Divine Command Ethics: Jewish and Christian Perspectives (Philosophical Ideas in Debate)

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DIVINE COMMAND ETHICS

The central aim of this book is to determine the response of the classic texts of Jewish tradition to the famous dilemma posed in Plato’s Euthyphro: does God freely determine morality, or is morality independent of God? The author argues that the picture that emerges from Jewish texts is signiﬁcantly more complex and nuanced than most Jewish philosophical literature is prepared to concede. While providing an extensive discussion of the perspective of Jewish tradition on divine command ethics, this book develops a position that is distinct from, and critical of, other views that have recently been advanced in Jewish scholarship. At the same time, the book provides a substantial analysis of some Christian perspectives on divine command ethics. Michael J. Harris has been Rabbi of The Hampstead Synagogue, London, since 1995. He received his doctorate in philosophy from the School of Oriental and African Studies, the University of London. His main areas of interest are Jewish studies, philosophy of religion, and moral philosophy.

PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS IN DEBATE Series Editor: Professor Paul Helm University of London

This series offers fresh examinations of philosophical issues which Jewish, Christian and Islamic philosophers have debated. The debates, which mainly occurred in the medieval period, involve important philosophical issues relating to such themes as time and creation, human and divine action, and the foundations of ethics. DIVINE COMMAND ETHICS Jewish and Christian perspectives Michael J. Harris

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DIVINE COMMAND ETHICS Jewish and Christian perspectives

Michael J. Harris

First published 2003 by RoutledgeCurzon 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by RoutledgeCurzon 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2003 Michael J. Harris All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Harris, Michael J., 1964– Divine command ethics: Jewish and Christian perspectives/ Michael J. Harris. p. cm. – (Philosophical ideas in debate) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Religious ethics. 2. Christian ethics. 3. Ethics, Jewish. I. Title. II. Series. BJ1188.H37 2003 296.3′6–dc21 2002042570 ISBN 0-203-63393-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-63736-4 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–29769–9 (Print Edition)

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FOR MY PARENTS

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements Explanation of abbreviations

1

xi xii

Introduction

1

Divine Command Theory and The Shared Moral Universe of God and Humanity: the analytical framework of the project

3

1.1 Introduction 3 1.2 Some interpretations of DCT 4 1.2.a God’s command as a necessary condition of morality 5 1.2.b Interlude: divine command and divine will 6 1.2.c God’s command as a sufﬁcient condition of morality 8 1.2.d DCT as an epistemic thesis 10 1.2.e DCT as a semantic thesis 15 1.3 Some interpretations of SMU 19 1.3.a ‘Necessary condition’ SMU 20 1.3.b ‘Sufﬁcient condition’ SMU 21 1.3.c Epistemic SMU 21 1.3.d SMU as the notion that God is bound by morality 22 1.4 The appropriateness of raising the DCT/SMU issue in a Jewish context 23 2

Analytic discussion of positions on DCT and SMU in philosophy and contemporary Jewish thought 2.1 Introduction 26 2.2 DCT and SMU in the history of philosophy 27 2.2.a Ockham 27 2.2.b Martin Luther and John Calvin 29

vii

26

CONTENTS

2.2.c 2.2.d 2.3 DCT 2.3.a 2.3.b 2.3.c 2.3.d 2.3.e 2.3.f 2.3.g 2.3.h 2.3.i

3

Other philosophers 31 ‘Modiﬁed’ DCT 32 and SMU in contemporary Jewish thought 36 Yeshayahu Leibowitz 37 Immanuel Jakobovits 40 Marvin Fox 41 Aharon Lichtenstein 42 David Hartman 44 Shubert Spero 45 Abraham Joshua Heschel 46 Lenn Goodman 47 Further supporters of SMU in contemporary Jewish thought 48

Biblical texts

50

3.1 Introduction 50 3.2 The legitimacy and desirability of examining biblical texts 51 3.3 Biblical texts 53 3.3.a Torah as Covenant 53 3.3.b Genesis 3:5 and 3:22 55 3.3.c Genesis 18:17–33 59 3.3.d Genesis 20:2–7 66 3.3.e The Book of Genesis’s assumption of the moral knowledge of some of its personalities: Carlebach’s argument 67 3.3.f Deuteronomy 4:6–8 69 3.3.g Micah 6:7–8 69 3.3.h Biblical treatment of theodicy 70 3.4 Conclusion 70 4

SMU: Rabbinic texts and concepts and post-Talmudic rabbinic thought 4.1 Introduction 72 4.2 Rabbinic texts 73 4.2.a Tractate Yoma 67b 73 4.2.b Tractate Shevuot 39a 76 4.2.b(i) Pre-Sinaitic challenges 77 4.2.b(ii) Post-Sinaitic challenges 77 4.2.b(iii) Talmudic challenges 78 4.2.c Leviticus Rabbah 32:8 80

viii

72

CONTENTS

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4.3

4.4

4.5 4.6 5

4.2.d Tractate Eruvin 100b 81 4.2.e Tractate Gittin 59b 83 4.2.f Sagi’s analysis of the Talmudic treatment of mamzerut 83 Rabbinic concepts 85 4.3.a Derekh eretz 85 4.3.b The Seven Noahide Laws 86 SMU in post-Talmudic rabbinic thought 87 4.4.a Introduction 87 4.4.b Saadia Gaon 87 4.4.c Nissim Gaon 90 4.4.d Maimonides 91 4.4.e Rabbi Judah Halevi 96 4.4.f Nachmanides 97 4.4.g Rabbi Meir Halevi Abulaﬁa 98 4.4.h Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook 98 4.4.i Rabbi Meir Simhah Hakohen of Dvinsk 100 God’s moral nature 102 Conclusion 102

Divine Command Theory in the texts of Jewish tradition

103

5.1 Introduction 103 5.2 Rabbinic texts 103 5.2.a Tractate Yoma 22b 103 5.2.b Tractate Berakhot 33b 106 5.2.c Tractate Kiddushin 31a 108 5.3 Post-Talmudic rabbinic thought 110 5.3.a Don Isaac Abarbanel 110 5.3.b Rabbi Ovadiah of Bertinoro 112 5.3.c Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Levin 113 5.3.d Rabbi Abraham Isaiah Karelitz (‘Hazon Ish’) 115 5.3.e Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook 117 5.3.f Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch 117 5.4 Conclusion 119 6

The Akedah: Genesis 22 and DCT/SMU 6.1 Introduction 120 6.2 Genesis 22: the biblical text as it stands 120 6.3 Interpretations of Genesis 22 in rabbinic and post-Talmudic rabbinic thought 129

ix

120

CONTENTS

7

DCT/SMU and the commandment to wipe out Amalek

134

7.1 Introduction 134 7.2 The biblical commandment to exterminate Amalek as it stands 134 7.3 Interpretations of the commandment to wipe out Amalek in rabbinic and post-Talmudic rabbinic thought 136 7.3.a Traditional Jewish exegesis of the biblical text 136 7.3.b Halakhic treatment of the Amalek commandment 143 Concluding reﬂections

151

Notes Bibliography Index

155 196 205

x

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is based on my doctoral thesis, written as a student at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my supervisor, Professor David-Hillel Ruben. It was his encouragement that ﬁrst led me to embark on my doctoral studies, and his kindness, intellectual acumen and love for both the Jewish and the Western philosophical traditions were a source of strength throughout. David’s inﬂuence is both a necessary and a sufﬁcient condition of this book’s existence. It was Professor Paul Helm’s anthology on Divine Command Theory that ﬁrst aroused my excitement about the ﬁeld while I was an undergraduate philosophy student at Cambridge. To have written this book under Paul’s general editorship has thus been a great privilege, and I have deeply appreciated his important suggestions and his encouragement. I have had useful conversations about divine command ethics with many people. I would like to thank, in particular, Professor Daniel Statman and Rabbi Dr Louis Jacobs for being so generous with their time. I would also like to thank the library staff at the London School of Jewish Studies for their frequent assistance. I am fortunate indeed in serving as rabbi to a congregation, The Hampstead Synagogue in London, which has always encouraged its spiritual leaders to think and write and provided a supportive environment in which they can do so. My deep gratitude is due to the congregation’s President, Mr Michael Haringman, for wholeheartedly continuing this tradition and for his constant interest in my academic work. My children, Yehudit, Nechama and Yonah, have been very patient in allowing me time and space to study and write, as well as being, at other times, the most delightful of distractions. This book is dedicated to my parents, who brought me up in a home where Jewish tradition thrived and the life of the intellect was greatly valued. Their enthusiasm about, and interest in, my academic work has always been deeply invigorating. Michael J. Harris

xi

EXPLANATION OF ABBREVIATIONS

In order to make the argument of the book easier to follow, I list here an explanation of the abbreviations that I use frequently. DCT SMU (DCTNR) (DCTNW)

(DCTSR) (DCTSW)

(DCTER) (DCTEW) (DCTB) (SMUN)

(SMUS)

(SMUE)

Divine Command Theory The Shared Moral Universe of God and Humanity God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act. Either God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act or God’s unrevealed will is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act. God’s revealed Torah command is a sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an act. Either God’s revealed Torah command is a sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an act or God’s unrevealed will is a sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an act. We would have no moral knowledge without God’s revealed Torah commands. We would have no moral knowledge without our access to God’s unrevealed will. Morality depends upon God, and He is absolutely unbound by morality. It is not the case that God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act and it is not the case that God’s unrevealed will is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act. It is not the case that God’s revealed Torah command is a sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an act and it is not the case that God’s unrevealed will is a sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an act. We would have at least some moral knowledge even if we had no revealed Torah commands and no access to God’s unrevealed will.

xii

EXPLANATION OF ABBREVIATIONS

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(SMUB) (M)

(M′)

Not only is morality totally independent of God, but God is bound by it: He ought not to do or command what is immoral. God freely determined morality by an act of His will, made it as it is, when He created the world. He could have made it other than it is; but now that He has made it as it is, He is bound in any later commands or actions by it. God freely determined morality by an act of His will, made it as it is, when He created the world. He could have made it other than it is; but now that He has made it as it is, it can reasonably be assumed that His will regarding morality will remain unchanged.

xiii

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INTRODUCTION

Although questions surrounding divine command ethics have a long pedigree within the history of philosophy and the history of religious thought, philosophers of religion have paid increasing attention to these issues in recent decades, with several important works appearing in the 1980s and 1990s. However, the recent literature has contained little systematic discussion of the perspective of Jewish tradition on divine command ethics, certainly in English. This book aims to provide an extensive discussion of this kind, while developing a position that is distinct from, and critical of, other views that have recently been advanced in Jewish scholarship concerning the stance of Jewish tradition on divine command ethics. At the same time, this work aims to provide a substantial analysis of some Christian perspectives on divine command ethics, drawing from both the history of philosophy and the contemporary philosophical literature. Thus, I refer both to the roots of divine command ethics in Christian thought in some writings of Ockham, Scotus, Luther and Calvin and to the contemporary Christian approaches developed from within the tradition of analytical philosophy by Robert Adams and John Hare. In this way, context is provided for the discussion of Jewish perspectives, similarities and differences between Christian and Jewish perspectives become apparent, and the outlooks of the Christian and Jewish traditions hopefully throw light upon one another. The focus, in most of this book, on speciﬁcally Jewish and Christian dimensions of divine command ethics will hopefully further the central aim of the series of which this work is a part – namely, the discussion of philosophical issues from the perspective of some of the great religious traditions. The approach of this book differs from the prevalent mode of thinking about divine command ethics from a Jewish perspective. Contemporary Jewish scholars who address the issue of the attitude of Jewish tradition to divine command ethics tend to take a rather monochromatic view, though in opposite directions. Some scholars – for example, Immanuel Jakobovits, Isadore Twersky and Marvin Fox – think it clear that Jewish tradition supports Divine Command Theory, the notion that morality depends upon God’s command. Others – e.g. Aharon Lichtenstein, Shubert Spero, Louis Jacobs and Avi Sagi – think it equally clear

1

INTRODUCTION

that the tradition denies this view. This book argues that if a sufﬁciently sensitive analytical framework within which to examine the classic texts of Jewish tradition is developed, the picture that emerges from those texts yields a signiﬁcantly more complex and nuanced stance concerning divine command ethics than most of the contemporary literature is prepared to concede. A somewhat puzzling feature of the contemporary Jewish debate concerning divine command ethics is the frequent lack of reference to directly relevant writings penned by other scholars. By attempting to be much more comprehensive than is much of the literature in detailing positions on divine command ethics that have been taken in the contemporary Jewish discussion, this book aims to accomplish something that has been largely missing in previous analyses, namely, bringing disparate points of view in the contemporary Jewish discussion to bear on one another. The book begins with the seminal dilemma posed in Plato’s Euthyphro: is morality freely determined by God or is it independent of Him? In Chapter 1, the analytical framework of the project is established by identifying and distinguishing several versions of Divine Command Theory (DCT) and of the rival view that morality is independent of God (which I term ‘The Shared Moral Universe of God and Humanity’ or ‘SMU’). I emphasise the importance of the distinction, usually overlooked, between divine command and divine will. In Chapter 2, some relevant positions taken in the history of philosophy, in Christian thought and, especially, in contemporary Jewish thought, are discussed. In Chapters 3 and 4, biblical, rabbinic and post-Talmudic rabbinic sources that apparently endorse SMU are analysed. Deploying the analytical framework developed in Chapter 1, I argue that the somewhat one-dimensional account of the attitude of these texts to DCT/SMU that has often been presented is inadequate. In Chapter 5, rabbinic and post-Talmudic rabbinic sources that seemingly support DCT are discussed. I argue that the complex situation described in previous chapters concerning the attitude of Jewish texts to DCT/SMU is further complicated by the fact that some texts support a strong interpretation of DCT. In Chapters 6 and 7, I consider two central instances of conﬂict between divine instructions and morality. These are the Akedah story (the subject of Chapter 6), which has also received much attention in the Christian tradition (most famously, perhaps, in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling), and the Torah’s commandment to exterminate the Amalekites (discussed in Chapter 7). I argue against Avi Sagi’s recent claim that the ways in which later Jewish tradition dealt with these conﬂicts demonstrate the tradition’s support of SMU. I urge that Sagi’s claim thus provides no compelling reason to revise the conclusions reached earlier in this study. In the Conclusion, some brief reﬂections are offered on the wider question of the relationship between the Jewish tradition and morality.

2

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1 DIVINE COMMAND THEORY AND THE SHARED MORAL UNIVERSE OF GOD AND HUMANITY The analytical framework of the project

1.1

Introduction

In a celebrated passage in Plato’s Euthyphro, Socrates poses the following question: ‘Is what is holy holy because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is holy?’1 The contemporary philosophical literature tends to recast Socrates’s query, which it terms ‘the Euthyphro dilemma’, in monotheistic and more modern terminology. The horns of the dilemma are then refashioned in the following kind of way: is it the case that (1) an act is right because God commanded (or wanted or willed or approved) it, or alternatively, is it the case that (2) God commanded (or wanted or willed or approved) this act because it is right?2 According to horn (1), God – or more precisely His command or will, etc. – determines morality; morality depends upon God. On horn (2), by contrast, morality is independent of God; He commands or wills certain things because of moral considerations that are not contingent upon Him. The central objective of this book is to ask, and to attempt to formulate a response to, a cluster of questions that can initially be expressed as follows: what is the response of the classic texts of Jewish tradition to the Euthyphro dilemma?3 Does (1) or (2) best capture the position of the classic Jewish texts? Is there, in fact, as is usually claimed in the contemporary Jewish literature, one uniform, unambiguous response? The answer that I will argue for includes, as a fundamental component, the claim that the picture that emerges from Jewish texts is signiﬁcantly more complex and nuanced than many contemporary Jewish writers are prepared to

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THE ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE PROJECT

concede. One very important dimension of this complexity has to do with the wide variety of possible interpretations of (1) and (2). My aim in this chapter is to explore some of the possible meanings of (1) and (2) in order to get a sense of the rather broad range of different ideas that (1) and (2) might convey, and in order to highlight the necessity of reﬁning and sharpening (1) and (2). This reﬁnement is crucial for the project, because when we examine Jewish texts in the coming chapters we need to be equipped with an analytical framework that is sufﬁciently nuanced to give an adequate and plausible reading of those texts. To read a given text in the light of the question: ‘What is the attitude of this text to (1) (or (2))?’ is unlikely to be very illuminating. We need, rather, to be able to ask what the view of the text is concerning some much more carefully delineated version of (1) or (2). If we come to the texts with analytical instruments that are too blunt, we are likely both to overlook the subtleties of particular texts and, worse, to ﬁnish up by misconstruing the attitude of Jewish tradition as a whole towards the issues that concern us. Although by no means every possible meaning of (1) and (2) is discussed in this chapter, nor even every interpretation that has been suggested in the literature, I shall attempt to consider a wide enough range of possible readings of (1) and (2) to ensure that we ﬁnish up with an analytical framework that is sensitive enough to facilitate our examination of texts in the coming chapters. The kind of view expressed by (1), in which morality is in some sense dependent upon God, usually focuses on divine commands and is therefore frequently called ‘Divine Command Theory’ or ‘Divine Command Morality’. I shall henceforth term it ‘DCT’. (1) as it stands expresses a rough and rather strong form of DCT; there are, however, as already indicated, numerous more precise interpretations, and there are also weaker interpretations. The kind of view expressed by (2) is sometimes referred to by the term ‘autonomy’. I prefer to term it ‘The Shared Moral Universe of God and Humanity’ and shall henceforth refer to this kind of position as ‘SMU’.4 Again, (2) expresses SMU only in broad and rather strong terms; there exist both more exact readings and weaker readings. We are now equipped to reformulate the central question of this book as: What is the position of the classic texts of Jewish tradition on the issue of DCT versus SMU? And we already have a strong inkling that the answer will depend partly upon what versions of DCT and SMU are intended.5 I now turn, then, to an analysis of some possible meanings of DCT and SMU. It will be convenient ﬁrst to consider DCT.

1.2

Some interpretations of DCT

The various forms of DCT considered here share with (1) and with each other the core idea that morality is in some sense dependent upon God. I wish to emphasise three further points in introducing section 1.2. First, not every version of DCT discussed in this section is fully explicated and defended. This is a natural outgrowth of the fact that my focus in this work is on the view concerning DCT and

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SMU embodied in classical Jewish texts, rather than on presenting a philosophical or theological case for any version of either one of these conceptions. In some instances, therefore, a fairly brief sketch of the version of DCT in question will characterise it in a manner that is adequate for our later textual analysis. Second, I wish to stress that not every form of DCT considered in this section is, properly speaking, what might be termed a ‘full’ version of DCT. As various philosophers have pointed out, even the idea that, for example, God’s command is a necessary and sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an act (let alone the notions considered below that His command is only one or another of these) fails adequately to convey the dependence of the act’s moral rightness on God’s command.6 Most ‘full’ versions of DCT involve both conveying this dependence and explaining its nature.7 Though some of the versions of DCT discussed in this section are not ‘full’ in this way, I count them as possible readings of DCT for the purposes of this work since they will facilitate our examination of Jewish texts in later chapters. The third introductory point is that since one of the central aims of this chapter as a whole is to develop a sense of the wide variety of possible interpretations of DCT and SMU, I shall sometimes discuss such readings even when they might not reemerge in our subsequent textual analysis. This is particularly true of my discussion of DCT, to which this section is devoted.8

1.2.a

God’s command as a necessary condition of morality

DCT can be understood as the idea that if there had been no divine commands, there would have been no morality. On this view, there is simply no such thing as morality without God’s commands: the very existence of moral values and moral obligations depends upon those commands. For the sake of clarity, we might contrast this with the far weaker kind of view, discussed in section 1.4, on which God’s commands are necessary for human moral activity. We can express this stronger interpretation of DCT in the following way: (3) If action A is right, then God has commanded us to do A. (= If God had not commanded us to do A, then A would not be right).9 Another way of expressing (3) is to say that God’s command is a necessary condition of morality, or of the moral rightness of an act. A formal expression of this idea is as follows: (x) (Rx⊃Cx) where x = an action, R = ‘morally right’ and C = ‘commanded by God’. Let us introduce the following piece of terminology for ease of reference later on: (DCTN) God’s command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act.10

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THE ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE PROJECT

1.2.b

Interlude: divine command and divine will

Thus far, I have usually spoken of DCT as claiming just what its name suggests: that morality depends upon God’s command. Now that we have begun the process of deﬁning DCT more closely, however, let us pause to consider whether there might be more that can usefully be said here. For a consideration of precisely what it is that DCT might assert the dependence of morality upon is a matter that I believe requires attention in the context of my project, though this issue is frequently overlooked both in philosophical discussions of divine command theory11 and, especially, in the contemporary Jewish literature on this subject. A number of philosophers claim that not only does God have certain wants or wishes concerning human moral behaviour that He communicates to us through revelation, but that He also has certain other wishes concerning human moral behaviour that He does not explicitly command, does not inform us about through revelation. The means by which we discover these non-revealed divine wishes is the principle of utility. Thus, William Paley writes: [T]here are two methods of coming at the will of God on any point: I. By his express declarations, when they are to be had; and which must be sought for in Scripture. II. By what we can discover of his designs and disposition from his works, or, as we usually call it, the light of nature. . . . The method of coming at the will of God concerning any action, by the light of nature, is to enquire into ‘the tendency of the action to promote or diminish the general happiness’.12 A similar position is adopted by John Austin13 and by Hugo Meynell.14 The thought that I wish to extract from these philosophers and apply to a Jewish context for the purposes of this project is simply this: not everything that God wishes or wills concerning human moral behaviour is necessarily communicated in a Torah command. From a Jewish perspective (as from some other religious perspectives), it seems plausible that God might have wishes concerning human moral behaviour that He communicates to us in other ways, notwithstanding the centrality of the category of explicit divine command or mitzvah in the Jewish tradition. (I do not wish to claim that it is plausible from a Jewish perspective that the principle of utility is such a means of discerning God’s will.) To this thought of Paley and others, I would add that it seems plausible, from a Jewish viewpoint (as from some other religious viewpoints), that God might also have wishes concerning human moral behaviour that He does not communicate to us at all. Thus, the category of God’s wishes concerning human moral behaviour may be much wider than, though it includes, those wishes of God concerning such behaviour that are communicated through Torah commands.15 It is, therefore, useful to distinguish between three different sorts of divine wants or wishes concerning human moral behaviour. These are: 1) wishes that

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God reveals, commands explicitly, in the Torah; 2) wishes that are not explicitly commanded in the Torah but which God communicates to us in other ways; 3) wishes concerning human moral behaviour which God does not make known to us at all, either by revelation in the Torah or by any other means.16 For our purposes, however, the important distinction will usually be that between 1), on the one hand, and 2) and 3) on the other. For a divine wish in category 1), I shall use the expression ‘God’s revealed Torah command’. For a divine wish in category 2) or 3), I shall employ the term ‘God’s unrevealed will’. Let us return to (DCTN). We can now see that there is an ambiguity latent in (DCTN) that can be teased out. Thus: (DCTN) God’s command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act might mean (DCTNR) God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act. Alternatively, however, it might mean (DCTNW) Either God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act or God’s unrevealed will is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act. (DCTNW) shares with (DCTNR) the assumption that God’s will is a necessary condition of morality, but, unlike (DCTNR), does not insist on God’s will as revealed in the Torah as a necessary condition of morality. It allows the possibilities that 1) God’s will as made known to us in some way other than through the Torah is a necessary condition of morality; and that 2) God’s will which is unknown to us either through the Torah or by any other means is a necessary condition of morality. Transferring to a Jewish context the basic idea of Paley and others that God has wishes concerning human moral behaviour that He does not explicitly command us in Revelation thus opens up a new possibility. That possibility is of a set of variants of DCT according to which morality is dependent not on God’s will as revealed in explicit Torah commands, but dependent on His will nonetheless – a will which may be communicated to us in ways other than an explicit Torah command or which may not be communicated to us at all.17 The reason for characterising such views as ‘variants of Divine Command Theory’ notwithstanding their focus on God’s will or wishes rather than on His command is that they endorse the notion at DCT’s core, namely, that morality is dependent upon God.18 Still more important to underline is my use of the expression ‘set of variants’. I employ the term ‘set’ here because ‘unrevealed will’

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DCT surfaces not only in the context of ‘necessary condition’ DCT, but also in the cases of various other interpretations of DCT. We shall see this in more detail as our discussion in this section proceeds, but it is worth pausing here in order to deﬁne more fully the parameters of our conceptual framework in this discussion. The core notion of DCT, as stated above, is that morality depends upon God. If we are attempting to develop an analytical framework in order to sharpen our later reading of Jewish texts, it is worth considering what are the precise parameters of the conceptual possibilities of this core notion of DCT. It is an obvious point – though one often overlooked in both the philosophical and the contemporary Jewish literature on our topic – that there are three sets of conceptual possibilities contained within the core notion of DCT. For that notion consists of two relata, namely God and morality, in addition to the relationship of dependence that is claimed to exist between them. It follows that the parameters of the conceptual possibilities latent in DCT are deﬁned not only by the range of possible interpretations of the relationship of dependence between the relata but also by the range of possible interpretations of the relata themselves. There are, thus, three axes along which possible versions of DCT can be generated. As stated earlier, the aim of this section is not to provide an analysis of every possible version of DCT. I do not aim in this chapter to exhaust the conceptual possibilities inherent in the notions of DCT and SMU, merely to consider enough of them both to develop a sense of the richness of the interpretive possibilities enjoyed by these notions and to develop an adequate analytical framework for our subsequent reading of Jewish texts. What I wish to emphasise, however, is that it is worth being clear about what the full boundaries of the range of conceptual possibilities are. For obviously, once we have properly grasped the precise nature of these boundaries, we can appreciate that there might be more such possibilities than we originally realised, especially ones that might be helpful to our later textual discussion. And in particular, I wish to stress, a more careful analysis of the conceptual possibilities inherent in the ﬁrst of the relata of DCT’s core thesis is worth considering. That is why I have highlighted the possible reading of DCT as the dependence of morality on God’s will in addition to the standard interpretation that morality is dependent upon God’s command.19 This is not to say that distinguishing between divine will and divine command is always illuminating; merely that it often is. Where I believe that this distinction should be attended to, I shall do so in what follows. In the cases of some of the versions of DCT discussed in this section I do not attend to this distinction. This is not necessarily because the distinction cannot be made in those instances but because it is not necessary for our subsequent textual analysis to focus upon it.

1.2.c

God’s command as a sufﬁcient condition of morality

DCT might also be read as the idea that God’s command is a sufﬁcient condition of morality. Let us term this as follows:

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(DCTS) God’s command is a sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an act. We can also express this idea in the following way: (4) If God commands us to do A, then A is right. (= If A were not right, then God could not have commanded us to do A). In a way that is parallel to (DCTN), (DCTS) can mean either (DCTSR) God’s revealed Torah command is a sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an act or (DCTSW) Either God’s revealed Torah command is a sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an act or God’s unrevealed will is a sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an act. ((DCTSR) and (DCTSW) are consistent.) (DCTSR) seems to lie open to the following objection. Consider the case of the ritual commandments of the Torah. These include such items as the dietary laws, the laws of the Sabbath, the laws of sacriﬁces, and the injunction to eat unleavened bread on the festival of Passover. These ritual commandments appear to produce counterexamples to (DCTSR). This comes out more clearly, perhaps, if we slightly adjust (4) so that it mirrors (DCTSR). Thus: (4′) If God reveals a Torah command to us to do A, then A is morally right. Substituting the last example of a ritual injunction listed above for the ‘A’ of (4′) yields: (4a′) If God reveals a Torah command to us to eat unleavened bread on Passover, then eating unleavened bread on Passover is morally right. There may be a sense of ‘morally right’ in which the Jewish believer would be prepared to assent to (4a′), but, prima facie at least, it is certainly not the normal sense of ‘morally right’. It appears to be the case that eating unleavened bread on Passover is neither morally right nor morally wrong. One might reply that a secularised view of morality is being presupposed here, but it seems to me that even Jewish believers do not understand eating unleavened bread on Passover to be either morally right or morally wrong; rather they understand it as a different and independent kind of obligation, as a purely religious or ritual

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duty. What the ritual commandments appear to show, then, is that there are actions that God commands which are outside the moral realm and concerning which it is not the case that they are either morally right or morally wrong. In order to meet this objection, we might attempt to reformulate (4′) in the following way: (4″) If God reveals a Torah command to us to do A, and A is either morally right or morally wrong, then A is morally right. (4″) seems successfully to block the objection from ritual commands. Since these commands are outside the realm of the moral, (4″) does not attempt to claim that they are morally right. A difﬁculty with (4″), however, is that it assumes the independence of the parameters of the moral realm from God’s command. On (4″), that A is either morally right or morally wrong rather than neither of these alternatives is independent of divine command. God’s command tells us what the precise moral status of A is, but it already possesses a deﬁnite moral status. And advocates of the notion of the sufﬁciency of God’s command for the moral rightness of an action may feel that this impinges overly on God’s sovereignty or omnipotence. They may feel, that is, that the idea of the sufﬁciency of God’s command for the moral rightness of an action, which is presumably rooted in recognition of divine qualities such as sovereignty or omnipotence, is fatally attenuated if all that God does is to ‘ﬁll in’ a predetermined moral framework. Advocates of the sufﬁciency interpretation of DCT may prefer to avoid (4″) by attempting to ‘brazen out’ the above objection to (4′). That is, they might insist that God’s command is indeed sufﬁcient for the moral rightness of an act.20 If matters that we might have thought of as ritual, or as in some other way beyond the moral sphere, turn out to belong in the domain of the moral, then so be it (so they might argue); that is merely an expression of God’s sovereignty and omnipotence in the moral arena as elsewhere.

1.2.d

DCT as an epistemic thesis

A further possible reading of DCT understands morality to be dependent on divine command epistemically. That is to say: action A may be morally right independently of God’s command, but it is only through God’s command that we know that it is morally right. This version of DCT can itself be interpreted in different ways. One possibility is: (5)

We would have no moral knowledge without divine commands.

