Joshua Berman just published a new essay on his site in which he more or less summarizes his book “Created Equal” and then proposes a “watchmaker argument” for the existence of God that firstly the intellectual quantum leap to come up with Jewish theology in the ancient world was just too big, secondly the theology serves no interest group, so who would have promoted it and thirdly that whoever wrote the Torah didn’t sign on it or leave any evidence of his existence which is unlike what people tend to do.
Personally I don’t like this kind of argument. What is obvious to one person is not obvious to another and presenting the case for the existence of God or a god as a probability exercise, I think rather misses the point.
God’s existence cannot be proven or disproven. In fact should he exist, then his existence would not be what we call an existence. A transcendental omnipotent everlasting will/intellect/conscience that is everywhere yet nowhere both within and without of the dimensions of space and time – and even there I haven’t even touched on what he really is. Any concept you have of him is pitifully partial and a metaphor. Proving God’s existence is unhelpful religiously, pointless scientifically and in my opinion unnecessary to the man of faith who integrates God’s messages to his life. If I was waiting for divine retribution or reward I would have given up doing mitzvot long ago.
Reading Berman’s book I came to a different conclusion. To me it seemed all of a sudden more understandable where the Torah was coming from and why it is the way it is. It is the state political manifesto of a nomadic people who believe in independence and dignity and reject hierarchical tyranny. An antithesis of all political thought before it.
The Torah is truly a remarkable document way ahead of its time and revolutionary to this day. The interest group that it served were the non stratified nomad clans that comprised the Hebrew public and were determined not to create another Egypt. The fact that “authors” of the Torah remain anonymous is just witness to the greatness of the vision of a divinely ordained code of equality for a divinely freed nation servant to no other than their God and to which no human can sign his name.
Also the Torah serves the Kohanim in Jerusalem who might want to ban all the other gods and focus everyone on their religion…
PS: I roughly read through the essay now.
The Bible actually has kings playing a major role in religious ceremony for example at the dedication of the temple the moving of the Ark of the Covenant etc. And Moses isn’t a common man or a priest, he is the chief or king. Likely the role of kings in Judea was even bigger than the Bible written and/or edited by “prophets” would like to admit.
More evolution perhaps than revolution. But I fully agree that a bunch of escaped slaves and nomads settling down would likely formulate a law that tried to limit the power of the king.
PPS – The Book of Psalms is another example of the religious role of the King that I meant to mention. Most of them are ascribed to David and they are often prayers of the King to God often to save himself in battle or whatever.
The way I’m seeing it is that the whole king thing is really a concession and counter to the original idea. The Judge was more the kind of leader that the Torah would seem to promote and Moses and Joshua were more modelled on that line. They were not hereditory and they did not have powers of royal decree above the law. The idea of a king as it developed – a divinely chosen dynasty which has turned into a major foundation stone of Jewish theology – seems to be a later idea, adopted from contemporary societies. It certainly isn’t echoed in the Humash. All it says is that if want a king “like everyone else has” then go ahead, and then tries to mitigate the damage.
It’s a good point that Moses and the judges weren’t hereditary positions according to the Bible (but the Kohanim were). Of course the kings of Egypt weren’t strictly hereditary either. Each dynasty represented a different ruling family. Similarly Roman emperors weren’t strictly hereditary either or even very much hereditary.
I think we don’t really know the answer to these questions. The only source we have that can provide any evidence on this is the Bible. The limited other letters and inscriptions etc. are not of any use. Whoever wrote the Bible was opposed to the idea of powerful kings and permanent slaves and Jewish law as practiced in the much later period of the Mishna of course reflects this. But we don’t know if hereditary chiefs and kings came first before the formulation of laws to limit the power of the king and establish a rule of law or vice versa as the Bible says. Everyone orthodox or not agrees that much of the history (post-Moses) was written a long time after the events.