told me that R. Pinchas Teitz had taken it down. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why he would do that. I didn’t know then what I know now, about how many people strongly opposed R. Elchanan’s viewpoints (e.g., R. Zvi Yehudah Kook wouldn’t allow R. Elchanan’s Kovetz Ma’amarim in Merkaz ha-Rav’s library. See Hilah Wolberstein, Mashmia Yeshuah [Or Etzion, 2010], pp. 192-193, 404). But even if I knew that, this would not have been a reason for R. Teitz to take down the poster. I went to see him, first to get my poster back, and also to understand why he took it down. He explained that since we had a minyan in the classroom, it was improper to have a picture of a man on the wall, even if this man was R. Elchanan.



Identifying Achashverosh and Esther in Secular Sources

Identifying Achashverosh and Esther in Secular Sources 
By Mitchell First 

This article is a summary of a longer article which will appear in his forthcoming book Esther Unmasked: Solving Eleven Mysteries of the Jewish Holidays and Liturgy (Kodesh Press), pp. 129-167.

     In this article, we will explain how scholars were finally able to identify Achashverosh in secular sources. We will also show that Esther can be identified in secular sources as well. Finally, we will utilize these sources to shed light on the story of the Megillah.Before we get to these sources, we have to point out that an important clue to the identity of Achashverosh is found in the book of Ezra.
Achashverosh is mentioned at Ezra 4:6 in the context of other Persian kings. The simplest understanding of Ezra 4:6 and its surrounding verses is that Achashverosh is the Persian king who reigned after the Daryavesh who rebuilt the Temple,[1] but before Artachshasta. But what about the secular sources? Was there any Persian king known as Achashverosh or something close to that in these sources?

     Until the 19th century, a search in secular sources for a Persian king named Achashverosh or something close to that would have been an unsuccessful one. Our knowledge of the Persian kings from the Biblical period was coming entirely from the writings of Greek historians, and none of the names that they recorded were close to Achashverosh. The Greek historians (Herodotus, mid-5th cent. BCE, and the others who came after him) described the following Persian kings from the Biblical period: Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes.
    We were thus left to speculate as to the identity of Achashverosh. Was he to be equated with Artaxerxes? This was the position taken by the Septuagint to Esther. Was he to be equated with Cambyses? Or was he, as Ezra 4:6 and its surrounding verses implied, the king between Daryavesh (=Darius I) and Artachshasta (=Artaxerxes I). But why did the Greeks refer to him as Xerxes, a name at first glance seeming to have no relation to the name Achashverosh?
    It was only in the 19th century, as a result of the decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions from the ancient Persian palaces, that we were able to answer these questions. It was discovered that the name of the king that the Greeks had been referring to as “Xerxes” was in fact: “Khshayarsha” (written in Old Persian cuneiform). This name is very close to the Hebrew “Achashverosh.” In their consonantal structure, the two names are identical. Both center on the consonantal sounds “ch”, “sh”, “r”, and “sh.” The Hebrew added an initial aleph[2] (a frequent occurrence when foreign words with two initial consonants are recorded in Hebrew), and added two vavs. Interestingly, the Megillah spells Achashverosh several times with only one vav, and one time (10:1) spells the name with no vavs.
     Thereafter, at the beginning of the 20th century, Aramaic documents from Egypt from the 5th century B.C.E. came to light. In these documents, this king’s name was spelled in Aramaic as חשירש, חשיארש and אחשירש. The closeness to the Hebrew אחשורוש is easily seen.
     How did Khshayarsha (consonants: KH, SH, R, SH) come to be referred to by the Greeks as Xerxes?
  • The Greek language does not have a letter to represent the “sh” sound.
  • The initial “KH SH” sounds of the Persian name were collapsed into one Greek letter that makes the “KS” sound. A tendency to parallelism probably led to the second “SH” also becoming “KS,” even though “S” would have been more appropriate.[3] Hence, the consonants became KS, R, KS (=X,R,X).
  • The “es” at the end was just something added by the Greeks to help turn the foreign name into proper Greek grammatical form.[4]
    (It was for this same reason that the Hebrew משה  became “Moses” when the Bible was translated into Greek.)

 

