Jonathan Sacks and Yoram Hazony: Is the Bible a Work of Philosophy?

[Music] I'm Daniel Johnson I'm the editor of standpoint magazine and I want to welcome you all very very warmly for coming here on a Sunday afternoon uh to hear about the Bible um it's it's uh it's an unusual thing to happen in the Natural History Museum but uh but so much the better for that and uh I want uh first of all I'm just going to tell you what we're going to be doing um our discussion will last until till about quter to 5 uh and then we're going to throw it open to all of you uh to ask whatever questions you have either for yuram or for the chief Rabbi and uh I very much hope that we will have a very Lively discussion that will last for about half an hour uh and then there will be book signing uh for those of you and I hope it will be many of you uh who are inspired uh to take home a copy of um uh of this this wonderful book uh the philosophy of Hebrew scripture uh so now first of all I want to welcome up onto the stage yorum honei uh yuram please uh come and join us um and uh yorum great great to see you um please take a seat uh yuram many of you will already know his work um uh he first came to my attention uh about a dozen years ago with this very controversial book The Jewish State the struggle for Israel's Soul uh a more political and historical work than the one we're talking about today um and uh he is of course the founder uh and now I think Provost uh is that right of the Shalem Center uh in Jerusalem uh which uh has done amazing work I think in bringing together uh intellectuals from all over the world uh to uh discuss a very wide range of things but particularly of course Jewish thought um so uh yam's uh on a on a worldwide tour uh discussing the philosophy of Hebrew scripture and we're very very fortunate to have him here today uh our other guest I think probably needs no introduction uh here um Jonathan Sachs Lord saak the chief Rabbi uh of Great Britain and the Commonwealth uh is of course himself uh a distinguished philosopher uh you know in an academic sense uh and uh and of course also uh a magnificent spokesman uh not only for uh Judaism and the Jewish people uh but actually for religion in general uh we were just discussing a moment ago uh his recent debates with Rich Dawkins and he's uh he's been prepared uh like U like my namesake the Prophet Daniel to go into the lion's den many a time uh to defend uh the the Bible and uh the the biblical uh tradition if you like um uh so again without further Ado uh Jonathan sax please come and come and sit down now um I wanted to uh uh begin uh with the Bible the he the Hebrew Bible may be read in many ways uh as history as law as poetry as prophecy but yur you are proposing to read it as philosophy now what can this approach bring to the Bible a book that has already undergone more exhaustive exeresis and Analysis than probably all other SE text put together uh give us give us uh basically you know why have you written this book look I don't I don't think that the word philosophy is itself the most important thing the most important thing is do we read the Bible for ideas or do we not read it for ideas right so calling it philosophy calling it wisdom is uh is a way of focusing on this question and in fact there's a very very old tradition in uh in the west which says no actually the the Bible is a unique kind of text it's a it's a it's a revelation and as Revelation it consists in a bypassing of man's natural faculties natural capacity to explore the world and try to understand the truths about the nature of reality about the way we should live and instead to to spend all of these these faculties that we have and to to accept things that are not necessarily reasonable maybe even completely absurd and so many many people think both in the public and and academics who study it they they've come to think of the Bible as as this absurd document that doesn't contain ideas it's not like Plato or Hobs something that we could just study it and and and learn from its wisdom and here I I propose that we can we can learn from its wisdom just like Plato and H uh Jonathan you have acclaimed the philosophy of Hebrew scripture as I quote a paradigm shifting work of immense significance but as a philosopher and as a rabbi you spent much of your life bringing the entire intellectual arsenal of Western thought to bear on the Hebrew Bible as indeed have count this other rabbis before you so what is youram doing that's new what is what is he doing that hasn't been done at least since the time of my Mones it's a good question Daniel the truth is uram is reclaiming the Bible as one of the constitutive texts of Western Civilization um and that is certainly something my Mones was doing my Mones was reading the Bible as a philosopher and he was reading it as philosophy he was doing so in a slightly different way I mean he used to see the philosophy of the Bible is very much beneath the surface and the narratives of the Bible were essentially allegories uh and um yuram is telling us to see the narratives of the Bible as themselves exemplifying major philosophical moral political views um and I think that's the way to go in the 21st century what I like about yam's work is he's come as a Bible scholar um to some of the work that I've been doing in from the opposite direction so I try to show for instance in the politics of hope that you could build a political philosophy around the Bible or Dignity of difference of global ethic or a theory of national identity in the home we build together so I've kind of done this as a philosopher rather than as a Bible scholar and yam has done it as a Bible scholar coming out from there uh but I do think we do need to reclaim the Bible as a book of ideas I once said nature was right in framing the choice before Humanity do we follow the idea of power or do we follow the power of ideas and Judaism has always been about the power of ideas uh I think they called uh one of the posthumously published uh works of Isaiah bin the power of ideas and that's something that drives us as a as a people Anders of Faith yum the main villain of your book uh is talian uh a Latin Church Father of the second and third centuries who lived in Roman Carthage um and actually one of your chapters is actually called Carthage and Jerusalem um now you hold his radical contrast between faith and reason responsible for the failure to read Hebrew scripture in the same way that we read Plato and Aristotle for example whereas talian asked what has Athens to do with Jerusalem uh quid Ergo AIS at Hy H solimus um you argue that the real contrast is between his carthaginian form of Christianity and the Jerusalem of the Bible which has much more in common with the Athens of Plato you described talian as a fanatic omitting to mention that he did live at a time when the Romans were persecuting the Christians so he had some excuse for being a bit fanatical however he demands that Christians believe in the death of Christ because it is absurd and in the resurrection because it is impossible you quote modern Christian apologists such as kard and CS Lewis echoing his line of argument now all this may or may not be fair to talian he's a fairly obscure figure now who eventually even left the church because it it wasn't rigor rigorous enough for him but are you being fair to the Christian mainstream uh isn't the great achievement of Christianity its reconciliation of helenic and hebraic thought in other words of Athens and Jerusalem not only is the New Testament written in Greek the early Christians even read Hebrew scripture in Greek too in the form of the Pento so to put it another way what has talian Carthage to do with the Rome of aquinus or say Benedict the 16th look I I I