When King Josiah of Judah turned 20, he embarked on a spectacular renovation of the First Temple in Jerusalem. During the long reign of his grandfather Manasseh in the seventh century BC. Having aged enough to rule after an era of regency, Josiah made the decision to repair the monotheism of the one God of Israel.
The books of Kings and Chronicles detail how he did this, from cleansing the Temple of polytheistic icons to destroying small places of worship throughout the kingdom, and even digging up the tombs of its priests. During the renovation of the Temple, Josiah’s priest, Hilkiah, announced a fitting discovery: a scroll of the Book of Deuteronomy, which he promoted as law, binding the Israelites exclusively to Adonai.
This is part of the account of a new look at the Pentateuch in “The Book of Revolutions: The Battles of the Priests, Prophets, and Kings Who Gave Birth to the Torah,” written by Rabbi Edward Feld and the Jewish Publishing Society.
In his book, Feld aims to show what he calls Torah pluralism by analyzing 3 of its legal codes: the Exodus Covenant Code 21-24; the Deuteronomic Code, which is discovered Deuteronomy; and the Code of Holiness, primarily located in Leviticus 17-25.
“These are the 3 portions of the Torah that deal, so to speak, with life in the world,” Feld told The Times of Israel. “Civil law, corrupt law, behavior, through all the other people of Israel. “
Apart from the Ten Commandments, those codes are vast sets of instructions, all delivered by God through Moses. Every memorable word: “an eye for an eye” in the Covenant Code; “Justice, justice you shall pursue” in the Deuteronomic Code; and “love thy neighbor as thyself” in the Code of Holiness.
Feld claims that each composed in other times and places. He attributes the Covenant Code to the northern kingdom of Israel in the ninth century BC. C. , the Deuteronomic Code to the southern kingdom of Judah in the seventh century BC. Holiness to Bathroughlonian exile after 586 B. C. Feld adds that the 3 codes were placed in the Torah through Israelite priests exiled in Bathroughlon to whom he attributes the compilation of the accepted edition of the Pentateuch.
“What’s amazing about the latest Torah editors is that they’ve included those codes that don’t necessarily say the same thing,” Feld said. “Occasionally they disagree with each other. [The publishers] were willing to put that in book.
For example, the Deuteronomic Code calls for a central area of worship in the Promised Land, while the previous Covenant Code implies that there would possibly be several such places.
As rabbi of the conservative movement, Feld knows what it’s like to be an editor willing to balance contradictory passages in the same pluralistic text. He is the editor of two prayer books of the Rabbinical Assembly that contain reflections: Siddur Lev Shalem for Shabbat and holidays and Mahzor Lev Shalem for summer vacation.
The High Holiday e-prayer book “contains a poem by Yehuda Amichai, who is obviously a secular poet, and statements by Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe,” Feld noted. “We include either in the same e-prayer book. Both have something to teach us.
As for his new book, he said, “I founded the manuscript on what the scholars said. I quote those scholars, if not in the book, at least in the footnotes. I don’t assume that all this is a new exchange. On the contrary, what I give as input is to bring everything together in a very transparent way, so that we can see the progression from Exodus to Nehemiah.
When asked if any of the codes are important, he replied: “What I’m saying is that all 3 say something that speaks to us. Started. . . to think that he would be more sympathetic to one than to the other. “other. I ended up being sympathetic to the 3, understanding the 3 in a new way, [with] deep moments of non-secular understanding.
Feld is also interested in the tumultuous events that caused the code.
In the north of the kingdom of Israel, a military coup in the ninth century B. C. he overthrew the space of Omri, who had embraced paganism and alienated the prophet Elijah. The spread of the Code of the Covenant through the new King Jehu represented a return to monotheism and angered Elijah’s successor, Elisha. Two hundred years later, in Judah, the brief reign of Manasseh’s son, Amun, ended in murder. Young Josiah succeeded his father, supervised through a regency, before reaching adulthood and campaigning against his grandfather’s polytheism.
