It amazes me that Rabbi Mordechai Breuer (1921-2007), a German-born Israeli expert on the Hebrew Bible and great-grandson of neo-Orthodoxy founder Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, embraced aspects of what is considered the heretical “Documentary Hypothesis.” Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918), introduced this hypothesis that the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) was written by different human authors and was edited to bring the texts together as a coherent whole, even with contradictions. Biblical commentators such as Rashi and Abraham Ibn Ezra reconciled the contradictions. But in the modern epoch, academic study of the Hebrew Bible attributed these conflicting texts to different human sources.
A divine contradiction
Rabbi Breuer defends the Divine origin of the text, yet, at the same time, he argues that the Documentary Hypothesis is based on “compelling evidence” and “proofs that cannot be refuted.” God is presenting these contradictions in the text as a technique of multivocal communication, conveying different ideas that are not to be reconciled, but understood as representing Divine complexity. Rabbi Breuer called this “Aspects Theory.”
Aspects Theory is ingenious; a way for a believer in the Divine origin of the Torah to accept modern historical and literary biblical scholarship. The historian is not betraying Judaism but uncovering different messages that God conveys in the text.
A different approach
I first discovered Aspects Theory only recently in Rabbi David Harbater’s study of the contradictions in the first 11 chapters in the Book of Genesis. His 2023 study, published by Gefen and titled, In the Beginnings, is a detailed and eye-opening investigation of the first book of the Torah – from the two contradictory accounts of the creation of humans to disparities between different genealogies.
To Rabbi Harbater’s credit, he takes a “Big Tent” approach in his study, accepting both proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis and those of the Aspects Theory, thereby making the text accessible to all readers. But Aspects Theory fuels Rabbi Harbater’s insights into the many worldviews hidden within the text.
Most impressive is his presentation of different ideas conveyed in the genealogies of Genesis before Noah and the Flood, usually ignored by students of the Hebrew Bible as being of little interest. While the genealogies put most of us asleep, Rabbi Harbater deciphers their contradictions as God’s different views of the nature of humankind.
TO WANDER outside of Genesis and Rabbi Harbater’s purview for a moment, the contradictions in the Ten Commandments – the version in Exodus 20 and that in Deuteronomy 5 – have always bothered me. For the followers of the Documentary Hypothesis, the different reasons for observing Shabbat can be explained by attributing them to two different human authors.
But Rabbi Breuer’s theory is also compelling. In Exodus, Shabbat is a day of rest to remember and imitate God’s rest after completion of Creation. In Deuteronomy, Shabbat is a day for remembering the Exodus from Egypt, how slaves could rest because they were now free. God presents two reasons for Shabbat: the universal and the particular (national). Shabbat is too complex to present only one reason for its observance. It would be inadequate.
As a student of history, I find the Documentary Hypothesis – it has been challenged but its basic structure has remained intact – to be compelling. The history of how the Hebrew Bible came together as a text over a millennium is convincing and fascinating. To accept the Documentary Hypothesis is to enter a world of heresy that challenges the Divine origin of the Torah. Those of us from religious backgrounds that stressed the origin of the Torah in God, find ourselves later to be in the realm of the epikores (heretics). But it is impossible to ignore 200 years of academic study of the Hebrew Bible’s history.
Yet, much can be said for Rabbi Breuer’s Aspects Theory. It acknowledges the contradictions in the text as planted by God to convey His complexity and multiple messages, all true. Rabbi Harbater’s In the Beginnings introduces Aspects Theory in a convincing presentation that has made me think twice about the Documentary Hypothesis.
I will never give up on the historical reconstruction of these texts. But attributing the contradictions to the many voices of God enriches our understanding of the Torah and imbues God with a complexity that is missing if we paper over differences in the text. Aspects Theory is also valuable in its willingness not to ignore legitimate modern scholarship of the Hebrew Bible. A Judaism that simply ignores this is a Judaism that is weak and cannot stand up to the challenges posed by modernity.
The writer is a rabbi, essayist, and lecturer in West Palm Beach, Florida.