think that tertullian is uh uh is not the he's not really the interesting figure as at at I mean your your question directs us to what is interesting which is the question of what is Christianity in its mainstream versions what is its relationship with uh with Hebrew scripture and the achievement of Christianity to begin with even before we start speaking about it as a synthesis its first achievement is to take Hebrew Bible and to bring it to humanity now Christians today are of many many different kinds and uh among those there there are those who uh uh uh like like tertullian still uh see uh Christianity as being absolutely essentially uh a a faith and maybe even a faith in things that are uh impossible and improbable and therefore we believe but most Christians that that that I know and I I'm I'm speaking now uh about Christian philosophers Christian theologians as well as simply Christian men and women most of the Christians that I know they're as invested at least as we are as Jews are in actually understanding what the Hebrew Bible is about rather than in trying to you know say well I've inherited some particular Doctrine and I have to to read it into these scriptures and the the position of a Christian in in the modern world no if he or she is no longer willing to accept uh that the whole Old Testament is is is uh a foreshadowing of the coming of Jesus but rather wants to learn it as many Christians have historically as a scripture that has its own meaning and its own message which is directed to Christians and to humanity and not simply to the Jews well such a Christian and there are many doesn't necessarily have the tools to be able to do that and one of the the the things that I hope to do with this book is to is to distinguish is to say well look if CS Lewis appeals to you then that's legitimate but if you actually want to know what what the Old Testament is about well the Old Testament is you're going to have to read it as a work that appeals to the reason of of of the audience including you that means it it deals with with great questions of political Theory and uh uh and metaphysics and ethics many Christians want to see it in this way and this book I hope will help yeah um chief chief R in order to demonstrate the philosophical character of The Bible isn't yorum at risk of widening the division between Judaism and Christianity do you think his way of looking at it uh is is a wise undertak does it respect what you call the Dignity of difference uh or is this just a good way of getting people to start having a robust debate about it uh well I hope not because I hope there are not too many disciples of talian around today at least in this room um I've yet to meet one actually and I believe in talian because he's impossible um and I love Italian I I I if I can say this telling a personal story you know I had this I tell this story in my book The Great partnership I had as my tutor my doctoral supervisor in Cambridge one of the world's great atheists you know when we had really great atheist and uh uh the late s Bernard Williams and S Bernard Williams was very rarely spoke about the reasons that made him give up his Catholicism but he did did his first published essay was called talian Paradox uh in which he argues that kreda impossib EST is a ridiculous well it's an impossible Creed he said because if you believe in nonsense what is your Criterion for distinguishing holy nonsense from nonsense nonsense which is a very good point and it made me warm to him you know I was a very religious guy I hope I still am and here was is this major atheist and and superb intellect and here I was reading him absolutely shred to tellal you and I thought to myself this is an atheist I can really relate to because my monod doesn't attack talian but he attacks those people in Judaism who thought like him that there are certain laws in Judaism that called Kim called statutes that are Beyond Reason and my mon in the same way as Bernard Williams says if it's Beyond Reason what makes you think that's above Humanity maybe it's below Humanity so I thought if my atheist supervisor can say the same sort of things as Moses my modities then this is an atheist from whom I can learn and of course what is common here is our commitment to reason and public discourse and that is why I think you know the the the Catholic tradition that you repr present and let us acknowledge the 50th anniversary of that process that set in motion Nostra T and and Pope John the 23d that has been one of the great acts of reconciliation in all of human history it transformed the relationship between Jews and Catholics from one of estrangement to one of friendship and it continues to be so and I regard this coming together of Jews and Christians um as as as a real signal of transcendence it's a sign of hope that a relationship of estrangement that lasted for the better part of 2,000 years can be healed and it can be healed because uh Catholic theologians and Jewish theologians have shared that belief in in reason reason and Revelation are not too uh exclusive categories God talks to us as um as as as being IM in the image of God that is beings who share IR rationality with God and you see that most obviously the way the Bible deals with the concept of Justice God can uh bring a case against Israel for failing to keep their side of the bargain but Abraham and Moses and Jeremiah and job can have an argument with God they can speak the same language because Justice which is reason applied to the moral life um is the language of Faith so you know talian is tremendously useful in all of this because if you're going to pick an opponent try and pick one who's dead try and pick one who's been dead a very long time and try and pick one who doesn't have too many disciples today um for those who come to the Hebrew scriptures from a secular background yuram you make a very strong claim that the general nature nature of the arguments used in the Bible is relevant to everybody not just to religious people because understanding the Bible requires no prior commitment to the god of Israel uh and I quote you while they the scriptures were written for the instruction of the Jews there is no reason why the standpoint and argument they make should not be heard and debated among all nations end quote why should secularists whether Jews or Gentiles atheists or agnostics bother to study the holy book of a Nation so remote in time and place what what what does it bring for the secular mind well I I I think that there there's a a a a crucial question which is which is in fact what's being debated in in in in public you know the chief Rabbi debating uh Dawkins uh most recently is is precisely a debate over over one thing which is whether the Bible is something that as as uh many of the current atheist uh pists have said repeatedly and many academics who follow them uh is the Bible in fact a book of Darkness of barbarism and something that in terms of its teachings we'd best set it aside because to the extent that you don't set it aside you're endanger in all of humanity that's a very very well defended and articulated position today in in our society and the the question is those of us who see the Bible as actually offering something is there any way that we can say that what that something is without appealing to things that are that are colleagues that are interlocutors simply don't believe I mean it's it's just not that helpful to to begin a conversation by saying well I believe in God and I believe that the that this scripture was written by God and that it's binding on me that leaves out the people that I'm speaking to and gives them no hope of being able to identify with what it is that I'm saying so without without taking away in in any