{"id":58018,"date":"2017-06-21T16:29:12","date_gmt":"2017-06-21T21:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/?p=58018"},"modified":"2017-06-29T14:34:21","modified_gmt":"2017-06-29T19:34:21","slug":"history-allegory-really-doesnt-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/inspiration\/history-allegory-really-doesnt-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"History or Allegory? It Really Doesn\u2019t Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

I fielded a question recently from someone who had read a book by a certain author and was confused because this author had presented certain incidents from <\/span>sefer Bereishis<\/span><\/i> (the book of Genesis) as allegorical. The questioner had learned these things as literal history and wanted to know which things actually happened and which were stories presented for the moral lessons they teach. I assured him that our tradition is indeed to consider the narrative in <\/span>sefer Bereishis<\/span><\/i> as literal history but if someone considers certain things to be allegorical, that is not in and of itself heretical.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is territory that I have tread before, in <\/span>The God Papers<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and <\/span>The God Book<\/span><\/i><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span>In <\/span>Moreh Nevuchim<\/span><\/i> (<\/span>Guide for the Perplexed<\/span><\/i>), Maimonides discusses the debate between the Jewish belief that the universe was created and the then-prevalent scientific position that the universe always existed. (It may surprise you to learn that this was not only a debate in the Rambam\u2019s day but even until modern times. The Big Bang theory was not widely accepted even among scientists until the 1970s.) Obviously, Rambam ascribed to the Biblical creation account but he makes a surprising statement. He says that if it were definitively proven that the universe always existed, it would not pose a theological quandary. All that would mean is that the creation account, which we always assumed to be literal, is actually an allegory. (<\/span>Guide<\/span><\/i> II, 25)<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting to note that the difference between a created universe and an eternal universe is infinite, while the difference between a 6,000-year-old universe and a 15-billion-year-old universe is finite. Judaism won the big battle: science now agrees with us that the universe was created. The difference of a few billion years is merely quibbling over the details. If the Rambam wouldn\u2019t get bent out of shape over an infinite percent difference, our current scientific debate would barely pique his interest at all. And yet, for so many, this issue presents a serious crisis of faith!<\/span><\/p>\n

In truth, there\u2019s a lot of gray area between the \u201cdefinitely literal\u201d and the \u201cdefinitely allegorical.\u201d Let\u2019s look at the prophets. Isaiah chapter 20 says that God had Yeshaya (Isaiah) walk around for three years barefoot and naked except for a loincloth. The Radak says that Yeshaya didn\u2019t actually do this, he saw it in a vision. The Bible describes God as having the prophet Yechezkel (Ezekiel) perform a lot of symbolic tasks that might seem pretty crazy to us, like eating a scroll (chapters 2-3), lying on his side for over a year (chapter 4), and more. The consensus of commentators is that these things did not actually occur. Rather, they are things that Yechezkel saw in visions that the Bible describes allegorically as if they really happened.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, we must consider the famous incident of the \u201cvalley of dry bones\u201d in Ezekiel chapter 37. This chapter describes how Ezekiel saw a valley full of dry bones reattach themselves, get covered with muscles, sinew and skin, and get up. (This story was the inspiration for a familiar song: \u201cthe knee bone\u2019s connected to the leg bone, the leg bone\u2019s connected to the hip bone\u2026.\u201d) One might be tempted to consider such a thing allegorical but the predominant tradition is that this story literally happened. Rabbi Yehuda ben Beseira, one of the Sages of the Talmud, claimed not only to be descended from one of these revived skeletons, but to be in possession of that ancestor\u2019s tefillin (Sanhedrin 92b).<\/span><\/p>\n

There are, of course, times when we don\u2019t know for sure whether something is history or allegory. One noteworthy example is the entire Book of Job. The Talmud (Baba Basra 15a-b) has a multi-pronged debate about when Iyov (Job) lived. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says that Iyov lived in Moshe\u2019s day; Rabbi Yochanan and Rabbi Eleazar say that he was one of the Babylonian exiles; Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korcha says that Iyov lived in the time of Esther; others say he lived at the time of Yaakov. There are still other opinions.<\/span><\/p>\n

