Fact-Checking the Torah -- Reuss' sources

Reuss makes two claims about Jewish scholars that are typical of Christian scholars.

First, he claimed that the Jewish scholars misunderstood Torah.  He said that the Jewish scholars thought that the issue of not cooking a kid in its mother’s milk had to do with the verse about leaving it with its mother for seven days.

I have looked at Mekhilta Parshah Mishpatim Nezikin Section 20, Sifri Parshah Reh Section 51, Mishneh Torah Hilkhot Maakhalot Asurot 9, Bavli Chullin 108bff, Bavli Shabbat 130a, Tosefta, Rashi on Bavli Chullin 113b, Tosafot on Bavli 103b and 113b, and Midrash Rabbah.  There is no such connection.  If any of you know what source Reuss was looking at, ante up.

I suspect that he used a peripheral work, not in the mainstream, or that he copied from a non-Jewish scholar. I have seen the former in the source criticism of David Strauss (about whom I have a funny story and I’ll tell it if you ask), and the latter, of course, is endemic in the work of Philo, such as in his discussion of the Zodiac.

The second canard is Reuss’ claim that the author did not understand his material, that is, that Reuss understands Hebrew better than somebody who could use it spontaneously enough to invent Biblical text.

The problem, however, is with Reuss.  He claims that in Leviticus, where it lays down the rules and then names animals, it first names a wild animal and then a domestic animal.

The problem is that the sequence of animals is: camel, rabbit, hare, hog.

Camels in Torah are always domesticated, naturally enough, for it happened about the 2700s BCE.  Hares are well-known in Europe as wild game.  Europe held wild-boar hunts in medieval times, as well as hunting wild rabbits.  Reuss’ language may be misleading about what he means, but on the face of it, he seems to have thoroughly mixed up the European understanding of the animal world.  Nevertheless, he claims it’s the Jewish authors who don’t know what they’re talking about.

The canard that the Jews don’t understand their own literature occurs in contexts trying to claim that if they did, they would accept Jesus. Everybody I have known to express this canard knew precious little about Hebrew and nothing about 21^st century Biblical Hebrew.

Notice that I’m not claiming Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus. That would mean Reuss wrote knowing that he was wrong. The secret to urban legends is that they propagate because the transmitters don’t realize they are wrong.

It’s been the same for DH these many decades that its transmitters did not realize they were propagating an example of the conjunction fallacy.

So much for the history of DH.

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