Th e Pentateuch as Scripture and the Challenge of Biblical Criticism 213with any literal meaning of the Written Torah. Th e latter is preserved for
the purpose of midrash — determining, or artifi cially “deriving,” from the
sanctifi ed document what was really commanded. Th ough Halivni’s pro-
posal was not without diffi culties,7 its appeal was that it allowed both the
text of the Torah and the history of Israel’s religion to be studied critically,
without denying either the verbal revelation of a “Torah” to Moses or the
divine mandate for preserving traditional law.8
Academic Responses to the Problem
In the second category of responses to Pentateuchal criticism are those of-
fered by historical and literary scholars whose interest in the Bible is aca-
demic and for whom the critical approach to the Pentateuch is a method
of scientifi c investigation to be employed or modifi ed, and its fi ndings are
theories to be proven or disproved according to the weight of the evidence.
Th e fact that Jewish religious teachers did not provide a single, persuasive
solution to the theological issue made the number of biblical scholars to
emerge from the ranks of Orthodoxy small, though not quite so small as
may have been expected. Many traditional Jews entered biblical scholar-
ship but simply steered away from Higher Criticism (that is, from studying
the composition and dating of biblical books), preferring to concentrate
on biblical language, textual criticism, literary art, the history of interpre-
tation, or ancient Near Eastern studies; or they focused on biblical books
other than the Pentateuch. It needs to be stressed, therefore, that Jewish
scholars have been intimately involved with biblical studies in all of its fac-
ets, and what follows pertains only to the area of Pentateuchal criticism.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Enlightenment had
spread across Europe, and critical biblical scholarship had begun to de-
velop its characteristic features. Jewish scholars, however, were late to enter
the fi eld. Only aft er Jewish interest in the Bible, which had been on the
wane for several centuries, was stimulated and new opportunities for secu-
lar learning were opened up by western European countries to their Jewish
residents, leading to a late eighteenth-century Jewish Enlightenment (Has-
kalah), did Jewish activity in the fi eld begin to emerge.
Probably the fi rst Jewish scholar to enter, rather than shy away from (or
worse, simply dismiss), Pentateuchal studies was the German-born Brit-
ish rabbi M. M. Kalisch (1828 – 1885).9 Th is remarkable scholar, trained in
traditional Jewish learning, wholeheartedly embraced the critical approach