  Identifying Khshayarsha/Xerxes with Achashverosh thus makes much sense on linguistic grounds. Critically, it is consistent with Ezra 4:6 which had implied that Achashverosh was the king between Daryavesh (=Darius I) and Artachshasta (=Artaxerxes I).[5]
    We have an inscription from Khshayarsha in Persian which lists the countries over which he ruled. Among the countries listed are “Hidush” and “Kushiya,” most likely the Hodu and Kush of the Megillah.[6]
    Now that we have identified Achashverosh in secular sources, we can use these sources to provide some biographical information. Xerxes reigned from 486-465 BCE, when the Temple was already rebuilt. It was rebuilt in the reign of his father Darius I in 516 BCE. According to Herodotus, Xerxes was the son of Darius by Atossa, daughter of Cyrus. Xerxes was also the first son born to Darius after Darius became king. These factors distinguished him from his older half-brother Artabazanes, and merited Xerxes being chosen to succeed Darius. At his accession in 486 BCE, Xerxes could not have been more than 36 years old (since he was born after the accession of Darius in 522 BCE).
    The party in which Vashti rebelled took place in the third year of the reign of Achashverosh (1:3), and Esther was not chosen until the 7th year (2:16). Why did it take Achashverosh so long to choose a replacement? It has been suggested that Xerxes was distracted by his foreign policy. In the early years of his reign, Xerxes ordered a full-scale invasion of Greece. Xerxes went on the invasion himself, which took him out of Persia commencing in the spring or summer of his 5th year and continuing through part of his 7th year.[7] This invasion ended in defeat.
     From the secular sources and a solar eclipse that took place in the battles, it can be calculated that Xerxes did not return to Susa until
the fall of 479 B.C.E.[8] Tevet of Achashverosh’s 7th year, when Esther was chosen, would have been Dec. 479/Jan. 478 B.C.E. Accordingly, Esther was taken to the palace shortly after Xerxes’ return.
    Do we have any evidence in secular sources for the main plot of the Purim story, the threat to destroy the Jews in the 12th year (3:7)? We do not, but this is to be expected. No works from any Persian historians from this period have survived. (Probably, no such works were ever composed.) Our main source for the events of the reign of Xerxes is Herodotus and his narrative ends in the 7th year of Xerxes.[9]
    Interestingly, there is perhaps a reference to Mordechai in a later narrative source. The Greek historian Ctesias,[10] who served as a physician to Artaxerxes II, mentions a “Matacas” who was the most influential of all of Xerxes’ eunuchs. (Probably, “eunuch” was merely a
term used to indicate a holder of a high position in the king’s court.) “Matacas” suggests a Persian name with the consonants MTC, which would be very close to the consonants of the name Mordechai, MRDC.[11]  The information provided by Ctesias bears a significant resemblance to the last verse in the Megillah, which records that by the end of the story, Mordechai was mishneh (=second) to the king.[12]
(Perhaps we do not have to take mishneh literally; the import may merely be “very high official.”)
    Most interesting is what happens when we analyze the secular sources regarding the wife of Xerxes. According to Herodotus, the wife of Xerxes was named Amestris, and she was the daughter of a military commander named Otanes. (In the Megillah, Esther is described as the daughter of Avichail.) Ctesias records that Amestris outlived Xerxes. Moreover, in the further details that Ctesias provides, Amestris is involved in royal affairs even in the reign of her son Artaxerxes.[13] Neither Herodotus nor Ctesias use a term like “queen” for her, but their description of Amestris fits what we would call today the “queen.” Neither gives any indication that Xerxes had any other wife.
    Some postulate that Amestris is Vashti. But this is extremely unlikely since there is nothing in Herodotus or Ctesias to indicate any loss of
status by Amestris. Others postulate (based on verses such as Est. 2:19 and 4:11[14]) that Esther was never the main   wife of Xerxes, but was one of other wives of a lesser status. See, e.g., Chamesh Megillot, Daat Mikra edition (published by Mossad Harav Kook), introduction to Esther, p. 6. The problem with this approach is that the clear impression that one receives from the Megillah is that Esther was the Persian wife of the highest status from the time she was chosen in the 7th year of the reign of Achashverosh through the balance of the years described in the book. See, e.g., verse 2:17 (va-yasem keter malkhut be-roshah va-yamlikheha tachat Vashti).
    The approach that seems to have the least difficulties is to postulate that Amestris is  Esther and that Herodotus simply erred regarding her ancestry. Although Herodotus traveled widely in the 460’s and 450’s B.C.E., he probably never set foot in Persia. His information about Persia is based on what was told to him orally. Every scholar knows that he could not possibly be correct on a large percentage of the details he reports (whether about Persia or any matter). Also, the impression that one receives from the Megillah is that Esther did not disclose her true ancestry for several years. Whatever rumors about her ancestry first came out may be what made their way to Herodotus.[15]
    It is striking that the name Avichayil means military commander.[16] It is not so farfetched to suggest that Avichayil might have had another name which resembled the name Otanes.  The Megillah tells us that Esther had another name, Hadassah.
   Herodotus tells a story depicting the cruelty of Amestris. Amestris takes revenge on another woman by cutting off her body parts and throwing them to the dogs. Ctesias writes that Amestris ordered someone impaled, and had fifty Greeks decapitated. But scholars today know not to believe all the tales told by the Greek historians about their enemies, the Persians. (Herodotus, known as the “Father of History,” is also known as the “Father of Lies.” The reputation of Ctesias as a historian is far worse; he is widely viewed as freely mixing fact and fiction.)
    Although he never says it explicitly, one gets the impression from Herodotus that he believed that Amestris was the wife of Xerxes even in the first seven years of Xerxes’ reign. But it would be understandable that Herodotus might have had such a belief. According to the Megillah, Vashti was gone by the third year of Xerxes. Xerxes reigned 18 years after that. To Herodotus and his informants, Vashti may have been long forgotten.
    We have no Persian sources for the name of the wife of Khshayarsha. But close examination of the name “Amestris” supports its identification with Esther. The “is” at the end was just a suffix added to turn the foreign name into proper Greek grammatical form (just as “es” was added at the end of “Xerxes”). When comparing the remaining consonants, the name of the wife of Xerxes is recorded in the Greek historians as based around the consonants M, S, T, and R, and the name as recorded in the Megillah is based around the consonants S, T, and R. Out of the numerous possible consonants in these languages, three consonants are the same and in the same order! Probability suggests that this is not coincidence and that the two are the same person. Probably her Persian name was composed of the consonants M, S, T, and R, and the M was not preserved in the Hebrew. (One source in Orthodoxy that has suggested the identification of Esther with Amestris, without any discussion, is Trei Asar, Daat Mikra edition, published by Mossad Harav Kook, vol. 2, appendix, p. 3.)

