“I could never believe in the god of the Bible.”
It’s Torah Thursday, and the parsha is Mishpatim. Let’s stir it up.
This common atheist argument is self-defeating. See, to say that you could not believe in G-d because of the Bible, requires one of two premises, or both: Either G-d is the author of the text, or the Bible accurately characterizes G-d. Either way you go, the idea that you do not believe in G-d because of the Bible is to heep a lot of weight onto the Biblical literature. I say this argument is self defeating because it presupposes the existence of G-d to argue against G-d.
I want to take this slowly to make plain my objection. Anyone who doesn’t believe in G-d because of all the shitty stuff G-d seems to do, say, or endorse in the Bible must first presuppose that all that stuff accurately describes G-d. The argument needs a G-d to argue against G-d. That’s self defeating.
Now, hold up, before you think I’m trying to refute atheism to prescribe theism, let me say this: I don’t think you should believe in G-d because of the Bible either. This is more along the lines of what I’ll talk about in today’s post. My argument is that you should neither ground your atheism nor your theism in the Bible. Whichever way you fall out on the G-d thing, I say don’t form your beliefs about G-d by appeal to the text. If you believe in G-d, awesome; if you don’t, awesome. Let a thousand flowers bloom.
Rather than appeal to the Bible, I’d say base beliefs about G-d in philosophical argumentation, or in the beauty of nature, or in kids’ eyes, or in the restructuring of systems of power to amplify the voices and needs of those historically marginalized and oppressed. I find G-d in the courage to face one’s own mortality or the strength to join a struggle for collective liberation. If G-d is anywhere, G-d surely is there.
If pressed, I’d describe myself as a sort of non-theist. “Don’t you mean agnostic?” Not exactly. An agnostic is someone who suspends belief about G-d. “Maybe there’s a G-d, maybe not, I choose to suspend judgment,” seems to be a fair enough charecterization of an agnostic position. This doesn’t quite fit me. I’d say that a theist is someone who make a claim that G-d exists. An atheist makes a claim that G-d does not exist. An agnostic says maybe G-d exists. As for me, my interest is in the text and the development of rites, rituals, and cultural norms that developed historically alongside the text during its thousand-year period of authorship, editing, redaction, omission, oral history, canonization, and interpretation. I could learn decisive evidence of G-d’s existence/inexistence today, and that knowledge would not alter much about my love of the literature and the study of its development.
That’s what I mean by non-theism. It’s not agnosticism; rather, it’s an approach to the ancient literature that centers the text and its people. “Weren’t the people talking to/with/about G-d? in the text?” Sure, that’s right, but things aren’t so easy. In the Bible we get two creation accounts of Genesis featuring very different characterizations of G-d. The pre-priestly anthropomorphic G-d who pulls up to the garden party to check on Adam and Eve. But before that, there’s the transcendent ruler of the universe G-d who orders the cosmos. Later, the Deuteronomistic G-d of retributive justice, and the Second Temple period G-d of the apocalyptic literature that developed ideas of a divinized messiah and an emphasis on the eschaton, or the end times, drawing from Hellenistic thought.
The Bible, a library of human authored source documents that were shaped by collision with other cultic and cultural traditions in ancient southwest Asia, and later, Roman occupied Judea and Samaria, does not deliver a single portrait of the Holy One, and so, when people complain about the G-d of the Bible, we must ask, to which characterization of G-d is one referring? I push the question upstream and ask, which authorial source are we reading, and how does that source typically portray the Holy One and why? We’ve been getting into this with the Exodus narrative, the P source that gave double portions of manna to respect the sabbath, or the E source that favors Moses as G-‘d’s favored prophet, possibly a northern kingdom framing against the Aaronid priesthood of the south in the J source–not all scholars get on with those particular details of the distinct JEDP sources, but let’s have that one out over coffee.
By centering the source critical approach we also shift our interest, not in a defense of the shitty things G-d seems to be up to in the text, and, of course, we also find compassionate and loving characterizations as well, but shifting to a source critical approach is the non-theist way. I can set my ideas about the Holy One aside and focus on the text and its many authors.
This week’s parsha gets pretty quickly into rules to govern the treatment of enslaved people. See, if we associate G-d with the text, we’ve laid enslavement at G-d’s feet, but if we prioritize communities of authorship, we can engage in discussion with our ancestors. My judaism is accountable to my ancestors and holds my ancestors to account, so when we read in Mishpatim rules for enslaved persons or verses that remind us women were treated as property, we can be reminded that our ancestors were in cultural settings far different from our own. What does justice demand of us? A project of truth telling about our ancestors and a commitment now to be better. And isn’t that what the Torah is? A frame for moral discourse?
The beauty of the text for me is the possibility to join the conversation and to know we’re called to ideals that often we fail to meet. I don’t fear divine retribution because I believe in people, and “we can get better cause we’re not dead yet.” That’s got a high holidays ring to it, doesn’t it? Man, I may be headed to Sheol or I may be headed to hang with HaShem, and if it’s the latter, I don’t think they’ll be mad that I spent more time believing in people than believing in them.
Hitzonim | Outsiders 
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