sense from that way of describing uh describing what's in scripture I think that the Bible also has many many other things and they can be translated into a language that anyone can understand and not only that but I think they were written in such a way that it should they should be acceptable Moses begins his his his great speech in Deuteronomy by telling uh the children of Israel that that this that this teaching that he's teaching them should be their their uh their wisdom and their understanding in the sight of the Nations and there are many many other such passages in the Bible that is the Assumption of the prophets is that the Nations should be able to Simply look at this and discuss it with us and see the wisdom in it now if that's not happening today and uh with with with the exception of the extraordinary uh uh uh Mission and activism of the chief Rabbi there are very very few additional people that you can point to who are in fact making this translation and bringing the the Jewish teaching to the world with very few exceptions this is simply not something that's happening now we have to ask ourselves why is this not happening and I think that the answer begins with the fact that we don't necessarily as Jews look at the Bible as speaking in the language of reason I of course we we you know when we discuss it on on sabbaths or in yeshivas and seminaries we we we we do talk about it as reason but we don't know how to explain that to to others and I I I'm I'm hoping that that that that this will help that this book will help as as an opening what it does is it it begins from the premise that the reader does not believe in God that the reader does not accept any kind of divine involvement in the writing of the text and asks nevertheless is it true that what you see is a is a barbaric book and I find the opposite I find that it's a book that in fact brings Hope For The First Time political hope and uh and and a certain moral perspective that later becomes associated with with things that many people believe in into the world for the first time to lose that the original source of uh an outside perspective a perspective Beyond the corruption of uh of of of uh uh corrupt men and and societies which is which is what the Bible proposes for the first time in human history to Simply lose that and give up on it because Professor Dawkins or others believe that they can create morality from the ground up well I have yet to see that done and I I I think that yes a person who doesn't necessarily believe should be able to approach the Bible and see it and I I I I think that we can all help in this Chief Robert what what what does the bible uh building on that have to teach the a world which regards all books sacred and profane as to some extent obsolete which has a sort of contempt for the literary culture that Jews have always had and and and many Christians too in the past in other words um in a deeply secularized World um are we are we ready to have this argument are we ready are Jews in particular ready to have a robust debate uh not only with Christians but with militant atheists oh absolutely and i i i road test this quite a number of times each year because of that wonderfully eccentric English institution called thought for the day which is another illumination of talian paradox I mean you couldn't I it exists only because it's impossible there you are getting up in the morning ready to face a new day and some Rabbi gives you a sermon just when you looking forward to life you know so it's a wonderfully eccentric thing and uh it it forced me from day one to Grapple with this question how can I speak from the heart of Faith to an audience 99 and a half% of which do not share that Faith because we're only half a percent of the population of Britain and it's absolutely amazing how easy it is I've never found somebody saying I couldn't understand you lots of people saying I don't agree with you but nobody ever said I don't understand you and what right have you got uh to speak to me nobody ever said that so if you take that uh message a Biblical message to the world it is astonishing how many people be they Christian or seek or Muslim or Hindu or plain secular relate to it um what is distinctive about that message coming from the Hebrew Bible um yuram has mentioned one concept which I think is fundamental the idea of hope you know that what I admired Bernard Williams for was his ability unflinchingly to look at a world without hope you know I I call that the tragic uh image picture of Life Greece gave us the heroism of tragedy and Judaism gave us the alternative of Hope the principled rejection of tragedy in the name of Hope which is fundamental to Isaiah and it's fundamental really to the whole biblical message I think there are two other things that are fundamental number one is freedom individ idual and personal freedom which is the basis of our belief in a free Society if there can be a complete exhaustive scientific description of human behavior that means that all scientific all human behavior is a matter of uh inescapable effect of inevitable causes there is no human Freedom now if there is no human Freedom then why even bother to have a free Society I said this to um Richard Dawkins friend and colleague the neuroscientist Colin Blakemore unfortunately that bit of the program was not fully broadcast I did did a couple of years ago I say Colin if you're right Colin is a hard determinist he believes human beings are not free at all I said in that case why on Earth do we have courts of justice that punish criminals just do some neurosci you know just wheel them into the operating room remove that bit of the prefrontal cortex or the amydala that's giving them an extra bit of aggression why not just treat them why punish them and he could not answer it he said well I can see why totalitarian regimes might choose to do that actually even non-al even American America in the 50s was doing lobotomies or lucoto to do just that and I think A Clockwork Orange is is about that theme so I think that is something that that the Hebrew Bible talks about it's the theme of Adam and Eve can and abble the whole story is about how God gave human human beings freedom and how they misused it but how God never yet gave up Faith in humans so Freedom number two human dignity if we are just a bundle of chemicals a bundle of selfish genes then in what sense do we describe any special dignity to the human person and you know that uh you know I I I I was incred did any of you see this wonderful documentary about the work of Dr ludvig Gutman who was the inspiration behind the Paralympics you know and ludvic Goodman comes along as a as Jew from an orthodox family background comes here as a refugee from Germany sees the way paraplegics are being treated they have a life behind them but nothing in front of them and he comes in and says no these are human beings choose life you could feel that Mosaic imperative therefore choose life um and he gives them back life so this belief in human dignity is not some abstract idea it's changed the way we've regarded paraplegics and in Jerusalem right now there's a 92-year-old Professor called ruven foin who's done the same for deeply traumatized and brain damaged children so here is a sense of human dignity that's given back paraplegics and brain damaged children their hope for the future so Freedom dignity and hope are not Concepts that conflict with science but they are forever beyond the remit of science which is why BF Skinner called his book beyond freedom and dignity I do not want to go down the road Beyond freedom and dignity and if we want to preserve those then we are going to have to begin and enlist highly secular people with a strong humanistic sense and