—-   
    Once we realize that Achashverosh is Xerxes, it becomes evident that the asher haglah  of Esther 2:6 cannot be referring to Mordechai. King Yechanyah was exiled in 597 B.C.E. If Mordechai was old enough to have been exiled with King Yechanyah, he would have been over 120 years old when appointed to a high position in the 12th year of Xerxes. Moreover, Esther, his first cousin, would not have been young enough to have been chosen queen a few years earlier. One alternative is to understand verse 2:6 as referring to Mordechai’s great-grandfather Kish.[17] Another alternative is to view the subject of 2:6 as Mordechai, but to read the verse as implying only that Mordechai came from a family that had been exiled.
                                                                     —-
   The identification of Achashverosh with Xerxes does not fit with the view of the Talmud. According to the Talmud (Megillah 11b, based on Seder Olam chap. 29), Achashverosh reigned between Koresh and Daryavesh. In this view, the Temple had not yet been rebuilt at the time of the events of the Megillah. (In the view of Seder Olam and the Talmud, the Persian period spanned the reigns of only three Persian kings. This is much shorter than the conventional chronology. The conventional chronology is set forth in the Table below. For more information about this discrepancy, see my Jewish History in Conflict: A Study of the Major Discrepancy Between Rabbinic and Chronology, Jason Aronson, 1997).
    That the king intended to be depicted in the Megillah was Khshayarsha/Xerxes is accepted by legions of scholars today, even if they question the historicity of the story. Within Orthodoxy, some sources that accept the identification of Achashverosh with Xerxes include: Chamesh Megillot (Daat Mikra edition), R. Isaac Halevy,[18] R. Shelomoh Danziger,[19] R. Avigdor Miller,[20] R. Adin Steinsaltz,[21] R. Yoel Bin-Nun,[22]  R. Yehuda Landy,[23] and R. Menachem Liebtag.[24]
    The Megillah (10:2) implied that we could search outside the Bible for additional information regarding Achashverosh. I trust that this
search has proven an interesting one!
                                                             ——
     Table: The
main Persian kings from this era and their dates (B.C.E.):
Cyrus              539-530
Cambyses [25]   530-522
Darius I         522-486
Xerxes           486-465
Artaxerxes I  465-424[26]
Darius II        423-404
Artaxerxes II 404-358
Artaxerxes III 358-338
Arses             338-336
Darius III      336-332
Mitchell First works as an attorney in Manhattan and lives in New Jersey, and is available to lecture on this topic. He can be reached at MFirstatty@aol.com
[1]
Admittedly, this is an oversimplification, since the Daryavesh who rebuilt the
Temple is mentioned both at Ezra 4:5 and at Ezra 4:24.  See further below, n. 5.
[2]
Both the Elamite and the Akkadian versions of the name Khshayarsha also had an
initial vowel. In Elamite,“i”, and in Akkadian, “a”. See Edwin M. Yamauchi, Persia
and the Bible (1990), p. 187.
The name of the king is found in Aramaic in
the panels of the Dura-Europos synagogue (3rd century C.E., Syria)
without the initial aleph.
[3]
That the transmission of foreign names is by no means an exact science is shown
by how the name of  the son of Xerxes
was recorded by the Greeks. The Greeks preserved the “Arta” of the first part
of his name, Artakhshaça, but then just tacked on “xerxes,” the name of his
father, as the second part of his name!
[4]
I.e., convert it into the nominative case.
[5] With regard to verse 4:24, the proper understanding of
this verse is as follows. The author of the book of Ezra decided to digress,
and to supplement the reference to accusations made against the Jews in the
reigns of Koresh through Daryavesh with mention of further accusations against
them in the reigns of the subsequent kings, Achashverosh (Xerxes) and
Artachshasta (Artaxerxes I). Verse 4:24 then returns to the main narrative, the
reign of Daryavesh. The role played by verse 4:24 is that of “resumptive
repetition.” This is the interpretation adopted by the Daat Mikra
commentary to Ezra (pp. 27 and 35) and by many modern scholars. See the
references at Richard Steiner, “Bishlam’s Archival Search Report in Nehemiah’s
Archive: Multiple Introductions and Reverse Chronological Order as Clues to the
Origin of the Aramaic Letters in Ezra 4-6,” Journal of Biblical Literature
125 (2006), p. 674, n. 164. This understanding of verse 24 only became evident
in modern times when it was realized that linguistically Achashverosh was to be
identified with Xerxes.
[6]
Roland G. Kent, Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon, p. 151 (2d ed.,
1953).
[7]
Many find allusions in the Megillah to the preparation for the invasion and to
the invasion. See, e.g., Esther 1:3 and 10:2.
[8]
See, e.g., William H. Shea, “Esther and History,” Andrews University
Seminary Studies 14 (1976), p. 239. In the Persian system of regnal reckoning,
485 BCE was considered year 1 of Xerxes. 486 B.C.E. was only the accession
year.
[9]
See Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander (2002), pp. 7 and 516. In his
narrative of events up to the 7th year, Herodotus does make some
tangential references to events after the 7th year. For example, he
refers to Artaxerxes a few times, and he tells a story about something that
Amestris did in her later years. (She had fourteen children of noble Persians
buried alive, as a gift on her behalf to the god of the underworld.) Later ancient sources write about the
assassination of Xerxes.
[10] The Persica of Ctesias only survives in quotations or summaries by others. For this
particular section of Ctesias, what has survived is a summary by Photius (9th cent.)
[11]
Another version of Photius reads “Natacas” here. But this difference is not so significant.
“N” and “M” are related consonants, both being nasal stops; it is not uncommon
for one to transform into the other.
[12]
See also Est. 9:4.
[13]
This means that Artaxerxes I (who empowered Ezra, and later Nechemiah) was
technically Jewish!
[14]
Est. 2:19 refers to a second gathering of maidens, after Esther was
chosen. Est. 4:11 records that Esther had not been called to the king for 30
days.
[15]
It is sometimes claimed that Esther could not have been the wife of Xerxes
because Herodotus (3,84) tells of an agreement between Darius I and his six
co-conspirators that the Persian king would not marry outside their families.
One of the co-conspirators was named Otanes. But Herodotus nowhere states that
the Otanes who was the father of Amestris was the co-conspirator Otanes. Briant
writes that if Amestris had been the daughter of co-conspirator Otanes,
Herodotus would doubtless have pointed this out. See Briant, p. 135. Therefore,
implicit in Herodotus is that Xerxes married outside the seven families.
[16]
I would like to thank Rabbi Richard Wolpoe who first made this observation to me.
[17]
That the name Mordechai may be based on the name of the Babylonian deity Marduk
also suggests that Mordechai was born in exile.
[18]
Dorot ha-Rishonim: Tekufat ha-Mikra (1939), p. 262.
[19]
“Who Was the Real Akhashverosh?,” Jewish Observer, Feb. 1973, pp. 12-15.
[20]
Torah Nation (1971), pp. 40 and 42.
[21]
Talmud Bavli, Taanit-Megillah, p. 47, ha-Hayyim, and p. 50, ha-Hayyim.    .
[22]
Hadassah Hi Esther (1997), p. 49, n. 8. (This work is a collection of
articles by various authors.)
[23] Purim
and the Persian Empire (2010), pp. 40-42.
[24]
For additional sources in Orthodoxy that accept the identification of
Achashverosh with Xerxes, see Jewish History in Conflict, pp. 178-79.
[25]
Cambyses’ name was discovered to be “Kabujiya” in Persian. His name is recorded
as כנבוזי in Aramaic documents from Egypt from the 5th
cent. B.C.E. He did not reign enough years to be Achashverosh. Nor did he reign
over Hodu. See Jewish History in Conflict, p. 167. Although he is not
mentioned in Tanakh, his reign is alluded to at Ezra 4:5 (in the word ve-ad).
[26]
Another king named Xerxes reigned 45 days after the death of his father
Artaxerxes I.


