Fact-Checking the Torah -- a new fallacy?

You’re reading this because you want to know what to do now that your favorite urban legends, as well as those of other people, have been discredited by facts or logic.

One is that you could cry interpretationism. That’s a fallacy which says you don’t have to take my same fundamental positions and therefore you don’t have to agree with me that the way to interpret Torah is as the basis of Jewish law and culture.

You’re right. But interpretationism cuts both ways. I’ve been in online or other conversations where the other party expects me to agree with them, no matter what they say to bolster their claims. One tried calling names because what convinced him (commentaries based on bad translations) didn’t convince me.

But of course, that’s not you. You wouldn’t call names.

Interpretationism comes from the field of criticism, mostly the field of art criticism. It says the critic doesn’t have to take into account the artist’s upbringing or lifestyle at the time a work was created, in writing a critique.

That means the critique wholly relies on the critic’s point of view.

So what? They have freedom of speech.

Of course they do. What they don’t have is freedom of belief – my belief. They’re not entitled to shape my opinion if they rely on outdated information, commentaries or bad translations.

In fact Joel Baden of Yale is taking DH into the field of art criticism, but with a difference.

First, Baden assumes the four documents. That’s not exactly starting from scratch, and you now know that the concept is false in a number of ways.

Second, as Susan Niditch points out, Baden preserves a Grafian isolation (my phrase, not hers) about which I’ll say more a few posts from now.

Third, Baden retains the redactor, which DH only needed because of its presumption of the four documents.

Fourth, Baden holds that some parts of Torah contradict others. A-ha! You say.  You never talked about what DH definitely calls contradictions.

No more I did. That’s for next week.