actually go go into conversation with them and say these are things worth fighting for y um your argument requires a rethinking of the way that we uh read the the the Hebrew Bible's depiction of God it's a sh shift I'm not saying you you Advocate this shift for for everyone but but for those re the kind of readers uh Jonathan was just talking about it's a shift from God the king of Israel uh to God the father of humanity but does this do justice to what the scripture actually says when God speaks to the Patriarchs and Prophets he does so as Lord that is he demands that we should obey his law keep his Covenant and heed his prophecies God does not philosophize He commands now you say that in order to understand how the Patriarchs and Prophets experience God speaking to them we need to abandon classical or medieval concepts of reason and revelation God you argue poses questions rather than delivering lectures allowing the human interlocutor to find the answers himself so when a prophet hears God calling you claim this has nothing to do with the Greek Greek notion of inspiration of being filled with a spirit from outside nor is it the later idea of an inner voice it is you say something else but what well there's a a great many important questions there and I I I fear that I can't address all of them and it would take the rest of the afternoon uh so let me let me just uh uh begin at a certain point and and and and uh uh and and and try try to um to answer uh Hebrew Bible has um a number of different metaphors uh which it uses to help human beings understand what it means to have a a world that that has a God in it so the most commonly uh discussed one the one that's sort of constantly uh within the public eye and in in in in these debates about you know should we believe in God or not and is it damaging is is the image of God as king uh sitting on his throne distant cold giving out orders making decisions right now there's no doubt that that view is in the Bible I don't have any intention of denying it and it's important but it's also the case that that's not the only image and the the prophets in sort of mercilessly mixing the different metaphors uh they teach us a way to approach reality which is not monolithic and does not simply accept that kind of um distant cold god- giving out orders is the only form of religious understanding at least as important uh is uh what what we call the god of the Covenant right and the Covenant is not identical the Brit the idea of a Brit an alliance with God is absolutely not identical to the idea of God is the king giving orders right it's the the the idea of a covenant is very often in fact in scripture uh it it's uh often uh compared to uh the Covenant between a husband and wife right there there can be Covenant between a husband and wife that's called a breit there can be a covenant between a a great king and and a small King a local king the head of a city or a community both of these covenants assume not a distant impersonal perfect God who knows everything who can just give orders but just the opposite they assume that the nature the fabric of the reality that we live in is one in which God actually needs us anyone enters into a covenant it's because he needs the person he's covenanting with now a husband he can he can give all the orders that he wants to his wife he can threaten her he can be mean to her he can he can think that he can he can tell her what to do but when the prophets bring the image of God as the husband and Israel is the wife they're saying exactly the opposite they're saying you can command all you want but Israel like the young wife she'll make her own decisions she'll go be with other men if she wants to you can't force her to love you you can't force her to obey you you can be violent but you can't make her do anything ultimately the relationship between a man and a woman depends on the woman wanting to take part in the relationship and the same is true of the relationship between God and man in scripture in this other metaphor which is so common the metaphor of the Covenant is a metaphor in which God realizes he comes in the in the stories that we see in the Bible he comes to recognize that giving orders simply doesn't perfect the world human beings are free they'll make all sorts of decisions they'll make any decisions they want if he wants the world to be repaired if he wants it to be improved and fixed then he needs our partnership Abraham is his partner Israel is his partner partner and God offers partnership to all of the nations of the world that's a completely different understanding of our role in our relationship to to God and it allows us for example to argue with God but it also means that we don't have to see God as giving orders we can see God as as looking for our partnership and that's something that I think that that Hebrew scripture is actually unique in offering the Western tradition well Daniel I I would make uh three points that are fundamental number one it's absolutely clear that God loves people who argue with him that's probably the most important reason he chose the Jewish people he just loves it you know Noah obeys and God never really starts a major order with Noah although he makes a very important Covenant but God loves Abraham and Moses and Jeremiah because they argue with him to be a Jew yeah other people have conversations Jews only have arguments uh the second principle Which is far from obvious and when I first discovered it it hit me like a bolt from the blue is this the Torah the pentat contains a lot of Commandments 613 according to our traditional way of counting them now you would have thought it is inevitable that a book that contains 6 13 Commandments has somewhere within it a word that means to obey Biblical Hebrew contains not one single word that means to obey and when Hebrew was revived in the 19th century as a spoken language as it is in Israel today they had to borrow a word from Aramaic L which doesn't exist in the Hebrew Bible it's an Aramaic word but that is the word used for to obey what word does the bible use instead of to obey it uses the word shma the first word of our holiest prayer which means to listen to hear to understand in other words command and control is not at all the way God is in the Bible he is speaking to our understanding inviting us to become in that lovely phrase of the rabbis his Partners in the work of creation that's the second point the third point which I just love is this God is father of humanity you know to my mind when we talk about the Exodus you know the hero is Moses but as I wrote in my haad actually the real heroes are Six Women uh Miriam y Moses mother shifra and Pua the two midwives uh Tor who is moses' wife who saves his life and Pharaoh's daughter now at least two and possibly four of those are not even Jewish we don't know about shiffer and Pua were they Jewish were they not Abel thought not so did lutat never mind these are the moral heroins and the heroine of all heroins is Pharaoh's daughter she is the one who gives Moses his name she is the one who rescues him from the river she is the one who at Great risk to herself adopts him and brings him up after all it was his her father who issued the decree every male Israelite child Hebrew child kill throw into the river so great risk she is the one without whom there would be no Moses she is the one who gave Moses his name now the question is what was the name of Pharaoh's daughter and they and the Book of Exodus does not tell us but the book of Chronicles mentions a Pharaoh's daughter and her name is baa or btia and that means God's daughter and the midrash the rabbi said about this the following thing which I think is beautiful he said to Pharaoh's daughter you adopted Moses as