Introduction to The Song of Songs (An Excerpt) by Amos Hakham

Introduction to The Song of Songs (An Excerpt)
by Amos Hakham
Translated by David S. Zinberg

Amos Hakham passed away on August 2, 2012 at the age of 91.  The following is an unofficial translation of an excerpt from the Introduction to his commentary on the Song of Songs, published in 1973 by Mossad Harav Kook, in the Da’at Mikra series of Bible commentaries.  

The selection below is an outstanding example of Hakham’s distinct approach, in both his Introduction and commentary, characterized by uncompromising scholarship coupled with faithfulness to tradition.  Here and in his other writings, he displays a profound mastery of the Bible and the literature of the Sages, a keen eye for subtle literary and linguistic features of the text, a love of Jewish tradition, and a genuine religiosity that is never cloying.  His style is marked by a fluid, graceful clarity.  With courage and sensitivity, Hakham confronts one of the most challenging subjects in traditional biblical exegesis.   

Hakham’s presentation is transparent and honest rather than pedantic.  First, he cites a broad range of general approaches and specific theories, from both traditional and modern sources.  He then carefully and fairly evaluates each view, adds his own observations and, finally, offers a  conclusion.   

Biblical quotations are from the New JPS Version, except for translations inconsistent with Hakham’s understanding of the verse.  The translation of a passage from Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah is from I. Twersky, A Maimonides Reader (New York: Behrman House, 1972).  Where valuable, I have included Hakham’s original Hebrew in square brackets.  Hakham’s footnotes are not included in this translation.    