The most surprising opinion, however, may be that Iyov never existed at all! According to this opinion, the entire story is a parable taught for the lesson it imparts. A similar (but slightly different) opinion appears in the Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 57). There, the scholar Resh Lakish opines that Iyov was an actual person but that this story is a work of historical fiction, the same way that our legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood are works of fiction based on people who actually lived.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is the Book of Job a work of literal history? Historical fiction? Pure allegory? There seems to be no consensus on this one \u2013 it\u2019s completely user\u2019s choice!<\/span><\/p>\n

There are times when it actually would be problematic to take things literally! I\u2019m talking about such verses as \u201cThe Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I stretch My hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it\u201d (Exodus 7:5) and \u201cI will surely hide My face on that day because of all their evil\u2026\u201d (Deut. 31:18). Does God have hands? Does He have a face? (Consider Exodus 33:23: \u201cI will remove My hand and you will see My back but My face will not be seen.\u201d That verse has hands, a face <\/span>and<\/span><\/i> a back!) One of Maimonides\u2019 thirteen principles of faith, as paraphrased in <\/span>Ani Maamin<\/span><\/i>, is \u201cI believe wholeheartedly that God has no body and physical limitations do not apply to Him. There is nothing resembling Him.\u201d In such a case, taking things literally would be heretical!<\/span><\/p>\n

So there are things in Torah we take literally. There are things in Torah we take allegorically. There are things we just don\u2019t know about. And there are even things we\u2019re not permitted to take literally! Clearly, what\u2019s literal and what\u2019s allegorical is not black-and-white but a huge mosaic of gray tiles in a multitude of shades. (Laws, of course, are literal. \u201cThou shalt not kill\u201d means do not kill!)<\/span><\/p>\n

So, if I read a book or hear a speaker who takes something as allegorical that I have always considered literal, that doesn\u2019t make him a heretic. We both draw lines between Biblical history and Biblical parable, he just draws the line somewhere different from where I do.<\/span><\/p>\n

However \u2013 and this is crucial \u2013 this does not give us <\/span>carte blanche<\/span><\/i> to disregard everything in the Torah that disturbs our 21<\/span>st<\/span>-century sensibilities by exiling it to the Land of Parables. Remember when Maimonides said that if the eternity of the universe were proven he would consider the creation account to be an allegory? That\u2019s not the end of his thoughts on the matter. He continues, \u201cThe eternity of the universe has not been proven and we do not abandon the literal understanding of Biblical verses in order to accommodate a theory\u201d (<\/span>Guide<\/span><\/i> II, 25 again).<\/span><\/p>\n

You and I are not the Rambam. (At least I\u2019m assuming you\u2019re not!) We are not at the paygrade to decide that things are allegorical if doing so contradicts our <\/span>mesorah<\/span><\/i>. Even the Rambam said he would not do so without a 100% ironclad compelling reason! (That\u2019s a good thing: the scientific theories of his day were pretty compelling but they were eventually disproven.)<\/span><\/p>\n

If our <\/span>mesorah<\/span><\/i> says that something is history and someone chooses to believe that it\u2019s a parable, it\u2019s not heresy. They may be wrong but that\u2019s okay; people are allowed to have ideas that are wrong. But just because it\u2019s not heretical, that doesn\u2019t mean that the rest of us should go out of our way to be wrong, too. If and when something requires reevaluation, there are those who are qualified to reevaluate it, though such people are few and far between. I am fairly confident that none of the people at that paygrade are reading this article. I know for a fact that no one at that paygrade wrote it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I fielded a question recently from someone who had read a book by a certain author and was confused because this author had presented certain incidents from sefer Bereishis (the book of Genesis) as allegorical. The questioner had learned these things as literal history and wanted to know which things actually happened and which were<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration"],"yoast_head":"\nHistory or Allegory? 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