246 Job Y. Jindo
- For a polyphonic analysis of biblical religion and literature from a Kauf-
mannian perspective, see Israel Knohl, Divine Symphony: Th e Bible’s Many Voices
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003). - As Yochanan Muff s puts it, “only a being in control of nature (including
[God’s] own nature) can act with the freedom needed to involve Himself in the
world of humankind”; Yochanan Muff s, Love and Joy: Law, Language and Reli-
gion in Ancient Israel (New York: Jewish Th eological Seminary, 1992), 6. See also
idem, Th e Personhood of God: Biblical Th eology, Human Faith and the Divine Image
(Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2005), esp. 55 – 60; Moshe Halbertal and Avishai
Margalit, Idolatry, trans. Naomi Goldblum (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1992), 68 – 73. - See E. Urbach, “Neue Wege der Bibelwissenschaft ,” Monatsschrift für Ge-
schichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums (1938): 1 – 22, esp. 3 – 4. - Kaufmann, Golah, 1:22; idem, Toledot, 1:xxiii – iv and esp. 2:41, where he
notes, “It is impossible to ‘explain’ this spark of striking and original creativity. Th e
birth of every novel and original idea happens with an unusual spark, and there-
fore, any attempt to explain it is inconsequential-imaginative.” - Kaufmann, Toledot, 1:xxxix.
- Kaufmann, “Biblical Age,” 14; idem, Mi-kivshonah, 59.
- Cf. Kaufmann, Golah, 1:22.
- Kaufmann’s epistemic stance is reminiscent of a Kantian stance, which is
also espoused by Dilthey; see, e.g., Dilthey, Selected Works, vol. 1, esp. 8, 20 – 21,
248 – 49, 489 – 90. For this and for other reasons, Kaufmann is generally regarded
as Kantian. Note, however, that this stance is already anticipated by Maimonides,
whose work Kaufmann was certainly well versed in; see Th e Guide for the Per-
plexed, from part 1, ch. 71, to part 2, ch. 31, esp., pt. 2, ch. 22, where Maimonides
refers to Aristotle’s metaphysics as well as the axiom of the eternity of the universe
as no more than a mere “speculation.” A caution is thus in order: Kaufmann may
not be so Kantian as he is generally assumed. - Consider Kaufmann’s remarks in his letter to Klausner quoted earlier. As
Kaufmann nowhere advocated the validity of the integration of biblical criticism
into Jewish intellectual life in his Toledot, the demonstration of this validity, for
him, was not an agendum but a natural consequence of the publication of Toledot. - Cf. Jacob Milgrom’s argument according to which the general principles
and rules of the Ten Commandments that may go back to Moses are what underlie
the (composite) Torah canon in general and its laws in particular; Milgrom, “Can
Critical Scholarship Believe in the Mosaic Origin of the Torah?,” in Leviticus: A
Book of Ritual and Ethics (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 1 – 6.