I very much appreciated Jeremiah Untermans thoughtful response, but still disagree in terms of lower criticism. I will grant that it is not nearly as theologically troubling as higher criticism, but still find it rather dangerous on 3 levels.
1] Even though there is ample evidence that some mistakes might have crept in to our version of Tanach (see Marc Shaipros famous article, later made into a book [
www.yutorah.org]), to think that all of our seferi torah might have gotten wrong is a huge jump to make and should not be thought of the same way as finding a mistake in an early edition of the Ritva or even the Vilna shas
2] I think it is safe to say that Chazal would be horrified by the casual and almost flippant way that people in universities amend the text of Tanach right and left, often not even based on finding other manuscripts, just on the assumption that their reading makes more sense than the current version. For that matter, not everything that we find in a dig should be assumed to be authoritative. The Dead Sea Scrolls should not be equated with the Aleppo Codex.
3]I dont pretend to be an expert in Biblical Criticism, so please correct me if this is wrong, but I believe that lower criticism is not just changing a latter or 2 here and there, but also extends to ideas such as assuming that the space in the passuk in Bershit 35:22 was originally filled with attacks on Reuven for sleeping with Bilah, but the Tanach cleaned it up. These broader applications of lower criticism not only do not have a source in Chazal, theyre antithetical to Chazals approach to Tanach.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/02/2011 01:22PM by mlb.