(5) clearly does not deny the existence of morality or moral obligation in the absence of God’s commands. It claims merely that without those commands, we would not know anything about morality. Yet (5) is nevertheless a very radical

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version of DCT as an epistemic thesis. It claims that moral knowledge is totally unattainable by human beings without God’s assistance. For the sake of argument, let us assume that Sagi and Statman are correct in their assertion that the most cogent version of the radical (5) assumes not only that human beings had no moral knowledge at all prior to receiving God’s commands but also that they were unaware of this lack of knowledge.21 On this version, human beings were completely unaware not only of any moral obligations but even of moral concepts. Through divine commands they became aware not only of their actual moral obligations but of moral language itself. Sagi and Statman urge22 that (5), construed even in this charitable fashion, runs into serious empirical difﬁculties. For, they argue, its assumption that the world lacked all moral knowledge prior to God’s revelation is difﬁcult to defend in the light of our knowledge of signiﬁcant human cultures which claim that they attained moral knowledge without divine revelation. This objection might be countered by the claim that the moral knowledge of atheist societies ultimately does rely on divine revelation and that this fact has simply been forgotten in the course of time. Substantiating this counter-claim, however – so Sagi and Statman reply – would require proofs which are neither currently available nor are ever likely to be so. For argument’s sake, again, let us grant all of this to Sagi and Statman. The point that I wish to highlight is that attending to the distinction between God’s unrevealed will and His explicit commands proves illuminating in this context also. For (5) can be taken in two ways. First: (DCTER) We would have no moral knowledge without God’s revealed Torah commands. Alternatively: (DCTEW) We would have no moral knowledge without our access to God’s unrevealed will. (DCTEW) is intended to convey the thought that we would have enjoyed at least some moral knowledge without God’s Torah commands, but that we would not have any moral knowledge without access to His will through our cognitive equipment. (DCTEW), as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, is close to a view which has been articulated by several Jewish thinkers. (DCTEW) enjoys at least signiﬁcant initial plausibility from a religious perspective: presumably, from the religious point of view, we would want to explain any moral knowledge not received through explicit revelation in terms of cognitive apprehension of God’s will.23 Moreover, I wish now to emphasise, the empirically-based objections levelled at (5) by Sagi and Statman seem to have more force when applied to (DCTER) than when directed at (DCTEW). (DCTEW) is able to account for the moral

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knowledge claimed by atheist societies more plausibly, without resorting to the claim that such knowledge ultimately depends on a distant revelation that, ex hypothesi, the atheist society knows nothing about. For (DCTEW), there is no difﬁculty in explaining past, present or future moral knowledge possessed by any human individual or society; such knowledge is readily available through cognitive apprehension of the divine will. Of course, the atheist denies this; but what the atheist denies is at least closer to the issue of God’s existence that is by deﬁnition at stake between the atheist and the theist. That is to say: the atheist would probably be quite happy to concede that if there were a God, He might well make some moral knowledge easily available to human beings through their cognitive faculties. But the atheist, I believe, would be less prepared to admit that (DCTER) was anything more than utterly fanciful. To summarise: even if Sagi and Statman are right about (5)’s implausibility, their objections are cogent only against (5) construed as (DCTER). (DCTEW) seems to possess at least initial plausibility from a religious perspective. Since (DCTEW) does seem plausible despite its extreme claim that we would have had no moral knowledge without our cognitive access to God’s will, let us leave it alone. The question to which I now wish to turn is: granted that (5) in its (DCTER) version is implausible, can it be modiﬁed in such a way as to give it greater plausibility? We shall be able to identify some more moderate versions of (DCTER) if ﬁrst we brieﬂy consider the structure of moral arguments. The structure of a moral argument is as follows: (1) All token acts of type x (e.g. murder) are wrong. (This is the major premise of the argument.) (2) a is an act-token of type x. (This is the minor premise.) (3) Therefore, a is wrong. This suggests two further versions of (DCTER). In the ﬁrst – let us term it (DCTER2) – what we lack without revelation of divine commands is knowledge of the kind provided in (1), namely that all acts of a certain type, e.g. murder, are wrong. (DCTER2) is quite radical. While not as extreme as (DCTER), which claims that we would have no moral knowledge whatsoever without God’s revealed Torah commands, (DCTER2) suggests that although we would have knowledge of moral concepts and moral language without God’s commands, we would not know how to apply these. In the second version – call it (DCTER3) – what we lack without God’s revelation of His commands is knowledge of the kind presented in premise (2). On (DCTER3), we know independently of Torah revelation that (for example) all acts of murder are wrong. What such revelation furnishes us with is the ability to identify which acts count as murder. Without this revelation, we may not have known whether or not killing an assailant in self-defence or killing an enemy in battle or capital punishment count as murder. (DCTER3) appears to be advocated by Saadia Gaon:

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Although reason considers stealing objectionable, there is nothing in it to inform us how a person comes to acquire property so that it becomes his possession. It does not state, for instance, whether this comes about as a result of labor, or is effected by means of barter, or by way of inheritance . . . Besides these, there are many other uncertainties pertaining to this subject which would take too long and would be too difﬁcult to enumerate. The prophets, therefore, came along with a clear-cut decision for each instance.24 There seems to be a serious difﬁculty about the coherence of (DCTER2). (DCTER2) claims that although we would have knowledge of moral concepts and moral language without God’s commands, we would not know how to apply these. But could we indeed have one of these sorts of knowledge without the other? In order to know whether God’s revelation concerning the application of moral concepts is correct, we must at least know that God is good. Thus, before God reveals to us how to apply moral concepts, we would have to know already that we can apply the concept ‘good’ to Him.25 At ﬁrst glance, (DCTER3) has the advantage of avoiding this difﬁculty. If we already know how to apply moral concepts – for instance, if we know that all acts of murder are wrong – and the role of revelation is merely to identify, for example, which acts count as murder, then we already possess sufﬁcient moral knowledge prior to revelation to apply the concept ‘good’ to God. (DCTER3), then, assumes that the following state of affairs obtains: a) human beings know prior to revelation how to apply moral concepts; b) this enables them to know that God is good; c) human beings need divine revelation in order to know which actions are actions of a certain type, and know that God’s revelation concerning this is morally correct. It seems, however, that (DCTER3) runs into a similar problem to that encountered by (DCTER2) earlier in the epistemological chain. For is it indeed possible that we could know that all acts of a certain type, e.g. murder, are wrong, without knowing which acts count as murder? Assuming the validity of the ‘paradigm case’ argument, it appears that our knowledge of the principle that all acts of murder are wrong is inextricably linked with our ability to identify acts of murder; that part of what it is to know that all acts of murder are wrong is to know which acts are acts of murder. If we cannot identify acts of murder, it is unclear in what sense we can be said to know that all acts of murder are wrong.26 I think that it may nevertheless be possible to modify (DCTER3) so that it becomes defensible even assuming the validity of the paradigm case argument. (DCTER3) is problematic assuming the validity of the paradigm case argument if (DCTER3) is understood in the following way: (DCTER3) (i) We know independently of divine revelation that (e.g.) all acts of murder are wrong. (ii) But we have no knowledge whatsoever

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concerning which acts count as murder. (iii) Divine revelation gives us the ability to identify which acts count as murder. Yet the examples given earlier of actions whose status as murder or otherwise we would be unable to determine without revelation – killing in self-defence, killing an enemy in battle, and capital punishment – might justiﬁably be considered ‘borderline’ cases. And they suggest a different, weaker version of (DCTER3), namely: (DCTER3′) (i) We know independently of divine revelation that (e.g.) all acts of murder are wrong. (ii) There are ‘borderline’ cases of actions whose status as acts of murder or otherwise we are unable to determine. (iii) Divine revelation gives us the ability to determine whether or not these ‘borderline’ cases count as murder. (DCTER3′) would appear to avoid the problems encountered by (DCTER3) when faced with the paradigm case argument. (DCTER3′) concedes that part of what it is to know that all acts of murder are wrong is to have a very good idea of what sort of action it is that counts as murder. And this understanding is something that we possess independently of divine revelation. But there is a gap between very good understanding and total understanding, and without revelation there are what might be called, borrowing a piece of terminology from Hart, ‘penumbra cases’,27 actions concerning which we are uncertain whether or not they fall into the category of murder. It is this gap that divine revelation bridges, informing us on which side of the line the ‘penumbra cases’ fall. The notion, central to (DCTER3′), that we could enjoy a very sound knowledge of which actions count as murder while remaining uncertain about instances at the margins of the concept of murder, seems intuitively very plausible. If we know, independently of revelation, that all acts of murder are wrong, it seems to follow that we are able to identify acts which fall squarely within the parameters of the category of murder as acts of murder. If we know that all acts of murder are wrong, we should not experience difﬁculty in being able to identify a clear instance of the unlawful taking of the life of an innocent person as an act of murder. Yet, precisely because acts like killing an enemy in battle and capital punishment share important features with clear instances of acts of murder and do not share other such features, we might be uncertain in these cases. Both this knowledge in central instances, and doubt in penumbral ones, could quite coherently be shared by an atheist: the idea that we might know in most cases but not all which acts count as murder is quite independent of theistic commitments. Moreover, (DCTER3′) as a whole seems to enjoy plausibility from a religious point of view. It is quite plausible that we understand independently of revelation that, for example, all acts of murder are wrong, that this knowledge involves a sound understanding of which acts count as murder, but that without revelation we are uncertain about penumbral cases, which revelation then instructs us about.

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Yet other versions of DCT as an epistemic thesis are possible.28 However, having identiﬁed plausible versions of epistemic DCT both of the ‘revealed Torah command’ and the ‘unrevealed will’ variety, we are probably sufﬁciently well equipped for our later textual analysis. Let us turn, therefore, to consider another major way in which DCT can be interpreted.

1.2.e

DCT as a semantic thesis

DCT might be taken as claiming that: (6) ’x is morally right’ means ‘x is commanded by God’. One way in which (6) can be understood is as a factual statement about the way in which moral concepts are used. In other words, when people use moral expressions like ‘good’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, what they truly intend is statements about God’s commands. This position is discussed by Robert Adams. Let us call Adams’s precise initial formulation (6a): (6a) the word ‘wrong’ in ethical contexts means ‘contrary to God’s commands’.29 (6a) is intriguing, but it faces an obvious objection that is noted by Adams himself:30 even if, in some cases, what people mean by ‘x is wrong’ is ‘x is contrary to God’s commands’, there are clearly very many instances in which this is not the case. For example, atheists who articulate moral judgements plainly do not intend to make statements about God’s commands. Therefore, as Sagi and Statman point out, (6a) faces a dilemma. If it is intended as a report about the way in which moral concepts are used, then it is false. If, on the other hand, (6a) is construed as a stipulative deﬁnition, suggesting how the word ‘wrong’ should be used in ethical contexts (though it seems clear that Adams does not intend (6a) to be taken in this way), then the deﬁnition itself needs to be substantiated in a way that cannot be derived from the actual use of the concept.31 A further objection that may be raised against (6a) relies on G.E. Moore’s ‘open question argument’.32 This argument purports to demonstrate that the meaning of the word ‘good’ cannot be identiﬁed with any natural property. The argument runs as follows: if the meaning of ‘good’ is identiﬁed with property x, then it should make no sense to ask ‘But is something with property x indeed good?’ For that would be like asking: ‘Is a single man one who is unmarried’? – a question which makes no sense, since the word ‘single’ means ‘unmarried’. If it does always make sense to ask ‘Is something with property x indeed good?’, then it follows that the meaning of ‘good’ cannot be identiﬁed with property x. Similarly, the claim of (6a) that the word ‘wrong’ in ethical contexts means ‘contrary to God’s commands’ can be challenged, since the question whether an act that God has commanded us not to do is indeed wrong is always a meaningful question.

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Sagi and Statman counter this objection on the grounds that ‘it does not answer the question of how will it help to convince anyone who believes that an expression conveys the very meaning of the term “good” or of any other term’.33 Yet the rejoinder proposed by Sagi and Statman seems inadequate. The ‘open question argument’ should indeed win over someone who believes that ‘wrong’ in ethical contexts means ‘contrary to God’s commands’, because it apparently shows that ‘wrong’ does not mean that. Rooney suggests a more promising rebuttal of the open question argument.34 Even if ‘a is wrong’ means ‘a is contrary to God’s commands’, it is still meaningful, it still makes sense, to ask whether an act that God has commanded us not to do is wrong. Indeed, for any deﬁnition (or truth of meaning) ‘X is Y’, it does make sense to ask ‘Is Y X?’. Consider the questions: ‘Does a triangle have three sides?’, ‘Is a bachelor an unmarried man?’ and ‘Is un homme heureux a fortunate man?’. Each of these questions makes perfect sense, but each would have to be dismissed as senseless if the objection based on the open question argument possessed any validity. And if the objector’s use of ‘meaningless’ or ‘senseless’ is really a loose way of saying ‘pointless’, then we may respond that none of these questions need be pointless. Coming respectively from a child, a learner of English and a beginner in French, they are not at all without purpose. Neither are these by any means the only possibilities: these inquiries might also come from someone who does not have a full and accurate account of the meaning of the terms in question, or from someone who is mistaken about the meaning of the terms or who has forgotten them. As Rooney puts it: if the divine command theorist is right in his account then his opponents are wrong, and their position is therefore analogous to that of the questioning child, or learner; it is the position of the ignorant, the mistaken, the forgetful, the confused, and so forth. What it makes sense to ask depends in general on the circumstances of the question, and in particular on the level of knowledge of the questioner. If God’s commands really are what makes right whatever is right, then ‘Is what God commands right?’ is a sensible question for some (relatively ignorant) people to ask but not for other (relatively enlightened) people to ask.35 It might be countered that Rooney’s rejoinder to the open question argument shows merely that questions such as ‘Does a triangle have three sides?’ and ‘Is a bachelor an unmarried man?’ make sense only if they are understood as semantic questions. They only make sense, that is, if asked by someone who does not know the meaning of the words ‘triangle’ and ‘bachelor’, such as a learner of English. And we can rephrase the open question argument so that it accommodates this objection, in the following kind of way: (1) If ‘wrong’ means ‘contrary to God’s commands’, then there should be no meaningful non-semantic open question as to whether what is contrary to God’s commands is indeed wrong.

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(2) But such a non-semantic open question is indeed meaningful. Therefore (3) ‘Wrong’ does not mean ‘contrary to God’s commands’. Whether or not the objection to (6a) based on Moore’s open question argument or a reﬁned version of that argument is effective, Adams’s awareness of the ﬁrst objection raised above, that people often manifestly do not mean ‘x is contrary to God’s commands’ when they say ‘x is wrong’, prompts him to suggest a modiﬁed version of (6a): The theory cannot reasonably be offered except as a theory about what the word ‘wrong’ means as used by some but not all people in ethical contexts. Let us say that the theory offers an analysis of the meaning of ‘wrong’ in Judeo-Christian religious ethical discourse.36 Let us express Adams’s modiﬁed position as follows: (6a’) The word ‘wrong’ in Judeo-Christian ethical discourse means ‘contrary to God’s commands’.37 As Adams is aware, (6a′) must still explain how it is that theists and atheists engage in moral dialogue if they are speaking totally different languages. For theists use ‘wrong’ in the sense of ‘contrary to God’s commands’, whereas atheists make no reference to God whatsoever. Adams attempts to show later on in his paper38 that sufﬁcient common ground still exists between these two languages for dialogue to be possible. Whether or not Adams is successful in that task, however, serious difﬁculties with his position remain. We might ﬁrst ask a very straightforward question concerning the truth of (6a′). When Jewish and Christian believers use the word ‘wrong’ in ethical discourse, do they really always mean ‘contrary to God’s commands’? The waters are muddied somewhat by Adams’s employment of occasionally inconsistent terminology. At some points in his discussion, he appears to modify his position signiﬁcantly further than (6a′). (6a′) baldly asserts that ‘wrong’ means ‘contrary to God’s commands’ in Judeo-Christian ethical discourse, but sometimes Adams qualiﬁes this claim. For example, he writes: part of what the believer normally means in saying ‘X is wrong’ is that X is contrary to God’s will or commands.39 Again, near the end of his discussion, Adams says: ‘contrary to the will or commands of God’ is part of the meaning of ‘(ethically) wrong’ for many Judeo-Christian believers.40

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Be that as it may, there must be serious doubts concerning the veracity of (6a’). At one point, Adams says: ‘It is wrong to do X’ will be assented to by the sincere Jewish or Christian believer if and only if he assents to ‘It is contrary to God’s commands to do X’. This is a fact sufﬁciently well known that the known believer who says the one commits himself publicly to the other.41 This seems to be just false. For example, a Jewish or Christian believer might very well hold that the content of ethics is not exhausted by divine commands, that there are many things that are morally wrong that God has issued no commands about. There may, for instance, be matters ‘beyond the letter of the law’, which God’s laws permit but which the believer considers to be ethically prohibited.42 Or there may simply be lacunae where there are things that the believer thinks are wrong but concerning which God has issued no commands. Or consider the sphere of ritual law referred to earlier, e.g. the prohibitions against eating the ﬂesh of the swine, eating leaven on Passover and working on the Sabbath. The Jewish believer takes these actions to be contrary to God’s commands, but may well not deem them ethically wrong. Yet another possibility is that a Judeo-Christian believer might even hold (as I understand Yeshayahu Leibowitz to assert in my discussion of his views in Chapter 2) that there are things that God has commanded that are themselves morally wrong, but that divine commands override morality.43 A further important point – a slightly adapted version of an observation made by Sagi and Statman44 – concerns semantic versions of DCT in general, and therefore applies not only to (6a′) but, equally, to (6a) and (6). This point has to do with the status of semantic forms of DCT as interpretations of DCT. Propositions like (6a′), (6a) and (6) claim that there is a logical equivalence between the term ‘wrong’ and a claim about God, and assert that this equivalence originates in a linguistic usage. But, as mentioned earlier, logical equivalence is too weak to capture the notion of morality’s dependence upon God: DCT (or, at any rate, what I termed above ‘full’ DCT) is ‘asymmetrical’. A ‘full’ semantic interpretation of DCT needs to claim both that (i) x’s being wrong is synonymous with x’s being contrary to God’s command, and that (ii) x’s being contrary to God’s command is explanatorily prior to x’s being wrong. But (6a′), like (6a) and (6), claims only (i) and not (ii); it is symmetrical rather than asymmetrical. Adams tries to resolve this difﬁculty by saying that, on his theory, x’s being contrary to God’s command ‘conceptually precedes’ its being wrong. But Adams does not explain the meaning of this conceptual precedence. The idea of conceptual precedence thus seems to smuggle in kinds of dependence other than semantic dependence, since without them we cannot understand why and in what sense God’s command conceptually precedes moral judgements. If this is correct, then (6a′) (like (6a) and (6)) is either not a ‘full’ version of DCT, or it is ‘full’ but does not claim that the dependence of morality upon God is semantic.

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There is another way in which (6) can be understood, not considered by Adams, which constitutes a different interpretation of DCT as a semantic thesis. (6) might be taken as the claim that: (6b) God freely stipulates the meaning of moral concepts. It is important to underline that (6b) is not merely a linguistic claim. It is not just that God freely decides to assign the word ‘right’ to some actions and the word ‘wrong’ to others; anyone could do that. (6b) makes the stronger, conceptual claim that the concept of right = the concept of being commanded by God. According to (6b), when God commands human beings to perform action A, A becomes right conceptually; the concept ‘right’ attaches to A. A non-moral example helps to clarify the point. That the word ‘bachelor’ means ‘unmarried male’ is merely an empirical and contingent truth. The word ‘bachelor’ might have meant ‘horse’. But that the concept of bachelor = the concept of an unmarried male is an a priori, necessary truth. By the same token, according to (6b), when God commands human beings to perform action A, A’s becoming right is a necessary, conceptual truth. We have now surveyed a number of possible readings of DCT. These readings have varied with how we understand the relationship of dependence between God and morality that DCT claims to exist, and with how we understand what DCT means by ‘God’ here – i.e. His explicit commands or His unrevealed will. We can now turn to a consideration of possible interpretations of SMU.

1.3

Some interpretations of SMU

Earlier, we encountered the following very rough formulation of SMU: (2) God commanded (or wanted or willed or approved) this act because it is right. (2) is intended to convey the idea that morality is in some sense independent of God. This is the core idea of SMU. In this section, I shall consider some different interpretations of SMU. Before embarking upon this, however, an important clariﬁcation must be made. Although the rough formulation (2) is the converse of (1), when setting out and discussing different forms of SMU below I shall intend – and frame – these versions as the denial of the corresponding versions of DCT and not as the converse of those versions. To illustrate by means of a rather broad formulation set out earlier: (DCTN) God’s command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act.

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The converse of (DCTN) is: (SMUNC) The moral rightness of an act is a necessary condition of God’s commanding it. The denial of (DCTN) is: (SMUND) It is not the case that God’s command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act. The versions of SMU that I shall discuss are, in respect of the converse vs. denial issue, modelled on (SMUND) rather than on (SMUNC). My discussion of some different interpretations of SMU in the remainder of section 1.3 is brief, for two reasons. First, we shall be able to characterise these versions of SMU quite easily, since they are simply the denial of some of the versions of DCT which we have already identiﬁed. Second, by now we have a sense of the complexity of DCT and the broad range of possible interpretations that it can bear. Since what I intend by SMU is just the denial of DCT, it is not difﬁcult to imagine the breadth of possible readings inherent within SMU. I shall conﬁne myself, therefore, to a brief identiﬁcation of those forms of SMU that seem most likely to be helpful in our later analysis of classical Jewish texts, omitting, for example, any discussion of SMU as a semantic thesis.

1.3.a

‘Necessary condition’ SMU

In our earlier examination of versions of DCT, we encountered: (DCTNR) God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act and (DCTNW) Either God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act or God’s unrevealed will is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act. The SMU counterpart to these views is: (SMUN) necessary case that rightness

It is not the case that God’s revealed Torah command is a condition of the moral rightness of an act and it is not the God’s unrevealed will is a necessary condition of the moral of an act.

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1.3.b

‘Sufﬁcient condition’ SMU

In our analysis of versions of DCT we encountered: (DCTSR) God’s revealed Torah command is a sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an act and (DCTSW) Either God’s revealed Torah command is a sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an act or God’s unrevealed will is a sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an act. We can now formulate a further version of SMU, namely (SMUS) sufﬁcient case that rightness

It is not the case that God’s revealed Torah command is a condition of the moral rightness of an act and it is not the God’s unrevealed will is a sufﬁcient condition of the moral of an act.

It is worth noting at this juncture that of the three views just enumerated, (SMUS) perhaps enjoys the greatest prima facie religious appeal. For the notion of either God’s explicit command or His unrevealed will being sufﬁcient for morality seems to lead very quickly to the conception of a God who is entirely incomprehensible to us from a moral perspective. On either (DCTSR) or (DCTSW), if God commands the torture and murder of innocent children, then these actions simply become moral requirements. If we are not prepared to accept such consequences, (SMUS) appears initially attractive.

1.3.c

Epistemic SMU

Two epistemic versions of DCT set out earlier are: (DCTER) We would have no moral knowledge without God’s revealed Torah commands and (DCTEW) We would have no moral knowledge without our access to God’s unrevealed will (i.e. we would have at least some moral knowledge without God’s Torah commands, but none without our access to His will).

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In contrast to these views, an epistemic version of SMU would claim (SMUE) We would have at least some moral knowledge even if we had no revealed Torah commands and no access to God’s unrevealed will. As noted earlier, (DCTEW) possesses initial plausibility from a religious perspective. We can now add that (SMUE) does not enjoy similar religious appeal: it seems, prima facie at any rate, too extreme. In highlighting the religious attractiveness of (DCTEW), it is worth reminding ourselves also that (DCTEW) shares with (SMUE) the feature that it does not necessarily commit us to the claim that there would have been no morality or moral obligations without God’s will. (DCTEW) asserts only that we need our access to the divine will in order to know anything about these. Relatedly, and while our focus is on epistemic versions of DCT and SMU, it is worth emphasising the independence in general of ontic and epistemic forms of these theses. For example, even on quite a strong version of the epistemic independence of morality from God such as (SMUE), it is still a logical possibility that morality is ontically dependent upon God, i.e. that some ontic version of DCT is true. By the same token, morality might be ontically independent of God, and thus SMU would hold at the ontic level, but we might at the same time not be capable of knowing anything about morality without divine assistance, so that DCT would obtain at the epistemic level. It turns out, therefore, that some of the versions of DCT and some of the versions of SMU analysed in this chapter are, logically, mutually compatible. This point particularly merits attention in anticipation of our later examination of Jewish texts, for we shall need to bear in mind at that juncture both the necessity for precision in identifying which form of DCT or SMU a given text supports and the possibility that a given text might turn out to support a surprising combination of DCT/ SMU theses.

1.3.d

SMU as the notion that God is bound by morality

In the introduction to section 1.3, we identiﬁed the core idea of SMU as the notion that morality is independent of God. But within this core idea we can distinguish two thoughts. Let us focus on moral obligations for this purpose. The ﬁrst thought – on which the versions of SMU thus far discussed are based – is that moral obligations are independent of God’s command or will. The second, stronger notion – not necessarily implied by the ﬁrst – is that these moral obligations apply to God Himself; God Himself is bound by moral obligations.45 Let us express this stronger thought as a further version of SMU, namely: (SMUB) Not only is morality totally independent of God, but God is bound by it: He ought not to do or command what is immoral.

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Although (SMUB) is very problematic,46 we shall need to refer to it when discussing certain texts in subsequent chapters. It will be useful to provide a formulation of DCT which embodies the denial of this idea: (DCTB) Morality depends upon God, and He is absolutely unbound by morality. The extreme nature of (SMUB) and (DCTB), coupled with our earlier distinction between God’s unrevealed will and His explicit commands, prompts the thought that a formulation that ﬁnds some kind of middle ground between them might be helpful in our later discussion of classical Jewish texts. Let us express this more moderate idea as follows: (M) God freely determined morality by an act of His will, made it as it is, when He created the world. He could have made it other than it is; but now that He has made it as it is, He is bound in any later commands or actions by it. (M) endorses the core idea of DCT that morality is in an important sense dependent on God, making it dependent upon an act of His will (though there are versions of DCT which, unlike (M), assert that God can alter morality whenever He so desires). At the same time, (M) advocates, like a strong version of SMU, the notion that God is bound by morality – though it is the very morality that He Himself has determined. (M) does sound somewhat bizarre, a curious hybrid of DCT and SMU elements, though I believe that it is worth formulating because of the light that it might shed on our later reading of Jewish texts. A more substantive possible difﬁculty with (M) which should be noted at this point is that (M) assumes that God binds His future choices. Yet the idea that a sovereign can bind his or her future choices is somewhat controversial.47 It might be safer, therefore, to modify (M) so as to avoid this controversy, and to articulate in addition to (M) the following formulation for use in our later textual discussions: (M′) God freely determined morality by an act of His will, made it as it is, when He created the world. He could have made it other than it is; but now that He has made it as it is, it can reasonably be assumed that His will regarding morality will remain unchanged.

1.4

The appropriateness of raising the DCT/SMU issue in a Jewish context

The aim of this concluding section is to attempt brieﬂy to head off two broad lines of attack on my project which might be raised even at this quite early

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stage. Both these critiques centre upon the same issue, namely: is it really worth asking whether the classic texts of a theistic religion like Judaism support SMU? Is SMU at all a genuine option for a religion such as Judaism? The ﬁrst line of attack might pose this question on the basis of Meynell’s assertion that SMU ‘may well seem to the theist to be blasphemous . . . it is of the essence of “God”, as most people understand the meaning of the term, that, if he exists at all, the moral law is dependent on his decrees, and not vice versa’.48 Meynell’s formulation is a little vague, and it is doubtful whether Jewish believers, at any rate, take DCT to be ‘of the essence’ of what ‘God’ means. Ewing perhaps comes closer to identifying what it is about SMU that might trouble Jewish believers when he writes: surely . . . a believer in God must hold that all things, and therefore the laws of ethics, depend on God? Most theists by no means like the idea of something independent of God limiting him.49 More usefully still in the present context, Sagi and Statman emphasise DCT’s consonance with deep religious intuitions concerning God’s freedom, sovereignty and omnipotence.50 By the same token, SMU can easily be construed, at least prima facie, as undermining these divine qualities. Since themes such as divine freedom, omnipotence and (perhaps especially) sovereignty are stressed in Jewish tradition, it might be argued that DCT is so obviously the view that classical Jewish texts will adopt that the question whether in fact this is so is not deserving of serious attention. Yet this rather drastic conclusion is premature. To rule out a priori the possibility that some version or versions of SMU might be compatible with some doctrine of divine freedom, sovereignty or omnipotence is unreasonable. Moreover, a brief consideration of the situation regarding the truths of logic and mathematics may be illuminating in this context. For it might be thought, for instance, that God’s sovereignty is compromised by the mere existence of truths that are independent of Him, or that His omnipotence is vitiated if He cannot do the logically impossible. And we might therefore expect that religious traditions such as Christianity and Judaism would unequivocally champion the dependence of logical and mathematical truths on God. Yet although Descartes, for example, asserted clearly on several occasions the existence of such dependence,51 Aquinas explicitly maintained that God’s sovereignty is not undermined by being restricted to the realm of what is logically possible.52 Similarly, in the Jewish tradition, there are conﬂicting views. Saadia and Albo state explicitly that God cannot do the logically impossible,53 and Saadia adds that this implies no restriction on God’s omnipotence: God, says Saadia, is able to do everything, and the absurd is nothing.54 Some hasidic thinkers take issue with the medieval view.55 But in the light of the different positions adopted regarding the truths of logic and mathematics, we cannot rule out in advance the possibility of ﬁnding support for SMU in Jewish texts on the assumption

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that such endorsement would conﬂict with qualities which the tradition ascribes to God. The second critique questions whether the DCT/SMU issue is an appropriate one in a Jewish setting on other grounds. If Jewish texts endorse DCT, it is easy to account for, and to identify, the role of God in the moral arena on the Jewish view. But if the texts supported SMU, how would we account for this role? If they turned out to buttress SMU, how would we then explain why a divine revelation commanding moral laws was necessary at all? In other words, if we were unable to identify some signiﬁcant role that, according to Jewish texts, God would play in the moral sphere even if those texts turned out substantially to support SMU, this would undermine the force of the central question of this book. It is indeed possible to point to several potentially important roles that, for a religion like Judaism, God might occupy in relation to ethics if Jewish texts turned out to endorse SMU. An important notion in this context is what Sagi and Statman call ‘weak dependence’: that is, some kind of dependence of morality upon religion that stops short of DCT.56 Possible roles for God and religion in the moral arena that come under the rubric of weak dependence include the idea that religion is necessary for moral activity.57 It might be argued that human beings, even when conscious of their moral obligations, are incapable of acting in accordance with their awareness because of their nature. Only religion can help them overcome the conﬂict between their nature and moral requirements and enable them to act morally. Less radically, it might be urged that, though capable of moral action, human beings ﬁnd it very difﬁcult to behave ethically without religion. More moderately still, it might be claimed that religion heightens the likelihood that individuals or societies will behave morally, because of the capacity of religion to foster moral activity. Perhaps none of the theses just mentioned sound particularly convincing. However, I am concerned at this juncture only to defend the force of my central question in this book by illustrating that if Jewish texts turned out to support SMU, God and religion would not necessarily thereby be condemned to redundancy in the moral sphere. There would remain numerous possibilities for identifying a role for God in relation to morality.58

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2 ANALYTIC DISCUSSION OF POSITIONS ON DCT AND SMU IN PHILOSOPHY AND CONTEMPORARY JEWISH THOUGHT

2.1

Introduction

I turn, in this chapter, to a discussion of some of the relevant positions taken in the history of philosophy (including the history of Christian thought) up until the present and (at greater length) in contemporary Jewish thought, and attempt to deﬁne those positions in terms of the analytical framework developed in Chapter 1.1 The positions on DCT and SMU adopted in the history of Jewish thought – i.e. in Judaism’s classical texts – are the central focus of most of this study and are analysed in detail in subsequent chapters. In this chapter, I conﬁne myself to contemporary Jewish scholarship. My brief discussion of DCT and SMU in the history of philosophy until the present is intended to provide useful background and context for the analysis offered in the remainder of this book. My examination of positions taken on DCT and SMU among contemporary Jewish writers will again supply context by helping to deﬁne the position defended in this work in relation to these thinkers. As I shall argue, such context has often been missing in the contemporary Jewish debate. I wish to point out at the outset that there is an asymmetry between my discussion of DCT/SMU in the history of philosophy and my analysis of this issue in contemporary Jewish thought. In the former discussion, I am concerned with whether a given philosopher advocates DCT or SMU. In the latter discussion, the primary focus will usually (though not always) be not the thinker’s own position but rather what they understand to constitute the view of Jewish tradition on this issue.2 This reﬂects the project of this work, which is not to develop a philosophical or Jewish theological argument for DCT or SMU but rather to attempt to determine the attitude of the classic texts of Jewish tradition.

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2.2

DCT and SMU in the history of philosophy

There are many writers who, in the course of the history of philosophy up until the present, have advocated versions of DCT and SMU.3 The objective of sections 2.2.a and 2.2.b is brieﬂy to highlight a few key ﬁgures, a grasp of whose views will facilitate our discussion in later chapters. In section 2.2.c, I aim to provide a broader picture of DCT and SMU in the history of philosophy by brieﬂy discussing thinkers other than those whose views are analysed in 2.2.a and 2.2.b. This, of course, is not to imply that the positions on DCT/SMU of the philosophers discussed in 2.2.c are less important to the philosophical history of this issue than the views analysed in the earlier sections; on the contrary, some of the positions referred to only in passing in section 2.2.c have been very inﬂuential. I have chosen to focus in detail on the writers discussed in sections 2.2.a and 2.2.b because an understanding of their particular views will be helpful to the analysis of later chapters, and because of their centrality in the Christian discussion of divine command ethics. In section 2.2.d, I brieﬂy discuss an interesting approach to DCT recently developed by some Christian philosophers.

2.2.a

Ockham

Attempts to trace the origins of DCT in the history of philosophy often begin with the scholastic philosophers John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham.4 I shall focus here on the views of Ockham, whose moral theory, as noted by Marilyn Adams, is often taken as ‘the paradigm of “Divine Command Morality” ’.5 In a passage in On the Four Books of the Sentences, Ockham writes: the hatred of God, theft, adultery, and actions similar to these according to the common law . . . can even be performed meritoriously by an earthly pilgrim if they should come under a divine precept, just as now the opposite of these in fact fall under a divine command. And, with a divine command in effect for the contrary of these, it is not possible that anyone meritoriously or rightly engage in such acts, because these are not performed meritoriously unless they come under a divine command. And if they should be done by an earthly pilgrim meritoriously, then they would not be called or named ‘theft’, ‘adultery’, ‘hatred’, etc.; because these names signify such acts not absolutely, but with the connotation or understanding that one who performs such actions is obligated by a divine precept to do the opposite. And therefore, as far as the total meaning or the deﬁnition of such names is concerned, they signify evil qualities; and in regard to this, holy men and philosophers understand that these names, as soon as they are mentioned, are linked with evil. If, however, the acts in question fell under a divine command, then someone who performed them would not be obligated to do the opposite; and consequently, they would then not be named ‘theft’, ‘adultery’, etc.6

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The overall import of this passage is that the moral status of an action depends solely upon God’s command. Theft, adultery etc. are wrong at present only because ‘the opposite of these in fact fall[s] under a divine command’ – i.e. because God forbids these actions. If these actions were commanded by God, they would be ‘performed meritoriously’, and, as the end of the quoted passage makes clear, they would not be called by names which are negatively morally charged. Let us now attempt to identify more precisely, in terms of the analytical framework developed in Chapter 1, the forms of DCT that Ockham accepts in this passage. Ockham states explicitly that the actions that he is discussing ‘are not performed meritoriously unless they come under a divine command’, in other words: (DCTN) God’s command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act. But Ockham also says that theft, adultery etc. ‘can even be performed meritoriously by an earthly pilgrim if they should come under a divine precept’, i.e. (DCTS) God’s command is a sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an act. As stated above, however, the overall import of the passage cited is clearly that the moral status of an action is solely dependent upon the divine command. Ockham thus does not mean in this passage merely that God’s command is a necessary and sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an action. As pointed out in Chapter 1, that would yield only equivalence. But Ockham plainly intends, as well, that there is an asymmetrical relationship of dependence of the moral rightness of an action on God’s command. And the dependence that he argues for in this passage is clearly ontic as opposed to epistemic or semantic. In another passage, Ockham writes: By the very fact that God wills something, it is right for it to be done . . . Hence if God were to cause hatred of himself in anyone’s will, that is, if he were to be the total cause of the act (he is, as it is, its partial cause), neither would that man sin nor would God; for God is not under any obligation, while man is not (in the case) obliged, because the act would not be in his own power.7 The beginning of this passage, ‘[b]y the very fact that God wills something, it is right for it to be done’, asserts (DCTS). In the remainder of the passage, Ockham claims that there are no moral constraints on God’s actions. Thus, this extract also supports (DCTB) Morality depends upon God, and He is absolutely unbound by morality.

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Divine freedom from moral constraints is also asserted in Ockham’s remark that ‘[o]bligation does not fall on God, since He is not under any obligation to do anything’.8 A number of writers attribute ontic DCT to Ockham without qualiﬁcation and, by implication, take passages such as those cited above as accurately representing his position.9 However, it should be noted before concluding our discussion of Ockham that contrasting interpretations of his stance are not uncommon. Thus even Copleston, who seems to agree that, ultimately, Ockham supports DCT, believes that ‘we are faced with what amounts to two moral theories in Ockham’s philosophy’10 because of Ockham’s frequent employment of the scholastic concept of ‘right reason’ which he sometimes portrays as the norm of morality.11 Oakley states that Ockham is simply inconsistent,12 and David Clark,13 Linwood Urban14 and Marilyn Adams15 have all argued that Ockham’s position is signiﬁcantly more complex than a straightforward espousal of ontic DCT.

