The Latest From Mark
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Do the Torah’s Immoral Laws Discredit God?
Out of respect for the supreme value of moral autonomy, God elected to accept his chosen people where they stood, moral warts and all. Rather than instantly accelerate their progress to some arbitrary point along an infinite continuum, he gave them—and through them, all of humanity—a road map that would guide them to their final…
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The Hebrew Bible Embraces Pluralism and Rejects Dogmatism
I present here an excerpt (lightly edited) from chapter 6 of my Come Now, Let Us Reason Together. This text argues that the many apparent contradictions and inconsistencies found in the Tanakh (the 24 books constituting the Hebrew Bible) show that authentic Judaism is open-minded, pluralistic, and esteems controversy as a uniquely valuable tool in…
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Why We Need Not Take the Torah Literally
In a prior post I have argued that Jews should take the Torah seriously but not literally. I append below a brief essay on this subject excerpted from my Come Now, Let Us Reason Together. It is evident that the insistence by some on a literal reading of the Torah distracts us from God’s message,…