short takes

[cellio]

One of the cats is apparently taunting Dani.

A few months ago, Baldur started going off early in the morning (6ish), meowing in the bedroom. I've been chasing him out and, if it happens a second time, throwing him out and closing the door. This has been happening on a regular basis -- not necessarily every day, but most of them.

Dani left for Origins (gaming con) on Wednesday and returned Sunday. Baldur did not do this even once during those four days. This morning, he was back to normal.

Heh. Baldur is yanking Dani's chain, it appears. I wonder why.



Sunday dinner last night was just three of us; Dani had spent the last several days around a convention full of people, so he bowed out, and the other regulars were busy with various things. So Ralph, Lori, and I sat around chatting about various things, including a fair bit of D&D geeking. (We've decided what to do about polymorph and templates.) Ralph made wonderful steaks on the grill. I've never learned the art of cooking steaks -- I can do good things with roasts, with birds, with stews and soups and chili, but steaks elude me. Ralph has the knack.

Dani did not come home from Origins with many bags of games this year. It was apparently a slow shopping year. :-) He did play some interesting games, but didn't find them for sale.

I spent some of Saturday studying the Torah portion I'm chanting next month. It's a longer portion than I would have bitten off on my own initiative, but it's managable. So far it's going fairly well, and I've internalized a couple more of the trope symbols.

Today while studying with my rabbi we came to the justification in the talmud for all of the Torah and all of the oral law having been given to Moshe at Sinai. (I actually anticipated where the argument was going, and I think my rabbi was pleased that I saw it before we got there.) I had not realized before that according to this argument all of scripture, not just all of torah, was given at Sinai. In other words, that collection includes prophets and writings. That's an idea I'm having trouble with. (Berachot 5a, for those who care.)

Comments

[geekosaur]

I had not realized before that according to this argument all of scripture, not just all of torah, was given at Sinai. In other words, that collection includes prophets and writings. That's an idea I'm having trouble with.

Cf. my comments to amergina about "oral Torah" (which you may have missed, as it was a reply to an old thread, here).

According to what I've been reading, written Torah consists of the 5 Books of Moses, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa, 24 books total; oral Torah was committed to paper much later as the Mishnah, which became the core of the Talmud; and both were given at Sinai, although the oral Torah changed over time and was expected to do so, as the "adaptive" part of the Torah, and this "adaptive" function was why the Talmud was written the way it was.

[cellio]

Thanks for the pointer; I did miss the other comment.

I had been under the impression that written Torah was the five books of Moses, not the entire Tanakh. (Tanakh = Torah, Nevi'im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (writings).) Oral torah, as you say, is mishna and later the rest of the talmud; tradition is that all this was given at Sinai. The surprise to me was that "all this" supposedly includes all of the Tanakh.

An Orthodox friend once explained to me that it wasn't so much that every bit of the oral torah was given, but that the rules for deriving it and the starting points were given. (He referred to the written torah as sort of like the "chapter headings", with the oral torah being rules for expanding that.) The rabbis of the talmud did innovate; I know of seven things that they just plain added without any basis in written torah. But the vast majority of oral torah is tied into the written torah in some way.

What have you been reading, out of curiosity?

[geekosaur]

Abraham Cohen's Everyman's Talmud. I can provide citations, but not right now as I'm at work and the book is at home; for now, suffice it to say that in its discussion of written Torah it comments that the Five Books of Moshe are "commonly referred to as the Torah" while claiming that the term "Torah" applies to the whole of the Tanakh. It then goes on to show various Rabbinical arguments about what books other than the Five were to be included.

(Its comments about oral Torah are in the Introduction, in an overview of the history of the development off the Talmud.)

[geekosaur]

Okay, citation. I misremembered; it does not specifically state that it applies "Torah" to the entire Tanach, but implies it in several ways:

Ch. 4 ("Revelation"), section IV ("The Written Torah"), p. 141, 2nd. paragraph: "In the last citation we have the three sections into which the Scriptures were divided: Pentateuch (often referred to specifically as Torah), Prophets, and Hagiographa. The last two are sometimes quoted under the designation of Kabbalah (tradition) (R.H. 7a)."

P. 141, last paragraph, a sort of negative reference: "A tradition tells that `the Torah (i.e. the Pentateuch) was given originally in separate scrolls'..." — clarifying what "Torah" applies to here because the rest of the book suggests otherwise.

P. 145, last paragraph: "It was an accepted dogma that the Torah was inspired by God. (...) Especially with respect to the Pentateuch it was held that every word of it was verbally inspired."

I will note that the terminology used in Everyman's Talmud seems to me like it's geared more toward Christian than Jewish readers; quite possibly Cohen chose to present Tanach as "Torah" rather than introduce unfamilar terms (N.B.: for some reason I associate the term "Pentateuch" with Catholicism). Although he also uses the term "Scriptures" to refer to the same text (as quoted above), so it's still not entirely clear what he intended. In general, however, when the book refers to "Torah" it means the whole of Scripture i.e. the Tanach); whenever it refers to the Five Books of Moshe, it uses the term "Pentateuch", and when quoting another source which uses "Torah" in that sense it inserts a parenthetical explanation.

[goljerp]

for some reason I associate the term "Pentateuch" with Catholicism

Hm. Not sure why that would be.

I personally like the sound of the word "Pentateuch". It's a dactyl (at least, the way I pronounce it, it is), and it sounds kinda cool. I'll use it over "Chumash" any time. (I know this is not technically correct as I'm using it to describe a book which has the torah + haftorot [selections from the prophets which are read after the Torah on Saturdays and holidays] -- but I don't care. Pentateuch, Pentateuch, Pentateuch.)

[goljerp]

Sinai was an extraordinary experience in the rabbinic imagination. There's a midrash (I'm not sure where) that says that everything was given at Sinai: not just the complete TaNaKh[1] , not Tanakh + Mishnah, not even Tanakh + Talmud, but everything, including the insight that someone studying somewhere had just now.

[1] TaNaKh = Torah-Nevi'im-Kethuvim = 5 books of torah+prophets+"The writings" (Psalms, Esther, etc.)

[cellio]

But if everything was given at Sinai, wouldn't that include the midrash where Moshe travels forward in time, observes a study hall, and is utterly confused by what he hears because the laws being cited are unfamiliar? If that midrash was given at Sinai, it wouldn't have been able to happen as stated -- temporal-anomoly time, batman! :-)

[goljerp]

Oh, that's easy.

Moses was up on Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights, right? Well, he popped forward in time sometime during that duration, before he was given that midrash.

Now the tough part is if this bit of torah was given before he popped forward in time. :-)

(Actually, I think that there are very few discussions about when, exactly, something was given at Sinai.)

[geekosaur]

That was mentioned as well, rationalized as cellio said: that it was more the "intent" that was given, and that it energizes all belief. (FWIW, this interpretation is carried over from Judaism into the Christian view of the Holy Spirit (which differs somewhat from the Jewish one), and the Shi'i "withdrawn" Twelfth Imam.)