2.2.b

Martin Luther and John Calvin

Since much of this study focuses on DCT and SMU in Jewish thought, and in particular since the existence and strength of support for DCT in classical Jewish sources is a matter of controversy, it is worth highlighting the support for DCT expressed in certain passages in the Reformation writings of Luther and Calvin. With their endorsement of DCT, these ﬁgures (among others) continued, after Ockham, a tradition of adherence to DCT in Christian thought.16 I shall now cite two examples of passages in which Luther expresses DCT and identify the precise forms of DCT that are articulated in these passages. A) In reply to the question of why God permitted the fall of Adam and why He created all humanity tainted with sin, Luther writes: God is He for Whose will no cause or ground may be laid down as its rule or standard; for nothing is on a level with it or above it, but it is itself the rule for all things. If any rule or standard, or cause or ground, existed for it, it could no longer be the will of God. What God wills is not right because He ought, or was bound, so to will; on the contrary, what takes place must be right, because He so wills it. Causes and grounds are laid down for the will of the creature, but not for the will of the Creator – unless you set another Creator over him!17 Luther’s language in the third sentence of this citation (‘What God wills’, etc.) echoes that of the Euthyphro dilemma as originally formulated by Plato but provides (unlike Plato in Euthyphro) a response that favours DCT. (DCTS)18 and (DCTB) are the forms of DCT clearly supported in passage A). B) Discussing the question of whether there is injustice on God’s part, Luther states:

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For the fact is that there neither is nor can be any other reason for his righteousness than His will . . . Furthermore, since His will is the highest good, why are we not glad and willing and eager to see it be done, since it cannot possibly be evil?19 If the only reason for God’s righteousness is His will, then God’s will is both a necessary and a sufﬁcient condition of morality – i.e. (DCTN) and (DCTS).20 Luther also conveys the ‘asymmetry’ of DCT by making God’s will explanatorily prior to His righteousness. Luther then makes explicit a very important corollary of DCT, which we will encounter again, though in a Jewish context, later in this chapter: if God’s will (or command) determines morality, it follows logically that there can be no conﬂict between His will (or command) and morality – ‘it cannot possibly be evil’.21 I shall now cite three passages from Calvin which illustrate his support for DCT and identify the precise versions endorsed in these texts.22 The context of all these passages is a discussion of the doctrine of predestination; this is explicit in the third passage cited, passage E). The texts read as follows: C) For if his [God’s] will has any cause, there must be something antecedent to it, and to which it is annexed; this it were impious to imagine. The will of God is the supreme rule of righteousness, so that everything which he wills must be held to be righteous by the mere fact of his willing it. Therefore, when it is asked why the Lord did so, we must answer, Because he pleased. But if you proceed farther to ask why he pleased, you ask for something greater and more sublime than the will of God, and nothing such can be found.23 D) . . . the will of God is not only free from all vice, but is the supreme standard of perfection, the law of all laws. But we deny that he is bound to give an account of his procedure; and we moreover deny that we are ﬁt of our own ability to give judgment in such a case.24 E) . . . the Lord has created those who, as he certainly foreknew, were to go to destruction, and he did so because he so willed. Why he willed it is not ours to ask, as we cannot comprehend, nor can it become us even to raise a controversy as to the justice of the divine will. Whenever we speak of it, we are speaking of the supreme standard of justice . . . But when justice clearly appears, why should we raise any question of injustice? Let us not, therefore, be ashamed to stop their mouths . . . Whenever they presume to carp, let us begin to repeat: Who are ye, miserable men, that bring an accusation against God, and bring it because he does not adapt the greatness of his works to your meager capacity?25 (DCTS) is supported in these passages (certainly, at any rate, in C) and E)); but there are two further points of interest that make them particularly worth

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citing. First, proponents of DCT sometimes stress human obedience rather than human comprehension. Passage D) – and, even more so, passage E) – demonstrate the consanguinity that exists, for some advocates of DCT, between DCT and an emphasis on human obedience as opposed to human understanding. Second, passage E), in particular, makes plain Calvin’s disapproval of human challenges to divine justice (I understand the phrase ‘when justice clearly appears’ to be a reference simply to the divine will that Calvin says is the supreme standard of justice, not a reference to instances where what God does seems just to us). This point is worth emphasising in anticipation of our later discussion of Jewish texts. Calvin’s disapproval of human moral challenges to God is echoed in an often-discussed recent article by James Rachels, who takes such disapproval to be the appropriate religious stance.26 As we shall see in subsequent chapters, however, Jewish tradition, beginning with the very ﬁrst Jew, Abraham, in Genesis Chapter 18, has tended not to ﬁnd such challenges problematic. Rachels’s article is an attempt to disprove the existence of God, and his attitude to the religious view of human moral challenges to God brings to mind Meynell’s perceptive remark that there exist ‘remarkable differences between the God in whom many theists believe, and the God in whom many atheists disbelieve’.27

2.2.c

Other philosophers

More recent advocates of DCT in the history of philosophy than those considered in sections 2.2.a and 2.2.b include, among others, Descartes, Locke and (possibly) Berkeley.28 Another supporter of DCT, though seldom mentioned as such in the literature, is John Austin, who writes: the divine law is the measure or test of . . . morality . . . law and morality, in so far as they are what they ought to be, conform . . . to the law of God.29 As mentioned above in Chapter 1, Austin holds that there are two kinds of divine commands: explicit (which he terms ‘revealed’ or ‘express’), and ‘tacit’. Together, these types of command give us (among other things) the content of morality. The way in which we ﬁnd out what the ‘tacit’ commands are, according to Austin, is ‘the principle of utility’: whatever action (or, more precisely, class of actions, because Austin is a rule- rather than an act-utilitarian) brings about the greatest happiness of the greatest number is tacitly commanded. The class of actions that conforms to the principle of utility conforms also to God’s command. In Austin’s words: the Divine commands [are] the ultimate measure or test . . . the principle of utility, or the general happiness or good, [is] the proximate measure to which our conduct should conform, or the proximate test by which our conduct should be tried.30

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The above citations from Austin show that he takes divine commands or divine law as explanatorily prior to morality. Austin says further: It [utility] is not in itself the source or spring of our highest or paramount obligations, but it guides us to the source whence these obligations ﬂow.31 This passage clearly expresses DCT: divine commands are the source of our moral obligations. Austin’s support, as articulated in the above quotations and elsewhere in The Province, appears to be for ontic DCT, i.e. (DCTN) and (DCTS) plus some kind of explanatory priority of divine commands over morality. Wittgenstein also endorses DCT, characterising as ‘shallow and rationalistic’ the notion that God commands x because x is good.32 More recently, DCT has been advanced in various forms by, for example, Robert Adams, Philip Quinn, Stephen Clark, Robert Burch, Edward Wierenga and Paul Rooney.33 The history of philosophy has also witnessed much opposition to DCT. Socrates argues in the Euthyphro, in response to the dilemma that Euthyphro puts to him, that the good is not good because the gods approve it; rather the gods approve it because it is good. Similarly, the Cambridge Platonists, e.g. Ralph Cudworth,34 emphasised the existence of an absolute standard of right and wrong, grounded in reason and independent of appeals to divine authority. Other ﬁgures in the history of philosophy who have supported SMU include Richard Price.35 Kant was the author of a seminal and celebrated critique of DCT, arguing that obedience to commands only because God issued those commands cannot count as truly moral behaviour. If behaviour is to be moral, Kant insisted, it must be not heteronomous but rather autonomous, i.e. self-legislated or selfimposed. Thus, divinely revealed morality cannot justiﬁably be considered moral. Revealed morality is, on a Kantian view, a contradiction in terms.36

2.2.d

‘Modiﬁed’ DCT

An important recent development in discussion of divine command ethics, alluded to brieﬂy in Chapter 1,37 is the novel approach of those Christian philosophers who have advocated a ‘modiﬁed’ version of DCT. The crucial notion for modiﬁed DCT is that of a God who loves His human creatures. Since Jewish tradition certainly shares with Christianity this conception of God,38 modiﬁed DCT is interesting and initially appealing from a Jewish perspective as well, even though, as noted in Chapter 1, modiﬁed DCT does not, in fact, feature in classical Jewish texts. ‘Modiﬁed DCT’ was pioneered by Robert Adams in two papers.39 The ﬁrst example of the modiﬁed DCT approach that I shall focus on in this section is Adams’s ﬁrst paper. In that paper, Adams claims that ‘It is contrary to God’s commands to do X’ implies ‘It is wrong to do X’ only if certain conditions are assumed – namely, only if it is assumed

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that God has the character which I believe Him to have, of loving His human creatures. If God were really to command us to make cruelty our goal, then He would not have that character of loving us, and I would not say it would be wrong to disobey Him.40 What Adams would say if God commanded cruelty for its own sake is ‘that my concept of ethical wrongness . . . would “break down”’,41 and I could no longer call any action ethically wrong (or ethically permitted or right). This is because the religious believer’s statement that x is ethically wrong, for Adams, not only carries implications concerning God’s commands but also presupposes that certain conditions for the applicability of the believer’s concepts of right and wrong are met. And one central condition of this sort is that God loves us, or, more speciﬁcally, that He does not command cruelty for its own sake. What does Adams gain by modifying DCT in this way? Clearly, the advantage of this approach – and Adams’s explicit motivation in developing it42 – is that it seemingly enables him both to maintain commitment to DCT, with all DCT’s religious attractions,43 and to avoid an apparently morally unpalatable ramiﬁcation of DCT: saying that it would be wrong not to practise cruelty for its own sake if God commanded it. Yet there is a heavy price to be paid if this unpleasant ramiﬁcation is to be avoided. Adams himself is clearly aware of the difﬁculty here: The modiﬁed divine command theory clearly conceives of believers as valuing some thing independently of their relation to God’s commands. If the believer will not say that it would be wrong not to practice cruelty for its own sake if God commanded it, that is because he values kindness, and has a revulsion for cruelty, in a way that is at least to some extent independent of his belief that God commands kindness and forbids cruelty.44 The central philosophical difﬁculty with Adams’s modiﬁed DCT (I shall discuss theological issues later) is that the independent valuations that it allows appear fatal to the core notion that morality depends upon divine commands. For these independent valuations, focused (positively) on kindness and (negatively) on cruelty, seem to be clearly moral valuations. And if they are, then morality is not, after all, dependent on divine commands. Adams attempts to resolve this problem by distinguishing between different sorts of value concepts. He urges that it is not essential to a divine command theory of ethical wrongness to maintain that all valuing, or all value concepts, or even all moral concepts, depend on beliefs about God’s commands. What is essential to such a theory is to maintain that when a believer says something is (ethically) wrong, at least part of what he means is that the action in question is contrary to God’s will or commands.45

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But Adams’s manoeuvre is unconvincing. Adams claims that the modiﬁed divine command theorist would not accept a divine command ethics in a situation in which God commanded cruelty for its own sake because ‘he [the modiﬁed divine command theorist] hates cruelty and loves kindness’, and that this attitude does ‘not . . . presuppose judgments of moral right and wrong’.46 This may be so; but if hating cruelty has nothing to do with judging it to be morally wrong, then it is hard to see why, if God commanded cruelty, the modiﬁed divine command theorist’s concept of ethical rightness and wrongness would ‘break down’. It is difﬁcult to see why the modiﬁed divine command theorist could not say, for example, when faced with a divine command to act cruelly, ‘Not to act cruelly would be morally wrong, since God has commanded this, but I nevertheless hate cruelty and am going to ﬁnd acting in this way very unpleasant’. A further, very recent example of the modiﬁed DCT approach is the theory defended by John Hare (though Hare does not employ the term ‘modiﬁed’ in characterising the kind of divine command theory that he develops).47 On Hare’s version of DCT, which he bases on an interpretation of Scotus, the end towards which we are headed is some kind of loving union with God. Using the term ‘command’ to describe what gives the route to this end is traditional, but less appropriate than some such term as ‘call’; for ‘command’ stresses the power relation rather than the love relation which governs not just the destination but the selection of route.48 According to Hare, then, morality depends on God’s command or call. But, in addition, God loves us, and both the end result of following God’s commands in the moral arena, and those commands themselves, reﬂect that love. Hare understands Scotus as holding, and himself endorses, an apparently (though only apparently) paradoxical, dual-faceted view about morality. This is that a) morality cannot be deduced from human nature; b) morality is grounded in our nature. God’s moral law, on this conception, does not follow from our nature. The prohibition against murder, for example, cannot be deduced from the way in which we have been created. As things are, however, God has determined that we reach our ﬁnal end of loving union with Him by (inter alia) not murdering. This is, as it were, the route that God has laid down. The route did not have to be this one given the creation of beings with human nature; there is no necessary route to our necessary end. There are in fact countless ways in which God could have commanded us towards ﬁnal union, even given the nature with which we were created. But the route that God has in fact chosen (not murdering, and the rest of the second half of the Decalogue) is morally right, and binding upon us, because God has chosen it. Yet although God’s moral law does not follow from our nature, and is dependent on His will, that moral law nevertheless ﬁts our nature very well. As Scotus puts it: ‘God wills in a most reasonable and orderly manner’.49 Hare offers as an

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example the Decalogue’s prohibition against bearing false witness. This command ﬁts our deep-seated desire to share life with other human beings on the basis of verbal communication, for which our ability to trust that we are speaking the truth to each other is essential. Unlike Adams, Hare does not really address the issue of God’s commanding a patently immoral act or how the believer would respond if He did.50 Divine commands of this sort seem to be rendered very unlikely by Hare’s theory. If God loves us, His commands in the moral arena reﬂect His love, and those commands eminently suit our nature, no divine command to practise wanton cruelty need be anticipated. On Adams’s theory, too, it is ‘unthinkable’, though logically possible, that God should issue such a command.51 But Adams focuses much attention on the question of what would happen if the unthinkable occurred, thus ultimately leaving himself open to the objections outlined earlier. Given the initial appeal of the modiﬁed DCT approach from a Jewish perspective, as noted above, it is worthwhile to consider further the theological advantages and/or disadvantages of this line of thought. The ﬁrst point that I would like to make in this context refers to Adams’s theory in particular. Adams, as we have seen, is very worried by the mere logical possibility of God commanding wanton cruelty, and insistent on resisting the notion that it would be wrong not to practise cruelty if God commanded it. But is there anything really theologically troubling about a divine command theory – like Ockham’s – which accepts this notion? As Adams himself says at one point: We need not imagine that Ockham disciplined himself to be ready to practice cruelty for its own sake if God should command it. It was doubtless an article of faith for him that God is unalterably opposed to any such practice. The mere logical possibility that theft, adultery, and cruelty might have been commanded by God (and therefore meritorious) doubtless did not represent in Ockham’s view any real possibility.52 For a divine command theory to be committed to the proposition that, in the logically possible but realistically impossible event of God’s commanding wanton cruelty, not to act cruelly would be morally wrong, need not, I think, be unduly troubling from a Judeo-Christian theological perspective. There is a more radical way of arguing that a modiﬁed divine command theory is theologically unnecessary. This is to urge, as Michael Levine has done recently in a discussion of Adams’s ﬁrst paper,53 that it is logically impossible for God to command things like cruelty. Levine writes: ‘The assumption that Adams wants to make about God in his divine command theory (i.e., that God has a loving character) is an assumption that the unmodiﬁed divine command theorist already does (or can) make’.54 For, argues Levine, since it is a central claim of theism that God is perfectly good, the unmodiﬁed divine command theorist already assumes that God possesses a loving character with which commanding

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cruelty is incompatible. Thus, ‘[i]f “God” commanded us to do cruelty for its own sake that would show ipso facto that whoever was doing the commanding was not God’.55 Levine concludes: ‘Given the theist’s conception of God, it is not possible (rationally) to believe that God commands cruelty because part of that conception is that God cannot command cruelty’.56 The obvious riposte to Levine is that his position appears inconsistent with DCT. According to DCT, it is God who determines good and evil. If God’s nature prevents him from commanding certain acts, then good and evil are independent of God’s will and indeed help to determine what commands He issues. If, on the other hand, good and evil truly depend on God’s will, then He can make cruelty morally obligatory.57 Yet ultimately, I believe, Levine’s argument is sound. The objection assumes that the claim that God possesses a moral nature entails SMU. But God may have freely willed His moral nature, the nature that, in turn, helps shape what He wills. God’s having a moral nature is thus perfectly consistent with DCT.58 The idea that it is logically impossible for God to command immoral acts such as wanton cruelty, though controversial in the history of Christian thought, is not an unattractive one from the Judeo-Christian perspective, which places such emphasis on God’s moral qualities and nature. Levine has thus successfully provided, I believe, a reason for considering modiﬁed DCT theologically unnecessary from the point of view of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Modiﬁed DCT, then, while certainly a stimulating development in recent discussion of divine command ethics, particularly from a Jewish and Christian viewpoint, would appear to encounter serious philosophical and theological obstacles.

2.3

DCT and SMU in contemporary Jewish thought

My aim in this section is to identify the views of leading contemporary Jewish scholars who have expressed a view on DCT/SMU in order to provide context for the position that I shall defend in this study. Some introductory clariﬁcations are in order. First, I shall restrict the discussion to thinkers who are rooted in traditional approaches, rather than in modern philosophy, since it is primarily the views of such thinkers which form the background to, and the contrast with, the position that I shall attempt to develop. Thus, there is no analysis here of the positions of such writers as Buber, Rosenzweig, Hermann Cohen and Levinas. Second, a somewhat puzzling feature of the contemporary Jewish debate on the DCT/SMU issue is the frequent lack of reference to directly relevant writings by other scholars.59 By attempting to be more comprehensive than is much of the literature in detailing positions on DCT/SMU that have been taken in the contemporary Jewish discussion, I hope to accomplish something that has been largely missing in previous analyses, namely, bringing disparate points of view in the contemporary Jewish discussion to bear on one another.

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The third introductory point is that for some of these ﬁgures (e.g. Leibowitz), the issue that concerns us here is closer to their central concerns than others and thus they have more to say about it; others (e.g. Jakobovits, Heschel) deal with DCT/SMU in a more cursory fashion. My discussion of some of these thinkers is quite brief since my aim at this stage of the argument is merely to characterise their positions on DCT/SMU (and to do this as far as is possible in terms of the analytic framework developed in Chapter 1) rather than to criticise those positions.

2.3.a

Yeshayahu Leibowitz

An intriguing response to the issue of divine interaction with morality is offered by Yeshayahu Leibowitz. In general, Leibowitz propounds a highly austere view of Jewish religious life. The following statement is typical: The religious Jew is he who has accepted upon himself the yoke of Torah and the commandments . . . if we are talking about the religion of Israel, we cannot avoid seeing the fact that the original, historical Hebrew concept of religiosity is the acceptance of the yoke of Torah and the commandments.60 For Leibowitz, Judaism – at least at the level of the individual religious life of the Jew who takes his or her faith seriously – is essentially co-extensive with the observance of Torah and the commandments of Judaism. Leibowitz admits that, on a more abstract plane, Torah study and observance of the practical commandments do not exhaust the entire content of Judaism. But so far as the individual’s Jewish life is concerned, he remains adamant that observance of Torah and the commandments is the fundamental relevant characteristic. A corollary of this picture of what constitutes Jewish religious life is a claim which is highly germane to our topic and which Leibowitz repeatedly emphasises. It is that human needs, interests and values have no legitimate place whatsoever in Judaism. Characteristic is the following statement: ‘Judaism is not a programme for the solution of the problems of humanity but [a programme for] the service of God’.61 And in one of Leibowitz’s sharpest formulations: ‘The essence of religion as service of God is that it conﬂicts with the needs and nature of man’.62 Leibowitz frequently stresses that ‘the needs and nature of man’ includes human moral needs.63 Service of God is at odds with human ethical perceptions. Hence, the great signiﬁcance for Leibowitz of the Akedah, the story of the Binding of Isaac in Genesis Chapter 22.64 Leibowitz argues that whereas Christianity is essentially a giving religion, a means for man to achieve the satisfaction of his spiritual needs – epitomised by the symbol of the Cross, representing the sacriﬁce made by the divine for the sake of man – Judaism possesses a diametrically opposed ethos. Judaism is fundamentally a demanding religion which offers man

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nothing but obligations which transform him into a servant of God, thus making him an instrument for the realisation of a goal that lies outside him. This theology ﬁnds expression, according to Leibowitz, in Judaism’s supreme symbol of faith, the Akedah, ‘when all human values are annulled and pushed away because of the fear and love of God’.65 Against this background, Leibowitz’s direct pronouncements about the relationship between – or rather the total cleavage between – Judaism and ethics come as no surprise. For example, he writes: Judaism has not been embodied in ethics, and there is no meaning to the expression ‘the ethics of Judaism’ . . . ethics cannot be Jewish or non-Jewish, religious or non-religious – ethics is ethics . . . ethics is an atheistic category, which cannot be reconciled with religious consciousness or religious feeling . . . Judaism did not produce a speciﬁc ethics and was never embodied in ethics and never boasted of or professed ethics. Scripture does not recognise the good and the upright, rather ‘the good and the upright in the eyes of the Lord’.66 This way of de-ethicising Scripture is a technique of which Leibowitz is fond. Attempting to reconcile his insistence that the Torah contains no moral directives with the Scriptural words held by Rabbi Akiva to constitute a great principle of Torah, Leibowitz points out that the relevant text, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’67 is followed immediately by the words ‘I am the Lord’. The addition of this formulation, argues Leibowitz, radically transforms the verse ‘from a humanistic-moral principle into a religious commandment’.68 In a similar vein, Leibowitz notes that the sins committed against one’s fellowman, enumerated in the great confession central to the Yom Kippur liturgy, are each termed ‘the sin that I have sinned before Thee’.69 As mentioned above, Leibowitz deems ethics ‘an atheistic category’. Combining this contention with Leibowitz’s treatment of Leviticus 19:18, we are again unsurprised by a statement which would otherwise have seemed unwarranted: Regarding ‘And you shall love your neighbour as yourself’ . . . as an expression of ‘the morality of Judaism’ is merely a heretical falsiﬁcation of the Torah.70 Let us now attempt to summarise Leibowitz’s position. Leibowitz knows that there exists a category of the ethical within the matrix of human life. What he is implacably opposed to is the use of Judaism as a means towards achieving these human ethical goals. Leibowitz is also passionately committed to a related but even more radical notion: the idea that Judaism even contains any human ethics is anathema to him. Judaism and ethics are utterly discrete categories, separate realms, and there cannot be any such thing as a ‘morality of Judaism’.71

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As his comments on the Akedah make clear, Leibowitz holds that conﬂict between religion and morality is possible. He plainly opposes proposition (SMUB), and maintains that God can command what is immoral. At the same time, however, we should note that, as Sagi and Statman point out,72 conﬂict between religion and morality necessarily entails the opposite of DCT. For if God’s command determines morality, no conﬂict is possible between His command and moral obligations. (This is the corollary of DCT pointed out by Luther that I highlighted above: DCT entails the denial of the conﬂict thesis.) Thus it turns out that Leibowitz, while denying (SMUB), denies DCT also, or at least ontic command versions of it. It will clarify matters at this point to contrast the reasons for Duns Scotus’s and Leibowitz’s opposition to (SMUB). For Scotus, in the passage concerning the Akedah cited earlier,73 if God commands Abraham to kill Isaac, then killing Isaac becomes a moral obligation, and not murdering an innocent person ceases to be a moral obligation, since (so it seems that Scotus thinks, at least in this passage) God can change the moral order at any time. In other words, Scotus’s opposition to (SMUB) ﬂows from his commitment to DCT, in particular (DCTB). On Leibowitz’s view, however, that God can command the murder of an innocent person does not show that God determines morality. What it shows is that God can give commands belonging to another category altogether (‘religious’ commands), and these take precedence over the moral claim, which is indeed not to kill Isaac. For Leibowitz, then, God overrides morality. For Scotus, He shifts the moral goalposts: He decides that killing Isaac is moral. Thus, we have the following three-way disagreement: Proposition (SMUB) (in part): God is bound by morality; He ought not to do or command what is immoral. Leibowitz: not-(SMUB), because God can override the demands of morality. (Leibowitz denies both (DCTB) and (M) as well). Scotus: not-(SMUB), because God freely determines morality (Scotus asserts (DCTB)). Notice that (SMUB) can thus be denied both by adherents of DCT and by proponents of weaker versions of SMU, and even relatively strong weaker versions, as it were, i.e. ontic versions. Advocates of DCT deny (SMUB) because God freely determines morality. Adherents of (even ontic) SMU can consistently deny (SMUB) because, as pointed out in Chapter 1, even if moral obligations are independent of God’s will, it does not necessarily follow that God is bound by such obligations.

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2.3.b

Immanuel Jakobovits

Jakobovits writes: Every monotheistic religion embodies . . . a deﬁnition of moral values. None does so with greater precision and comprehensiveness than Judaism. It emphatically insists that the norms of moral conduct can be governed neither by the accepted notions of public opinion nor by the individual conscience. In the Jewish view, the human conscience is meant to enforce laws, not to make them. Right and wrong, good and evil . . . defy deﬁnition by relation to human intuition . . . These values, Judaism teaches, derive their validity from the Divine revelation at Mount Sinai.74 What is moral and what is not, says Jakobovits, is, on the Jewish view, revealed to us by God. There is no place for the invention by human beings of their own moral laws. On the contrary: the task of humanity is simply to submit to the precepts of divinely revealed morality. Jakobovits does not consider the possibility of a non-man-made, objective morality that nevertheless does not depend upon God. He presents only two options, a morality contingent upon God and a subjective human morality, and claims that Jewish tradition unequivocally endorses the former. Jakobovits’s remarks in the passage cited are brief, and appear in the context of a discussion whose primary focus is a topic other than the relationship between divine commands and morality. It is thus difﬁcult precisely to determine his position, but it is at least clear that he takes morality to be dependent on God’s explicit Torah commands, and it would appear that he construes this dependence as ontic in nature.75 In another work, Jakobovits, in a statement reminiscent of one of Leibowitz’s observations mentioned in the preceding section, writes: the duty to ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ is imperative only because ‘I am the Lord’ – that is, ‘because I have commanded it’.76 Again, this statement is brief and appears in a discussion whose central focus is not directly related to DCT/SMU. Nevertheless, it is a deﬁnite expression of support for an ontic command form of DCT. In fact, the concise nature of Jakobovits’s articulations of support for the idea that DCT is the view of Jewish tradition is worth remarking upon, particularly when his statements are contrasted with Lichtenstein’s remarks, cited in section 2.3.d. As we shall see, though equally brief, Lichtenstein clearly avers that SMU is the position supported in Jewish tradition. It is a curious feature of the contemporary Jewish literature on the DCT/SMU issue that many writers apparently consider the position of Jewish tradition on this issue to be obvious and capable

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of brief description – while construing that position in opposite ways. Not only do Jakobovits and Lichtenstein imply by their economy that their opposing readings of Jewish tradition on DCT/SMU are uncontroversial and obviously accurate, but their readings are also one-dimensional in nature. Neither admits the possibility that the outlook of Jewish tradition on this issue might be complicated or nuanced. What all this suggests, of course, is that there is no simple answer to the question whether Jewish tradition supports DCT or SMU. If signiﬁcant Jewish scholars take diametrically opposing answers to be obviously correct, one suspects that the truth lies somewhere between and is of a complex nature. That, at any rate, will be one of the central claims of this study.

2.3.c

Marvin Fox

77

In a celebrated article, Fox makes several statements in support of the claim that Jewish tradition endorses various versions of DCT. He writes: It is through God’s revelation, mediated by the prophets, that men are taught to know what is right and wrong.78 The implication here, certainly in context, is that God’s revelation is the only way that human beings achieve moral knowledge. Fox thus supports: (DCTER) We would have no moral knowledge without God’s revealed Torah commands. The implication becomes explicit in Fox’s next paragraph: In ancient Hebrew thought there is only one source of the knowledge of good and evil – the commandments of God as they are revealed to man.79 In another essay, Fox expresses unequivocal support for the idea that the Hebrew Bible supports both epistemic and ontic forms of DCT: The Bible knows only God as the source of all notions of right and wrong. There is no deﬁnition of the good except His teaching and His will . . . Within the biblical framework, He alone teaches us what is virtuous; there is no standard other than that which He has given us . . . Even in the moments of their greatest bitterness and despair, the biblical prophets did not question that God alone is the source of our knowledge of right and wrong . . . without the divine moral standard, there is no standard at all.80

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Later, Fox says: To consider a law as both a divine commandment and immoral is a contradiction in terms. What God commands must be good; otherwise the commander is not God.81 Strictly speaking, Fox’s formulation in the ﬁrst sentence of this passage suggests (or understands the Bible as supporting) a semantic version of DCT. For it is if the word ‘moral’ means ‘commanded by God’ that to say that something is at once both immoral and a divine commandment is a contradiction. Fox, however, like most other contemporary Jewish writers who discuss the DCT/ SMU issue, does not distinguish between different forms (e.g. ontic, epistemic, semantic) of these theses. It is possible, therefore, that in this passage Fox is merely reiterating support for some version of ontic DCT. He might just mean to say that what God commands is ipso facto moral, and its morality is to be explained in terms of its being a divine command. And when he asserts that considering a law as both a divine commandment and immoral is a contradiction in terms, what he perhaps intends is the corollary of ontic DCT that, as we saw above, is emphasised by Luther: if God’s command (ontically) determines morality, then logically there can be no conﬂict between divine commands and morality.

2.3.d

Aharon Lichtenstein

Responding to the question ‘Does Jewish tradition recognise an ethic independent of halakhah?’ Lichtenstein comments: I must confess that, at one level, an unequivocal response could easily be mounted. If the issue be reduced to natural morality in general, it need hardly be in doubt . . . the existence of natural morality is clearly assumed in much that is quite central to our tradition.82 For Lichtenstein, then, Jewish tradition supports an ontic version of SMU. At the very least, the above quotation expresses the denial of (DCTNR) God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act. Soon afterwards, however, Lichtenstein leaves us in no doubt about his conviction that Jewish tradition is committed to SMU: As Benjamin Whichcote, the seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonist, pointed out, one cannot ask, ‘Shall, then, the judge of the whole earth not do justice?’ unless one assumes the existence of an unlegislated justice to

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which, as it were, God Himself is bound; and which, one might add, man can at least apprehend sufﬁciently to ask the question.83 It is clear from the context of his remarks that Lichtenstein understands the claims that he makes about SMU in the context of Genesis 18 to apply to Jewish tradition as a whole. What are these claims? There is an unequivocal assertion here that Jewish tradition supports ontic SMU, in fact that (SMUB) Not only is morality totally independent of God, but God is bound by it: He ought not to do or command what is immoral. Moreover, Lichtenstein’s reference to the human apprehension of unlegislated justice means that he takes Jewish tradition, minimally, to deny (DCTER) We would have no moral knowledge without God’s revealed Torah commands. Lichtenstein admits that subsequent to the Sinaitic revelation of divine directives, it is indeed a serious question what difference tradition’s recognition of what he calls ‘natural morality’ actually makes. Nevertheless, he argues, it does make some very signiﬁcant difference: natural morality sets a standard beneath which revealed imperatives could not conceivably fall. In other words, our awareness of tradition’s acknowledgement of natural morality places constraints on our interpretation of Scriptural commands: given that awareness, we will not read those commands in ways that render them radically dissonant with the dictates of natural morality. Thus, for example, in proving that the killing of a Gentile constitutes proscribed murder (although the Torah at one point speaks of a man killing ‘his fellow’,84 i.e. a Jew), the Mekhiltah explains: Prior to the giving of the Torah, we were enjoined with respect to bloodshed. After the giving of the Torah, instead of [our obligation’s] becoming more rigorous, [is it conceivable] that it became less so?85 Thus, the Mekhiltah refuses to interpret the Torah’s prohibition against one killing ‘his fellow’ as excluding the killing of a non-Jew from the terms of the prohibition. What motivates this refusal, argues Lichtenstein, is the Rabbis’ conviction that no revealed Torah command could possibly intend to enshrine a lower ethical standard than that demanded by natural morality, which forbids the taking of all human life. Ethical guidelines for how we are to understand revelation notwithstanding, Lichtenstein brieﬂy indicates that, subsequent to the divine revelation of Torah at Sinai, natural morality no longer functions as a sanction for our religious practices. Only the Torah occupies that role. He cites Maimonides:

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What you must know is that [as regards] anything from which we abstain or which we do today, we do this solely because of God’s commandment, conveyed through Moses, not because God had commanded thus to prophets who had preceded him. For instance . . . we do not circumcise because Abraham circumcised himself and the members of his household but because God commanded us, through Moses, to become circumcised as had Abraham.86 In the post-Sinaitic era, we fulﬁl our religious obligations because of the requirements of revelation. This is quite consistent, however, with Lichtenstein’s view that SMU is the view of Jewish tradition.

2.3.e

David Hartman

Hartman remarks: I allow that the Torah may challenge some accepted current patterns of behaviour, but I cannot imagine that it requires us to sacriﬁce our ability to judge what is just and fair. The covenant invites a community to act and to become responsible for the condition of its human world. This invitation to full responsibility in history would be ludicrous if the community’s rational or moral powers were relegated in the very act of covenantal commitment.87 Divine revelation, claims Hartman, cannot ask us to suppress our own moral judgement. Hartman assumes, then, that human beings possess some kind of independent capacity for moral judgement – for it is this, he claims, that the Torah cannot ask us to forego. It sounds so far as if Hartman’s sympathies lie with SMU, even if the quoted passage itself does not justify attributing to Hartman a more precise formulation of SMU. However, Hartman’s remarks concerning the impact of human moral comprehension upon the halakhic process further clarify his position. He writes: the development of the halakhah must be subjected to the scrutiny of moral categories that are independent of the notion of halakhic authority . . . so too must our human ethical sense shape our understanding of what is demanded of us in the mitzvot . . . contemporary halakhic Jews need not apologise for using the best of ethical thought to learn how to apply the mitzvot that touch upon ethical and moral considerations in everyday life.88 ‘Moral categories . . . independent of the notion of halakhic authority’ sounds close to SMU, and though ‘our human ethical sense’ might be divine in origin, one gets the impression from his remarks on our topic taken together that

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Hartman would assert the independence of this ethical sense from God. The passage just cited also brings out something of the radical nature of Hartman’s position, at least in comparison with the views of Lichtenstein outlined above. Hartman grants human moral understanding a more signiﬁcant role in the development of Halakhah than does Lichtenstein. For Lichtenstein, once natural morality has served its function as the ethical threshold for the imperatives of revelation, its job is done. It has no operative relevance to the halakhic life of the Jew. It cannot, for instance, serve as a reason for any religious practice, as Lichtenstein’s quotation from Maimonides makes clear. On Hartman’s view, by contrast, human moral perceptions remain functional and even busy subsequent to Sinaitic revelation. For Hartman, then, unlike for Lichtenstein, Judaism goes further than mere recognition of the existence of revelation-independent morality and moral knowledge. According to Hartman, independent morality is a constant presence in, and a pervasive inﬂuence upon, our daily religious existence. In a subsequent passage, Hartman clearly articulates his opposition to DCT, at least in its interpretation as (DCTNR), the claim that God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of morality: My claim that ethics is central to the covenantal revelation should not be confused with the assertion that without revelation ethical norms have no rational obligatory grounding. Human history has shown that individuals are capable of developing viable ethical systems not rooted in divine authority. God’s revelation of the ethical is not meant to compensate for a presumed inability of human reason to formulate an ethical system.89 Broadly speaking, then, Hartman’s sympathies certainly lie with the notion that SMU is the outlook of Jewish tradition. He seems favourable to SMU in various forms, though some of his locutions do not make clear precisely which version of it he is supporting. In addition, he maintains that revelation-independent morality plays a key role in shaping the contours of the daily religious life of the observant Jew.