The 3rd peaceful revolution. During Bathroughlonian’s captivity, prophets like Ezekiel and Zechariah generated a mirrored image among other exiles of what a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem would look like. Influenced by this wave of thinking, Feld believes, an organization of reformist priests drafted the Holiness Code.
“I myself believe that what those revolutions have discovered and given to life has meaning beyond their time, even to this day,” Feld writes in the book. “Because they were a search for a basic understanding of the meaning of religion in God. “and the way of life that religion requires. “He continues: “The devout force of the concepts propagated through those revolutionaries can be experienced through anyone who enters Jewish life today. Judaism is unthinkable without reference to those codes.
Regarding the Covenant Code, he writes, “the concept that the other people of Israel have a covenant dating back to God has been a permanent foundation of Jewish theology,” while “Deuteronomy emphasizes the concept of mitzvot, the concept that the other Jew God addresses people and God commands them to behave safely. As for the Holiness Code, it “adds its own unique understanding to the meaning of devout behavior: God needs us to behave in such a way that our hearts are transformed. “
The codes were tough; a Deuteronomy law requires that a lost son be brought before the old premises and stoned to death. (There is also the prohibition of homosexuality in Leviticus 18:22, while the 3 codes recognize a certain degree of slavery. )Blessings for those who obeyed the codes, there were curses for transgressors. One set of curses, the Tochacha of Leviticus 26, comprises such violent language that historically it is read sotto voce in the synagogue.
In the following centuries, a later categorization of Jewish law, the Talmud, adopted a watered-down view of parts of the codes.
“The Talmud says that such a scenario [as the capricious son] was never created and never happened in all of Jewish history,” Feld said, “but this is given as a kind of training so that one does not have this kind of behavior. Certainly, no one would ever endure the punishment enunciated through the Torah. The Talmud has a form of understanding.
The concept of the e-book originated earlier this century, when Feld was rabbi-in-residence at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he noted that many scholars struggled to reconcile their devout religion with biblical criticism.
“I tried to show that one can examine ancient Judaism, take a critical biblical view and derive something non-secular from that,” he said.
He then turned to biblical resources that tell the story of the Israelites, the 700-year era that began with the agreement of the Twelve Tribes in the Promised Land and ended with exile along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. He discovered the books of Kings and Chronicles to know valuable. However, he also cross-referenced biblical accounts with fresh resources from other Levantine cultures such as Assyria and Babylon, as well as archaeological evidence, adding of present-day Israel.
“The greatest wonder was the extent to which each of the legal codes was influenced by prophetic union,” Feld said, mentioning “two axes of prophetic union: loyalty to the God of Israel, the One God; and [that] the God of Israel had as its central unit social equity, care for the poor, fear and fear of how others treated one another.
Doing detective work, he advocated the Covenant Code as the creation of the northern kingdom of Israel; as a confederacy, it emphasized a dating of the covenant between the ruler and the people, as opposed to the direct monarchy of Judah. Deuteronomy found it strongly parallel to Josiah’s reforms and represented a Judean effort into constitutional law.
What he also discovered was an influence from Israel’s neighbors. The ruler of Assyria called himself King of kings, a term that has been exclusively related to God in the Hebrew Bible. Feld was also surprised by the popularity and patience of polytheism among the ancient Israelites. , which afflicted reformers like Josiah.
At stages of biblical history, the average Israelite, the average Jew did not worship an unmarried deity.
“It helps keep coming back to each and every generation,” he said. “It’s a kind of back and forth that helps keep repeating itself. “
The e-book notes that the revolutions discussed in the text may have followed a different path, but the end results of each important for Judaism. The Covenant and Deuteronomy codes emphasized the exclusivity of dating between God and the Israelites, while the Holiness Code emphasized the importance of non-public moral habit through this link to the One God in its signature line: “You will be holy because the Lord your God is holy.
“Ultimately, I hope readers realize the difficulty biblical concepts face in their day before they succeed,” Feld writes. those revolutionary moments!”
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