your son even though he wasn't your son I am going to adopt you as my daughter even though you're not my daughter now this is Hitler's daughter are you with me this is the enemy r large and she is the moral heroine of all heroins and I think there that lovely Touch Of God adopting her uh is just so beautiful God is the father of humanity there are only two perfect individuals in the whole of the Hebrew Bible one is called Noah the other one is called job they are both non-jews no Jew ever uh merited you know it says about Noah that was an ish sadik a righteous man perfect in his Generations he walked with God no other individual in the whole of the Hebrew Bible is called sadik did you know that yuram you thought Joseph was called it I I I did but I I could see the objection coming so I stopped he didn't he didn't you know um Hosea says you sold the righteous for a pair of shoes and tradition said that was the brothers selling Joseph as a slave but Hosea never calls Joseph A righteous man the only righteous man in the whole of the Hebrew Bible is not Jewish so that that is just one example of God is the father of all Humanity which is absolutely to my mind inescapably the message of the Bible and the prophets are constantly saying this and that's why I hope it's a book for all Humanity well on that note I think I'd like to throw the discussion open to you the audience um to hear your views and please though try and keep keep the question brief uh and it would be very helpful if you'd like to identify yourselves uh you're not obliged to but it would be interesting for us this is a distinguished audience hi student um you're wrong you spoke about the relevance of the of the Old Testament to set to the set the world and about creating morality from how you think that the could be created from the ground up um and what I was really thinking was was that may be true but why should it be this book Sur if if we're talking to a a SE person or a non person why should why should they why should they believe that they should use the T as a as the ultimate text as opposed to the well I I've I've never proposed that the Torah be used as the the only text I mean I I uh I I I think that uh uh Plato or Aristotle to pick two examples of you know non-jewish texts that that I I respect greatly and that that many others do as well uh have plenty to contribute to the discussion and I'm sure that there are other texts from other places in the world that I might be less familiar with but that doesn't mean that they can't contribute I'm sure that they can contribute uh I I think that the the problem problem we have is not so much a problem of saying why should this text be instead of other texts I think the problem that we have in the Societies in which we live is closer to being one of as as Daniel asked before of of why should we use any texts I mean that that really is I I think the the the argument because I look I I'm sure that I can sit with uh uh just just as I can sit with a you know with with with a uh uh someone who's really a a convinced platonist I'm sure that I could also sit with a with with with with a Muslim who loves his sources and believes that his sources are are the best sources for helping uh uh uh uh create a a good life for his his people and for the world I'm sure that we could find things to agree about I'm sure that we could find important crucial things to disagree about and both of those are important but I think that the the the chasm that divides all people who believe that Traditions can be the source of helping us uh work our way through to dealing with with understanding difficult issues like questions in Morality political thought theology the difference between those people and the people who are running around today in the name of science actually writing best-selling books saying you don't need any of this you can throw all of it out in fact it's all pernicious and what you really need to do is is is what we need to do is to advance Neuroscience so that we can measure what within people's brains what makes people happy and what makes people unhappy as though that actually is capable of contributing to to to to moral knowledge now that's what the the principal debate is about and as a look I'm not an expert in the Quran so I I I can't tell you much about it I know quite a bit about the Hebrew Bible and I can tell you that the Hebrew Bible is in public discourse as well as in learned academic discourse is treated as a barbaric text it's treated as a text that if you're a normal person and and you take a look at it then you're simply not going to be able to find what all the fuss was about I think it's important that we find what all the fuss is about because I don't believe I mean I I know quite a bit about about these uh uh uh contemporary Alternatives and I I I don't understand how they can come to replace the biblical tradition and when I say biblical tradition I mean not simply the texts as we have them but the texts as interpreted and adopted and understood over many many generations by many wise people contributed to them I don't see an alternative so if there is one you know I'm happy to take a look at it but I don't think we have any choice if if we want a moral world I could I just add as a footnote to that um the point made by Neil Ferguson towards the end of his uh big book called civilization it's a wonderful wonderful quote from a member of the Chinese Academy of social sciences uh the Chinese Academy of social sciences were charged with the task of answering the following question China was ahead of the West in virtually every field up to the 15th century thereafter the West zoomed ahead and the Academy of social science was charged with finding what did the West have that we didn't have and the academ says at first we thought it was your guns you had better weapons than we had then we did some more research and realized that it was your political system you had democracy and we didn't then we surveyed it a bit more and we realized it was your economic system you had the market economy and we didn't but for the the last 20 years we've known the simple answer which lies behind all the other answers namely it was your religion Now by that he means that judeo-christian Heritage which conferred on the west its perennial restlessness between the world that is and the world that ought to be which set in motion all the creative developments of the last five centuries now I think I call a member of the Chinese Academy of social sciences as an impartial witness hi my name is Adam Boer I'm a chemistry student I was wondering it seems that does seem as a fact that all pieces of literature written a certain time certain place addressed to a certain audience uh and they have to be understood from within that context uh so both to and the chief R when you're looking to try and glean an authentic Philosophy from the Hebrew Bible how do we how are we supposed to navigate the really tricky area of the context of the Hebrew Bible and you know various opinions that go along with that question well look you know everything you say is true and even the much more exaggerated forms of this that have been offered by by all sorts of philosophers are also true to a certain extent but I think that they all exaggerate I think think that we can recognize Freedom when we see it and when when uh when uh Gideon gidon when he stands up to the uh to to to to his uh brother Israelites who come to him and say we want you to be a king and we want your son to rule over us forever and he says I will not rule over you and my son will not rule over you but God will rule over you those words I think can be recognized by anyone in any civilization regardless of of what their background is I