2.3.f

Shubert Spero

A thinker whose views have much in common with the positions of Lichtenstein and Hartman is Spero. He writes: We indicated earlier that God is the source of the moral commands in the Bible. How shall we understand this? Does it mean that a certain rule is to be deemed moral because God has ordained it, or does it mean the reverse, that God ordains certain rules because they embody moral principles? The latter would appear to be the case . . . morality is prior to our knowledge of God not only in an epistemological sense but in

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an axiological sense as well . . . Morality . . . becomes obligatory for man, not because of the arbitrary ﬁat of divine legislation but because morality, whose value and obligatoriness man has always dimly perceived, is now identiﬁed with God, who is absolute value, the prototype of all morality. In a sense, God has no choice but to ordain moral rules. The moral God cannot command rules that are not moral.90 Near the beginning of this passage, Spero provides his own reformulation of the Euthyphro dilemma. He then very unambiguously grasps the SMU horn of the dilemma, claiming that on the biblical view SMU is true not only epistemologically but axiologically also. In other words, for Spero the Bible supports both (SMUE) We would have at least some moral knowledge even if we had no revealed Torah commands and no access to God’s unrevealed will; and ontic SMU. Spero’s formulation in the last two sentences of the passage cited merits attention. To say that God ‘has no choice’ but to ordain moral rules and that He ‘cannot’ command immoral rules suggests logical necessity rather than moral necessity. If God ought to command only what is moral, then He does have a moral choice, and He may choose not to restrict His commands solely to what is moral. However, it is not fully clear which kind of necessity Spero intends here, and his qualiﬁcation ‘[I]n a sense God has no choice . . .’ perhaps suggests that he intends only moral necessity. If he does mean this, then Spero holds that the Bible endorses, in addition to ontic SMU and (SMUE): (SMUB) Not only is morality totally independent of God, but God is bound by it: He ought not to do or command what is immoral.91

2.3.g Abraham Joshua Heschel Heschel writes concerning the Euthyphro dilemma: [D]o the gods love the good because it is good or is it good because the gods love it? Such a problem could only arise when the gods and the good were regarded as two different entities, and where it was taken for granted that the gods do not always act according to the highest standards of goodness and justice. To inquire: is a particular act holy (commanded by, or dear to God) because it is good or is it good because it is holy (commanded by or dear to God)? would be just as meaningless as to inquire: is a particular point within the circle called the center due to its equidistance from the periphery or is its equidistance from the periphery due to its being the center? The dichotomy of the holy and the good is

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alien to the spirit of the great prophets. To their thinking, the righteousness of God is inseparable from His being.92 It is difﬁcult to determine with conﬁdence precisely what Heschel’s view is in this passage. On the one hand, Heschel seems to suggest that the Euthyphro dilemma is chimerical, ‘meaningless’; that neither DCT nor SMU accurately captures the prophetic attitude towards this issue. On the other hand, what Heschel might really mean is that in the prophetic view, God and the good are so inextricably intertwined that necessarily, whatever God commands is good and vice versa, or more formally: Necessarily (A is a good action A is an action commanded by God). But as we saw in Chapter 1, an equivalence is not enough to capture the notion of dependence, that what makes an action good is that God has commanded it. Thus, even on this interpretation of Heschel, Heschel is not committed to DCT.

2.3.h

Lenn Goodman

At times, Goodman93 employs language that suggests support for ontic DCT. Thus, for example, he claims that ‘monotheism is the religious mode that . . . seeks the source of all values – moral, aesthetic, even ontic – in a single locus . . . God’94 and he refers to God as ‘the Absolute Source of all values’.95 However, Goodman is not fully consistent in adopting this position. In his most direct reference to the Euthyphro dilemma, or at least to a common way in which contemporary philosophy recasts that dilemma,96 he writes: To say of an act that it is right and that it is God’s will become [in monotheism] two different ways of saying the same thing . . . in monotheism goodness is constitutive in the idea of God. Theistic subjectivism, then, becomes a red herring, and the question whether right is right because God wills it, or God wills it because it is right, a pseudoquestion. For in monotheism, normatively, God’s will means what is right, and what is right is God’s will.97 Goodman’s claim here that ‘goodness is constitutive in the idea of God’ is very close to Heschel’s ‘the righteousness of God is inseparable from His being’. Similar ideas are endorsed in further passages, for example: The very idea of divinity is bound up with what is best and most perfect. Thus Amos speaks interchangeably of the quest for God and the quest for the good, and Hosea equates lovingkindness, truth, and knowledge of God . . . The core of monotheistic ethics is the identity of the love of goodness with the love of God.98

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But let us return to the passage that begins ‘To say of an act’. Initially, this seems a difﬁcult passage to fathom. Unlike the ﬁrst passage from Goodman cited above, it is clearly not an assertion of ontic DCT. Rather, two other views seem to be adopted here. First, Goodman appears, both at the beginning of this passage and at the end, to attribute to monotheism semantic DCT. At the beginning, he claims that to say that an action is right and to say that God wills it are ‘two different ways of saying the same thing’. At the end, he is explicit that ‘God’s will means what is right’. Yet in the middle sentence of the passage, Goodman seems to espouse a second and conﬂicting view, dismissing the Euthyphro dilemma as ‘a pseudo-question’. But how can Goodman have it both ways? Surely he cannot both support semantic DCT as the appropriate response to the Euthyphro dilemma and argue that the dilemma is not a real one? I think, however, that we can see that Goodman is being internally consistent in this passage if we recall a point made at the end of our discussion of semantic DCT in Chapter 1.99 A ‘full’ semantic version of DCT needs to make two claims: that (1) x’s being right is synonymous with x’s being willed by God; and that (2) x’s being willed by God is explanatorily prior to x’s being right. But Goodman claims only (1). And to claim just (1) is to assert symmetry rather than asymmetry between the two relata. On (1), there is no dependence of x’s being right upon x’s being willed by God; the two relata are simply equivalent. And if they are equivalent, then the question of which one depends upon the other is, in a sense, a ‘pseudo-question’. Thus, I believe that Goodman, in this passage, should be interpreted as supporting only a ‘non-full’ semantic version of DCT, which does not, in fact, assert a relationship of dependence between the relata. Whatever Goodman’s view in this passage, however, it is clearly a different one from the view that he articulates in the ﬁrst passage quoted in this section, which clearly supports ontic DCT.

2.3.i

Further supporters of SMU in contemporary Jewish thought

In concluding this chapter, let us highlight the views of some further advocates of the claim that Jewish tradition supports SMU, since I shall often refer to the views of these writers in the remainder of this work. A fairly recent essay by Louis Jacobs focuses directly on the central question for this study of whether classical Jewish texts support DCT or SMU.100 Jacobs attempts to argue that Jewish tradition as a whole, including biblical and rabbinic thought, medieval Jewish philosophical thought and some modern sources, endorses SMU.101 Jacobs’s article provides a further clear illustration of the tendency to take the identiﬁcation of the classical Jewish view on DCT/SMU as a straightforward matter, embodying as it does the implicit assumption that the issue can be unambiguously decided for Jewish tradition as a whole in a single essay. Moreover, Jacobs does not distinguish between different forms of SMU. Similarly brief treatment is provided by Sagi and Statman,102 who in a single

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article argue not only that support for ontic DCT is almost totally absent from Jewish tradition as a whole, but present a theory to explain this absence. Sagi returns in greater detail and depth to the claim that Jewish tradition endorses SMU in a recent book.103 In fact, Sagi argues in this work for twin central theses, namely, that Jewish tradition rejects 1) ontic DCT and 2) the conﬂict thesis. While Sagi devotes considerably more space in the book than in the earlier article to arguing for the view that Judaism supports ontic SMU, he continues, like Jacobs and others, to see the issue of DCT/SMU in Jewish tradition as a very straightforward one. My central claim in this study will be that the issue is, in several ways, far from straightforward. It is appropriate brieﬂy to mention at this juncture a substantive difference in approach between Jacobs and Sagi. Sagi omits the Bible from his analysis and does not include it in his claim that Jewish tradition supports SMU. Here my approach is closer to that of Jacobs, though it differs somewhat from his position also. I shall return to this issue in greater detail in Chapter 3.

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3.1

Introduction

In this chapter I begin to make the case for the central claim of this book: that the approach of the classical texts of Jewish tradition to the DCT/SMU issue is complex and nuanced, notwithstanding the fact that the contemporary literature is usually reluctant to admit this. My argument, so far as the bulk of this chapter (i.e. section 3.3) is concerned, will take the form of an analysis of biblical texts2 that apparently support or have been claimed to support SMU. I shall argue that the import of most of these texts is at best ambiguous, and that while some texts clearly reject various command forms of DCT, most others, if they show anything about DCT/SMU at all, can just as plausibly be understood to buttress various will forms of DCT as to support various types of SMU.3 If my analysis is correct, it will demonstrate that the view of thinkers such as Brunner,4 who argue that the Bible unequivocally and consistently endorses an ontic will version of DCT, is unjustiﬁed; and that the position of writers like Jacobs and Spero,5 who understand the Bible as being clearly in favour of SMU, is similarly exaggerated. Section 3.2 is devoted to methodology: I contrast my approach with that of Sagi, and argue for the legitimacy, and indeed desirability, of an examination of biblical texts in the context of the DCT/SMU issue. Two other methodological points can be brieﬂy dealt with at this juncture. First, we should not expect to ﬁnd in classical Jewish sources (and this is especially true of earlier, biblical texts) views about DCT/SMU that use the term ‘morality’, since there is no word for ‘morality’ in the Bible.6 At a lower level of generality, however, we can expect to ﬁnd relevant passages, since of course speciﬁc moral concepts such as justice, mercy and goodness are often explicitly referred to in biblical texts. Moreover, we might anticipate locating texts in which moral issues or DCT/SMU are at stake even if no explicit moral terminology is employed. Second, I wish to emphasise that the way in which I shall analyse biblical texts here entails that I need take no position on controversial issues surrounding the authorship of the Bible. I shall be discussing the Bible as literature, as a literary genre, and examining it from an internal point of view. I am interested

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here in the view of the biblical text about DCT/SMU regardless of the question of how the text came into being. In the same way, one could analyse Macbeth or Hamlet, their characters and their worldview, without entering the issues of whether Shakespeare wrote these plays or whether he ever even existed.7

3.2

The legitimacy and desirability of examining biblical texts

When discussing the position on a given issue of ‘Jewish tradition’ or ‘Jewish thought’, the natural place to begin is the Bible.8 Such a claim may appear commonsensical and uncontroversial, yet it is not always accepted. In his discussion of the DCT/SMU issue in Jewish sources, Sagi implicitly rejects this assumption by analysing only Talmudic and post-Talmudic texts,9 with no attempt at a systematic treatment of relevant biblical passages. Neither does Sagi offer any explanation for what is, on the face of it, a startling omission: after all, Sagi’s stated objective is to determine the position of Jewish tradition tout court,10 and yet he conducts his enquiry without systematic reference to Judaism’s seminal document. What lies behind Sagi’s decision to ignore biblical texts is, perhaps, Daniel Statman’s concern11 that any examination of biblical writings in contexts such as the present one is likely to prove unproductive, given the radically different possibilities of interpretation of germane passages. Now, of course, I do not want to suggest that any biblical passage, or indeed verse, is necessarily capable of bearing only a single plausible interpretation. That is rarely, if ever, the case. It is, moreover, almost undoubtedly true that some treatments of biblical texts in the literature about Judaism and DCT/SMU are too cursory, even tendentious.12 What I do wish to claim, however, is that it is sometimes possible to offer plausible interpretations of the stance of relevant biblical passages in relation to our topic, although this involves giving those passages more careful and more nuanced attention than they have sometimes received. And if it is not possible to do this with biblical passages, then – and I wish to strongly underline this point – it is not clear why it should be possible in the case of Talmudic and post-Talmudic passages. Moreover, even if it should turn out – as I shall argue in this chapter that it does – that biblical texts germane to the DCT/SMU question are indeed capable of bearing more than one plausible interpretation, that yields no justiﬁcation for not examining these texts. For if the criterion for examining classical Jewish texts is that they must only bear one likely interpretation, then we shall be compelled to forego analysing any such texts at all, whether biblical or post-biblical, and Sagi himself will have no justiﬁcation for his own discussion of post-biblical texts. In a suggestive passage in the Introduction to his book Judaism: Between Religion and Morality, Sagi writes: one of the aims of this book is the attempt to sketch a worldview as it arises out of the Jewish ‘life-world’ [olam hahayyim] as it actually is. For

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this reason, I have paid particular attention to the materials of the living tradition itself: Halakhah, Scriptural exegesis and so on. Such materials were the clear and basic formative agents of Jewish tradition. From them one can learn about the world and thought of Jews, sometimes far more than what can be learned from systematic philosophical thought. For the systematic philosophical thought [of Judaism] was shaped in the context of conscious confrontation with the ‘outside’; Jewish philosophy developed in the context of encounter with and internalisation of new worlds. It is the product of dialogue, and as such contains something of the ‘inside’, but also something of the ‘outside’. It is certainly instructive about the capacity of Jewish tradition to adapt to the outside world, but it already embodies a complex world that lies beyond primary experience of Jewish tradition as a living tradition.13 Sagi’s intriguing claim here – that it is often precisely the non-philosophical traditional sources, rather than Jewish tradition’s systematic philosophical treatises, that are most genuinely revealing of Judaism’s thinking – is, I suspect, warranted. But if that is so, it is curious that Sagi counts Halakhah and Scriptural exegesis among ‘the clear and basic formative agents of Jewish tradition’ and yet fails to mention Scripture itself. Doubtless the issue of how precisely to determine what constitutes the position of any tradition on a particular issue is a complex one. Yet, prima facie at any rate, the outlook of ‘Jewish tradition’ on an issue like DCT/SMU is best assessed by placing the emphasis upon an examination of its central texts. Even supposing that we were able, say, to obtain solid evidence as to the opinions of actual Jews throughout history on a topic like DCT/SMU, it seems unlikely that we would want to claim that these opinions constitute the view of Jewish tradition. It appears to me, therefore, that in attempting to determine the position of Jewish tradition on DCT/SMU, a sound strategy is to focus on the tradition’s central texts. As far as the Bible is concerned, that means following the majority, ‘commonsense’ view as against Sagi’s rather idiosyncratic – and undefended – position, and including the Bible within our purview.14 I am therefore advocating a position, regarding the examination of biblical texts in the present context, that in a sense lies midway between the position of Sagi, who ignores biblical texts, and that of thinkers such as Jacobs, Carlebach and Falk, who understand the Bible to be clearly replete with texts that endorse SMU.15 What I believe is necessary is a careful analysis of relevant biblical texts, equipped with the kind of conceptual framework developed in Chapter 1. To sum up: Sagi omits an examination of biblical texts from his enquiry into what constitutes the position of Jewish tradition on DCT/SMU. Sagi offers no rationale for this omission, and it seems reasonable to assume, with the majority of writers, that assessing the view of Jewish tradition on a question like DCT/ SMU involves looking at its central texts, including the Bible, its foundational document. This chapter, therefore, includes three central claims. First, as already

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indicated, the scope of an adequate enquiry into the view of Jewish tradition on DCT/SMU must be expanded to include Scripture. The second and third claims emerge from my analysis of biblical texts in the remainder of this chapter. The second claim is that there are signiﬁcantly fewer biblical texts that, even prima facie, support SMU than is assumed by writers like Jacobs, Falk and Carlebach, and the import of even those texts that apparently best reﬂect SMU is ambiguous between SMU and versions of will DCT. The third claim is that, pace Brunner, the Bible does not unequivocally support an ontic will version of DCT. Let us turn, then, to an examination of biblical texts.

3.3 3.3.a

Biblical texts Torah as Covenant

Falk writes: Instead of imposing His will by an outright command, the Almighty . . . [chooses] the framework of the covenant . . . God could have been satisﬁed with delivering His commandments, but He chose to enter into a bilateral agreement . . . In the ﬁnal instance, the obligation of humanity to observe divine commandments is based on mankind’s own commitment . . . this is a true idea of . . . the moral capacity of human beings prior to revelation.16 In a similar vein, Shubert Spero comments: the Bible describes all of the many kindnesses and beneﬁts that God has bestowed upon Israel, from their liberation from Egypt through all of the tribulations in the wilderness, that should have evoked thankfulness and loyalty . . . arguments of this kind assume . . . the moral obligation to show gratitude.17 He continues: The frequent appeals to Israel to obey the covenant contain a covert argument suggested by the term ‘covenant’, i.e. an agreement formally entered into by two or more parties. This is taken most seriously by the Bible as obligating . . . the people collectively and individually, who freely committed themselves to the terms of the covenant . . . this argument as well rests upon a presupposition that one ought to keep a promise, honor an agreement, stand behind one’s word. Thus, while the Torah contains a moral code revealed by God to Israel, it is urged upon Israel because of moral principles of gratitude and promise-keeping,

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with the implication that these are somehow binding prior to the Sinaitic covenant . . . Returning . . . to the observation that the ultimate appeal of the Bible seems to be to gratitude and promise-keeping, we are led to the conclusion that in Judaism the self-evidence of these moral obligations is assumed.18 Let us attempt to formulate the essential argument of Falk and Spero more precisely.19 It seems to run as follows: (1) The Torah includes God’s commands to Israel. (2) The Torah grounds Israel’s obligation to obey God’s commands in covenant-honouring/promise-keeping.20 Therefore (3) The Torah assumes a moral obligation to honour covenants/keep promises that is logically prior to revelation. If this argument is sound, we can view the verses in the Torah and other parts of the Bible that speak, for example, of Israel’s covenantal obligation to obey God’s commands, as texts that embody commitment to the existence of a certain kind of moral obligation prior to revelation.21 More precisely, it appears that what is biblically supported if the Falk–Spero argument is correct is ontic SMU, or at least ‘necessary condition’ SMU, since covenant-honouring is morally right without God’s command. Here, however, caution is needed, and some of the distinctions drawn in the analytical framework of Chapter 1 come further into the foreground. For it is clear that the Falk–Spero argument does not unequivocally show that, in the biblical view (SMUN) necessary case that rightness

It is not the case that God’s revealed Torah command is a condition of the moral rightness of an act and it is not the God’s unrevealed will is a necessary condition of the moral of an act.

For the Falk–Spero argument shows only that the Torah assumes the existence of a moral obligation to honour covenants that is independent of, and prior to, revelation. It shows that the Torah itself rejects (DCTNR) God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act. But it might still be the case that the source of the obligation to honour covenants is God’s will: there might be a moral obligation to honour covenants only because, say, God willed it when He created the universe. Thus, the Falk– Spero argument might only show that, in the Bible’s view:

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(DCTNW) Either God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act or God’s unrevealed will is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act. In conclusion, the Falk–Spero argument (even in the distilled and, I believe, more cogent form that I have cast it in here) does not provide us with clear grounds for claiming to have found any biblical support for SMU. For the argument may only demonstrate biblical endorsement of one version of a will interpretation of DCT.

3.3.b

Genesis 3:5 and 3:22

The third chapter of the Book of Genesis is directly relevant to our theme because it partly comprises, at face value at any rate,22 the biblical account of how the human race obtained moral knowledge. I shall argue, however, that beyond its relevance, it is difﬁcult to draw any conclusions about Genesis 3’s signiﬁcance for DCT/SMU. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent tells Eve that by defying the divine command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, she and Adam will indeed ‘become like God, knowing what is good and evil’.23 The following verses report that Adam and Eve eat from the tree, and thus attain ethical knowledge. Their achievement of moral cognition is conﬁrmed near the end of the chapter: ‘And the Lord God said: Behold, man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil’.24 According to Genesis 3, then, human moral knowledge is dependent upon Adam and Eve’s consumption of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. It is important to underscore that God does not reveal moral knowledge to Adam and Eve through any directive. Rather, Adam and Eve attain knowledge of good and evil by eating the fruit of a tree, and that knowledge is transmitted, somehow, to their descendants, the human family as a whole. Human moral knowledge – the Bible seems to be telling us very clearly – came about in this way, rather than, for example, through divine commands. Had divine commands not subsequently been revealed, humanity would still have possessed moral understanding. This biblical passage thus certainly appears to deny: (DCTER) We would have no moral knowledge without God’s revealed Torah commands. However, Genesis 3 does not necessarily support (SMUE) We would have at least some moral knowledge even if we had no revealed Torah commands and no access to God’s unrevealed will

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because perhaps what the fruit of the tree of knowledge does is precisely to furnish its eater with access to God’s unrevealed will. Thus Genesis 3 may only endorse: (DCTEW) We would have no moral knowledge without our access to God’s unrevealed will (i.e. we would have at least some moral knowledge without God’s Torah commands, but none without our access to His will). In fact, Genesis 3 appears to be recounting the story of how moral knowledge in general – ‘the knowledge of good and evil’ – was gained by human beings, rather than merely ‘at least some’ of it. On the face of it, Genesis 3 radically undermines any claim of the divine revelation of commands to constituting a necessary condition of human ethical cognition. Consequently, Genesis 3 seems, at the very least, to yield an unambiguous rejection of (DCTER). I shall now consider two objections to the claim that Genesis 3 rejects (DCTER). I shall argue that although the second objection is not successful, the ﬁrst is, so that Genesis 3 cannot ultimately be taken to deny (DCTER) or to provide any support for either (SMUE) or (DCTEW). The ﬁrst objection is that the scope of the moral knowledge with which Genesis 3 is concerned is really too narrow for the passage to properly be considered signiﬁcant for our enquiry. For the only new-found human moral knowledge that the passage focuses upon is the sense of shame associated with nakedness. The concluding verse of Genesis Chapter 2 tells us that Adam and Eve in the Garden were naked and unembarrassed to be so. As soon as they have eaten the forbidden fruit, we are told that what Adam and Eve now realise is that they are naked and that they need to cover their nakedness (verse 7).25 In verse 10, in reply to God’s question ‘Where are you?’, the focus is again on nakedness as Adam says that he hid from God because of it. And in verse 11, God retorts: ‘Who told you that you are naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?’. It seems, then, that the ‘knowledge of good and evil’ that Adam and Eve obtain in our passage and bequeath to humanity is merely the knowledge that nakedness ought to be covered – they attain a sense of shame about their own nakedness. Consequently, what humanity is shown by Genesis 3 to know about morality independently of revealed divine command is rather meagre. The range of moral knowledge that Genesis 3 is concerned with is simply too restricted to render this text an important one for our enquiry. It might be replied to this objection that although Genesis 3 focuses on the shame associated with nakedness, this is intended merely as an instance of a far wider moral knowledge that Adam and Eve now possess as a result of their consumption of the forbidden fruit. After all, the serpent tells them that if they eat the fruit, ‘you shall become like God, knowing what is good and evil’, and nowhere is it explicitly indicated that the knowledge that Adam and Eve have

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in fact attained through their eating of the fruit is anything less than this. However, it does seem to me that the implicit textual indications that the awareness that Adam and Eve come to possess by eating the forbidden fruit is purely sexual in nature are strong enough to considerably impair the plausibility of reading Genesis 3 as the story of the attainment of a reasonably comprehensive human moral knowledge independently of divine revelation. The claim that Genesis 3 rejects (DCTER) or provides any endorsement of either (SMUE) or (DCTEW) is thus substantially undermined by this objection. A second, rather obvious strategy that might be deployed in attempting to undercut the apparent support that Genesis 3 lends to the idea of signiﬁcant revelation-independent moral knowledge is to draw attention to those parts of Genesis 3 and the surrounding narrative not yet considered in our discussion. I believe that this objection, unlike that just considered, is unsuccessful. This second objection runs as follows: Is it not striking that human attainment of moral knowledge in Genesis 3 is so bound up with sin and with divine displeasure? We would have expected that humanity’s development of ethical cognition would be the subject of divine pleasure or approval. Instead, the biblical text informs us that the very ﬁrst divine prohibition in human history was that against eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil;26 that it is the serpent, to whom the text explicitly attaches a morally negative epithet,27 who persuades Eve to eat from the tree; that God is displeased about Adam and Eve’s consumption of the fruit and punishes them and the serpent;28 and that Adam and Eve’s consumption of the forbidden fruit leads to their expulsion from Eden.29 Moreover, Genesis 3:5 itself probably suggests that hubris is involved in the human attainment of moral understanding: ‘For God knows that on the day you eat from it [the forbidden fruit], your eyes shall be opened, and you shall become like God, knowing what is good and evil’. The suggestion of an improper and arrogant human attempt to join the ranks of the divine is echoed in 3:22: ‘Behold, man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil’. Given that the human achievement of moral cognition is portrayed in the biblical text in such a negative light, as the outcome of sin and the cause of punishment (the objection continues), Genesis 3’s rejection of (DCTER) comes at too high a price. For if Genesis 3 shows that human moral cognition came about independently of divine revelation, it also sharply indicates that it ought not to have done, or at least not in the way that the story describes. At best, then, it might be said, while Genesis 3 shows human ethical knowledge as possible without divine revelation, it condemns the way in which that knowledge was actually attained, surrounding it with an air of moral paradox and ambiguity that radically subverts the text’s rejection of (DCTER) and any support that it might lend to (SMUE) or (DCTEW). But how, precisely, is this subversion effective? It does not follow from knowledge being obtained by sinful means that the knowledge itself is sinful. To say otherwise is to commit the ‘genetic fallacy’ of confusing the origin of something with its nature or value. It might be that originally God had wanted humanity to achieve its moral knowledge in some other, legitimate way, but that once

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humanity had chosen to disobey God, He allowed it to achieve this knowledge through sin.30 And perhaps hubris lies not so much in humanity’s achieving God-like moral knowledge as in the improper motivation suggested by the serpent of wishing to ‘become like God’. Another way of deﬂecting the objection concerning the negative connotations that Scripture seems to attach to Adam and Eve’s achievement of moral knowledge independently of divine revelation is suggested by the following comment of R. Bahya ben Asher:31 The tree of knowledge endowed those who ate of its fruit with desire and choice. This emerges from the use of the Hebrew da’at to describe it. In the Talmud the word is used in the sense of ‘opinion’ and ‘free choice’ . . . In other words, the tree of knowledge is really the tree of freewill. The Almighty forbade it to man since the latter was destined before the sin, to act like an angel, patterned to be rational in all his ways. But after the sin he achieved freewill and choice and became conscious of his bodily desires. This constitutes a Divine and good quality, in one way, but evil in another.32 According to Bahya, then, the moral ambiguity resides not in Adam and Eve’s achievement of the knowledge of good and evil as such, but rather in the loss of the status quo ante, with its pristine, angelic quality, that such achievement entails. Prior to gaining ethical cognition, man is like the angels; he has no free will, and good and evil do not exist. Upon eating the forbidden fruit, humanity is catapulted into a new mode of existence, into a universe informed by the category of the ethical and involving moral knowledge and choice. There is nothing ethically wrong about the new-found knowledge of the difference between good and evil; but a world containing good and evil and human free will entails risks that do not form part of the pre-moral world. Let us allow, for argument’s sake, that the word daat in the biblical text can plausibly be understood as meaning ‘free will’. A serious problem that remains with Bahya’s view is that it is difﬁcult to see how Adam and Eve could have disobeyed God and eaten the forbidden fruit unless they already possessed free will prior to eating it. Why, if Adam and Eve were angelic before eating the fruit, did they eat it? In rebutting the second objection, therefore, we must rely on the ‘genetic fallacy’ consideration discussed above, rather than on Bahya. However, as discussed above, the ﬁrst objection of the two just considered, which highlights the fact that the awareness gleaned from the forbidden fruit was purely sexual in character, renders the kind of moral knowledge discussed in Genesis 3 too limited in scope to be truly signiﬁcant for our analysis. Thus, I believe, the ﬁrst objection signiﬁcantly devalues the text’s rejection of (DCTER) and any support that the text might give to (SMUE) or (DCTEW). From our discussion of a natural way in which Genesis 3 might be understood as supporting the notion of revelation-independent human moral knowledge, and

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from our consideration of some objections to such an understanding, it is difﬁcult to see how Genesis 3 embodies any clear support for, or denial of, any version of DCT or SMU.33

3.3.c Genesis 18:17–33 Abraham’s dialogue with God concerning His proposed destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the eighteenth chapter of Genesis is of obvious relevance to our discussion. Regarding Abraham’s famous rhetorical challenge to the Almighty in this text,34 Aharon Lichtenstein, in a passage already cited in Chapter 2, seems, at ﬁrst glance, entirely justiﬁed when he writes: As Benjamin Whichcote, the seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonist, pointed out, one cannot ask ‘Shall, then, the judge of the whole earth not do justice?’ unless one assumes the existence of an unlegislated justice to which, as it were, God Himself is bound; and which, one might add, man can at least apprehend sufﬁciently to ask the question.35 In terms of the analytical framework of Chapter 1, the precise claims that seem to be implied by Abraham’s celebrated question to God are, according to Lichtenstein: (SMUN) It is not the case that God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act and it is not the case that God’s unrevealed will is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act; and (SMUB) Not only is morality totally independent of God, but God is bound by it: He ought not to do or command what is immoral. Lichtenstein’s remark about human beings understanding enough of unlegislated justice morally to challenge God does not necessarily entail (SMUE), since the only way humans possess this understanding might be through God. However, this remark certainly involves the denial of (DCTER) We would have no moral knowledge without God’s revealed Torah commands. We ought, perhaps, to be more cautious about claiming that, for Lichtenstein, Abraham’s question implies (SMUB), since Abraham’s question focuses exclusively on the notion of justice. Certainly, though, Abraham’s challenge to God implies, according to Lichtenstein, the following, modiﬁed version of (SMUB): (SMUB′) Not only is justice totally independent of God, but God is bound by it: He ought not to do or command what is unjust.

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For the purposes of the next part of my discussion of Genesis 18, I shall assume that Lichtenstein is correct in his basic thesis that Genesis 18 supports SMU.36 Later in this section, I shall examine whether this basic claim is truly justiﬁed. Assuming, then, that Lichtenstein’s reading of Genesis 18 is fundamentally correct, we are probably justiﬁed in going further than (SMUB′), in the light of an interesting ambiguity in Abraham’s challenge to God. That challenge in fact spans three verses (23–25), and Abraham’s celebrated rhetorical question in verse 25 is merely the culmination. In verse 23, Abraham asks God: ‘Will you indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked?’. Similarly, in verse 25, Abraham pleads with God not to kill the righteous with the wicked, not to treat these two categories of people in the same way, punishing the righteous because of the wicked. In verse 24, however, Abraham asks God to save the whole city if it contains ﬁfty righteous people: ‘Perhaps there are ﬁfty righteous men in the city; will You destroy and not forgive the place for the sake of the ﬁfty righteous men who are in its midst?’. In this verse, Abraham’s request is not merely that God desist from punishing the righteous undeservedly, but also that He save the wicked because of the righteous. (In the event, as we read in the remainder of the text, God accedes to both requests – and in the case of the second request, Abraham succeeds in reducing the number of righteous people required to ten.)37 Given that Abraham asks God not only for justice but also, as we have just noted, for mercy (to save the wicked because of the righteous), we can see that (SMUN) and the denial of (DCTER) are reinforced by our text, for it seems (i) that merciful actions are right independently of God and (ii) that humanity knows about mercy independently of revelation. What about (SMUB)? Substituting mercy for justice in (SMUB′) yields (SMUB″) Not only is mercy totally independent of God, but God is bound by it: He ought not to do or command what is unmerciful. However, the logic of the concept of mercy may make (SMUB″) difﬁcult to sustain. For it is arguably of the essence of mercy that it is, to an extent, discretionary. While we may feel comfortable about saying that, in general, to show mercy is a good thing for human beings to do and even for God to do, it seems strange to say that human beings or God are bound to show mercy or have a duty to show mercy in any given instance.38 Perhaps, then, it is reasonable to say that Abraham’s request for mercy for Sodom implies: (SMUB′′′) Mercy is totally independent of God, and whenever God acts, He always takes mercy into consideration. Abraham’s request for mercy for Sodom apparently presupposes, inter alia, something like (SMUB′′′). He asks God to view the case at hand as an instance for the exercise of mercy.