__________________________________________
The Content and Meaning of the Song of Songs in the Literal Sense
The Song of Songs, in the natural sense of Scripture [peshuto shel mikra], is about a man’s love for his beloved woman [ahavat ha-dod le-ra’eyato], and the woman’s love for him.
The question of continuity and division is critical for understanding the Song of Songs, and there are a variety of views on the subject.  Aggadists tended to interpret its verses independently, each conveying its own idea.  Opposing this method, Rashi wrote in his Introduction: “There are many aggadot on this book . . . but they are inconsistent with the syntax of Scripture and the sequence of the verses.  I have endeavored to follow the natural sense of the verses and to interpret them sequentially . . .”  Indeed, one who studies Rashi’s commentary on the Song of Songs will find that he attempts to interpret the entire book as a single, continuous poem.  For Rashi, the continuity of the Song of Songs lies mainly within its referent [nimshal], which is Israel’s history from its origin to the end of days.  R. Abraham ibn Ezra interpreted the Song of Songs in similar fashion, though Ibn Ezra also tried to find continuity within its literal sense.  In his commentary, the Song of Songs is a chronology of events taking place between two lovers.
A number of modern biblical scholars attempted to follow this approach to its logical conclusion; they maintained that the Song of Songs is a single, continuous poem written in the form of a dramatic dream vision.  But adherents of this view are forced to posit far-fetched interpretations and to take many verses out of context.  Other scholars held that the Song of Songs is an anthology of several poems (excerpts of poems, for the most part) — composed in various periods and provenances — which were compiled haphazardly at a later time.
The most plausible approach, I believe, is as follows:  The Song of Songs is not a continuous chronology of two lovers, and it is certainly not a drama.  But neither is it an anthology of poetic excerpts.  Rather, it is an anthology of complete poems written by a single author on a single subject, following a specific methodology and purpose.  The poems are sometimes brief and simple, sometimes lengthy and complex.  Nevertheless, for the most part they are self-contained units.  In the commentary, I have assigned a unique title to each poem and have also noted its division into sections or stanzas.  Often, the divisions are ambiguous; other commentators have split or combined the poems differently.  But these are merely details which do not undermine the central thesis that the Song of Songs is an anthology of complete poems.
As mentioned, the overall theme of the poems is the love between the dod and his ra’eyah.  However, there are several differing opinions regarding the circumstances in which the poems were composed.  Rashi (in the  Introduction to his commentary) says that the ra’eyah in the Song of Songs is a “widow of the living,” i.e., her husband has abandoned but has not divorced her, and she longs for him in her songs.  He consoles her, promising that he will yet return.  Ibn Ezra reads the Song of Songs as the story of a preadolescent girl, whose beloved is a shepherd, guarding a vineyard.  
Modern biblical scholars have suggested that the poems in this book do not describe events which took place between a particular pair of lovers but, instead, these songs were popular at wedding banquets.  As proof, some point to a statement of the Sages forbidding the use of lyrics from Song of Songs in drinking halls (Sanhedrin 101a; Tosefta Sanhedrin 12:5).  Because the Sages prohibited such a practice, their argument goes, this was in fact the original custom.  It was eventually forbidden, they say, due to deteriorating moral standards and out of fear that it might create an atmosphere of levity leading to the desecration of the sacred.  Among those who maintain that the Song of Songs comprises wedding songs, some suggest that the name “Solomon” — appearing seven times in the book — refers not to King Solomon, but to the groom, who is likened to a king.  In light-hearted humor, he is caricatured as “Solomon.”  Some have claimed that these songs were originally sung at festivals for Israelite girls, such as the dance festival at Shiloh recorded in Judges (21:21), and the festival mentioned at the end of Mishnah Ta’anit (4:8) as well as the Targum to Lamentations, on the phrase “her maidens are unhappy” (1:4).         
The most reasonable approach, I believe, is as follows: Although the Song of Songs does include dance songs (e.g., “Turn back, turn back, O maid of Shulem!” 7:1), one cannot claim that all the poems are dance songs.  It is likely that the poet borrowed phrases from dance songs and embedded them, as necessary, within his poems.  Likewise, some of the poems may have originally been wedding songs — at least one, ending in the words, “Eat, friends, drink deeply, beloved” (5:1), is an obvious example; it is a call to the diners at a wedding banquet to eat and drink — but one cannot generalize this to all the poems.  Most likely, the portraits of the lovers within the Song of Songs depict a variety of circumstances.  In some, the lovers may be formally unconnected; in others, they may be betrothed, at their wedding banquet, or already married.  Also, the notion that every “Solomon” is a metaphor for the groom seems far-fetched.  Sometimes, “Solomon” is simply King Solomon himself.  
