Talmudic Thinking and the Bible

Judaism is a tradition of orthopraxy (right action) rather than orthodoxy (right thought). In fact, the tradition seems to demand disagreement of perspective, interpretation and doctrine, as long as the community holds to the sign of circumcision, the sanctification of the Sabbath, and practices such as following the dietary rules (kashrut) and remembering the history of Israel throughout the religious calendar. This is more than simply accepting disagreement -- as the tradition has emerged, agreement seems not only unavoidable, but something to be avoided.

Consider the Hebrew Bible's opening words. In Hebrew, the first three words of Genesis 1:1 are

The words above consist of 14 consonants -- and no vowels. The entire text of the Hebrew Bible was written a millenium before a written vowel system had been invented. The author would certainly have known how to pronounce the phrase, however. In most cases, there is little question. Consider the English phrase:

Th qck brwn fx jmpd vr th lzy dgs bck

But occasionally, there can be ambiguity. If, for instance, we encounter the consonants lvng, we need a context to know if it is leaving, loving, or living. But even a context may not be enough: "She grew tired of his lvng" is still ambiguous.

In the 800s C.E. and after, a system of written vowels was invented by rabbis who carefully copied the text from generation to generation. The system was to be sure that the public reading of the text was performed correctly -- at least, correctly as those particular rabbis saw it. The resulting text looks like this:

The dots and marks above, below and inside the letters indicate a particular pronunciation, and thus indicate what the rabbis believed sentence is meant to say. But, strangely, the vowels on the first two words make the phrase meaningless. There are only two ways to read the consonants (and here we are considering the grammatical rules developed by those same rabbis):

which would give us "In the beginning God created..." or

which would give us "In the beginning of God's creating activity..." The first is creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing); the second assumes something already in existence when God begins his creating process.

The rabbis obviously knew the difference (they created the system, after all). But what they gave us was a text that we have to change in order to make it say something. And herein lies the dynamic. One person can build a strong argument for the first, but another can build a strong argument for the second (and today increasing numbers do). The question of "right" is impossible to resolve. We are left with a never-ending debate.

That is Judaism. For those who are of the community, who share the practices of circumcision, Sabbath, kashrut and the calendar, the purpose of life is not the establishment of answers, but the engagement of questions. What is important, after all, is that two people talk of Torah. Then God is fully present.