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Of course, Abraham’s question on its own would not imply (SMUN), etc. if the rest of the biblical passage under discussion showed him to be mistaken; here, even if Lichtenstein’s basic understanding of Genesis 18 is correct, his analysis requires slight modiﬁcation. We can, for example, conceive of a biblical text in which Abraham is told that there simply is no justice or mercy independently of God’s command; the justice and mercy he is appealing to are chimerical. Or the text might have gone on to describe God as ﬁnding Abraham’s question merely incomprehensible. What actually happens in the biblical text, however, is that the entire relevant part of Genesis 18 reinforces Abraham’s challenge to God; and so it turns out that the inference of (SMUN), etc. from Abraham’s challenge is indeed (seemingly) justiﬁed. We have already noted that God responds positively to both the justice and mercy ‘strands’ of Abraham’s challenge in the continuation of our text. Let us now examine how we might strengthen Lichtenstein’s basic thesis that Genesis 18 supports SMU even more, by examining further the apparent reinforcement in the biblical text of Abraham’s question and analysing how the text appears further to bolster the claims implied by that question. In response to Abraham’s moral objections to His proposed course of action, God does not reply that His conceptions of justice and mercy diverge from Abraham’s, nor does He suggest that Abraham is mistaken in any other way. On the contrary: God concedes Abraham’s ethical point. If there are a handful of righteous men in Sodom, the city should indeed be saved. Once God has conceded that Abraham is right about the moral issues, the framework of moral agreement within which the discussion about Sodom’s future will take place has been established. The dialogue between Abraham and God from this point onwards in the biblical text focuses solely on the question of what might be termed the mathematics of mercy: what is the precise minimum number of righteous men that the city is to contain in order that the whole city, including the wicked in its midst, be spared. The shared understanding of God and Abraham seems to be that both justice and mercy will be served if God allows the presence of a small number of righteous people to save the whole city; Abraham simply bargains God down, as it were, as far as he can. Further support for this kind of reading of Genesis 18 can be garnered from the fact that, as noted by Nehama Leibowitz,39 the text makes clear that God deliberately gives Abraham the opportunity to intercede on behalf of the inhabitants of Sodom. God says to Abraham: ‘The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave. I will go down now and see’.40 God thus effectively invites Abraham to participate in a conversation with Him. Given that this conversation is obviously going to revolve around themes such as justice, desert, punishment and mercy, it would be strange for God to issue the invitation to discussion if the two lacked a shared understanding of these concepts. In a similar vein, Nachmanides offers the following analysis of God’s reasons for inviting Abraham into dialogue:

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if, according to the principles of righteousness and justice they [the people of Sodom and Gomorrah] deserve to escape punishment, he [Abraham] will pray before Me to let them alone and the matter will be in order, but if indeed they completely deserve punishment, he [Abraham] will also wish them punished, and therefore [in either case] it is appropriate to let him know of My intentions.41 Returning to the text of Genesis 18, we read ‘And Abraham drew near’42 – an apparently superﬂuous phrase. Rashi,43 following the Midrash, notes that the Hebrew signiﬁes drawing near a) to do battle; b) for the purpose of conciliation; and c) in order to pray. According to Rashi, then, the apparently redundant term vayyigash (‘and he drew near’) serves to portray Abraham’s stance before God during the dialogue: Abraham was simultaneously – and paradoxically – aggressive, conciliatory and prayerful. Rashi’s explanation is very faithful to the text. Abraham twice beseeches God not to become angry with him and articulates his awareness of being mere ‘dust and ashes’ before God. Simultaneously, however, Abraham does not hesitate either to challenge God’s behaviour on moral grounds or to bargain hard with Him for Sodom’s salvation. Our text makes clear that although human beings may be utterly insigniﬁcant when compared to God in His glory and majesty, they nevertheless share with God at least a signiﬁcant degree of moral understanding and are thus capable even of moral critique of Him. A challenge that might be mounted to the reading of Genesis 18 as supporting SMU is that although God seems to acquiesce to Abraham’s request in this chapter, as soon as we move on to Chapter 19 we read of the destruction of Sodom and its neighbouring cities.44 Is this not the clearest (despite its being only implicit) negative divine response to Abraham’s question imaginable? Is not the message of Chapter 19 that Abraham was simply mistaken, and are not the claims that his question seemed to imply and which appeared to be supported by the whole of the relevant section of Genesis 18 now radically undermined? There is a more plausible explanation for the destruction of Sodom. Jonathan Sacks writes of Abraham’s question in Genesis 18: Abraham’s problem is this: the towns are about to be destroyed; therefore, all the inhabitants will suffer; there is no town without some righteous men; therefore some of the suffering will be undeserved. What turns out to be mistaken is not his moral stance, but his factual assumption.45 The destruction of the cities of the plain carries no damaging consequences for the picture drawn above of Genesis 18. The fact of the destruction is easily explained: Abraham’s assumption that Sodom contained any righteous men whatsoever was typically generous but sadly mistaken. In Chapter 19 we read of an assault made on Lot’s house with the intention of sexually abusing his guests,

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the angels. The attack is carried out by ‘young and old, all the people from every quarter’.46 As Rashbam47 explains, the point of the text’s emphasis on all the people is to inform us that there were no righteous people at all in whose merit Sodom might have been saved.48 In similar fashion, Rashi comments on the phrase ‘all the people from every quarter (lit. ‘end’)’: ‘From one end of the city to the other, for not one of them objected to them [the perpetrators of the attack], for there was not even one righteous man among them’.49 Rashi and Rashbam are very faithful here to the plain sense of the biblical text, bringing out the implications of the narrative’s highlighting of ‘all the people’. Thus far in this section, we have seen that much can apparently be said in favour of Lichtenstein’s fundamental claim that Genesis 18 strongly supports SMU in a variety of forms. We have also considered and attempted to rebut one objection to Lichtenstein’s view. At this juncture, however, we may consider whether his basic thesis is really warranted. Fox, who, as we saw in Chapter 2, is an opponent of SMU, unsurprisingly reads Genesis 18 in a radically different way to Lichtenstein: When he [Abraham] asks, ‘Will You sweep away the innocent along with the guilty?’ and adds the rebuke, ‘Shall not the judge of all the earth deal justly?’ there is no element of blasphemy in his question, nor is he appealing to an independently known moral standard. His criticism of God is that He seems about to violate the very standards He Himself has set. It is as ‘judge of all the earth’ that God has taught us the principles of justice and has demanded of us rigorous adherence to those principles.50 In a similar vein, one might counter Lichtenstein’s reading of Genesis 18 as unambiguously supporting SMU by urging that although Abraham’s question clearly perceives God as bound by justice, it might have been God Who freely established the standard of justice in the ﬁrst place. That, as Fox indicates, is the force of Abraham’s reference to ‘the judge of all the earth’ – the One who established the standard originally. In terms of the terminology of Chapter 1, then, we might argue that inferring deﬁnite support for (SMUN) from Genesis 18 is unwarranted. Rather, we should perhaps infer the weaker conclusion that (DCTNW) Either God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act or God’s unrevealed will is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act. And instead of (SMUB), we might argue that we should infer from Genesis 18 only a weaker view, namely the ‘hybrid’ of DCT and SMU that we termed (M): (M) God freely determined morality by an act of His will, made it as it is, when He created the world. He could have made it other than it

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is; but now that He has made it as it is, He is bound in any later commands or actions by it. In Chapter 1, we saw that (M) is a controversial formulation because of the issue of whether or not a sovereign can logically bind his future choices. If we wish to avoid (M), we might suggest the alternative formulation suggested there, namely: (M′) God freely determined morality by an act of His will, made it as it is, when He created the world. He could have made it other than it is; but now that He has made it as it is, it can reasonably be assumed that His will regarding morality will remain unchanged. If we read Abraham’s question as supporting (M′), Abraham in fact does not think that God is bound by a standard of justice that He originally established. However, Abraham does assume that, having originally established a certain standard of justice by an act of His will, God’s will, in this regard, has remained the same until the present moment at which Abraham and God are conversing. Notice that even on this weaker, non-SMU reading of Genesis 18 in terms of (DCTNW) and (M) (or (M′)), we are still justiﬁed in understanding the biblical text as denying (DCTER) We would have no moral knowledge without God’s revealed Torah commands. Be that as it may, there is still a very sharp dichotomy between the SMUinformed and the weaker readings of Genesis 18. Which reading is the more plausible? A number of considerations are relevant here. First, the points made above concerning the text of Genesis 18 that I argued can be marshalled in order to bolster Lichtenstein’s basic thesis that Genesis 18 supports SMU can, in fact, be deployed with equal effect to buttress the weaker reading. That God does not reply to Abraham’s moral objections that the divine conceptions of justice and mercy differ from Abraham’s, that God concedes Abraham’s ethical point, is as compatible with the weaker reading of Genesis 18 as it is with the SMU-based reading. Similarly, God’s invitation to Abraham to discuss with Him the fate of Sodom, and Nachmanides’s remarks cited above in this connection, are just as helpful for the weaker reading as for the SMU interpretation. And that Abraham dares to challenge God on moral grounds, despite his relative status as ‘dust and ashes’, also lends no more credence to the SMU reading than to the weaker view. Thus far, then, it is difﬁcult to choose between the divergent readings. But a second consideration – also based upon the text of Genesis 18 – seems to militate in favour of the weaker reading. The beginning of the part of Genesis 18 relevant to our discussion asserts that ‘the way of the Lord’ is ‘to do righteous-

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ness and justice (mishpat)’.51 Thus, when Abraham poses the question ‘Shall the judge of all the earth not do justice? (mishpat)’ his challenge assumes added resonance for the reader because of the fact that we have just been informed that justice is God’s own way. This seems to bolster the weaker reading: Abraham appeals to God to act in accordance with standards of morality, of justice, which He Himself has established and which the biblical text has so closely identiﬁed with God as to term them nothing less than ‘the way of the Lord’. There is a third consideration. Let us recall the end of the passage cited above from Fox: ‘It is as “judge of all the earth” that God has taught us the principles of justice and has demanded of us rigorous adherence to those principles’. The obvious riposte to Fox is: Where and when did God teach us these principles of justice and insist upon our allegiance to them? There is no record in the biblical text of God having done these things; certainly not prior to the Sinaitic revelation, at any rate, and that event takes place much later in the biblical narrative, in the Book of Exodus. Fox might reply: God indeed instructed Abraham about justice, so that Abraham is now reminding God of His own moral lesson; the text just happens not to report God’s lecture to Abraham. Yet then the question becomes one of plausibility; and Fox’s imagined reply seems less plausible than the claim that the text omits what would be the very signiﬁcant event (particularly in the light of the later report of Abraham’s discussion with God concerning the fate of Sodom) of God teaching Abraham about justice for the straightforward reason that this event never occurred. It seems more likely that Genesis 18 supports SMU than that it fails to report God’s teaching of justice to Abraham, if this event really took place. The question that must now be asked is: Is the advocate of what I have termed the weaker reading of Genesis 18 any more persuasive than Fox? Such an advocate claims, inter alia, that God’s unrevealed will is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act. As stated in Chapter 1, I take ‘unrevealed will’ to mean ‘unrevealed in an explicit Torah command’; ‘unrevealed will’ may be communicated to us in some other way, or even not at all. If the advocate of the weaker reading of Genesis 18 claims that God communicated His will concerning justice to Abraham in a pre-Sinaitic act of revelation, but the biblical text simply fails to report this, then the champion of the weaker reading obviously suffers from the same deﬁciency in plausibility as Fox. But the advocate of the weaker reading has other options: he might argue that God does not communicate to Abraham at all that act of His will that makes just actions right. Yet if that is so, if Abraham does not know that just actions are right, then on what basis does he make his moral challenge to God? A third option for the exponent of the weaker reading of Genesis 18 – more plausible than the two alternatives thus far considered – is to suggest that Abraham’s cognitive equipment gives him access to what God wills concerning justice and that it is this knowledge of God’s own will that provides the platform for Abraham’s ethical challenge. If the advocate of the weaker reading of Genesis 18 takes this third option, is his interpretation of this biblical text more convincing than an SMU-based

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reading? I ﬁnd it difﬁcult to say. The biblical text certainly says nothing explicit about Abraham enjoying cognitive access to God’s unrevealed will concerning justice. At the same time, however, there are powerful religious intuitions – such as those which motivate the religious thinkers mentioned in Chapter 152 who are reluctant to make even mathematical and logical truths independent of God – that would motivate some theists who look at the biblical text to say: Of course Abraham is not challenging God in Genesis 18 on the basis of some external standard of justice that somehow binds even God. That would be unthinkable. Rather, Abraham is saying: ‘You, Almighty God, are Master of the Universe, and You have set clear standards of justice. But why are You ﬂouting them?’. If the ﬁrst and third considerations just discussed provide no clear grounds for deciding between the SMU-based and the weaker readings of Genesis 18, then what remains is the second consideration that, as we saw, is rooted in Genesis 18:19. But although I believe that that second consideration is sound, it is conﬁned to one verse of the text and does not really furnish adequate grounds for deciding between the two rival interpretations. To sum up: Genesis 18 is certainly a very relevant text for our enquiry. It certainly implies the denial of (DCTER). Moreover, there is a good prima facie case for understanding it as strongly supporting several forms of SMU. Yet despite the fact that several writers understand the passage in this way, it is ultimately difﬁcult to determine whether the text is not equally consistent with a weaker, non-SMU view.

3.3.d

Genesis 20:2–7

In Chapter 20 of Genesis we read that Avimelekh, King of Gerar, takes Sarah into his household, in the mistaken belief that she is Abraham’s sister rather than his wife. God, appearing to Avimelekh in a dream, tells him that he will die for this sin of adultery.53 The story continues: Now Avimelekh had not drawn near unto her [Sarah]; and he said: ‘Lord, shalt thou kill a righteous nation?! Did he [Abraham] not say unto me “She is my sister”, and also she said “He is my brother”! In the purity of my heart and the cleanliness of my hands have I done this’.54 Avimelekh protests that he has acted in complete innocence and is morally blameless. God replies that He is aware that Avimelekh has acted in innocence in bringing Sarah into his home, and that Avimelekh will escape punishment if he returns Sarah to Abraham.55 To a degree, Avimelekh’s ethical challenge to God mirrors Abraham’s challenge in Genesis 18, and the close proximity of the two passages in the biblical narrative is surely no accident. I suggest that the proximity – and the fact that God responds in positive fashion in this episode as well – emphasises again, pace Rachels,56 both the validity and the propriety, in the biblical view, of human

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ethical challenges to God, irrespective of whether the source of the challenge is a saint like Abraham or a pagan like Avimelekh. Avimelekh’s moral protest to God consists in the simple moral argument that he is innocent and therefore undeserving of punishment. This challenge and the divine response to it can be analysed in parallel fashion to Abraham’s objection in Genesis 18, and the relevant passage in Genesis 20 as a whole is susceptible to a similar commentary to that offered to Genesis 18 in the previous section. This includes, centrally, that Genesis 20 might reasonably be taken to endorse either some versions of SMU or the kind of weaker, non-SMU interpretation discussed in the previous section. The strong parallel that exists between Genesis 18 and Genesis 20 when these texts are examined from the perspective suggested here is further illustrated by a possible objection to my analysis of Genesis 20 that stems from the biblical text at the end of Chapter 20. The text reads: And Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Avimelekh and his wife and his maidservants, and they gave birth. For God had surely closed every womb in the house of Avimelekh, on account of Sarah, wife of Abraham.57 This passage apparently suggests that God does not accept Avimelekh’s ethical challenge. For Avimelekh, we are told, is punished despite his innocence, as are his wife and maidservants who, if anything, are even less culpable. This objection is parallel to the objection considered in the previous section which pointed to God’s destruction of Sodom subsequent to His dialogue with Abraham as a way of undermining the proposed analysis of the biblical text. It seems, however, that this objection can be deﬂected. The suffering of Avimelekh and his household can quite plausibly be construed not as punishment but as a divine warning to Avimelekh, who has Sarah in his house, that something is amiss. God intends the suffering to prompt Avimelekh to reﬂect on the seizure of Sarah.58

3.3.e

The Book of Genesis’s assumption of the moral knowledge of some of its personalities: Carlebach’s argument

One of Alexander Carlebach’s arguments for an SMU-type view is based on much broader biblical evidence than merely those passages which describe human moral challenges to God: Cain and Lemech, the generations of the Flood and the Dispersion, Sodom and Gomorrah and many others, individuals or people, are assumed in the Bible to have a sense of right and wrong . . . without having been vouchsafed an explicit supernatural revelation as was given to Israel on Sinai.59

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If Carlebach’s argument is sound,60 then the consequences are the denial by the biblical text of (DCTER), and ambiguity as to whether the text supports (SMUE) or (DCTEW). However, it seems to me that Carlebach’s argument is ﬂawed. For let us ask: on what grounds, precisely, does Carlebach think that Cain and other biblical characters are assumed by the text to have a sense of right and wrong? He does not say. Presumably – judging from the examples he gives, which are of people who are divinely punished – Carlebach reasons as follows: God rebukes (e.g.) Cain for killing Abel and indeed punishes him, and God would presumably not have done this had Cain not been deserving of punishment. More precisely, Carlebach’s argument seems to be: (a)

There are several instances in the Book of Genesis of people being punished for offences against morality, e.g. murder and violence. (b) No divine revelation has yet occurred. Therefore (d) The Book of Genesis assumes that there is a morality independent of revelation that the people who are punished (i) possess knowledge of and (ii) have sinned against. But Carlebach has smuggled in another, unstated premise in order to arrive at (d), namely: (c)

God does not punish people who do not possess moral knowledge.

But perhaps God does punish people who are morally ignorant.61 In other words, the fact that God punishes Cain (and other personalities) does not necessarily show that the biblical text assumes that Cain possesses moral knowledge. It might merely reﬂect the text’s assumption that God sometimes punishes the morally unlettered. In order to show that the biblical text attributes moral knowledge to Cain, we would need premise (c) as well.62 Yet, although not explicitly mentioned by Carlebach, there are several characters in the Book of Genesis to whom the biblical text seems quite clearly to attribute moral knowledge. For example, Esau employs moral terminology in complaining to Isaac about Jacob when he discovers that Jacob has taken the blessing that was intended for him: ‘He has deceived me [vayaakveini] on these two occasions!’.63 Laban and Jacob accuse one another using moral language. Laban asks Jacob: ‘Why have you stolen my gods?’.64 Jacob complains of Laban’s unfairness and deceit, saying to Rachel and Leah: ‘But your father mocked me and changed my wages a hundred times’,65 and his sense of injustice seems almost palpable when he directs the same accusation directly at Laban: ‘This is my twenty years in your household: I served you for fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your ﬂocks, and you have changed my wages a hundred times!’.66

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Instances like this would appear clearly to indicate the biblical text’s rejection of (DCTER). The biblical text also might support either (SMUE) or (DCTEW), but there seem no clear grounds for preferring either one of these over the other. The claim that the personalities who display possession of moral knowledge have had morality divinely revealed to them in events unreported by the text is implausible, but (DCTEW) does seem as likely an interpretation here as (SMUE) if its claim is that the biblical personalities in question enjoy access to God’s moral will via their cognitive faculties.

3.3.f

Deuteronomy 4:6–8

This passage reads: And you shall observe them [the laws of the Torah] and perform them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the eyes of the peoples, that when they hear all these statutes, they shall say: ‘Surely a wise and understanding people is this great nation . . . And what great nation is there, which has such righteous [tsadikkim] statutes and ordinances as all this Torah which I set before you this day?’ The text apparently assumes the existence of an ethical standpoint independent of Torah by which ‘the peoples’ can judge the laws of Torah to be ‘righteous’. This ethical standpoint may be entirely independent of God; or it may have been originally established by God even though it is now used as a yardstick by which to judge the content of His Revelation. It is therefore unclear whether this Deuteronomy text supports ontic SMU or takes morality as ultimately dependent, ontically, on an act of God’s will that took place prior to revelation of the Torah. Certainly, though, this text seems to deny that morality is ontically dependent upon God’s revealed Torah command.

3.3.g Micah 6:7–8 The text reads: Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my ﬁrst-born for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? It hath been told thee, O man, what is good, and what the Lord doth require of thee: only to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.67 Louis Jacobs attempts to derive ontic SMU from this passage, arguing that ‘if the good were simply identiﬁed with the will of God it would be tautologous to say . . . that man should obey God’s will and do good ’.68

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Jacobs’s argument does not seem cogent. Even if our passage were not from a prophetic text, it would be quite plausible to take ‘what is good’ and ‘what the Lord doth require of thee’ as merely two different expressions of the same idea. One person’s tautology, one might say, is another’s poetry. Particularly in a prophetic passage, it makes sense to understand these expressions in this way, given the ubiquitous use in the prophetic literature – and indeed in the cited passage itself – of parallelism.69

3.3.h Biblical treatment of theodicy Sagi and Statman claim that the Bible’s treatment of the theodicy issue supports SMU, since questions raised in the Book of Job and elsewhere, concerning the suffering of the innocent and the prospering of the wicked, are never given DCTbased answers such as ‘The wicked prosper because such is God’s will, and His very will is justice’.70 Rather, argue Sagi and Statman, the Bible emphasises, as in the Book of Job, human inability to understand divine reasons.71 Yet it is not at all clear how, say, the sort of response given by God to Job in the concluding chapters of the Book of Job supports SMU. God says such things to Job as: Where were you when I set the foundations of the earth? Declare, if you have the understanding! Who ﬁxed its measures, if you know, or who stretched the line upon it?72 God stresses to Job His exaltedness, Job’s profound ignorance of Him and His ways, and thus the impropriety of Job’s complaints. Though this divine response does not support DCT, it does not explicitly endorse SMU either. Moreover, what God says seems at least consistent with DCT, and indeed consistent even with the precise formulation ‘the wicked prosper because such is God’s will, and His very will is justice’. Further still, there is a striking contrast between the divine response that Job receives and that received by Abraham in Genesis 18.73 Whereas Abraham morally challenges God and God ‘concedes’, and this fact lends support to attempts to read Genesis 18 as endorsing SMU,74 Job’s criticism is not accepted and Job humbly admits that he has spoken inappropriately.75 It is therefore difﬁcult to argue that the divine response to Job lends support to SMU.

3.4

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have argued that there seems to be no good reason to endorse Sagi’s implicit, undefended rejection of the need to examine biblical texts in attempting to assess the position of Jewish tradition on the DCT/SMU issue. My analysis of biblical texts in the bulk of the chapter tried to demonstrate that most texts that apparently support SMU can, at best, just as reasonably be interpreted to support different forms of a will version of DCT as they can to endorse

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various forms of SMU. A consequence of this analysis, if correct, is that the views of Brunner, Jacobs and others signiﬁcantly oversimplify a complex situation. However, some biblical texts do appear clearly to reject certain types of command versions of DCT.

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4 SMU: RABBINIC TEXTS AND CONCEPTS AND POST-TALMUDIC RABBINIC THOUGHT

4.1

Introduction

In this chapter I continue my argument for the claim that the attitude of the classical texts of Jewish tradition to the DCT/SMU issue is a complex and nuanced one. In particular, I shall argue in this chapter that analysis from the perspective of the conceptual framework developed in Chapter 1 of rabbinic and post-Talmudic sources1 that seemingly support SMU, or have been claimed in the literature to do so, yields a highly complex picture of the attitude of rabbinic and post-Talmudic thought to DCT/SMU. I shall argue, as far as some rabbinic and post-Talmudic texts are concerned, that they are neutral between all three theories: command DCT, will DCT and SMU. In the case of others, I shall maintain that texts which apparently endorse SMU, while they undoubtedly deny certain command versions of DCT, can be construed with equal plausibility as bolstering various will forms of DCT. Moreover, I shall argue that while some texts unequivocally reject certain command versions of DCT, there are other sources which probably support some will versions of DCT. All of this is in stark contrast to the views of writers such as Jacobs, Lichtenstein, Spero and Sagi who, as we saw in Chapter 2, understand rabbinic and post-Talmudic thought (and indeed Jewish tradition as a whole) clearly to support SMU. What I hope will emerge from my analysis is not only the inadequacy of the conception of rabbinic and post-Talmudic literature as unambiguously in favour of SMU, but also the conclusion that no monochromatic account of the attitude of rabbinic and post-Talmudic thought on DCT/SMU is likely to prove successful. For different relevant sources say different things (though sometimes only subtly different things) about DCT/SMU, and many of the germane texts require individual and careful examination. Analysis of rabbinic and post-Talmudic sources that apparently advocate DCT, or have been claimed to do so, will be deferred until Chapter 5.2

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4.2 4.2.a

Rabbinic texts3 Tractate Yoma 67b

A passage in Yoma 67b is one of the most obvious Talmudic texts that might be marshalled in support of SMU.4 I shall argue in this section that ultimately Yoma 67b cannot properly be understood as unambiguously endorsing versions of SMU, though the passage does clearly reject certain command forms of DCT. I shall also attempt to deﬂect an important objection that has been raised against the kind of way in which I propose to read this text. The passage reads: ‘You shall perform my ordinances (mishpatai)’5 – [this refers to] matters which if they had not been written [in the Torah], by right (din hu) should have been written, and these are they: [the laws concerning] idolatry, immorality, bloodshed, robbery and blasphemy. ‘And my statutes (hukotai) you shall keep’6 – [this refers to] matters to which Satan objects, and these are they: [the laws concerning] eating the pig, and wearing sha’atnez [a garment containing a forbidden mixture of wool and linen], and the halitsah [performed] by a sister-in-law, and the puriﬁcation of the leper, and the scapegoat. And perhaps you might think that these are vain things; therefore Scripture says: ‘I am the Lord’7 – I the Lord have made it a statute and you have no right to criticise it.8 This passage proclaims that there is an entire category of divine imperatives which ought to have been part of the Torah even if they had not in fact been included in it. In his commentary to this Talmudic text, Rashi comments on the word mishpatai: [This word] implies things which are morally right [meyusharim – more literally, perhaps, ‘upright’] and which it is reasonable to do. The Talmudic text implies, primarily, that the mishpatim would have been known even if they had not been commanded in the Torah. (Admittedly, the passage does not employ any explicit epistemic terminology, but it seems fair to understand it in this way.) Yoma 67b further, and secondarily, implies that the actions forbidden by the mishpatim would have been morally wrong even if they had not been prohibited in the Torah. Put slightly differently, Yoma 67b claims not only to know independently of the Torah that certain actions are morally wrong, but also that it is true that these actions are morally wrong. For Yoma takes the Torah to be true, and so, by implication, it takes it to be true also that these actions are wrong, since that is something that was worthy of inclusion in the Torah.

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Clearly, then, Yoma denies (DCTER) We would have no moral knowledge without God’s revealed Torah commands; and it also denies an ontic command version of DCT, at least (DCTNR) God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act. But here again, as in the case of some of the biblical texts analysed in Chapter 3, the analytic framework of Chapter 1 acts as a brake on jumping to conclusions about a text’s support for SMU. For although Yoma is consistent with (SMUE) We would have at least some moral knowledge even if we had no revealed Torah commands and no access to God’s unrevealed will and (SMUN) It is not the case that God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act and it is not the case that God’s unrevealed will is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act, i.e. Jacobs’s ‘autonomy of ethics’, Yoma might only support (DCTEW) We would have no moral knowledge without our access to God’s unrevealed will (i.e. we would have at least some moral knowledge without God’s Torah commands, but none without our access to His will) and (DCTNW) Either God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act or God’s unrevealed will is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act. And there seems to be no obvious reason to understand Yoma as endorsing these versions of SMU rather than as supporting the corresponding forms of will DCT.9 I shall now consider an objection that, if successful, would undermine the claim that Yoma supports either the versions of SMU or the versions of will DCT just identiﬁed. Halbertal argues that any understanding of Yoma as endorsing the notion of revelation-independent moral obligations is problematic, since included in the inventory of commandments which should have been written in the Torah are items like the prohibitions against idolatry and blasphemy. Yet these prohibitions are not obviously moral in nature.10 But why, precisely, does the fact that the text includes non-ethical items in the list of things that, had they not been commanded in the Torah, ought to have been commanded, compromise its support for revelation-independent

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morality? The Talmud is still saying that there are certain actions that are morally wrong without God forbidding them in the Torah, and that we would have some moral knowledge even without revelation. The presence of the prohibitions against idolatry and blasphemy in the list (and these are the only more-or-lessclearly non-ethical items in it) merely indicates that, on the Talmud’s view, we would possess, without revelation, some basic religious sensibility as well. At most, what Halbertal’s objection appears to show is that one could add to the forms of SMU or will DCT, as propositions derivable from Yoma 67b, something like the following claims, which are unconnected with morality: (R1) God’s revealed Torah command is not a necessary condition of the religious (in)appropriateness of certain acts; and (R2) We would have at least some religious sensibility without God’s Torah revelation. However, Halbertal’s objection might be deeper. Although he does not say so, it is possible that in fact the objection that he has in mind is that suggested by Urbach.11 Assuming that this is so, what we can term the Halbertal/Urbach objection to understanding Yoma as supporting revelation-independent morality runs as follows. Since the list of things that, had they not been included in the Torah, ought to have been commanded includes non-ethical items such as blasphemy and idolatry, it cannot fairly be claimed that Yoma endorses the idea that we would have possessed some moral knowledge even without revelation or the idea that certain actions are morally wrong even without God prohibiting them in the Torah. Yoma’s focus is not morality, and all that the passage is really saying is that there are some Torah laws, the mishpatim, for which rational explanation is readily available (in non-moral terms, such as the beneﬁcial consequences of these laws), while there are other Torah laws, the hukkim, which seem to elude rational justiﬁcation.12 The Halbertal/Urbach objection can be deﬂected, because the rational and the moral cannot be radically prised apart in this way. The objection concedes that Yoma asserts the existence of Torah laws for which there is an independent rational account. But an independent rational account just is an independent moral account. For example, even if the independent rational account is framed in terms of self-interest and prudence, this would already constitute a moral account on those theories which take self-interest and prudence as the basis of morality. Moreover, the example of a rational rather than moral account which Urbach explicitly suggests, i.e. one in terms of beneﬁcial consequences, is of course a moral account from a utilitarian perspective. In conclusion, it appears that Yoma 67b certainly supports the notion of revelation-independent morality and thus implies the denial of the command versions of DCT speciﬁed above. However, it is ambiguous between support for the forms of SMU identiﬁed and the parallel forms of will DCT.

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4.2.b

Tractate Shevuot 39a

In this section, I shall discuss a passage in Shevuot 39a which does not usually feature in the literature on DCT/SMU in Jewish thought but which appears directly relevant to the analysis of this chapter. The Torah states: Any man from [among] the Children of Israel who gives of his seed to Molekh shall surely be put to death . . . And if the people of the land shall turn away their eyes from that man, when he gives of his seed to Molekh, and not put him to death; and I shall set My face against that man and his family.13 In Tractate Shevuot 39a, Rabbi Shimon raises an ethical difﬁculty: if he [the Molekh-worshipper] has sinned, how has his family sinned?14 Rabbi Shimon answers his own question by claiming that it is impossible that the transgressor’s family has not been implicated in the sin: there is no family that includes a publican that is not entirely composed of publicans, and none that contains a robber that is not entirely composed of robbers – because they protect him.15 R. Shimon’s question constitutes an implicit ethical challenge to a Torah law highly reminiscent of some of the challenges, presented by biblical ﬁgures, discussed in Chapter 3. The assumptions that appear to lie behind his question include (i) that since the Molekh-worshipper himself is the only guilty party, it is only he who deserves punishment, since it is wrong to punish the innocent and (ii) that God is bound by, or can reasonably be expected to act in accordance with, the moral principle that it is wrong to punish the innocent. What, then, are we to make of R. Shimon’s question and his response to it from the perspective of the DCT/SMU issue? At ﬁrst blush, we are inclined to say that this Talmudic text supports forms of SMU: Rabbi Shimon is assuming the existence of an independent moral obligation not to punish the innocent, and that even God is bound by or can reasonably be expected to act in accordance with this obligation. However, when we think back to the biblical challenges discussed in Chapter 3 and the analysis offered there, we might wish to say instead that Shevuot 39a may support either SMU or a weaker, non-SMU reading. In fact, discussion of Shevuot 39a, as the ﬁrst Talmudic ethical challenge to God that we have encountered in this study, prompts us to pause at this juncture and take careful stock. For we have thus far seen that, from a chronological perspective, we can categorise human ethical challenges to God in classical Jewish texts under three headings. These are: (i) pre-Sinaitic biblical challenges (i.e.

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Abraham in Genesis 18 and Avimelekh in Genesis 20); (ii) post-Sinaitic biblical challenges (e.g. Moses and Aaron in the Korah rebellion); and (iii) Talmudic challenges. How, precisely, should we read each type of challenge in terms of DCT/SMU?

4.2.b(i) Pre-Sinaitic challenges The pre-Sinaitic challenges, I argued in Chapter 3, are ambiguous between support for SMU and support for a weaker, non-SMU view. But a particularly important and distinctive feature of the pre-Sinaitic challenges, mentioned brieﬂy in Chapter 3 but which I now wish to highlight, is that they decisively oppose certain command forms of DCT. Genesis 18 and Genesis 20 are clearly incompatible with (DCTER) We would have no moral knowledge without God’s revealed Torah commands since they portray Abraham and Avimelekh as possessing moral knowledge prior to Sinaitic revelation. They also plainly reject (DCTNR) God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act since both Abraham and Avimelekh appeal to standards of morality that exist prior to revelation, and they equally clearly deny (DCTB) Morality depends upon God, and He is absolutely unbound by morality.

4.2.b(ii) Post-Sinaitic challenges What about the post-Sinaitic biblical challenges? I argued in Chapter 3 that they too are ambiguous between support for SMU and endorsement of a weaker, non-SMU view. But what about their approach to command versions of DCT? Let us ﬁrst consider the position of these challenges on (DCTER). Logically, at least, the challenges are consistent with (DCTER); they might be based solely on ethical knowledge gleaned from revelation. However, in terms of plausibility, the post-Sinaitic biblical appeals do not seem to sit easily with (DCTER). The post-Sinaitic biblical appeals do not cite any piece of divine revelation, and the way that they are expressed in the biblical text gives no indication that their moral cognition is based solely on revelation. What about (DCTNR)? Again, the post-Sinaitic biblical challenges are logically consistent with (DCTNR). Perhaps the only reason that promises should be kept or the innocent spared

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punishment is God’s revelatory command. Again too, however, this does not seem plausible from a textual angle: the challenges as they are articulated in the biblical text do not explicitly base themselves on any piece of divine revelation. Turning to (DCTB), the post-Sinaitic challenges obviously do not accept that God is absolutely unbound by morality. On the contrary, they are predicated upon the insistence that God, too, must keep promises and avoid punishing the innocent. Logically, the post-Sinaitic challenges are compatible with a modiﬁed version of (DCTB) which states that it is God’s revealed Torah commands that determine morality, that He could have commanded otherwise than He in fact did, but that now that He has commanded as He did, He is bound in any later commands or actions by this morality (or can reasonably be expected to act in accordance with it). But again, from a textual point of view, the post-Sinaitic challenges do not seem to appeal to Torah-revealed morality.