think they can read those words and say oh my gosh what I'm seeing is freedom I'm seeing the a man stand and say I want to not be ruled by other people by all of these these dictators the chief Rabbi called Pharaoh Hitler by all these these these these little dictators and Hitlers that that surrounded them they want to free now there are all sorts of more more difficult and more sophisticated ideas in the Hebrew Bible that that we'd have to talk about a little bit more but at least some of these ideas I think anyone can simply look at them and so when when when when someone like like uh let's say Tom Payne refers to Gideon refers to this passage in his uh uh trying to stir up the colonies to well I guess that's that's probably not a good thing to to to bring up here in London so we'll use a different ex but any are you sure You' forgiven think we we've forgiven the Americans all right so I'll proceed but Common Sense 70 to 76 I I I made I I I I I may be suffer for this a little bit later but seriously the the the reference of Tom Payne you know he may have thought all sorts of crazy things that I wouldn't necessarily agree with but he reads the Bible over that Chasm of of of Millennia and he reads that sentence and he sees freedom I I think anybody should be able to to to see that it's simply human beings don't change enough over the course of the centuries and the Millennia so they can't recognize Freedom when they see it and there are actually many other such things um to that I would just add the following it is absolutely constitutive of Jewish belief that there is an oral Torah together with the written Torah that is along with the Torah given at sin is the ongoing work of interpretation and reinterpretation which has never ceased um the um actual construction of that Cannon of 39 books which constitute the Hebrew Bible take a thousand years in real time from the days of Moses to the days of the last of the prophets so there is a Thousand-Year commentary on that Mosa core you then get the canonization of the Hebrew Bible and from the 3dr century BC to the 7th Century CE you get a thousand years of commentary on the commentary called midrash mishna and gamar that is then reaches closure and you then get a thousand years of commentary on the commentary on the commentary and right now we're at the fourth level of commentary on the commentary on the commentary the com and it never ceases and because of that uh the word of God for all time becomes the word of God for this time without that constant commentary and reinterpretation of which yam's book is a wonderful example we can't hear the word of the Bible for this time oh my goodness uh now everyone wants to speak yes the lady at the back please um hi I'm Mar um mod Judaism this last question relates to something that g said earlier about how Judaism provides a means of granting humans dignity and it raises an interesting question about when we look at the Torah one of the one of the ideas we can note is the way which the mute for example is put in a category we're talking about the dignity that the jewi conf find for the human but there's there's this sense in which the m is is s sidelined and interestingly of course the mute is sidelined along with another category which is women and when we talk about dignity one of the other sort of key terms that could come up is is this idea of qu the Dignity of the congregational community and the idea that women fully participating in in a worship service impus the the Dignity of the conation now this makes sense in a context we're talking changing contexts need to change and adapt to different circumstances and I'm wondering if both of you have something to to say in address well that I definitely give to yuram that was a very learned question well I'll do my best look I saying that uh that uh Hebrew Bible or any other uh sign significant source that you could point to the talmud or PL or anything else saying that it is foundational or even going as far as saying it that it's for us the foundation of our investigation into uh into uh the truths of the moral and political world is not the same as saying that absolutely everything that we consider to be right and correct today is already fully developed in uh in in the Hebrew Bible the Hebrew Bible is after all something as some someone said it it was written at a certain time and it was written for a certain time although I do believe that uh the those scriptures that have been handed down to us are those that have stood the test of time and I think that uh it's a mistake always to take such a text Skip over the thousands of years of elaboration and development and say oh it's a perfect blueprint or it was meant to be a perfect blueprint or it could be used as a it's not it's not it was not meant to be and it isn't however I do think that the um the the development uh of the kind of Consciousness that would allow you to ask such a question and to allow us to discuss it int intelligently and to to to take sides on exactly how to apply it and what to do I think that it's biblical and I think that it is not Greek and I don't know of any other source for it um the the uh the chief Rabbi spoke about this astonishing uh description of the way that the the that that the Jewish nation is Born the way that the Hebrew slave slaves are redeemed they're Redeemed by five women every one of those women if she hadn't dared to break the law and do what she did there would have been no Moses and there would have been no Israel and there would have been no hope for Humanity right and the the Bible is built it begins that way and it ends with with Esther about whom I wrote wrote a book but let me just point to one other example right and I'm not saying that that the Bible is not a patriarchical society and I'm not denying any of that still this example is worth paying attention to when when Moses is presenting the law and the the law to the nation another five women stand up and say you know we believe that this law is unjust this law is unfair and the daughters of they demand that the law of God given by the master of the universe and handed down by his Prophet be changed because they feel that it's unjust right this is not something that you know some Modern commentators is coming up with this is something that's right there in the in in the Books of Moses somebody put it there they demand that the law be changed and Moses says I better talk to God he goes talk to God and God says the gals are right we we'd better change the law now I proposed to you that this is not a fully fleshed out uh development as you might want to see of of Judaism or morality as as as you'd like to have it but on the other hand the fact that it has to be there in our scriptures that that the question of the law can't be perfectly complete even if it's from God and even it's if it's from Moses it can't be finally perfectly complete yet until these five women have their say and implying all sorts of others who may have been not quite heard or not quite taken into account well that is a Biblical message and I think that by studying the Bible we can come to that message history is an arena of change and obviously one of the fundamental questions is um does the Bible have a way of telling us what change is Chang in the right direction and what change is a way of getting lost and um as a result you have to read the Bible very very closely and one of the reasons that I think yuram is absolutely right in saying the Bible is a philosophical work is that that philosophy is overwhelmingly focused on the opening chapters of Genesis which we've just beg to read in the synagogue we just read the first chapters yesterday in the synagogue and it's a little like bethoven does at the beginning