The love portrayed in the Song of Songs is untainted and pure.  It is entirely within the bounds of that which is appropriate, permissible, and accepted.  No divine or human obstacle stands in the way of their love.  The ra’eyah brings her dod to her mother’s home; that is, everything is conducted according to custom and convention, and with the family’s approval.  The ra’eyah does have desperate moments.  But although she calls herself “lovesick” (2:5, 5:8), she is referring to an intense longing for her beloved rather than an emotional crisis.  At times, the ra’eyah refuses her dod, and the dod may elude her and disappear, but that does not mean that there was animus between them.  Instead, this dynamic should be understood as “a rejection with the left hand, and an embrace with the right.”  The ra’eyah is treated cruelly by her brothers, but they do not keep her away from her beloved.  They are intent only on increasing their possessions but, in  the end, they relinquish what is hers.
Whether the entire Song of Songs refers to a single pair of lovers, or describes multiple couples, is a significant question.  That is, can all that is said of the dod and the ra’eyah be conflated within the portrait of an individual man or woman?  There do not appear to be substantive contradictions between the different descriptions of the dod and ra’eyah; we may thus assume that the book intends to describe different circumstances or events in the lives of a pair of lovers who actually lived at some point in time.  
I do not mean to suggest that everything recounted in the Song of Songs should be taken as a narrative or that it only describes events that actually took place between two specific individuals.  The very nature of poetry is to portray circumstances more beautifully and more perfectly than they really are.  Here too, the primary goal of the Song of Songs is to present an ideal portrait of the innocent love between a dod and his ra’eyah.  But the descriptions are based on reality.  
The dod portrayed in the Song of Songs is a shepherd.  His sheep are never mentioned explicitly in the poems, but “shepherd” is used several times as his alternate name.  Although there appear to be instances where “shepherd” is used a metaphor for the dod, wandering the hills and tending his gardens like a grazing gazelle, he is initially depicted as a real shepherd, as implied by the verse, “Where do you pasture your sheep?  Where do you rest them at noon?” (1:7).  Possibly, because he would wander the countryside with his sheep, he mentions the names of several places scattered far and wide throughout the land.  It is also possible that because he was a shepherd, he compares his love’s beauty to flocks of goats and ewes.  But there is no hard evidence that compels us to interpret the text this way.  Nevertheless, we may infer from Scripture that he roamed the mountains (“leaping over mountains”; 2:8), which is consistent with shepherding.  The image of the dod is depicted with all the emotion and intensity of one who is “lovesick.”  Scripture suggests that he was tall (“preeminent among ten thousand,” “stately as the cedars”; 5:10,15), that his hair was “curled, and black as a raven” (5:11), his cheeks were ruddy and bearded (“his cheeks are like beds of spices”; 5:13), and he was a swift runner (2:9, 8:14).    
The ra’eyah is also tall, with an upright posture (“Your stately form is like the palm”; 7:8), her hair is black (“Your hair is like a flock of goats”; 4:1), and her complexion is dark as well (“because I am swarthy”; 1:6).  The white of her teeth, which “bear twins” (6:6), stands out against her dark face.  Her movement and her gait are full of grace (“How lovely are your feet in sandals, O daughter of nobles!”; 7:2).
She is called a “daughter of nobles,” and the poems imply that she was from a well-to-do family: She wears costly perfumes, and her brothers offer her a “silver battlement” (8:9).  They own vineyards, but she too has a vineyard of her own.  Her brothers direct her to tend the vineyards, and she also tends to sheep (perhaps at the advice of her dod, so that he might see her more easily: “Go follow the tracks of the sheep, and graze your kids by the tents of the shepherds”; 1:8).  The portrait in the Song of Songs suggests that her brothers treated her heavy handedly, forcing her to work in the vineyards.  She knew her dod previously and, unbeknownst to her brothers, fell in love with him; to them, she was still a child.  After much time elapsed, the brothers were finally inspired to provide for their sister’s upcoming marriage, only to discover that she had already found her intended.                                              
God is never mentioned in the Song of Songs.  This is likely one of the motivations for the Sages’ pronouncement that “every ‘Solomon’ in the Song of Songs is divine” (Shavu’ot 35b).  But the question remains why God is not mentioned explicitly.  Commentators and thinkers have said that the holiness of a text is not determined by tallying its divine names.  Just as there are texts whose sacredness is self-evident even without reference to God, so is the untainted and sacred love depicted in the Song of Songs.  Nevertheless, it seems that the poet deliberately excluded the explicit form of God’s name from the text.  Possibly, because the poems — in their literal sense — were originally meant to be recited as expressions of love between a groom and bride, it was feared that they might not always be recited in purity, and for this reason God’s name was omitted.  It is also possible the omission contains a moral statement, related to Rava’s comment (Mo’ed Katan 18b), that a lover may not solicit divine intervention in the hope of marrying his love.            
It is also worth noting that the dod and ra’eyah are nowhere mentioned by name.  They address each other not by proper name, but by pet name, like dodi, ra’eyati, and many others.  The ra’eyah’s friends are called “Daughters of Jerusalem,” and the dod’s friends are called “companions” [haverim], “friends” [re’im], and “beloved” [dodim].  This is a known biblical feature, in which male or female characters may remain anonymous for the duration of a lengthy and detailed narrative.    