4.2.b(iii)

Talmudic challenges

Let us now return to Talmudic challenges such as Shevuot 39a. I suggested above that at ﬁrst glance, as in the case of both types of biblical challenge, we might well be tempted to read these moral appeals as supporting SMU; and that on further reﬂection, we might take them as ambiguous between supporting SMU and endorsing a weaker reading which involves will versions of DCT. Yet Talmudic challenges like Shevuot 39a seem to merit further analysis still, for we ought to consider how congenial such challenges are to command versions of DCT. Might R. Shimon’s challenge be prompted by command DCT? It is certainly logically possible that it is, and so, once again, the issue must be decided on the basis of plausibility. On that basis, there seems to be a good argument against understanding R. Shimon’s appeal as prompted by command DCT, since despite the ubiquitous citation of Scriptural texts in Talmudic discussions, R. Shimon does not quote any biblical verses or divinely-revealed principles of justice in support of his moral question. On the other hand, it does seem plausible to understand R. Shimon’s moral objection to the divine threat of punishment against the Molekh-worshipper’s family as one that stems from his moral sense as shaped by Torah-revealed morality. On this view, R. Shimon’s question is, in effect, something like the following: ‘How can God threaten to punish the Molekhworshipper’s family, who are innocent? My moral sense, which, naturally and like most other important things in my life (since I am, after all, a Talmudic sage) is fashioned by the revealed Torah, tells me that punishing the innocent is morally wrong. This threat of punishment of the Molekh-worshipper’s family seems inconsistent with the justice that the Torah generally teaches us’. But why not read the post-Sinaitic biblical challenges in similar fashion? To do so, I believe, seems perhaps less natural than in the Talmudic case. R. Shimon in the Talmud speaks as a representative of tradition, a teacher of divine revelation and interpreter of the divine word, whose moral sense and moral pronouncements one would expect to be formed by revelation. By contrast, when Moses challenges

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God in Exodus 32 and Numbers 16, he does not seem to do so as a teacher of Torah or representative of the tradition, but rather as representative of the people. In those episodes, one might almost say, he is not God’s representative to the Israelites but the Israelites’ representative to God. In the Exodus 32 and Numbers 16 episodes, Moses is less the stern and austere lawgiver than he is the impassioned spokesman for his ﬂock. Let us return to the suggestion that R. Shimon’s appeal is rooted in command DCT. Such a suggestion is, of course, speculative; but my point is precisely that in this context, everything is speculative. Not only is it very difﬁcult to determine whether it is command DCT, will DCT or SMU that animates R. Shimon’s challenge; even a strongly persuasive argument in favour of any one of these options seems elusive. Might will versions of DCT lie behind R. Shimon’s challenge? Quite possibly: it is, from a religious perspective, intuitively plausible that R. Shimon, as a Talmudic rabbi, is asking his question on the basis of a morality that he takes God to have freely willed at some pre-Sinaitic point in time but understands God to be subsequently bound by or to be likely to adhere to. Against this, just as the formulation of R. Shimon’s challenge in the Talmudic text gives no indication that his appeal is motivated by Torah-revealed morality, so that formulation provides no evidence that it is generated by will DCT. Matters are no more determinate when we focus on the issue of how likely it is that SMU motivates R. Shimon’s question. The absence of textual indications in favour of either will or command DCT in the formulation of R. Shimon’s question may tempt us to understand his question as appealing to an independent morality; but there is no suggestion in the way that R. Shimon’s query is framed that it is based on SMU either.16 Let us now summarise the results of our discussion of the three kinds of human moral challenge to God in the types of Jewish texts that we have so far focused upon. The pre-Sinaitic biblical challenges, unlike the later two kinds of challenge, clearly involve the denial of certain forms of command DCT, and are ambiguous regarding whether they support will DCT or SMU. The later two types of challenge, since they occur post-Revelation, are logically compatible with the forms of command DCT denied by the pre-Sinaitic challenges. Therefore, command DCT is a candidate for explaining these two kinds of challenge. In the case of postSinaitic biblical challenges, I argued, however, that command DCT is perhaps a less plausible explanatory candidate than either will DCT or SMU. In the case of the Talmudic challenges, I argued that command DCT, will DCT and SMU are all logical candidates for explanation, and moreover that they are (more or less, at any rate) equally plausible. It thus turns out that Shevuot 39a lends no support to SMU or will DCT, and that it does not even involve the rejection (on either logical grounds or grounds of plausibility) of command DCT.17

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4.2.c Leviticus Rabbah 32:818 The relevant passage takes the form of a commentary to the following biblical verse: So I returned and saw all the oppressed under the sun; and lo, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no comforter; and their oppressors had power, but they had no comforter.19 The Midrash in Leviticus Rabbah 32:8 states: Daniel the Tailor interpreted this verse as referring to mamzerim: ‘and lo, the tears of the oppressed’ – the fathers of these have sinned, but of what concern is it to these unfortunates [i.e. why should they be punished]? The father of this child participated in a forbidden union, but how has this child sinned, and what concern is it of his? ‘and they had no comforter’, but ‘their oppressors had power’ – [this is] the Great Sanhedrin of Israel, which comes upon them with the power of the Torah and drives them away, because [it is written in the Torah that] ‘No mamzer shall enter the congregation of the Lord.’20 ‘and they had no comforter’ – The Holy One, blessed be He, says: It is upon Me to comfort them. For in this world they are impure, but in the world to come . . . As in the case of some of the rabbinic texts already discussed in this chapter, the question posed in this passage (a question concerning the mamzer law in Deuteronomy 23:3, though framed as a homiletical interpretation of Ecclesiastes 4:1) concerns the moral difﬁculty of the innocent being punished. It is the mamzer’s parents who have participated in the incestuous or adulterous union, but the mamzer himself (or herself) who is barred from marriage within the Jewish community. And, as in the case of the parallel questions analysed above, there are three explanatory candidates for Daniel the Tailor’s question. Yet this passage merits separate consideration, because it provides a response to the ethical challenge that is interesting in a further novel way. The response of this midrashic passage to the moral challenge raised is not that the mamzerim are in some way not innocent, nor that there is some moral value that must be taken into account as well as justice, nor even that the biblical text must be reinterpreted so that it does not involve the punishment of mamzerim. Rather, the response provided in the midrashic text is astonishing, and in a sense, more radical still.21 It is that the biblical text that contains the mamzer law is indeed morally problematic. Not only are the Great Sanhedrin of Israel oppressors and mamzerim the innocent oppressed, but God Himself undertakes ultimately to revolutionise the status of the mamzerim. Yet, notwithstanding its radical nature, the response of Daniel the Tailor in this passage still does not necessarily endorse SMU. To assert the morally

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problematic nature of the mamzer law is neutral between SMU, will DCT and command DCT. Daniel’s response is certainly logically compatible with both will and command DCT as well as SMU. Indeed, it sits quite plausibly even with command DCT. Daniel’s response might be read as saying that indeed the mamzer law is not compatible with the justice that is both usually taught by revelation and which owes its existence to revelation, and that therefore God will ultimately transform the standing of the mamzerim. God might reveal a law that is incompatible with the morality enshrined in revelation as a whole, and which He will later need to repeal, because He considers the mamzer law necessary as a deterrent to adulterous and incestuous relations in a pre-eschatological era. Yet the law is, by the ethical standards of revelation itself, unjust, and therefore it will ultimately be abolished.

4.2.d

Tractate Eruvin 100b

A Talmudic passage that is sometimes claimed to support SMU is the following statement of Rabbi Yohanan at Eruvin 100b:22 Had the Torah not been given, we could have learned modesty from the cat, [the prohibition of] robbery from the ant, [the strictures against] forbidden sexual relations from the dove, and [conjugal] manners from the cock. Apparently, this text explicitly denies: (DCTER) We would have no moral knowledge without God’s revealed Torah commands. At ﬁrst glance, moreover, the text supports (SMUE) We would have at least some moral knowledge even if we had no revealed Torah commands and no access to God’s unrevealed will since it claims that we would have possessed some items of moral knowledge merely by observing part of the behaviour of certain animals. However, perhaps what the conduct of these animals does is to give us access to God’s unrevealed will concerning how He wants us to behave, so that Eruvin 100b in fact supports only (DCTEW), i.e. the thought that we would have at least some moral knowledge without God’s Torah commands, but none without our access to His will.

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A possible attempt strictly to delimit the support lent by this text to (SMUE)/ (DCTEW) might be formulated as follows. Granted that R. Yohanan clearly supposes that we would have enjoyed some moral knowledge independently of the Torah; but why does he conﬁne himself to such a relatively modest claim, focused on speciﬁc bits of moral behaviour? Does this not suggest that there is no other moral knowledge that we would have possessed without revelation? Such an argument might be countered by taking into account the context of the Talmudic passage in which R. Yohanan’s statement appears. The Talmud at Eruvin 100b is discussing proper sexual mores and how certain animals teach us certain aspects of appropriate sexual behaviour. At that point, R. Yohanan’s dictum is cited – primarily, it would seem, because half of it (the conduct displayed by the dove and the cock) has to do with sexual behaviour.23 The context of the discussion in which R. Yohanan’s teaching is quoted is thus highly localised, and so his statement is correspondingly of relatively modest scope. Ultimately, however, Eruvin 100b probably fails to provide any genuine support for (SMUE)/(DCTEW). In the course of arguing that our passage furnishes no support for a natural law conception (a wider notion than SMU), Fox presents a number of objections that appear to apply equally to taking Eruvin 100b as an endorsement of (SMUE)/(DCTEW). Some of these objections seem to me unsuccessful, but one that does appear cogent is expressed by Fox as follows: the logic of the situation makes it impossible to suppose that man could have learned rules of sound behaviour only through independent observation of the behaviour of animals. If there were no antecedent standard, how would man have known which animals to imitate and which particular behaviour patterns of those animals to imitate? How would he have been able to decide that the chastity of the dove rather than the sexual habits of the rabbit were the appropriate model? . . . Unless we already know what constitutes good behaviour through some other source of instruction, studying the life of the animals only informs us of a range of possibilities, but provides us with no criterion for choosing among them.24 What Fox’s objection shows, I believe, is that R. Yohanan does not really mean to say that we could have gleaned certain bits of moral knowledge simply by observing the behaviour of certain animals; for, in fact, we could not have done. What R. Yohanan is saying in this passage is that once we already possess certain moral knowledge – which may have come solely from the Torah’s commands, or from access to God’s unrevealed will, or from some other source – we can look at the animal kingdom and see bits of moral behaviour (or animal analogues to moral behaviour) in the conduct of certain animals, and recognise that this behaviour is an appropriate model for us. Once we already know what is the appropriate behaviour in certain situations, this code of conduct can be reinforced for us by direct and unaided observation of nature.

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I conclude that Fox’s objection shows that Eruvin 100b does not support either (DCTEW) or (SMUE). Moreover, Fox’s objection successfully demonstrates that this Talmudic text is consistent even with (DCTER).25

4.2.e

Tractate Gittin 59b

In the relevant passage, Abaye says to Rabbi Yosef: The entire Torah . . . is for the purpose of promoting peace, as Scripture says: ‘Its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace’.26 Lichtenstein deploys Abaye’s statement in the context of his argument that Jewish tradition unequivocally supports what he calls ‘natural morality’. In the terminology of this study, he urges that Abaye’s dictum endorses ontic SMU: it ‘makes no sense . . . unless the ethical value of peace can be taken for granted’.27 But perhaps all that Abaye means is that peace is the highest-order value in the Torah, the goal to which all the other values of the Torah and everything it contains are in some way directed. And the reason that peace is a value is that God’s command or will determined so. Abaye’s statement does not necessarily, then, support or oppose any version of DCT or SMU.

4.2.f Sagi’s analysis of the Talmudic treatment of mamzerut In section 4.2.c I discussed one midrashic passage concerning mamzerut. In this section I argue that Sagi’s analysis of the overall Talmudic treatment of mamzerut is ﬂawed.28 Louis Jacobs characterises the law of mamzerut as ‘the most stubborn and embarrassing problem traditional Jewish law has to face’.29 For the mamzer, as indicated in section 4.2.c, is severely restricted in his or her range of potential marriage partners solely because of a sin – adultery or incest – committed by the mamzer’s parents. The trend in Talmudic discussions of mamzerut is to restrict the applicability of the law. For instance, in the case of a woman known to be unfaithful to her husband, the child that she bears is nevertheless ruled not to be illegitimate because ‘the majority of acts of intercourse are those of the husband’.30 In his analysis of the Talmudic treatment of mamzerut,31 Sagi points to this tendency to limit the applicability of the law. He provides examples of his own, such as Rabbi Yitzhak’s position32 that ‘a family that has become submerged, has become submerged’, i.e. the case of a family which contains a member whose lineage is in doubt, and where the doubtful status is not widely known, is treated leniently. In neither of the instances that we have cited, however, does the Talmud provide any indication as to why it is restricting the scope of the law. No motivation for the limitations, and, in particular, no ethical motivation, is articulated.

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Nevertheless, Sagi insists that ‘it is hard to ignore the fact that at the root of the law of mamzerut, and the [Talmudic] treatment of it, stand moral considerations’.33 I shall argue that Sagi’s claim is unwarranted, and a fortiori his further claim, which I shall discuss shortly, that the Talmud’s treatment of the subject of mamzerut implies SMU. The Torah commands that the ben sorer umoreh, or rebellious son, be put to death, though he has not committed any offence that would normally be deemed deserving of the death penalty.34 Talmudic discussions of this law often attempt to render it totally inoperable and to conﬁne it purely to the realm of the theoretical. Sagi asks: why do the Talmudic sages not offer a similarly radical interpretation of the mamzer law, given the acute moral difﬁculty that it presents? Sagi replies: It seems reasonable to assume that the reason is connected to the desire of the sages of the Halakhah to protect the integrity of the family unit and its value. The mamzer law constitutes a severe threat against destroying this unit, whose importance in Jewish tradition is extremely great. Decisive removal of the mamzer law would have made possible licentiousness and the loss of family values. Therefore, the sages of Israel preferred to place limits on the application of the law, but to preserve it as a brake against moral deviation.35 Yet, while Sagi’s answer is speculative, his question is troubling for his own position. Perhaps the fact that the Talmudic sages chose not to interpret the mamzer law out of existence shows that they do not in fact consider it to be morally problematic; if they had deemed it ethically difﬁcult, they would have condemned it to death by interpretation, as they did with the law of the rebellious son.36 Furthermore, why, according to Sagi, did the Talmudic sages not merely limit the application of the law of the rebellious son while preserving some role for it in the practical arena? After all, the imperative to honour parents is, like the institution of the family, a central Jewish value; it is the ﬁfth commandment in the Decalogue. And honour shown by children towards parents, like marital ﬁdelity, strengthens the integrity of the family unit. Why, then, did the sages not allow the law of the rebellious son some foothold in the sphere of the actual in order that it might act as a buffer against ﬁlial disrespect? It is in the paragraph immediately following that cited above that Sagi makes his claim concerning the supposed fact that moral considerations are at the heart of the Talmud’s treatment of mamzerut. But why is that a fact? Sagi has not provided any clear evidence that the Talmud brings moral considerations to its treatment of the mamzer law. Later in his discussion,37 Sagi goes further, stating that the Talmudic treatment of the mamzer law, in and of itself, implies the denial of DCT and the afﬁrmation of SMU. The only support that he provides for this claim is the suggestion that the complicated halakhic treatment of mamzerut in the Talmud would have been

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unnecessary on a DCT-type view. Again, however, why is this so? Even if the limitations on the mamzer law in the Talmud were given an explicitly moral basis – and we have seen that they are not – that would not demonstrate the Talmud’s endorsement of SMU. That moral basis would presumably consist in reluctance to punish the innocent mamzer for the sins of his or her parents. But such reluctance could just as well stem from revealed morality, particularly since the Torah explicitly articulates the principle that children are not to be punished for the sins of their parents.38 I conclude, as against Sagi, that the Talmud’s treatment of mamzerut cannot fairly be said to imply SMU, nor to imply the rejection even of command DCT.

4.3

Rabbinic concepts

4.3.a Derekh eretz The term derekh eretz (literally: ‘way of the world’) as it appears in the Talmud and other rabbinic literature possesses a variety of meanings. Often, however, it has a very wide meaning that includes moral elements. The Maharal of Prague39 elucidates the concept of derekh eretz in the following way: The things that are derekh eretz are all ethical matters included in [Tractate] Abot, those mentioned in the Talmud, and all other ethical matters. It is that conduct which is right and ﬁtting toward people; and failure to pursue some of its elements is sinful and a great transgression.40 The ethical matters denoted by derekh eretz are construed by the rabbis as not necessarily dependent upon revelation. According to the Midrash: ‘Rabbi Ishmael the son of Rabbi Nahman said: derekh eretz preceded Torah by twenty-six generations’.41 In context, this statement primarily denotes chronological priority. Whether or not it signiﬁes any other kind of priority,42 therefore, Spero is surely correct in noting that ‘the rabbis were clearly acknowledging the existence of morality in pre-Torah times’.43 The rabbinic concept of derekh eretz thus clearly involves the denial of (DCTNR) God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act. However, the concept of derekh eretz might support only (DCTNW) Either God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act or God’s unrevealed will is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act

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though it is consistent with (SMUN) necessary case that rightness

It is not the case that God’s revealed Torah command is a condition of the moral rightness of an act and it is not the God’s unrevealed will is a necessary condition of the moral of an act.

4.3.b

The Seven Noahide Laws

As mentioned brieﬂy in Chapter 3,44 the Seven Noahide Laws (sheva mitzvot benei noah) is a rabbinic doctrine, found in the Talmud45 although grounded in the Torah, according to which all of humanity (and not just the Jews) was given seven commandments through pre-Sinaitic revelation. Some of these injunctions are clearly moral in nature. The seven are 1) the obligation to establish courts of justice; and the prohibitions against 2) blasphemy; 3) idolatry; 4) certain sexual acts, e.g. incest; 5) bloodshed; 6) robbery; and 7) eating ﬂesh taken from a living animal.46 Commenting on this doctrine, Spero writes: Whether the seven Noahide mitzvot were ‘given’ to primal man in the form of a prophetic revelation or whether . . . the principles behind them were implanted in the minds of all men as some sort of intuitive or a priori truth is not clear. In either case, the point is that the existence of a knowledge of moral principles among men prior to the Sinaitic revelation may be said to have been assumed by Judaism.47 On either of Spero’s alternatives, it is clear that the rabbinic doctrine of the Seven Noahide Laws would deny (DCTER) We would have no moral knowledge without God’s revealed Torah commands. Moreover, on either alternative, the doctrine asserts that the moral knowledge that we possess as a result of having received the Seven Laws is a consequence of our access to God’s will, for either this access was ‘implanted’ into us or God revealed His will to us prior to the Sinaitic revelation. However, it clearly does not necessarily follow that the doctrine of the Seven Laws claims (DCTEW) We would have no moral knowledge without our access to God’s unrevealed will . . . since we might possess such knowledge from other sources. The doctrine of the Seven Laws maintains only that we possess some moral knowledge as a result of our access to God’s unrevealed will, not that we would enjoy no such

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knowledge without this access. So the doctrine of the Seven Laws is consistent with both (DCTEW) and with (SMUE) We would have at least some moral knowledge even if we had no revealed Torah commands and no access to God’s unrevealed will.48

4.4

SMU in post-Talmudic rabbinic thought 4.4.a Introduction

I turn, in the remainder of this chapter, to an analysis of rabbinic thought in the post-Talmudic era as it pertains to our topic, in order to complete the examination of sources in Jewish tradition that apparently support SMU or have been claimed in the literature to do so. The ﬁgures discussed in this section are major, often classic post-Talmudic rabbinic thinkers ranging over a period of approximately a thousand years, from Saadia Gaon (882–942) to ﬁgures such as Abraham Isaac Kook and Meir Simhah Hakohen of Dvinsk in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I do not endeavour to list every apparent rabbinic articulation of SMU in the post-Talmudic period, but rather focus on major ﬁgures whose views uncontroversially form part of Jewish tradition. Discussion of post-Talmudic rabbinic texts that apparently support DCT will be deferred until Chapter 5.

4.4.b Saadia Gaon49 Saadia Gaon, in The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, famously groups the commandments of the Torah under two broad headings: the ‘rational’ and the ‘revealed’.50 The rational precepts, which include the ethical, would have been known, says Saadia, even without revelation. The revealed precepts (e.g. the holiness of the Sabbath and festivals), on the other hand, would not have been known independently of revelation. Saadia goes on to discuss the problem of why rational commands were revealed, since we would have known about them in any case. It is in this context that Saadia expresses his view, which I cited in Chapter 1 and termed (DCTER3), that we would have what might be termed a general kind of moral knowledge without revelation, but would lack certain essential details. (DCTER3) is a very weak version of epistemic DCT. Saadia’s concept of ‘rational commandments’ clearly involves the denial of (DCTER) We would have no moral knowledge without God’s revealed Torah commands. Saadia’s position, then, is that 1) we would have enjoyed some moral knowledge independently of revelation, but 2) revelation supplied us with some additional, essential details. I shall now examine 1) and 2) in more detail.

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Let us begin with 1). Where, according to Saadia, did the knowledge that we possess independently of revelation come from? Some scholars take it for granted that the category of ‘rational commandments’ automatically endorses (SMUE).51 But there is no indication in Saadia’s discussion that the source of the moral knowledge that we possess independently of revelation is not God’s unrevealed will. What Saadia says in his discussion is quite consistent with (DCTEW) . . . we would have at least some moral knowledge without God’s Torah commands, but none without our access to His will. In fact, (DCTEW) probably captures Saadia’s view more faithfully than (SMUE). For, as Wurzburger points out: ‘Saadiah deﬁnes “rational commandments” . . . as divine commandments that may be apprehended by our cognitive faculties and that do not require for their validation any reference to a supernatural act of Revelation’.52 As mentioned in Chapter 1, to term something that is not revealed a command(ment) is possibly incoherent, but if we substitute ‘wants’ or ‘wishes’ for ‘commandments’ we can see that (DCTEW) captures Saadia’s view better than (SMUE). In a striking passage, termed by Fox the ‘passage that ranks as Saadia’s most forceful invocation of the primacy of reason in the knowledge of good and evil’,53 Saadia says of someone who is ‘compelled to take refuge in the theory that the disapproval of lying and the approval of truth were not prompted by reason but were the results of the commandments and prohibitions of Scripture, and the same was true for the rejection of murder, adultery and stealing’ that ‘[W]hen he had come to that . . . I felt that I needed no longer concern myself with him and that I had my ﬁll of discussion with him’.54 In this passage, Saadia unambiguously expresses his utter impatience with anyone who denies that reason furnishes us with some fundamental moral knowledge quite independently of revelation. But even here, what Saadia so powerfully articulates is the denial of (DCTER) rather than any endorsement of (SMUE). The passage is perfectly consistent with (DCTEW): Saadia’s view might well be that human reason puts us in touch with the divine will. His point might be that God gave us certain fundamental moral knowledge as part of the rational capacity with which He endowed us, and we did not require any special historical act of revelation in order to attain this knowledge. There is no evidence that Saadia wishes to argue that God does not enter at all into the explanation of human moral knowledge.55 Regarding what I termed above part 1) of Saadia’s position, then, I conclude that, while he clearly denies (DCTER), his views are certainly consistent with (DCTEW), and probably favour (DCTEW) rather than (SMUE). Let us now consider 2), Saadia’s view that revelation supplies us with certain essential details that supplement the general moral knowledge which we possess independently of revelation.

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Halbertal suggests that, on a close reading of the text, it is not in fact clear that Saadia believes that these revelation-supplied details are of an intrinsically moral nature.56 If Halbertal’s suggestion is correct, it would turn out that Saadia does not, in truth, hold that revelation supplies us either with general or with more detailed moral knowledge. It would turn out that, on Saadia’s view, we would have possessed both general and detailed moral knowledge without revelation; that Saadia does not advocate even as weak a version of the epistemic dependence of morality on Torah revelation as (DCTER3). I shall argue that Halbertal’s suggestion, though intriguing, is ﬂawed, and that it thus turns out that, while Saadia denies (DCTER), he advocates (DCTER3). We must ﬁrst consider an example in order to clarify what is meant by ‘general’ and ‘detailed’ moral knowledge: let us take the instance of stealing. Even without revelation, Saadia claims, we would have known that stealing is wrong.57 This might be termed a ‘general’ kind of moral knowledge. But without revelation, says Saadia, we would lack crucial details pertaining to this matter. We would, for example, lack knowledge concerning how property is legitimately acquired: does this occur through labour, inheritance, or by some other means? Neither, in the absence of revelation, would we possess knowledge of other important details, including whether a sale becomes valid by payment of money or by the purchaser’s physically taking hold of the article. Halbertal argues that there are two different ways of understanding these revelation-supplied details. The ﬁrst is to take different methods of effecting a sale (for example) as morally neutral. That is to say, from the moral point of view, it is irrelevant whether a sale is effected by payment or by the purchaser’s taking hold of the article. What divine revelation of the proper method of sale achieves is simply uniformity of practice and the granting of authority to that practice. The revelation-supplied details are thus conventions, regarding which it is essential to have uniformity, but the content of which could have been other than it is. The second way of understanding the revelation-supplied details takes them, by contrast, as enjoying intrinsic moral value. On this reading, human understanding can grasp a prohibition against stealing, but is incapable of discovering the details of the boundaries of ownership. The revelation that furnishes these details thus provides substantive moral knowledge. Halbertal argues that a close reading of Saadia does not yield any decisive grounds for choosing between these competing interpretations of his position. However, Halbertal urges, the following words of Saadia, at the end of Treatise 3, Chapter 3, perhaps tend to favour the ﬁrst interpretation: For these considerations, then, that we have enumerated and other such reasons, is it necessary for us to have recourse to the mission of God’s messengers. For if we were to defer in these matters to our own opinions, our views would differ and we would not agree on anything.58 I do not share Halbertal’s view that this passage favours his ﬁrst interpretation. Perhaps the reason that we would fail to reach agreement on, for example, the

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proper method of sale, is that human understanding does not reach that far: it grasps general moral principles, but beyond that, things get murky, and it is precisely that which generates the interminable disagreement. It seems to me, then, that the passage Halbertal cites in favour of his ﬁrst reading of Saadia is equally compatible with his second interpretation. Moreover, while I agree with Halbertal that most of Saadia’s discussion of this issue makes it difﬁcult to see which of the rival interpretations is valid, I think that there is a passage that, if anything, strengthens the second reading. This passage occurs in the context of the issue of the expiation of crime, which Saadia cites as an example of why revelation is required even for the rational commandments. The text reads: Reason considers it proper, to be sure, that whoever commits a crime should expiate it, but does not deﬁne what form this expiation ought to take: whether a reprimand alone is sufﬁcient, or a malediction should go with it, or ﬂogging too should be added. In the event that the punishment take the form of ﬂogging, again, the question is how much, and the same applies to the malediction and the reprimand. Or it is possible that no satisfaction will be obtained except by the death of the criminal. And again it might be asked whether the punishment should be the same for whoever commits a certain crime, or whether it should vary from person to person. Then the prophets came and ﬁxed for each crime its own penalty.59 The issue of severity of punishment, an issue whose scope Saadia explicitly takes here to include the death penalty, is surely not one of mere convention but of substantive morality. The revelation-supplied details thus furnish us, according to Saadia, with substantive, and essential, moral knowledge. Saadia thus supports (DCTER3). Having discussed parts 1) and 2) of Saadia’s position, I conclude that, in Saadia’s discussion in Beliefs and Opinions, he a) denies (DCTER); b) asserts (DCTER3); and c) probably supports (DCTEW).

4.4.c

Nissim Gaon

Rabbi Nissim Gaon writes: [The Seven Commandments of the Sons of Noah] did not all require revelation, for . . . the prohibitions against murder and robbery are rooted in natural understanding.60 Clearly, then, R. Nissim Gaon denies (DCTER). What human understanding does might just be to put us in touch with God’s unrevealed will, and so his statement might support either (DCTEW) or (SMUE).61

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4.4.d

Maimonides

Maimonides’s status as probably the most important post-Talmudic rabbinic thinker renders his views on our topic especially worthy of attention. In a well-known passage in his Mishneh Torah, in Hilkhot Melakhim 8:11, Maimonides writes: Any man [i.e. any gentile] who accepts the seven commandments62 and is meticulous in observing them is thereby one of the righteous of the nations of the world, and he has a portion in the world to come. This is only the case if he accepts them and observes them because God commanded them in the Torah, and taught us through our teacher, Moses, that the children of Noah had been commanded to observe them even before the Torah was given. But if he observes them because of his own conclusions based on reason,63 then he is not a resident-alien and is not one of the righteous of the nations of the world, nor is he one of their wise men.64 The very last part of the translation of this passage – ‘nor is he one of their wise men’ – conforms to the printed version of the Mishneh Torah, in which the text reads velo mehakhmeihem. However, there are (according to most scholars, more accurate) manuscript versions of the Mishneh Torah which instead read ela mehakhmeihem. On these manuscript versions, the end of the translation of Hilkhot Melakhim 8:11 would run: ‘and is not one of the righteous of the nations of the world, but is one of their wise men’. Hilkhot Melakhim 8:11 has been widely viewed as an important passage in modern discussions of revelation-independent morality in Judaism, and both the narrower textual issue and the broader question of the signiﬁcance of this text have been subject to considerable scholarly attention and indeed controversy.65 This passage, with its assertion that a gentile who accepts the Seven Noahide Laws is righteous and wise (according to the printed version) only if he accepts the Laws because they are divine commands and not based on his own reason, has sometimes been viewed as involving the denial of SMU.66 Yet it is far from clear that this is so. Maimonides is speaking of the motivation that a gentile must possess in accepting the Noahide Laws in order to be considered righteous (and on the printed version of the text, wise) and deserving of a portion in the world to come. Maimonides’s statement leaves open the possibility of SMU obtaining at either the epistemic or the ontic level. For regardless of his motivation for accepting them, the gentile might come to know the Noahide Laws independently of revelation, and it might be the case that, for example, bloodshed and robbery, which are prohibited by the Noahide Laws, would have been morally wrong even without revelation. Indeed, it might be argued that were these things not possible, there would be little point in Maimonides emphasising that the required motivation is acceptance of the laws on the basis of revelation and not reason.67

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If Maimonides does not deny SMU in Hilkhot Melakhim, as it is sometimes claimed that he does, does he actually advocate it elsewhere in his writings? I shall argue that both sources often cited in support of the claim that Maimonides asserts SMU, and sources that are usually overlooked, are either ambiguous or clearly fail to support SMU. In the sixth chapter of the Eight Chapters, Maimonides characterises the moral commandments of the Torah as follows: (Passage A) . . . the things well-known to all people as evil, such as bloodshed, theft, robbery, onaah,68 damaging someone who has done one no evil, repaying good with evil, denigrating parents, etc. And these are the commandments about which the Sages, of blessed memory, said that if they had not been written [in the Torah], they should have been written.69 Maimonides goes on to say of the Torah’s ritual prohibitions that (Passage B) ‘were it not for the Torah, they would not have been evil at all’70 – by contrast, Maimonides clearly implies here, with behaviour forbidden by the moral prohibitions of the Torah, which would have been evil even in the absence of revelation. In his approving citation of Yoma 67b in Passage A, Maimonides endorses the claims that I argued above in section 4.2.a were implied by that Talmudic text – namely, the denial of (DCTER) and (DCTNR). And in Passage B, Maimonides reiterates, by clear implication, the denial of (DCTNR). Some scholars conﬁdently ascribe SMU to Maimonides in the sixth chapter of the Eight Chapters.71 But, as in some previous instances that we have discussed, this is somewhat misleading. What is clear from the Eight Chapters is that Maimonides denies ontic and epistemic command DCT. Yet what he says is consistent with (DCTNW) and (DCTEW), and there do not appear to be any clear reasons for claiming that he favours (SMUN) and (SMUE) over these. In order to show that he does prefer the SMU formulations, we would need to demonstrate that Maimonides is prepared to grant that God does not feature at all in the explanation of morality, and this at either the ontic or the epistemic level. A passage in the Guide of the Perplexed which is often overlooked in the literature clearly denies command DCT, this time in its epistemic form of (DCTER), but is compatible with both (DCTEW) and (SMUE): an obedient individual receives compensation for all the pious and righteous actions he has accomplished, even if he was not ordered by a prophet to do them, and . . . he is punished for all evil acts committed by him, even if he was not forbidden by a prophet to do them; this being forbidden by the inborn disposition – I refer to the prohibition against wrongdoing and injustice.72

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Human beings are expected to know through ‘inborn disposition’ what their moral obligations are. Another passage in the Guide, this time one that is sometimes discussed in the literature, fails to support SMU. Maimonides argues that the moral commandments of the Torah constitute a part of the means of attaining human bodily welfare, which is, in turn, a necessary condition of the achievement of the perfection of the soul.73 Sagi and Statman derive from this that, for Maimonides, ‘[t]he commandments of the Torah have a rational basis and are not merely a product of God’s will’ and that ‘in the moral realm Maimonides adopts a thesis of autonomy’,74 by which they mean ontic SMU. The argument of Sagi and Statman appears curious, since according to Maimonides in this passage, morality is of purely instrumental value in the achievement of the religious goal of the perfection of the soul, a goal to which, as Maimonides says explicitly, ‘do not belong either actions or moral qualities and . . . [which] consists only of opinions toward which speculation has led’.75 In this passage, Maimonides perceives the moral commandments as a mere means to a religious end. And it is surely God who constitutes the ultimate link in the explanatory chain that clariﬁes why this goal is set at all. Of course, Sagi and Statman are correct in part of their claim: Maimonides believes that the moral commandments, like all divine commandments and everything that God does, reﬂect His wisdom and are motivated by reasons, rather than being merely the product of His arbitrary will; this he says explicitly elsewhere in the Guide.76 But does this mean that Maimonides supports ontic SMU? Consider again exactly what Sagi and Statman claim. They maintain that Maimonides supports ontic SMU in 3:27 of the Guide since he holds that 1) the moral commandments of the Torah are necessary for bodily welfare and 2) bodily welfare is necessary for the perfection of the soul. Therefore, urge Sagi and Statman, Maimonides holds that 3) there is a reason for the moral commandments. Yet this seems too weak a version of ontic SMU to be worthy of the name. In Maimonides’s scheme here, the reason for the moral commandments is only that they are instrumental in realising for human beings a religious goal determined by God. Crucially, it is still true for Maimonides in this passage that murder (say) is morally wrong because, and only because, God has forbidden it. For murder is wrong only because of the role of morality within the framework that leads to the divinelymandated goal of humanity. In other words, murder is undoubtedly divinely prohibited, for Maimonides, for a reason, rather than out of mere caprice on God’s part; but that reason is internal to the framework whose goal is the divinelyordained religious one. In this Maimonidean system, murder is wrong because God prohibited it. Of course, God prohibited it for a reason; but that reason just leads us back to God and the religious objective for human beings that He established. Returning to the Mishneh Torah, let us consider a further passage which, though directly relevant to our topic, is usually overlooked in the literature. The passage appears in Chapter 5 of Hilkhot Teshuvah (The Laws of Repentance).