of the gr of fuga you know he sets out the themes and then the development takes a long time but at least those themes are set out and here is a narrative that I want to share with you from Genesis chapters 2 and three which I haven't seen set out elsewhere it's quite important um in Genesis 1 man and woman are created simultaneously equally in the image of God in Genesis two they're created sequentially and when Adam sees his wife for the first time he utters the first poem in the Bible it is actually what is called a chiasmus ABC CBA in Hebrew she shall be called woman because she is taken from man and that sounds quite nice love at first sight but actually it's um less than ideal why number one he has not given her a proper name he has given her a generic name she's woman and number two she is subordinate to man she was taken from man you know and Augustine did some stuff with that partly influenced by Aristotle I don't want to go down that line um he saw a woman you know God man is in the image of God and woman is in the image of man you don't want to know this stuff it's horrendous um so and and as a result of which bad things happen the woman Rebels eats the forbidden fruit persuades her husband her husband eats it God says Adam what have you done and what does he do he blames his wife I hope we've changed a little bit since then but I'm not always sure he said look if you had never created this woman would I have eaten the Apple and it is then that something happens there's this strange sequence of verses Adam turns to his wife and gives her a new name he calls her K Eve which is a proper name and he then attributes to her something that makes her greater than he is he she is the mother of all life if we want to be Eternal because we're not going long going to be live forever so we will only achieve immortality through our children and I cannot give birth to those children only she can and at that moment Adam has done two things he's valued her as an individual and he set her value above himself and the very next verse says and God made them garments of bigote garments of skin however in the school of rabi Ishmael rabi Ishmael lived up in the Galil and in the Galil they didn't make a difference between an olant and iron which are both guls and he read it could not oh God made them garments of light in other words this couple that he had expelled from Eden nonetheless the second Adam recognizes his woman his wife is a person not just woman and not just subsidiary to himself but greater than himself self God clothed them both in light and I now want to show you something else that the biblical critics never understood they completely tone deaf to the two names of God in the Bible what what in the biblical critical language they call J and E uh Hashem and Elohim if you look at Genesis 1 it's entirely written as e as in Genesis 2 and three it's j e and Genesis 4 it's j right now what is the difference between e and J the the biggest greatest answer ever given to that was Judah Hali in the fourth book of the his philosophical Masterpiece called the kusari in which he says e is the god of Abraham e is the god of Aristotle the god of creation who deals in generalities universal laws and Jay is the god of Abraham the individual who relates to indiv indviduals you see how the Bible is telling us that it is only when Adam recognizes his wife as a person that he is capable of recognizing God as a person so if we men are deficient in our respect for women we will to that degree be deficient in our religious sense of God himself so we see that the Bible is setting out an ideal right at the beginning so so that the more we honor women the closer we are getting to that biblical ideal and now I want to put a bit more flesh on that and I'm going to do so in the name of a former Safar Chief Rabbi of Israel called Rabbi Baki doron who was V Chief Rabbi Rishon Lon in the 1980s or 1990s 198 what 1990s rabak shid Duran makes a very interesting contrast between what Max vber calls charismatic Authority and bureaucratic Authority who is the charismatic Authority in the Bible the prophet who is the bureaucratic Authority in the Bible the priest women can't be priests but they can certainly be prophets there were seven women biblical prophets so when it comes to that individual dignity Jewish law never distinguished between men and women the world of the prophets but when it came to kav the whole field of Sociology which deals with our shortcomings because blos create things you may have noticed this called alpha males in fact a lot of Jewish politics is best studied through uh the uh the interactions of alpha males at various levels of the Animal Kingdom so and you know so alpha males need Cav need honor and hence the social position of women in Judaism has never been as egalitarian as the charismatic position of women as prophetesses judges like Deborah teachers of Torah like the late nitz and lail uh you know Viva zberg and so on and so forth so there is an arena in which the women Dignity of women has always been equal to men in Jud ISM but once that gets into the fields of Sociology it has not always been equal and we can say that the 20th century and so far the 21st have seen the biggest advances in the role of women within the Jewish religious world uh the greatest advantages that have ever taken place have we reached the destination not yet is the Jewish people ready for that not yet but at least there's been major progress down here at the front please um my name is m Rosen I guess my most important identity here is your own daughter is wor abolutely um anyways um my question to you is you both spoke a lot about God loving argument and I'm wondering if you can at all distinguish that from Rebellion um and added to that because we know that there are many examples of God punishing rebelling um and added to that do you think there's a difference between an individual who argues with God um which can separate himself from the community versus the Jewish people as a whole argument with that on my my book deals quite a bit with uh with uh uh the issue of Disobedience uh and the the reason that I that I dwell on it is uh principally to attempt some kind of corrective because there are so many people who think who actually say the Bible is a book of obedience Prof Professor uh John levenson from Harvard just published a critique of the book in which he reemphasizes the the Bible is a book of love service and obedience now there's plenty of Love service and obedience that's good in the Bible there must be a thousand times where we're we're we're we're told that we should follow or keep uh the laws and even taking uh the chief rabis correct understanding of the Hebrew into account that's an awful lot of times of telling us that we should be forming our lives according to the laws as we understand them so I'm not saying that the book is not at all a Bible of obedience and people are completely wrong if they if they say that but there's much else that that that's in the Bible there's there's there's uh there's anger and there's audacity and there's Disobedience and um uh much of the time we're surprised to discover that God loves those people who are in fact not not obeying I mean the the the the the shocking fight between God and uh and Moses after the sin of the golden calf in which God says I'm going to destroy this people for what it's done which seems pretty you know pretty reasonable in context given given that they just received the Commandments yesterday and already they' they've created another God for themselves and and and and Moses says absolutely not you can't do that because if you do that then you violated your promise and then then then there's no order in in in in in this world