The Song of Songs as a Parable of Divine Love
In the Midrash, the Sages offered many allegorical interpretations of the Song of Songs, taking its earthly love as a parable for the love between God and Israel.  This notion is based on prophecies in which God’s covenant with Israel is symbolized by the marriage covenant between a man and his beloved wife.  The great medieval Jewish exegetes interpreted the Song of Songs within this conceptual framework and objected strenuously to the idea that its meaning is limited to its literal, natural sense of the love between a man and woman.
It is well known that the term “parable” [mashal] in the Bible, as well as in Hebrew generally, has several different meanings.  Many types of parables are found in the Bible (and not all parables are explicitly termed “parables”).  The parable in the Song of Songs is apparently not the type in which the referent displaces the literal sense but, instead, adds a nobler and more sacred meaning to the natural meaning.  That is, although the natural, literal sense refers to the love between a flesh-and-blood dod and ra’eyah, by virtue of the fact that their love is wholesome, innocent, pure, and holy, it is worthy of serving as a representation and a model for a more exalted love.  Support for such an approach can be found in the statements of the Sages and Jewish scholars throughout history.  Indeed, while the Sages of the Midrash interpreted the Song of Songs’ love as that between Israel and God, they also interpreted it naturally, viewing the dod and the ra’eyah as two human beings.  For example, in R. Yohanan’s exegesis of the verse, “I have come to my garden, my own, my bride” (5:1; see the commentary, in the poem’s summary section) [In the summary of that poem, Hakham cites Vayikra Rabba (9:6): “The Torah teaches you proper etiquette: A groom may enter the bridal chamber only after receiving his bride’s consent. First, (the bride) says, ‘Let my beloved come to his garden and enjoy its luscious fruits’ (4:16); and only then (in the next verse, the groom responds), ‘I have come to my garden, my own, my bride’ -dsz].  This is linked to the idea, appearing frequently in the literature of the Sages, that all aspects of marital relations are rooted in holiness and allude to holy matters.  For this reason, the marriage blessings include the following: “The barren will surely rejoice when her children return to her joyfully.  Blessed are you, God, who brings joy to Zion with her children.”  From the formulation of this blessing, we may infer that the joy experienced by every bride and groom represents the joy associated with the redemption and the ingathering of the Diaspora.  There are many kabbalistic teachings which take aspects of marital relations as symbols of lofty matters.      
We should also draw attention to the mistaken notion that the Sages interpreted the Song of Songs allegorically because they considered its natural sense to be unworthy of the Holy Scriptures. It is not so.  Some of the greatest exegetes have noted that one must not even contemplate the idea that a prophetic text would employ something inherently offensive to suggest that which is holy and pure.  Rather, just as the referent is holy, so is the allegory.  The fact that the prophets compare the covenant between God and Israel to the marriage covenant suggests that the latter is sacred and noble.  The Sages have said, “If a married man and woman are worthy, God’s presence dwells with them” (Sotah 17a).
As noted, many exegetes interpreted the Song of Songs allegorically, viewing the ra’eyah as an emblem for Israel and the dod for God.  Thus, the love between the dod and the ra’eyah represents God’s love for his people and Israel’s love for God.  In the Midrash, the Sages followed this exegetical method.  Likewise, the Targum translated the Song of Songs allegorically and ignored its literal sense.  Many such midrashim are embedded in Jewish liturgical poetry [piyyutim].  On Passover, several communities once recited — some still do — piyyutim based entirely on the Song of Songs, from start to finish, on the subject of God’s love for his people and the promised redemption.  Many piyyutim for other occasions include phrases from the Song of Songs; such phrases were a quintessential part of the piyyut vocabulary and, subsequently, entered popular usage.  
The great medieval exegetes such as Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and others, were also of the view that the Song of Songs allegorizes God’s love for his people.  The difference between the approach of Rashi and Ibn Ezra and that of the Midrash is as follows:  The Midrash generally ignores the allegory entirely and exclusively addresses the referent.  The exegetes, on the other hand, also address the literal sense of the allegory.  Furthermore, they attempt to connect adjoining verses and to find context and continuity within the Song of Songs as a whole.  In their view, the Song of Songs includes hints regarding all of Jewish history, from its origins until the end of days.  The hints are not of a general nature; they refer to specific future events.  Thus, for example, Rashi interprets the verse, “Before I knew it, my desire set me mid the chariots of Ammi-nadib” (6:12) as an allusion to the civil war between the Hasmonean brothers John Hycranus and Aristobulus, which led to Israel’s subjugation by Rome.  They saw the Song of Songs as a prophetic or visionary work.  But there are those who do not accept — within the natural sense of the book — interpretations predicting future events.  However, this objection does not undermine the view which sees the love in the Song of Songs as emblematic of God’s love for his people.  