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In that chapter, Maimonides discusses the concept of free will and its pivotal importance to Judaism. In the course of his discussion, Maimonides writes: If God were to decree upon a person to be righteous or wicked . . . how could He have commanded us through the prophets: ‘Do such-andsuch, but do not do such-and-such’? ‘Improve your ways, and do not go after your wickedness’? And [all the while the particular individual] from the moment that he was created has already been the subject of [divine] decree [concerning how he will act] . . .? And [if this were so] what place would there be for the entire Torah? And by what law and what justice [mishpat] would the wicked person be punished, or the righteous rewarded? ‘Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?!’77 Without free will, Maimonides argues, not only prophetic imperatives but the whole ediﬁce of Torah would collapse, because there would be no point in commanding people to act in particular ways. Moreover, divine reward and punishment would be unjust (lacking in mishpat) in the absence of free will. What prompts Maimonides’s concern about the injustice of God’s reward and punishment without free will does not appear to be the revealed Torah. For, strikingly, Maimonides appends to his argument the central verse, verse 25, of Abraham’s dialogue with God in Genesis 18 concerning the proposed destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, which we discussed in Chapter 3. Thus, Maimonides seems to suggest that divine reward and punishment of human beings who lack free will would ﬂy in the face of a justice that is not revealed in the Torah but which nevertheless binds God, or to which He can reasonably be assumed to adhere. In Hilkhot Teshuvah 5:4, then, Maimonides’s deployment of Genesis 18:25 carries the same implications as the biblical verse itself: the denial of (DCTNR) and (DCTB), and support for either (SMUN) and (SMUB) or (DCTNW) and (M) (or (M′)). So far, I have argued that there is no clear evidence that Maimonides supports SMU. However, we have seen that relevant passages in his writings are at least consistent with SMU. I have also argued that in several passages, Maimonides denies command DCT. I shall now attempt to rebut the argument, presented in an essay by Marvin Fox,78 that Maimonides in fact advocates command DCT. Fox argues that for Maimonides, ‘the divine law alone is morality’.79 Fox reaches this conclusion after an analysis of Maimonidean treatment of moral issues in Halakhah. This treatment, according to Fox, ranges ‘from what seems to be the deepest moral sensitivity to an apparently complete indifference to moral issues’.80 Examples of these extremes cited by Fox include: [t]he same codiﬁer who enjoins us to treat even the Canaanite slave with the compassion that human dignity demands, also teaches us that a wife may be whipped if she fails to do her household tasks.81

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Fox claims that the apparent dichotomy is a false one, since, for Maimonides, divine law and morality are one and the same and it is only by ‘conventional moral standards [that] we represent some of the divine law as morally elevated and some of it as morally degraded’.82 On the Maimonidean view, argues Fox, there simply exists no external moral standard by which the divine law may be evaluated. Fox thus arrives at the conclusion that, for Maimonides, divine law and morality are identical, because when analysed from the perspective of contemporary moral values, the Halakhah (in Maimonides’s codiﬁcation and interpretation of it) throws up an impossible conundrum, fastly adhering to moral values whilst at the same time radically undermining them. Fox’s solution is to abandon the standpoint of conventional ethics and to claim that once we recognise the identity of the legal and the ethical in Maimonidean thought, the deeply puzzling moral schizophrenia of the divine law is no longer problematic. It seems to me that Fox’s argument is vitiated by the gap between its premise and its conclusion. Let us assume, for argument’s sake, that the premise is correct: that Maimonides’s halakhic writings contain some statements which are congruent with contemporary ethical understanding and others which are profoundly at odds with that understanding. Fox’s conclusion – that divine law just is morality on Maimonides’s reading, and Maimonides thus advocates command DCT – by no means exhausts the theoretical possibilities. There may be other explanations than command DCT for the fact that some codiﬁcations in Maimonides’s halakhic writings offend modern moral perceptions. One example of such an alternative rationale is the conﬂict thesis: perhaps God’s law and morality conﬂict, but divine law overrides morality. (Thus, it may be that Maimonides thinks that whipping one’s wife for failing to perform her household duties is morally wrong, but that divine law permits the whipping and overrides the moral prohibition.) And as pointed out in Chapter 2, the conﬂict thesis entails the denial of DCT, for if God’s commands determine morality, then morality cannot conﬂict with His demands. A further alternative explanation for Maimonidean codiﬁcations that morally offends the modern ear would be simply that moral perceptions have altered since Maimonides’s day, and that in Maimonides’s time and place his codiﬁcations would not have appeared ethically troublesome. Command DCT is not a particularly plausible theoretical candidate for explaining Maimonides’s morally jarring statements, given the fact that Fox provides no independent grounds in his essay for taking Maimonides to be an advocate of command DCT. We may sum up our discussion of Maimonides as follows: a) Maimonides does not appear clearly to support SMU; b) in most of the relevant texts, what he writes is ambiguous between support for SMU and for a weaker view involving will DCT; c) Maimonides does, however, plainly deny important versions of command DCT.

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4.4.e

Rabbi Judah Halevi

Another major ﬁgure to whom SMU is sometimes ascribed is Rabbi Judah Halevi83 in his Kuzari.84 After his interlocutor, Al Khazari, cites the biblical verse which states that what God requires of us is ‘doing justice, loving compassion, and walking humbly with your God’,85 the Rabbi replies: These are the rational laws, being the basis and preamble of the divine law, preceding it in character and time, and being indispensable in the administration of every human society. Even a gang of robbers must have a kind of justice among them if their confederacy is to last. When Israel’s disloyalty had come to such a pass that they disregarded rational and social principles (which are as absolutely necessary for a society as are the natural functions of eating, drinking, exercise, rest, sleeping and waking for the individual), but held fast to sacriﬁcial worship and other divine laws, He was satisﬁed with even less. It was told to them: ‘Haply you might observe those laws which rule the smallest and meanest community, such as refer to justice, good actions, and recognition of God’s bounty’. For the divine law cannot become complete till the social and rational laws are perfected. The rational law demands justice and recognition of God’s bounty. What has he, who fails in this respect, to do with offerings, Sabbath, circumcision, etc., which reason neither demands, nor forbids? These are, however, the ordinations especially given to Israel as a corollary to the rational laws. Through this they received the advantage of the Divine Inﬂuence . . . Can it be imagined that the Israelites observe ‘the doing of justice and the love of mercy’, but neglect circumcision, Sabbath, and the other laws, and felt happy withal?86 By their nature, says Halevi, as well as chronologically, the ‘rational’ commandments, which include ethical norms, precede ‘divine’ or ritual laws, for adherence to rational commandments is a necessary condition of the effective functioning of any human society or group. The rational commandments are more basic than ritual commandments such as sacriﬁces, which are on a higher plane and are unique to the Jewish people. Yet notwithstanding the more sublime nature of ritual imperatives, a necessary condition of their proper observance is conscientious fulﬁlment of the rational commandments. At the same time, the Jew must abide by the higher-level, ritual commandments as well in order to attain perfection. Halevi’s idea that at least some morality is indispensable to any group of human beings which hopes to operate effectively, involves the denial of (DCTNR). Certain actions will be morally right or wrong for any human society regardless of Torah revelation (or indeed any other historical act of divine revelation). But this notion of Halevi’s is compatible with both (DCTNW) and (SMUN).

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In the passage quoted, the Rabbi also asserts that the ritual commandments are neither required nor rejected by the human intellect – presumably by contrast with the rational commandments, which have that name precisely because we would have known them through the intellect even without revelation. This statement of the Rabbi’s indicates Halevi’s denial of (DCTER), though once again, it might support either (DCTEW) or (SMUE). Halevi’s distinction between ‘divine’ and ‘rational’ laws in this passage is of course reminiscent of Saadia’s bifurcation between revealed and rational commandments.87 Later in the Kuzari, Halevi again echoes Saadia’s distinction. The Rabbi says: The social and rational laws are those generally known. The divine ones, however, which were added in order that they should exist in the people of the ‘Living God’ who guides them, were not known until they were explained in detail by Him.88 Here, the implication of 2:48, that we would have known the rational (and social) commandments independently of revelation – i.e. the denial of (DCTER) – is made explicit. A more powerful echo of Saadia immediately follows: Even those social and rational laws are not quite known, and though one might know the gist of them, their scope remains unknown. We know that the giving of comfort and the feeling of gratitude are . . . incumbent on us . . . [but] [t]he limitation of all these things to the amount of general usefulness is God’s.89 As we saw earlier, Saadia believes that we would have a general kind of moral knowledge without revelation, but we would lack important details. This Kuzari passage endorses that view, (DCTER3). In summary: Halevi denies (DCTNR) and (DCTER); might support either (DCTEW) or (SMUE); and asserts (DCTER3).

4.4.f Nachmanides In at least two places in his commentary to the Torah, Nachmanides90 clearly denies (DCTER). Again, however, this does not entail his positive assertion of (SMUE), and what he says might support either (DCTEW) or (SMUE). The relevant Nachmanidean statements appear in the context of the story of the Flood. Nachmanides says that it was because of robbery (hamas) that the punishment of the Flood was divinely decreed ‘because it [robbery] is a rational matter that does not require Torah’.91 According to Nachmanides, then, robbery is known to be wrong independently of Torah revelation – it is ‘a rational matter’. In a closely similar statement, Nachmanides asserts that it was the offence of robbery that brought about the punishment of the Flood ‘and the reason is

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because it is a rational commandment concerning which they had no need of a prophet to warn them’.92

4.4.g

Rabbi Meir Halevi Abulaﬁa

Maimonides rules concerning the ir hanidahat (idolatrous city):93 If the worshippers [of idolatry] are found to be the majority [of the population of the city], all the young children and wives of the worshippers are smitten by the sword.94 R. Meir Halevi Abulaﬁa95 objects to Maimonides’s ruling on the grounds that the wives themselves did not engage in idolatry, and the children, as minors, are not subject to judicial punishment. Concerning the wives, R. Abulaﬁa borrows the Talmudic idiom: ‘Shall Tuvia sin and Zigud be ﬂogged?’96 – i.e. it is wrong to punish the innocent. Regarding the young children, he writes: Far be it from God to do evil (halila lael miresha)! Where have we found a minor who is liable, that these should be liable?!97 Sagi argues: In both his claims, regarding the wives and regarding the children, R. Abulaﬁa assumes a clear moral criterion which exists independently of God . . . one by which God Himself is bound. Therefore, it is impossible that God would command the execution of the wives and the little children, and the commandments of the Torah cannot be interpreted in such a way as to portray God as an immoral entity.98 For Sagi, then, both arguments of R. Abulaﬁa support ontic SMU and (SMUB). But this does not seem necessarily to be the case. Perhaps R. Abulaﬁa thinks that the principle that it is wrong to punish the innocent reﬂects revealed Torah morality. And perhaps God would not do the evil of commanding the killing of the small children of the idolaters because He freely decides not to do evil, not because He is bound by any moral standard that is independent of Him.99

4.4.h Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook100 was a mystic rather than a systematic philosopher, and for this reason, among others, it is somewhat difﬁcult to ascertain his true views on many issues as they emerge from his writings.101 With this caveat in mind, however, it is worth examining here several well-known passages in his published canon, since they are of direct relevance to our discussion. The passages analysed in this section apparently support SMU but, on a closer reading, prove

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more ambiguous. In Chapter 5, I shall discuss a passage from Kook’s writings that seems to endorse DCT. Consider the following passage: ‘Derekh Eretz precedes Torah’.102 Natural morality, in all the depth of its splendour and its ﬁrm power, must be established in the soul and be a foundation for the great inﬂuences that come from the strength of Torah. Just as Fear [of God] is as the root that precedes Wisdom, so is natural morality as the root which precedes Fear and all its branches. This principle applies to the individual [Jew], to the [Jewish] people in general and to all humanity. And if there is sometimes a necessity to bring the inﬂuence of Torah without the precedence of the taking root of natural morality in its pure form, this can only be by way of emergency measure, and life must then turn itself around so that the process returns to its ﬁrm order: the precedence of a complete natural morality, in order to build on its foundation a banqueting hall of Torah and sublime Fear [of God]. Every word of Torah must be preceded by derekh eretz. If it is a matter with which reason and natural uprightness concur, it must come forward directly, with the inclination of the heart and the assent of the pure will implanted in man, just as [the prohibitions of] robbery and immorality and [the need for] modesty are [learned naturally] from the ant, the dove and the cat.103 How much more is this so if it stems from a person’s own inner understanding and his spiritual sense. And if it is a matter which is above reason and the heart’s inclination, it must also pass through the channel of derekh eretz . . . The Torah was given to Israel in order that the gates of her light – clearer, wider and holier than all the gates of light of man’s natural understanding and his spirit of natural morality – should open before us, and through us to the whole world. But if we shut our ears to the simple voice of God which calls with strength through all the natural gates of light, which is the inheritance of all humanity, because we think that we will ﬁnd the light of Torah in a Torah which is severed from all the light of life that spreads into the world from the inner human soul in its splendour, then we have not understood the value of Torah. Concerning this it is said: ‘a foolish and unwise people’,104 which is translated by Onkelos: ‘A people which received the Torah but did not grow wiser’.105 The thrust of Kook’s reﬂections seems to be that human beings possess ‘natural’ moral knowledge, independently of divine revelation, and that both this knowledge and Torah have an important role to play. This independent moral understanding is a pre-requisite if the inﬂuence of Torah is to prove efﬁcacious; Torah’s signiﬁcance cannot be appreciated without this ethical comprehension. Ultimately, the ‘light’ of Torah is greater, superseding that of ‘natural’ ethical

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cognition, but that does not detract from the latter’s crucial signiﬁcance. In any event, despite the somewhat opaque nature of this partly mystical passage, it seems clearly to deny (DCTER), and arguably to favour (DCTEW) over (SMUE). A second, clearer passage is the following, in which (DCTER) is denied and (DCTEW) probably intended: The justice that is already rooted in human nature and in the ways of the life of society, to punish the wicked, the burglar, the robber and the murderer . . . stems from the power of that moral knowledge which is engraved in the soul of man who is created in the image of God.106 In a third passage, Kook’s references to ‘natural moral sense’ and ‘natural moral sensibility’ seem once more to involve the denial of (DCTER): It is forbidden for religious behaviour to compromise a person’s natural moral sensibility. If it does, then our yirat shamayim [fear of heaven] is no longer pure. An indication of its purity is that our natural moral sense becomes more exalted as a consequence of religious inspiration. But if the opposite occurs, and the moral character of an individual or a group is diminished by our religious observance, then we are certainly mistaken in our path. This type of supposed ‘fear of heaven’ is incorrect (pesula).107 To sum up: in the three passages examined, which might appear at ﬁrst glance to endorse SMU, I have argued that in fact Kook a) denies (DCTER) and b) probably supports (DCTEW). The denial of (DCTER) is a feature of many of the traditional texts that we have discussed, and one would therefore perhaps expect that, if Kook has any view on DCT/SMU, the rejection of (DCTER) would form part of it. This consideration lends more weight to the suggestion that, despite the obscurity of his formulations, Kook indeed denies (DCTER).

4.4.i Rabbi Meir Simhah Hakohen of Dvinsk Although his approach to our topic appears to have been overlooked in the literature, Rabbi Meir Simhah Hakohen of Dvinsk108 is an important traditional ﬁgure who, in his celebrated commentary to the Torah, Meshekh Hokhmah, articulates a clear view on the epistemic dimension of the DCT/SMU issue. Meir Simhah develops in some detail the thesis that all human beings naturally possess different kinds of basic knowledge, including moral and intellectual cognition. He argues that man in his natural state, prior to being inﬂuenced for the bad by his appetites and by external factors, is able, quite independently, to discern good and evil. This, of course, is the denial of (DCTER). In one passage, Meir Simhah writes:

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in the [human] soul the love of uprightness is engraved, such as the avoidance of injustice to one’s fellow, including violence and robbery and adultery and so on, and in general: ‘Whatever is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow’.109 Later in the same discussion, he refers to ‘charity and uprightness which is engraved in a person’s soul and in his feelings’,110 and shortly afterwards, in a very clear, indeed striking formulation, he says: a person, when he is close to the time of his birth, without being suffused with despicable appetites . . . is a great book in which is written and engraved in the divine pen avoidance of injustice and the striving for justice and lovingkindness.111 From the context of this passage, it seems unlikely that Meir Simhah means that it is the revealed Torah that provides a person with this moral sensibility and sensitivity before the ‘despicable appetites’ exert their corrupting inﬂuence. Moreover, he explicitly says ‘close to the time of his birth’ – a stage in a person’s life when presumably he or she is in any event unable to beneﬁt from any moral knowledge contained in the revealed Torah. The moral cognition which, it is claimed in this passage, the human being receives from God and enjoys unsullied in early life is divinely given knowledge communicated in some other way than explicit revelation, presumably by being divinely ‘implanted’ in the human psyche and providing the human being with access to God’s unrevealed will. This passage does not quite unambiguously claim (DCTEW), since it does not necessarily assert that, without our access to God’s unrevealed will, we would have no moral knowledge. But it certainly claims that there is human moral knowledge that is divine in origin but which does not depend on Torah revelation. Thus it denies (DCTER) and is compatible with both (DCTEW) and (SMUE). Yet, the passage, with its focus on moral knowledge that is ‘engraved in the divine pen’, does more strongly suggest (DCTEW) than (SMUE). We have already encountered the Seven Noahide Laws on several occasions. It is therefore interesting to see how the Laws feature in Meir Simhah’s views on our topic. In another literary image, he writes that ‘the human soul is a book from which are known the Seven Noahide Laws’.112 For Meir Simhah, the Seven Noahide Laws are simply part of the cognitive equipment that human beings are born with. Again, (DCTER) is denied in this quotation, which might support either (DCTEW) or (SMUE). To sum up: R. Meir Simhah certainly denies (DCTER), but his comments are consistent both with (SMUE) and (DCTEW). However, the force of his view seems to be that all morality ultimately has a divine source, and thus tends to support (DCTEW).

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4.5

God’s moral nature

In this section I shall brieﬂy discuss the relevance to the DCT/SMU issue of one important feature of the whole range of classical Jewish texts from the Bible onwards, namely, the portrayal of God as possessing a moral personality or nature. There are many references in the Bible and rabbinic literature to God’s moral nature.113 This same is true of post-Talmudic halakhic literature, as Sagi demonstrates,114 and the liturgy, too, is replete with attributions of moral qualities, such as goodness and mercy, to God. Sagi and Statman115 argue that this conception of God as possessing a moral nature tends towards SMU, since it is clear that God acts on moral reasons. Such an idea of God, they maintain, does not sit easily with DCT’s voluntaristic conception of the Divinity. It is worth pointing out that the Bible, in particular, does not always portray God as moral and rational. It contains several instances of God’s ‘absolute power and His terrible anger’.116 Nevertheless, it is probably true that, overall, classical Jewish texts have a moral conception of God. A more serious difﬁculty with the position of Sagi and Statman is that it overlooks the logical possibility that God freely willed His mercy, goodness, etc. Of course, the notion of a God who freely willed His own nature is not necessarily an attractive one, since such a God might have willed an immoral nature for Himself. Nevertheless, that God freely willed His moral nature remains logically possible. Perhaps God’s moral qualities originate with Him rather than being independent of Him. And since He might have freely willed His moral nature, the fact that God possesses such a nature does not logically entail that He acts on moral reasons. Sagi and Statman thus conclude too hastily that God’s possessing a moral nature supports SMU, and fail to demonstrate the incompatibility of the portrayal of God in classical Jewish texts as having a moral personality with DCT.117

4.6

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have argued that the picture which emerges from rabbinic and post-Talmudic rabbinic texts that apparently support SMU or have been claimed to do so, is in fact a highly complex one. Often, such passages do not yield sufﬁcient grounds for deciding between command DCT, will DCT and SMU. Frequently, too, sources are compatible not only with SMU but with corresponding versions of will DCT as well. The most that can safely be asserted is that some texts reject some important versions of command DCT.

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5 DIVINE COMMAND THEORY IN THE TEXTS OF JEWISH TRADITION

5.1

Introduction

In this chapter I shall examine texts that apparently support versions of DCT or have been claimed to do so. I shall argue that the complex picture that I have drawn in previous chapters of the attitude of classical Jewish texts to DCT/SMU is further complicated by the fact that most of the texts analysed in this chapter do, in fact, support DCT, and indeed endorse as strong a version as ontic command DCT. I shall also argue that the situation has developed somewhat during the course of the history of classical Jewish texts, with greater support for ontic command DCT expressed later in that history. At the end of the chapter (section 5.4), I shall offer some conclusions on the basis of the texts examined thus far in this study.

5.2 5.2.a

Rabbinic texts1 Tractate Yoma 22b2

In this section, I shall consider a text that might conceivably have been taken to support DCT or SMU. I shall urge that it is most plausibly interpreted as supporting neither, but rather as being concerned with a related but different issue. In the Book of Samuel, God commands King Saul utterly to exterminate the Amalekites – men, women, children and animals.3 A passage in Yoma 22b imagines Saul’s response to this divine directive: ‘And he fought in the valley’.4 Rabbi Mani says: [This means that Saul ‘fought’ God] about matters of the valley.5 When The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Saul: ‘Go and smite Amalek’,6 he replied: ‘If, concerning one person’s life, the Torah commands the bringing of the eglah arufah,7 how much more so regarding all these lives [i.e. it must be wrong to take the lives of the Amalekites]. And if people have sinned, how have the cattle sinned? And if the adults have sinned, how have the children

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sinned?’ A heavenly voice came forth and said to him: ‘Be not righteous overmuch’.8 And when Saul said to Doeg: ‘Turn thou and attack the priests’,9 a heavenly voice came forth and said to him: ‘Be not wicked overmuch’.10 Saul ﬁrst points out that the divine instruction to exterminate the Amalekites is inconsistent with the Torah’s own profound concern for human life, as reﬂected in the law of eglah arufah. Saul’s second and third objections to God’s command, however, are of a piece with many of the challenges to divine commands discussed in Chapters 3 and 4. Saul is presenting an ethical argument that, at least at the level of the explicit, is not grounded in the Torah’s own revelation of moral principles. The assumptions behind Saul’s moral challenge include i) that since the children and animals are innocent, it is wrong to punish them, because the innocent ought not to be punished and ii) that God’s commands must conform, or can reasonably be assumed to conform, to the moral principle that it is wrong to punish the innocent.11 Like similar ethical challenges discussed in earlier chapters, Saul’s second and third objections in Yoma 22b are clearly compatible with either SMU or a weaker, non-SMU view – i.e. with either (SMUN) and (SMUB) or (DCTNW) and (M) (or (M′)). What about command versions of DCT? Here, it must be emphasised that Yoma 22b possesses a novel feature. In passages that we have previously examined, the ethical challenges mounted are apparently independent of any Scriptural basis. While, similarly, Saul does not cite any Torah verse or principle of justice in support of his second and third objections, these ethical criticisms of God’s command are preceded by a moral objection that is explicitly grounded in Scripture. Thus, the lack of explicit Scriptural foundations for Saul’s second and third objections stands out, and it appears very signiﬁcant. There is no shortage of Torah verses and concepts that could have been deployed to underscore the importance of justice or to buttress the notion that the innocent ought not to be punished. The Torah roots of Saul’s second and third objections would therefore surely have been cited if those objections were not independent of Torah revelation. Thus, although the second and third objections placed in Saul’s mouth are logically compatible with command DCT, those objections and command DCT do not sit at all easily together. It certainly seems more plausible to say that what informs Saul’s second and third criticisms of God’s command to destroy the Amalekites is either a morality that is totally independent of God or at least a morality that is independent of His Torah commands. So either (SMUN) and (SMUB) or (DCTNW) and (M) (or (M′)) are what seem to be supported by Saul’s second and third objections. I shall argue, however, that ultimately Yoma 22b is most plausibly read not as implying any particular view about DCT/SMU but as focusing on a related but separate issue. One obvious difference between Yoma 22b and some of the Talmudic passages discussed in Chapter 4 is that the moral discomfort with God’s command

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expressed in Yoma is mediated through the ﬁgure of King Saul, rather than directly articulated by one of the Talmudic rabbis. This suggests two contrasting, indeed conﬂicting possibilities. The ﬁrst is that the rabbis are simply using Saul as a mouthpiece for their own reﬂections, perhaps because of the rhetorical advantage to be gained if their concerns are voiced by as major a biblical ﬁgure as the ﬁrst king of Israel. Alternatively, it may be that the rabbis place certain ethical objections in someone else’s mouth precisely because they want to respond to, and indeed oppose, those criticisms. A further clear difference is that in Yoma 22b, the way in which the passage continues after the ethical challenges have been posed apparently undermines the assumptions implicit in those challenges. The heavenly response to Saul’s ethical objections to the divine command to wipe out the Amalekites gives those objections short shrift. Discussing this Talmudic passage, C.W. Reines argues that the Talmudic rabbis were uneasy about the notion of collective punishment, and voiced their moral discomfort using Saul as a mouthpiece.12 In a similar vein, David Hartman argues that the assault on Saul’s character at the end of the passage, in which we are reminded that he later massacred some priests and his suitability to raise moral objections against killing the Amalekites is thus subverted, is an ad hominem argument that leaves the substance of Saul’s charges intact.13 Yet Reines and Hartman do not seem to give sufﬁcient weight to the differences noted above between Yoma 22b and some of the Talmudic passages discussed in Chapter 4. The deployment of a vehicle to express the moral concerns, and in particular the choice of Saul, militates against the interpretation of Reines and Hartman. For an author whose intention was to express moral qualms about the injunction to destroy Amalekite children and animals or to indicate the validity of such reservations would be ill-advised to select Saul, with his blemished moral record, as the spokesman for troubled ethical sensibility. Moreover, such an author would surely avoid drawing attention to precisely that episode in Saul’s career which damages the king’s credibility as an ethically concerned individual. Why leave the door open even to ad hominem objections when to do so is unnecessary, given that other biblical personalities and texts could be unproblematically utilised to make similar ethical observations? Why not, for example, create a midrash in which Moses objects to the Torah’s commandment to wipe out Amalek? It therefore seems to me, based on Yoma 22b’s deployment of Saul as the vehicle for articulating moral objections and based upon the dismissive heavenly response in the passage to those objections, that this passage cannot justiﬁably be read in the way that Reines and Hartman suggest. It would appear that Yoma 22b, in fact, aims to undermine the sort of moral criticism of divine commands that Saul articulates. On the reading of Yoma that I am suggesting, Saul is selected as the representative of ethical dissatisfaction with God precisely because of his own equivocal moral stature. As the passage tells us, Saul objects to God’s instruction because he considers it wrong; but later in his life, he himself orders

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a terrible massacre. Yoma 22b suggests that these two acts were, in reality, two sides of the same coin. Saul’s moral discomfort with the divine directive to destroy Amalek was the outgrowth of a morally unstable personality given to extremes of both kindness and cruelty14 – both ‘righteous overmuch’ and ‘wicked overmuch’. King Saul is made the focus of the Talmudic passage because its author wishes to criticise the kind of sentiments that are placed in Saul’s mouth. Yoma 22b, then, is most plausibly read as a powerful critique of all human attempts morally to challenge God – whether on the basis of God’s revealed Torah commands, as in Saul’s ﬁrst objection, or on the grounds of a more independent morality, as in his subsequent objections. For a mere mortal to make an ethical protest to the Almighty, according to Yoma 22b, is mere hubris – the kind of suggestion made by morally ambivalent, Saul-type personalities.15 I suggest, then, that on the most likely reading of Yoma 22b, no real support can be garnered for any particular position on the DCT/SMU issue. For the central concern of this Talmudic text is simply to undermine the legitimacy of human moral criticism of God regardless of the source of the morality that animates the criticism. It might even be argued that Yoma 22b, rather than being neutral between DCT and SMU, tends to support DCT. For if Yoma’s view were that SMU is true, why would it consider human moral objections to God as hubris? If, in fact, there is a morality independent of God which binds Him, what is improper about a human challenge on ethical grounds? Surely such challenges can only be dismissed as hubris if DCT is true, for then it is God who freely determines morality. The difﬁculty with this argument is apparent when we recall that Saul’s ﬁrst objection is made explicitly on the basis of a revealed Torah command, the injunction of eglah arufah. The end of the Yoma passage is dismissive of all of Saul’s criticisms, including this one, rather than dismissive only of the objections that seem to be rooted in a morality that is independent of revealed Torah commands. Thus, it appears that Yoma does consider as unwarranted any16 human moral criticism of God, regardless of the origins of the morality behind the criticism. Even if DCT is true, Yoma considers it inappropriate for human beings morally to challenge God on the basis of His commands; even if SMU is true, Yoma considers it hubris to challenge God on the basis of the morality that is independent of Him. It therefore seems to me that Yoma 22b is indeed neutral on the DCT/SMU issue.

5.2.b

Tractate Berakhot 33b17

A well-known Mishnaic passage in B.T. Berakhot 33b states: He who says [whilst praying]: ‘Thy mercies extend to the nest of a bird’ . . . is silenced.18

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Two explanations for this silencing are offered in the Talmudic discussion of this Mishna.19 The ﬁrst is that someone who prays in this way suggests that God is merciful only to the bird in the nest, but not towards the rest of His creatures. The second explanation is as follows: because he [i.e. the person who utters this prayer] makes [i.e. indicates that] the commandments of the Holy One [are an expression of] mercy (rahamim), whereas [in fact] they are simply divine decrees (einan ela gezerot). This second Talmudic explanation appears to suggest that even those laws of the Torah which seem to possess a straightforward ethical rationale are in fact imposed by arbitrary divine ﬁat. The term gezerot, certainly in this context, carries strong overtones of arbitrariness. As Rashi puts it in his commentary on this Talmudic passage: He [i.e. God] did not command [the commandments of the Torah] out of mercy, but rather in order to place upon Israel the statutes of His decrees (hukkei gezerotav), in order to make it known that they are His servants and the observers of His commandments and the decrees of His statutes, even [observing] matters about which Satan and idolaters can respond and question what purpose there is for these commandments.20 Notice that the expression used by the Talmud is plural: einan ela gezerot – ‘they [all the commandments of the Torah] are gezerot’. The Talmud’s claim, in its second explanation of the Mishna, is not merely that the person who declares ‘Thy mercies extend to the nest of a bird’ has misconstrued the basis of the Torah’s commandment to send away the mother bird (though it claims this as well). The Talmud asserts also that all the commandments of the Torah are arbitrary divine decrees. If all the Torah’s commandments are of this nature, then so are the moral mitzvot. But if Berakhot 33b takes the moral mitzvot as arbitrary divine decrees, then it supports ontic command DCT.21 The Talmud’s second explanation has been interpreted by some in such a way as to preserve the idea that the commandment of sending away the mother bird reﬂects divine mercy. The author of Sefer Hahinukh,22 for instance, begins his discussion of that explanation with the following statement: The point [of the Talmud’s second explanation] is not to state that the Holy One is not merciful, Heaven forfend, for He is called merciful, and the Sages of blessed memory have said: ‘Just as the Holy One is merciful, so you be merciful’.23 Sefer Hahinukh goes on to present an argument to the effect that the point of the Talmud’s second explanation is that, whereas the mercy of human beings is

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part of their God-given nature, God’s own mercy is the product of His wisdom. In any event, as stated, Sefer Hahinukh understands even the Talmud’s second explanation as preserving the idea that the commandment of sending away the mother bird is an expression of divine compassion. If we accept an analysis such as that presented in Sefer Hahinukh, the inference of ontic DCT from Berakhot 33b is undermined. Yet it does appear that Rashi’s reading of the Talmud’s second explanation, cited above, constitutes a more plausible and straightforward approach to the Talmudic text, and that the inference of ontic DCT is therefore justiﬁed. Although it does not weaken the claim that the second explanation of the Talmud in Berakhot 33b supports DCT, it should be noted that, notwithstanding that explanation, several classical Jewish commentators give the commandment of sending away the mother bird an explicitly ethical interpretation. As already mentioned, Maimonides, in his discussion of the commandment in The Guide, states that the reason underlying it is compassion for the mother bird and the fostering of merciful feelings towards human beings.24 A further example is Rashbam, who also explains the commandment in terms of compassion.25 In fact, that kindness to animals informs the commandment to send away the mother bird is stated in earlier, midrashic sources.26 And while taking issue with Maimonides’s claim that the rationale of the commandment of sending away the mother bird is kindness to animals, Nachmanides, for instance, asserts that one objective of the commandment is to cultivate human compassion and to encourage us to avoid cruelty.27 This Nachmanidean reading of the commandment is clearly an explicitly moral one. In a similar vein, and in opposition to the Talmud’s second explanation, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook suggests that the Mishnaic text does not mean to exclude the possibility that God’s mercy indeed constitutes the rational underpinning for the commandment of sending away the mother bird. What the Mishna intends is that this ethical explanation cannot be considered as accurate with certainty.28 Since it is not appropriate to include unproven theses in prayer, the Mishna rules that one may not, in that setting, state a reason for a commandment which necessarily enjoys only the status of conjecture.29 As indicated above, however, despite the ethical understanding of the commandment to send away the mother bird presented in some midrashic and medieval sources, the fact remains that, on its most natural reading, the Talmud’s second explanation in Berakhot 33b perceives matters differently and supports ontic DCT. The Talmud’s second explanation in Berakhot may not ﬁnd many echoes in later traditional reﬂections on the Mishna and on the commandment of shiluah hakan – but it is inescapably there.