God can't simply promise to save this people and take them to the land of Israel and then decide to change his mind and there's a fight that goes on for five pages where they threaten one another they threaten one another mus there's a sit down strike Moses refuses he says if you're not going to you're not going to take this people up then write me out of your book and God gives them direct orders and says you go up you go up now twice those are direct commands and Moses refuses and he won't do it now you're absolutely right that there are plenty of places where where where where somebody you know disobeys something and Get Zapped and and and and you know the the the ground opens up and and everybody gets swallowed because they disobeyed something but I think that in order to understand this it's not a matter of you know it's just all sorts of different stories and it's arbitrary I think it's actually quite not arbitrary I think the point is that the god of Israel is looking for people who are actually able to help understand what the good and the just way is and when God looks at someone like Moses or Abraham or Jacob or AEL right and sees why this is this is this is someone who's made an effort and has actually come up with something that I didn't think of for how we can achieve Justice you'll notice that that I didn't think of we won't have time to talk about it now we'll have to talk about at some other time but the god of Israel in Hebrew Bible is not unchanging and all knowing in advance he's he's simply not in these stories what to make of it is a different question but in the biblical stories he's not that that comes to us from Greek Philosophy from Greek theology the god of Israel looks at someone like uh Abel who Rebels against the the the instruction to to to serve the soil and become a farmer and he says I see that this creature this person this man is or this woman is is struggling not just to resist and not just out of a desire for good but has actually achieved an Insight that brings the world towards something that's better that I God hadn't thought of before and I I think by the way that the daughters of Tad that that that story should also be seen in that light if you're going to take the risk of wrestling with God and rebelling against God and fighting with god well you'd better be right because if you're not right then then the results might not be so good but the the Bible consistently holds out this very strange and decisively important possibility which again descends to us from Hebrew scripture and not from other sources that that I'm familiar with which is that a human being can take the risk risk God's Wrath Rebel resist even refuse and if he or she has succeeded in identifying something that God then recognizes something is better then that receives honor and respect and love above anything else do you want to add to that I think if there is uh one Greek philosopher I mean Jews admire a awful lot of Greek philosophers but if there's one we really love and and half wish had been Jewish is Socrates because he's always arguing and always asking difficult questions and I find the fascinating the contrast between Socrates and and PES Passover because the citizens of Athens condemned Socrates to death for corrupting the young and what did he do he taught them to ask questions whereas in on PES the thing that every parent has to do is teach your child to ask questions and the lowest of the low is the Sho Your Daily Show the child who doesn't know how to ask you got a good wise son a wicked one a simple one but the lowest of the low is the one who can't ask questions so the question is what's a good question and what's a bad question and it's very interesting we have the wi son's question which is as follows this is from Deuteronomy chapter wherever whatever it is chapter six it shall when your son asks you in future what mean all these laws statutes and Justice judgments that God has commanded you and what does the wicked son ask when your child says to you what does all this mean to you now there are many ways of sep distinguishing between these two the hagad has one the Jerusalem talmud has another however some of our commentators make to my mind the finest distinction of all namely look at the verb in the two sentences the wise son asks the wicked one says in other words the wicked one doesn't really want an answer to the question he's only questioning for the sake of putting down ridiculing and walking away and that I think is the key distinction if somebody asks challenges argues but are willing to listen they really want an answer to the question they are willing to engage in what I had with Bernard Williams the collaborative Pursuit Of Truth then you are part of the conversation and we embrace you okay you know you don't keep everything but you're part of that continuing conversation which is the human embodiment of what I call the oral Torah judaism's conversation with God through the texts of the Hebrew Bible but if all you want to do is put down Challenge and and ridicule and then walk away then I'm afraid that's not part of the conversation and I think that is why you know I I went into the lion's den to see whether you know some of the world's great atheists today are willing to engage in that conversation and I think the truth is that um that is Ultimate you're um you know the the the bottom line of your thing why is the Hebrew Bible important because in Judaism the holiest thing of all is words it's certainly not power it's certainly not numbers it's certainly not might or force and it's not even obedience it's God speaks and wants us to hear to listen to understand and to respond and that sacred conversation which is our continuing commentary on a text that will never be a obsolete so long as human beings still walk the face of this Earth and still aspire to Hope let us be part of that sacred conversation thank you well uh it's very beautiful just to conclude everybody um I just thought I would quote um a great Jewish writer who however was not in every way a good Jew um I'm thinking of Saul Bellow the novelist uh Bellow changed his name from uh he was brought up Orthodox but he changed his name from Solomon to Saul because he thought it Saul was somehow more more American more acceptable to non-jewish society uh and uh he he struggled all his life uh with his his Jewish identity but in his great novel Mr zam's Planet at the end of the of the novel Mr zamler is a bit like Bellow himself he's not a very religious man in the conventional way uh but he is a holocaust survivor he's experienced terrible things and he speaks at the end about God uh he can't quite come to terms with with God but he knows also that he can't do without God and he can't do without the god of Israel and he comes up with one sentence which it seemed to me really resonates in what we've been talking about this afternoon he says the inability to explain is no ground for disbelief just because you can't understand the terrible things in the world just because you can't understand why God wants us to do certain things to be certain to live our lives in a certain way that doesn't mean you should not believe in him and I think we've heard today two remarkable thinkers remarkable writers uh talk about why God's words to us in the Bible are are still as indispensable as they ever were uh and they're indispensable regardless of where we come from what tradition we belong to and what we believe so I'd be grateful if you could all show your appreciation in the traditional way thank you very [Applause] much [Music] oh

Channel: Yoram Hazony

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Length: 78min 38sec (4718 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 23 2012