All the midrashim and the exegesis cited above view the ra’eyah as a “collective personification,” representing Israel as a whole.  However, some exegetes emphasize that God’s love applies to each Jew individually and they thus identify the ra’eyah with the devout soul, serving God out of love and longing for Him.  The Bible does contain expressions supporting the notion that the devout’s yearnings for God are represented by human love, e.g.: “We long for the name by which you are called” (Is. 26:8); “My soul thirsts for you, my body yearns for you” (Ps. 63:2); “My soul is attached to you” (Ps. 63:9).  See also Hagigah 15b where the verse “Draw me, let us run after you” (Song 1:4) is said to refer to R. Akiva, who “entered the orchard” of divine wisdom in peace, and left in peace.  Maimonides writes in the Laws Concerning Repentance (10:3):
What is the love of God that is befitting?  It is to love the Eternal with a great and exceeding love, so strong that one’s soul shall be knit up with the love of God, and one should be continually enraptured by it, like a lovesick individual, whose mind is at no time free from his passion for a particular woman, the thought of her filling his heart at all times, even when sitting down or rising up, when he is eating or drinking.  Even more intense should be the love of God in the hearts of those who love Him.  And this love should continually possess them, even as He commanded us in the phrase, “with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deut. 6:5).  This, Solomon expressed allegorically in the sentence, “for I am sick with love” (Song 2:5).  The entire Song of Songs is indeed an allegory descriptive of this love.
See also what Maimonides states in Guide of the Perplexed, Section III, at the end of chapter 51.
Many exegetes followed this approach by interpreting the details of the Song of Songs as allusions to the inner spiritual life of devout lovers of God; their feelings, longings, uncertainties, doubts, failures, and triumphs in attaining their goal, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord.  A number of them saw allusions to scientific and philosophical subjects — as they understood them — within the detailed descriptions of the book.  Among the adherents of this approach are R. Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon (translator of the Guide of the Perplexed), R. Joseph ibn Aknin (a disciple of Maimonides), R. Joseph ibn Kaspi (a commentator on the Bible and on the Guide), and R. Meir Malbim.  R. Abraham ibn Ezra and R. Isaac Arama (author of the Akedat Yitzhak) rejected this type of exegesis.  In their respective Introductions to the Song of Songs, they underscored the obligation to remain completely faithful to the Sages, and they rejected the conception of the Song of Songs as an allegory of anything other than the love between God and his people. Yet it appears that their statements were not directed at Maimonides.  His words stand firm, and we may take the yearnings of love in the Song of Songs as faithful expressions of the worshiper’s yearnings for God.  However, in Maimonides’ view, the allegory applies to the general theme of the book, but we should not attempt to draw  parallels between details of the allegory and details of the referent.       
We must also mention the kabbalistic approach to the Song of Songs.  Generally, “we are not to delve into hidden things”; as R. Isaac Arama writes in the Introduction to his commentary on the Song of Songs, he does not wish to address kabbalistic interpretations.  Still, it was the kabbalists who, in recent times, popularized its study — or, at least, its recitation — among the Jewish populace.  Based on their commentaries, the custom of reciting the Song of Songs before the Service for Welcoming the Sabbath has become widespread.    
In simple terms, the kabbalistic view is essentially this: The love in the Song of Songs represents the longing of creation for its Creator, the longing of worlds detached and distant from their origin to return and reunite with their Maker.  However, for our purposes we must emphasize that for kabbalists, that which takes place in the supernal realms is reflected in (or, casts a shadow upon) the events of our world.  The reflection is revealed in multiple stages and by various means.  Thus, we may conclude, a variety of hermeneutics of the Song of Songs are possible: The literal interpretation, describing the love between a man and woman; the midrashic, referring to God’s love for his people; the hermeneutic which speaks of the devout’s love for God; the mystical interpretation, which is about the love that permeates all of creation.  For kabbalists, each hermeneutic points to the same essential idea, even if revealed in a variety of ways and in different stages.