5.2.c Tractate Kiddushin 31a In another well-known passage, Rabbi Hanina states:

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Greater is he who is commanded and fulﬁls [the commandment] than he who is not commanded, yet fulﬁls it.30 This statement might be understood as supporting the notion that the commandments of the Torah, including those that concern the moral realm, possess value only because God commanded them, rather than enjoying any independent value. This is ontic command DCT, or at least (DCTNR) God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act. In response, it might be pointed out immediately that R. Hanina does not in fact suggest that the Torah’s commandments possess value only because they are divinely commanded, merely that someone who is subject to a commandment and obeys it is greater than someone who is not thus obligated. (The original Talmudic terminology is clearly comparative: gadol . . . yoter mi-mi.)31 These considerations are mirrored in part of Tosafot HaRosh’s discussion of the rationale underlying R. Hanina’s statement: The Holy One has no need whatsoever for any of the commandments except that He speaks and His will is done; therefore, he who is commanded and fulﬁls does the will of his Maker; but [regarding] he who is not commanded, yet performs [the commandment], it is not appropriate to say of him that he does the will of his Maker, because He has not commanded him [to do] anything. Nevertheless there is some reward [for this latter person].32 The whole point of fulﬁlling the commandments is to obey the divine will: God has ‘no need whatsoever for any of the commandments’ other than that ‘He speaks and His will is done’, i.e. His will as expressed in the commandments is obeyed. The value of the commandments lies solely in the fact that God commanded them. Tosafot HaRosh appears to read R. Hanina’s teaching in this way up until the last sentence of the passage cited. It appears, until this point in his analysis, that Tosafot HaRosh understands R. Hanina as advocating (DCTNR). In the ﬁnal sentence, however, Tosafot HaRosh, in stating that voluntary performance of a commandment merits reward, clearly attributes at least some value to mitzvot independently of the fact of God’s having commanded them, and underscores the comparative, as opposed to absolute, nature of R. Hanina’s dictum.33 Moreover, several plausible interpretations of R. Hanina’s statement read it in such a way that it provides no real support for (DCTNR). Tosafot34 suggest that someone who is commanded to perform a particular mitzvah enjoys spiritual superiority over someone who is not so commanded because the former worries lest he transgress, whereas the latter has the option of not performing

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the mitzvah at all, without this being in any way sinful, and is therefore not anxious about it. The mental effort involved on the part of the person who is subject to a mitzvah projects his action onto a higher spiritual plane than that occupied by the deed of someone who is not obligated. A related but different explanation35 of R. Hanina’s statement is Louis Jacobs’s suggestion that there is a natural human inclination to disobey commands: ‘The verboten has its subtle allure’.36 The explanations of Tosafot and Jacobs both focus on the psychology of the person who is subject to a divine mitzvah. That person is spiritually more praiseworthy than the person for whom the mitzvah is a mere option because of the anguish that he or she inevitably undergoes or because the person must overcome the natural inclination to rebel.37 The important point for our purposes is that on neither interpretation does Rabbi Hanina’s dictum provide support for ontic command DCT: his observation is understood simply as a general statement about the psychology of mitzvah fulﬁlment. In conclusion, it appears that R. Hanina’s dictum cannot conﬁdently be taken to support DCT.38

5.3

Post-Talmudic rabbinic thought 5.3.a

Don Isaac Abarbanel

Jakobovits argues that, for Abarbanel39 in his commentary to Leviticus 19:18, ‘the duty to “love thy neighbour as thyself” is imperative only because “I am the Lord” – that is, “because I have commanded it” ’.40 If Jakobovits is correct, Abarbanel endorses ontic command DCT, and the context in which Jakobovits offers his interpretation of Abarbanel makes clear that he indeed perceives Abarbanel as supporting this position. Yet Jakobovits’s reading of Abarbanel is unjustiﬁed. Throughout his commentary to Leviticus Chapter 19, it is clear that Abarbanel’s focus is solely on the issue of the motive from which the commandments are obeyed.41 For instance, Abarbanel argues that a central purpose of the recapitulation in Leviticus 19 of laws that have already appeared in the Decalogue is that God, may He be blessed, wished to make clear to them here that it would not be appropriate for them to strive for praiseworthy qualities and attributes because human reason (hasekhel haenoshi) decides upon them, but because God commanded them and in order to walk in His ways and to cleave to Him should they do everything that they do of the good and the perfect. Abarbanel does not claim here that ‘praiseworthy qualities and attributes’ would not have been praiseworthy had God not commanded them, nor that ‘good and perfect’ actions are right only by virtue of divine command. He is

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concerned only with the motivation of the person who acts morally, which, he maintains, should consist solely in positive response to God’s imperative. It might be objected that the issues of moral rightness and motivation cannot be entirely separated in this way. Many have argued that if an action is right, then ipso facto one has some motive to perform it: in other words, ‘A is morally right’ entails ‘a person has some reason/motive to perform A’. Thus, when Abarbanel says that the only reason or motive for performing moral acts is that God commanded them, this suggests that the rightness of such acts is solely dependent on divine command, i.e. it suggests ontic command DCT. For, if moral acts were right independently of God’s command, then there would be another motive for performing them, namely, just that they are right. However, it seems to me that this objection fails. Abarbanel does not appear to want to deny that one might have a reason to perform a moral act apart from the fact that God commanded it. Such reasons, he seems to think, exist; but at the psychological level, Abarbanel believes that what should motivate the believer, what the believer’s own mental focus should be when he reﬂects on the question of why he is performing the moral act, is the fact of God’s command.42 This becomes clearer when we consider Abarbanel’s discussion of non-ethical mitzvot in his commentary to Leviticus 19. He points out that there are appealing rationales for the non-ethical commandments concerning the Sabbath and idolatry: faithful observance of the Sabbath affords the opportunity to spend oneseventh of one’s life in relaxation and tranquillity, and worship of idols is plainly intellectually intolerable for the reﬂective individual. Nevertheless, insists Abarbanel, the appropriate motive for observing the Sabbath and avoiding idolatry is obedience to God’s directives. In context, this argument concerning the non-ethical commandments is clearly intended as an extension of Abarbanel’s remarks about the moral imperatives. His purpose is to argue that attractive rationales independent of divine command are available both for the ethical commandments and for some of the non-moral mitzvot, yet what actually motivates one at the psychological level should be the fact of God’s command. Having referred to the Sabbath and idolatry in this way, Abarbanel goes on to say of Leviticus 19 that its purpose is to caution us, concerning the commandments in general, that they should be observed not because human reason demands them but because God commanded them. Abarbanel seems happy to concede that human reason may indeed demand ethical and some non-ethical mitzvot independently of divine command. He is concerned only with what actually motivates the Jew who obeys these commandments. On this issue, Abarbanel has a clear religious preference. I conclude that Abarbanel, in his commentary to Leviticus 19, does not support DCT or indeed any other particular view about DCT/SMU, but remains neutral regarding this issue.

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5.3.b

Rabbi Ovadiah of Bertinoro

At the very beginning of his commentary to the Mishnaic tractate Avot, R. Ovadiah of Bertinoro43 writes: I say that since this tractate is not based upon the exposition of any commandment of the Torah, as are the other tractates of the Mishna, but is rather concerned solely with ethics, and the sages of the Gentiles have also written books according to their own inventions (kemo shebadu milibam) about the ways of morality and how one should behave towards one’s fellow-man, that the author (tanna) therefore opened this tractate by stating ‘Moses received the Torah from Sinai’ to inform you that the ethical principles in this tractate were not invented by the sages of the Mishna on their own (lo badu otam hakhmei hamishna milibam), but they also were revealed at Sinai.44 This passage strongly implies that the only true ethics is that which is divinely revealed at Sinai; all other ethics is ‘invention’. The fact that the ethical teachings in Avot are Sinaitically revealed constitutes the radical qualitative advantage which the ethics of Tractate Avot enjoy over the ethics created by the gentile sages and articulated in their books, and indeed over any ethics that could possibly be generated by human beings, including even the sages of the Mishna. R. Ovadiah is advocating here ontic command DCT, at the very least (DCTNR). Sagi and Statman disagree with this understanding of R. Ovadiah,45 arguing that, at most, he claims in this passage that ‘revelation is necessary for the attainment of ethical truth’, i.e. (DCTER). Even if Sagi and Statman are correct, then, epistemic command DCT is supported in this passage. Yet, it seems clear that R. Ovadiah does espouse ontic command DCT here. Sagi and Statman deal very brieﬂy with this text, and offer no grounds for their preferred interpretation other than the bald claim that it ‘is more plausible’ than an interpretation in terms of ontic DCT. Sagi and Statman assert that it is ‘because the non-Jewish sages lack the divine guidance required to understand moral truth’ that their morality is claimed to be an invention, not because R. Ovadiah understands morality to be ontically dependent on God’s command. But R. Ovadiah strongly suggests that even had the sages of the Mishna determined ethical principles of their own, this morality would also have been mere invention. For R. Ovadiah, then, the tractate opens ‘Moses received the Torah from Sinai’ precisely to indicate the quintessential superiority of divine, Sinaitic ethics over any human ethics, not the advantage of Jewish over gentile morality. It seems clear that as far as R. Ovadiah is concerned, all human ethics is of equally inferior status. Moreover, the contrast between divine and human ethics that R. Ovadiah is keen to emphasise appears to be centred on the ontic dimension. As opposed to morality which is invented by human beings, the true morality is that which is ‘invented’ by God, determined by His Sinaitic command.

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A ﬁnal consideration in favour of reading this passage as supporting ontic, as opposed to epistemic, command DCT is that at the beginning of the passage, R. Ovadiah draws attention to the fact that, unlike other tractates of the Mishna, Avot ‘is not based upon the exposition of any commandment of the Torah’. That, he explains, is why the tractate begins as it does: in order to stress the equality of the contents of Avot to the material contained in the other Mishnaic tractates – ‘they also were revealed at Sinai’ (emphasis supplied). There is no reason to suppose that R. Ovadiah means to distinguish between the revelation of the other commandments of the Torah and the revelation of the contents of Avot. On the contrary: just as the Torah commandments explicated in the other Mishnaic tractates – the Sabbath, the dietary laws, festivals etc. – are ontically dependent upon God’s revelation at Sinai, so the ethical principles of Avot are, for R. Ovadiah, ontically, and not just epistemically, dependent on Sinaitic revelation.

5.3.c

Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Levin

In his notes to Rabbi Jacob Emden’s commentary on the same Mishna in Avot, R. Zvi Hirsch Levin46 writes: ‘Moses received the Torah from Sinai’ – the author [tanna] of this Mishna provided this introduction to this tractate, as Rabbi Ovadiah of Bertinoro has written, to make it known that these ethical principles are based upon the Torah which Moses commanded us. And I say, further, that there is no morality or virtue unless a divine religion can be presumed to exist [ki im biheyot hakdamah lehadat elohut], as I proved in a debate that I had with a certain wise man concerning the rational commandments and the upright virtues, and after a long debate he conceded my point. And therefore he [the tanna] was compelled ﬁrst to lay the foundation for the divine religion with which God has favoured us through His prophet, the faithful one of His household [i.e. Moses], for that is the basis and the measure for all the virtues of a Jew. And therefore, sometimes the Torah commands actions which, by the measure of human nature and reason, ought not to be performed at all, as it commanded concerning the wiping out of Amalek, to destroy man and beast alike and to take vengeance for ever, for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and Israel are His people, by God’s instruction they encamped and by God’s instruction they journeyed . . . That which is explicitly stated in the Torah will not be altered; even if it appears contrary to the morality of reason [mussar hasekhel], do not rebel against it.47 Levin states explicitly in this passage that without religion, there is no morality or virtue, i.e. he explicitly asserts (DCTN). Moreover, Levin’s endorsement of (DCTSR) is clear from his reference to the commandment to wipe out

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Amalek: since God commanded this in the Torah, says Levin, it is right. In fact, the entire passage appears to afﬁrm ontic command DCT. Sagi and Statman correctly point out that this passage is ‘slightly ambiguous’48 and that there is a possible interpretation on which R. Levin does not advocate that ‘morality itself depends on God’s command’49 (ontic DCT in the terminology of this study). Rather, Levin might be understood as claiming that ‘we are incapable of knowing morality without revelation’,50 i.e. (DCTER). Again, it is worth pointing out that even if Sagi and Statman are correct, Levin, in this passage, supports epistemic command DCT. However, also in parallel to the argument of 5.3.b, I believe that Sagi and Statman go much too far when they claim that (DCTER) is a better reading of Levin than is an interpretation in terms of ontic command DCT. I shall try to show that Sagi and Statman’s reasons in support of the (DCTER) reading are unconvincing, and that in this passage, Levin indeed advocates ontic command DCT. Sagi and Statman present three reasons for preferring the (DCTER) interpretation.51 First, in connection with Levin’s remarks about the commandment to wipe out Amalek, Sagi and Statman say that he is claiming that i) despite our moral objections to this command, we can trust God’s goodness and be sure that the command is morally justiﬁed, rather than ii) because God commanded the destruction of Amalek’s seed, and only because of this command, is this act justiﬁed. Levin’s citation of the verse ‘the Lord is a God of knowledge’, say Sagi and Statman, suggests that for him, God’s commands are not based merely upon His will, but rather reﬂect His ‘knowledge’. Therefore, the people of Israel journey and encamp according to God’s instructions because they believe in His moral perfection. The second reason suggested by Sagi and Statman for favouring the (DCTER) interpretation of Levin is the debate with the wise man to which Levin refers. This wise man, claim Sagi and Statman, ‘had probably formulated his claim in terms of a view prevalent in Levin’s times’,52 namely, that there are rational truths, including moral truths, that human beings apprehend through reason and without the necessity for revelation. Levin brought the wise man round to his own view, suggest Sagi and Statman, by accepting the proposition that moral truth is independent of God’s command, but arguing that human beings are incapable of grasping such truth without divine revelation. If Levin espoused ontic DCT, suggest Sagi and Statman further, he could not have succeeded in persuading the wise man, since he would then have shared no common ground with the wise man, who believed in the rational validity of moral obligations. The third reason offered by Sagi and Statman in favour of the (DCTER) interpretation of Levin is the ﬁnal words of the passage: ‘even if it appears contrary to the morality of reason, do not rebel against it’. This is most plausibly taken, according to Sagi and Statman, as meaning that even when a divine command seems to contradict reason, we are not to go against it, since in truth the command is consistent with ‘the morality of reason’ and the contradiction is merely an apparent one.

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In response to Sagi and Statman’s ﬁrst reason, it seems to me that Levin, in his remarks about the commandment to wipe out Amalek, is in fact claiming that because God commanded the destruction of Amalek’s descendants, and only because of this command, is the destruction morally justiﬁed. Levin is saying that one consequence of morality’s being entirely dependent on God’s command is that the Torah contains some commandments, such as the imperative to exterminate Amalek, which appear highly problematic to us but which are, in fact, morally sound. I would argue that Levin’s citation in this context of the biblical verse ‘the Lord is a God of knowledge’ is intended to reinforce this observation by suggesting that we cannot understand the ways of God, and that his quotation of the verse ‘by God’s instruction they encamped and by God’s instruction they journeyed’ is meant to emphasise his central claim in this passage that morality is totally dependent upon God’s instruction or command. In reply to Sagi and Statman’s second reason, I would urge that their claim about the probable views of the wise man with whom R. Levin debated is pure conjecture. The fact that the idea that moral truths are apprehended through reason was popular in Levin’s day, surely does not create a reasonable likelihood that this was the position of Levin’s interlocutor. Moreover, why is it not possible that Levin entirely persuaded his interlocutor of his view and convinced him to accept ontic DCT? The ‘common ground’ shared by Levin and the wise man does not necessarily have to consist in the denial of ontic DCT. Perhaps, for example, the wise man was always willing to concede that God possesses a moral nature, and in the course of their conversation Levin persuaded him that morality is in fact ontically dependent upon God. Let us now turn to the third reason advanced by Sagi and Statman for preferring the (DCTER) reading. I contend that Levin says at the end of the passage that ‘even if it [i.e. what the Torah commands] appears contrary to the morality of reason, do not rebel against it’ because he holds that the morality of reason (mussar hasekhel) is a chimera; the only true morality is that commanded by God, and it is that which should be adhered to. In conclusion, while Sagi and Statman are justiﬁed in stating that the passage cited from R. Levin is ‘slightly ambiguous’, it is no more than that, and it appears that it is most naturally interpreted as espousing ontic command DCT.

5.3.d

Rabbi Abraham Isaiah Karelitz (‘Hazon Ish’)

The great halakhic decisor R. Abraham Isaiah Karelitz,53 popularly known as ‘Hazon Ish’, writes: Moral obligations are sometimes identical [guf ehad] with the rulings of the Halakhah, and it is the Halakhah which determines the forbidden and the permitted in ethics.54 On the assumption that, for Hazon Ish, ‘the rulings of the Halakhah’ and Torah commands are, at least in effect, equivalent,55 the ﬁrst half of the sentence

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quoted asserts the identity of moral obligations with Torah commands, while the second half – ‘it is the Halakhah which determines the forbidden and the permitted in ethics’ – awards the explanatory priority to Torah commands. The quotation apparently encapsulates ontic command DCT, including (DCTNR) and (DCTSR). Sagi and Statman – and in a related but different context, Lichtenstein56 – draw attention to the ‘sometimes’ in the quotation, arguing that Hazon Ish’s use of this term (lif’amim in the original Hebrew) decisively undermines any attempt to interpret this passage as expressing endorsement of ontic command DCT. For on ontic DCT, argue Sagi and Statman, any act A is right if, and only if, God has commanded it – in other words, moral obligations are always identical with the rulings of the Halakhah.57 (DCTNR) together with (DCTSR) would yield the claim that halakhic rulings and moral obligations are always identical, whereas Hazon Ish explicitly states that the identity holds only ‘sometimes’. However, referring back to the analytic framework developed in Chapter 1 yields an interesting insight that prompts a different reading of Hazon Ish to that suggested by Sagi and Statman. I suggest that Hazon Ish is most naturally read as claiming (DCTNR) together not with (DCTSR), but with the following: (4″) If God reveals a Torah command to us to do A, and A is either morally right or morally wrong, then A is morally right. This seems to me a more plausible interpretation of Hazon Ish’s words than either the conjunction of (DCTNR) and (DCTSR) or Sagi and Statman’s complete rejection of the idea that Hazon Ish here supports (DCTNR) and (DCTSR). When Hazon Ish says that moral obligations are sometimes identical with the rulings of the Halakhah, he intends the ‘sometimes’ to exclude the large area of Halakhah that covers non-moral (e.g. ritual) areas. As pointed out in Chapter 1, there is a natural implausibility, even for someone who holds that God’s Torah command is a sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an act, about the claim that, say, eating unleavened bread on Passover, which God commands in the Torah, is morally right. What Hazon Ish most likely intends in this passage, then, is that God’s Torah command is a necessary and sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an act in all cases where that act belongs to the moral realm, but that there are acts that God commands, rulings of the Halakhah, which are outside the moral realm altogether. In short, Hazon Ish supports (DCTNR) and (4″), and in these senses he advocates ontic command DCT. Hazon Ish emphasises his support for these forms of DCT by going on to note that in his great medieval halakhic Code Arbaah Turim, Rabbi Jacob ben Asher places his observations about the importance of justice at the beginning of Hoshen Mishpat, the section of the Code which deals, inter alia, with civil and criminal law. Hazon Ish argues that this is because R. Jacob wishes to indicate that the definition of robbery is not established by human opinion (daat benei adam) but rather by the laws of the Torah. Everything deﬁned by Torah law as robbery is such even

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if intuitively it does not appear so to us, and any action in accordance with Torah law is in accordance with justice even if this, too, is counter-intuitive.58 Hazon Ish’s endorsement of ontic DCT is further articulated in the following passage, which occurs in the same chapter: a person should endeavour to plant in his heart the following great principle, that in any case in which he encounters his neighbour, it is necessary to weigh up the matter in the scales of the Halakhah in order to know who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed, and does not the learning of morality lead to love and compassion for the oppressed, and bitter fury at the oppressor, and how great the error of mistaking the oppressor for the oppressed and the oppressed for the oppressor, and to know the truth [of the matter] there is no place except the books of the halakhic authorities.59 Which party is the oppressor and which the oppressed in any case of conﬂict, then, can be determined only by the Halakhah. To sum up: I believe that the most plausible reading of Hazon Ish understands him as supporting the (DCTER) and (4″) versions of DCT.

5.3.e Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook In Chapter 4 (section 4.4.h), I discussed some texts in Kook’s writings which apparently support SMU. In a further passage, Kook’s assertion, in particular, that ‘morality arrives in the world through divine channels’ seems to constitute an afﬁrmation of an ontic version of either will DCT or command DCT. The passage reads: Morality cannot stand without its source . . . morality without its divine source will diminish and fade; just as morality arrives in the world through divine channels, so it must always ﬂower from them.60 Without the phrase ‘just as morality arrives in the world through divine channels’, this passage might perhaps be read as articulating the thesis of the dependence on God of moral activity.61 The presence of this phrase appears to render the passage as a whole most plausibly read as an expression of ontic DCT. However, as emphasised in 4.4.h, most interpretations of Kook are tentative, and this must be especially true in the case of a brief passage that is replete with metaphors.

5.3.f Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch In Chapter 4, we encountered rabbinic sources which apparently support SMU that, I argued, may or, at most, probably, support (DCTEW). The writings of

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Samson Raphael Hirsch62 are frequently overlooked in the literature. Yet Hirsch, a major traditional ﬁgure if not a systematic philosopher, seems not only to deny (DCTER) but sometimes clearly to endorse (DCTEW). References to ‘inner Revelation’ are scattered throughout many of Hirsch’s writings. An example of a statement of this doctrine is as follows: A general conception of Right, of what man owes to his fellow man is planted in the conscience of every uncorrupted human being, and this general consciousness of Right, is also the Voice of God.63 This passage is reminiscent of the writings of Meir Simhah Hakohen discussed in Chapter 4, section 4.4.i. Hirsch denies (DCTER) here and probably asserts (DCTEW): he does not explicitly state that we would have no moral knowledge without access to God’s will, but presumably he means that our moral knowledge comes from God (though not from His revelation of Torah). The same can be said of another passage, in which Hirsch describes justice as ‘an expression of what man recognizes from his inner revelation to be the just claim of his fellow-man’.64 A further example of a statement of the doctrine of inner Revelation is the following: God’s will has been revealed to you . . . He has implanted in your mind the general principles of truth and right . . . and . . . your mind echoes His voice which demands truth and right everywhere and rebels against every injustice. By all this the Divinely apportioned claims of all creatures on you may be evident to you, and you may be able to understand and absorb His teaching of justice and for ever carry within yourself a voice reminding you to discharge the task of justice. Observe . . . that only that is truth which corresponds to the Divinely created reality of the external world or to the rules which God has implanted in your mind, and hence that God is your Source of truth. That is, you recognize as just that which satisﬁes your own sense of justice, which God has instilled in you; thus God is also the Source of justice. And if you ask, ‘Why does this appear as “true”, as “just” to me’? You are unanswerably led to something for which there is no reason other than God’s will . . . truth and right are the ﬁrst revelation of God in your mind.65 Unlike the previous passages cited from Hirsch, this one clearly expresses (DCTEW). The moral knowledge that human beings enjoy is acquired through access to God’s unrevealed will, which is the only legitimate source of such knowledge. Three of the post-Talmudic rabbinic texts examined in Section 5.3 thus endorse ontic command DCT, and one (Kook) supports ontic DCT in either a command or a will version. In Chapter 4, we encountered several post-Talmudic

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texts – e.g. in the writings of Maimonides and Halevi – which deny this type of DCT. Thus, we are justiﬁed in concluding that two diametrically opposed attitudes towards ontic command DCT ﬁnd expression in post-Talmudic texts, with support for this kind of DCT appearing in the more recently authored texts.66

5.4

Conclusion

Most of the texts examined in this chapter, I have argued, are most plausibly interpreted as supporting various versions of DCT, sometimes even a version as strong as ontic command DCT. Sagi and Statman’s claim that ‘DCM formulations are almost non-existent in [Jewish] texts’67 is thus a signiﬁcant overstatement, as are all positions that take either DCT or SMU as the only, or virtually the only, voice of Jewish tradition. The following conclusions emerge from our analysis in Chapters 3–5. 1) The answer to the question of whether DCT or SMU is the view of Jewish tradition is much more nuanced than most of the contemporary literature, exempliﬁed by the positions surveyed in Chapter 2, is willing to concede. 2) Types of DCT and SMU must be carefully distinguished, both in terms of the kind of relationship (ontic, epistemic, etc.) that is claimed to exist (or not to exist) between God’s command and morality, and in terms of precisely what morality is asserted to depend (or not to depend) upon (God’s unrevealed will or His Torah command). When texts are analysed from this perspective, it clearly emerges that different texts say different things, and therefore that the monochromatic picture usually presented in the literature is inappropriate. It also emerges that some texts which are commonly taken to support, or appear to support, a particular view on DCT/SMU cannot truly be justiﬁably understood as endorsing any position. 3) In particular, our analysis has shown that while many sources reject forms of command DCT, it is unclear whether they support versions of SMU or versions of will DCT. At the same time, as I have argued in this chapter especially, a signiﬁcant number of sources support DCT, many even in its ontic command form. 4) Furthermore, the situation alters somewhat over time, with advocacy of ontic command DCT achieving increasing emphasis the later one ﬁnds oneself in the history of classical Jewish texts. Thus support for ontic command DCT is extremely difﬁcult to ﬁnd in the Bible; it is to be found, though very seldom, in classic rabbinic sources; and it is most pronounced – though it still has many opponents – in post-Talmudic rabbinic sources. 5) A number of sources probably support (DCTEW), and Hirsch appears certainly to do so. However, the only unambiguous and consistent theme that can truly be identiﬁed throughout the history of classical Jewish texts on the DCT/SMU issue is the denial of (DCTER). Classical Jewish texts, it appears, have never accepted that human moral knowledge is entirely dependent upon divine revelation.

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6 THE AKEDAH Genesis 22 and DCT/SMU

6.1

Introduction

Avi Sagi has recently claimed that ‘the ways in which Jewish tradition dealt with conﬂicts [between religious and moral obligations] are a clear proof for [its support of] moral autonomy’,1 i.e. SMU. In this chapter, I shall argue that this is not the case regarding the Akedah, and in Chapter 7, I shall urge that Sagi is similarly mistaken regarding the Amalek commandment. The central argument of Chapters 6 and 7 taken together, then, is that in at least these two central instances of conﬂict between divine instructions and morality, Sagi’s claim is unjustiﬁed, and thus provides no compelling reason to revise the conclusions reached at the end of Chapter 5 concerning the position of Jewish tradition on DCT/SMU. The story of God’s command to Abraham to sacriﬁce his son Isaac in Genesis Chapter 22,2 often referred to in Jewish tradition as Akedat Yitshak (‘the Binding of Isaac’), or simply as the Akedah, is a much-discussed passage that is obviously not only a central instance of conﬂict between religious and moral obligations but is of central relevance to any discussion of DCT/SMU in traditional Jewish texts. As Jerome Gellman notes, it raises ‘more than any other Biblical narrative the question of the relationship between God’s command and the ethical’.3 This chapter has two main goals. First (in section 6.2), I shall consider the biblical text of Genesis 22 as it stands, and ask whether the analysis offered of the Bible’s position on DCT/SMU in Chapter 3 requires revision or amendment in the light of the Akedah. Second (in section 6.3), I shall ask how the way in which the Akedah has been interpreted in rabbinic and post-Talmudic rabbinic thought squares with the analysis offered in Chapters 4 and 5.

6.2

Genesis 22: the biblical text as it stands

In Chapter 3, while I argued that numerous biblical texts might support either will DCT or SMU, I did not identify any text which unambiguously endorses will DCT, including ontic will DCT. Yet at ﬁrst blush, the Akedah can easily be read as endorsing ontic will DCT,4 and thus necessitates amendment of the picture

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presented in Chapter 3 of the position of the Bible on DCT/SMU. It appears quite plausible – and, as we shall immediately see, it has often been argued – that God’s instruction to Abraham to perform the seemingly monstrously immoral act of murdering his innocent child should be explained by the theory that, in the view of the biblical text, it is God who freely determines the moral rightness or wrongness of actions. In terms of the analytical framework presented in Chapter 1, that theory consists of (DCTNW) and (DCTSW), and also (DCTB) Morality depends upon God, and He is absolutely unbound by morality. DCT-based readings of the Akedah are common. Patterson Brown, for instance, in the course of a more general argument in which he claims that to be Jewish or Christian involves accepting DCT, writes: In the proverbial story of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 22), the lesson is presumably that Abraham thought it right to obey God’s directive to sacriﬁce the boy.5 Another example is Quinn: There are . . . scriptural stories that can serve as a basis for a direct argument to the conclusion that God is the source of moral obligation. These are the incidents sometimes described as the immoralities of the patriarchs. They are cases in which God commands something that appears to be immoral and, indeed, to violate a prohibition he himself lays down in the Decalogue. Three such cases come up again and again in traditional Christian discussions. The ﬁrst is the divine command to Abraham, recorded in Genesis 22:1–2, to sacriﬁce Isaac, his son.6 Quinn goes on to argue that for traditional Christian commentators such as Augustine, Bernard, de Novo Castro and even Aquinas,7 the Akedah and similar instances show ‘that divine commands can and do determine the moral status of actions’.8 One might add to Quinn’s list Duns Scotus, who states that it can become legitimate to kill . . . a man, namely, if God should revoke this precept, Do not kill . . . and not only legitimate, but meritorious, namely, if God should give a command to kill, as He gave a command to Abraham concerning Isaac.9 Michael Wyschogrod presents a similar argument from a Jewish perspective: Does God forbid murder because it is evil or is it evil because God forbids it? If God forbids murder because it is evil, then it is not God

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forbidding murder that makes it evil but it is evil independently of God’s will and God forbids it only because it is evil . . . If this is how things are, then, when God commands Abraham to sacriﬁce Isaac, Abraham should have pointed out that this was evil and that God had no right to issue such a command. Because Abraham did not reply to God in this vein, but instead proceeded to carry out God’s command unquestioningly, and because this willingness is considered Abraham’s great merit, it is clear that the Bible teaches that what is evil is so because God forbids it and for no other reason. Ethics is thus not autonomous and a genuine command of God cannot be evil even if it seems so by human standards.10 One immediate point that can be made in response to the idea that the Akedah clearly supports ontic DCT has already emerged in Chapter 2.11 There we saw that Genesis 22 can easily be read as supporting not DCT but the conﬂict thesis, the idea that conﬂict is possible between God’s command and morality. That is to say: it is not that God’s commanding Abraham to kill Isaac renders Abraham’s act of killing morally permissible or obligatory. The divine command does not alter the moral status of the action at all; rather, God’s command clashes with the moral imperative but takes precedence over or overrides it. This reading of Genesis 22 in terms of the conﬂict thesis seems perfectly natural. And, as we have had occasion to point out previously, the conﬂict thesis involves the denial of ontic DCT. The conﬂict thesis, as we saw in Chapter 2, also involves the denial of (DCTB), (M) and (SMUB).12 In Chapter 2, we saw that the position that the Akedah should be read as supporting the conﬂict thesis is advocated by Leibowitz. According to him, in the Akedah ‘all human values are annulled and pushed away because of the fear and love of God’.13 That Genesis 22 supports the conﬂict thesis is also asserted by Kierkegaard, who famously argues in Fear and Trembling that the Akedah episode involves ‘the teleological suspension of the ethical’: it shows that religious faith can sometimes demand that morality be left behind, put aside in order to fulﬁl the higher, religious obligation to obey God. Abraham, who is willing to disregard a clear moral requirement because of religion, is a ‘knight of faith’.14 Though reading the Akedah in accordance with the conﬂict thesis is plausible, it is important to acknowledge – though curiously, this is something that is overlooked by Sagi and Statman – that the conﬂict thesis implicitly involves the assumption of a certain position concerning the controversial issue of how morality is to be deﬁned.15 On some views, morality should be deﬁned by reference to its content: for example, it might be argued that a rule or principle is a moral one because it states that certain kinds of action are good or bad, or right or wrong. On other views, morality is to be deﬁned by reference to its form, irrespective of content. One kind of formal deﬁnition of morality takes overridingness to be morality’s deﬁning feature. Clearly, the conﬂict thesis assumes that overridingness is not the deﬁning feature of the moral, for if it were, then

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the religious obligation that is said, on the conﬂict thesis to override the moral obligation would be itself, by deﬁnition, a moral obligation. I shall now attempt to take the argument a stage further. I will contend that it is not merely that the Akedah does not clearly support ontic will DCT because of the plausibility of an explanation in terms of the conﬂict thesis. I shall claim that, beyond this, although ontic will DCT and the conﬂict thesis appear to be the obvious rival theoretical candidates for explaining Genesis 22, there is a plausible reading of Genesis 22 on which the biblical text supports neither of these alternatives. It thus turns out, I will urge, that the Akedah episode as it stands is ambiguous regarding the DCT/SMU issue. Not only does it fail clearly to endorse ontic will DCT, but there is no clear position at all on this issue that emerges from the biblical text, which can plausibly be read from a range of rival perspectives along the DCT–SMU axis. Therefore, I shall conclude, Genesis 22, notwithstanding its obvious relevance to the DCT/SMU issue, necessitates no further reﬁnement of the analysis presented in Chapter 3 of the Bible’s attitude to this issue. I shall now attempt to offer a reading of Genesis 22 on which this text provides support for neither ontic will DCT nor the conﬂict thesis. Let us begin by recalling that the Akedah episode occurs in the Torah very shortly after the story of Abraham’s dialogue with God concerning Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18.16 It is obvious both that Genesis 18 and 22 are not juxtaposed (or almost juxtaposed) accidentally in the biblical text and that they are thematically connected: both concern God, human beings and morality and the relationships between these elements.17 Many writers have noticed the juxtaposition or the connection,18 including Hartman, who clearly articulates what we are perhaps likely to feel on encountering the story of the Binding of Isaac in our reading of Genesis: We are not only amazed at the unintelligible demand of God, but dumbfounded when . . . Abraham, who had so boldly stood before God and argued for justice, now submits unquestioningly . . . What can explain this unconditional obedience to divine authority? Had Abraham forgotten what he himself had understood to be possible in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah? . . . the man who . . . engages in moral struggle with God, becomes suddenly like Noah, the man who . . . offered no objection when God announced the destruction of the world.19 Genesis 18 and Genesis 22 thus apparently present us with two sharply opposed scenarios. Whereas in Genesis 18 Abraham is assertive and God compliant, in Chapter 22 God commands and Abraham yields immediately and unquestioningly. I shall argue later, however, that, in fact, Abraham’s submissive posture in Genesis 22 can be explained in such a way that Genesis 22 turns out to be compatible with, and indeed complementary to, Genesis 18. Let us now note that a crucial point about the Akedah story is that Abraham is not asked only to kill an innocent person. For the same God who commands

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the sacriﬁce of Isaac has miraculously blessed the elderly Abraham and Sarah with this child. Moreover, Abraham has been promised by God that through Isaac, Sarah will be a mother of nations.20 God’s trial of Abraham in the Akedah21 therefore possesses two facets. Abraham is at once asked both to perform a deeply immoral act and to sacriﬁce the precious son of his old age through whom a glorious future was to have been realised. Which dimension was the more important, which the more painful aspect of the double-headed test that was the Akedah? Eugene Korn writes: Abraham’s problem was not merely that Isaac was precious to him, that Isaac was the only instrument by which his historical destiny could be fulﬁlled. The Bible is replete with lesser ﬁgures who were summoned by God to sacriﬁce their most valued possessions. Abraham’s sacriﬁce was categorically different because he was commanded to destroy a human being – and while the destruction of one’s possessions is emotionally frustrating, the wanton destruction of a human being is grossly immoral. Abraham’s dilemma was produced by the contradictory imperatives of religion and morality, not by a conﬂict of piety and desire . . . Abraham was trapped in a thicket of absurdity: having to do what was religiously right but was morally wrong.22 It seems to me that Korn has things precisely the wrong way around here.23 In practice, the two aspects of Abraham’s test – let us call them the personal and the moral – are of course inseparable. Abraham cannot kill the innocent human being without also killing Isaac, and it is beyond doubt that both dimensions of the test present Abraham with an almost inconceivably difﬁcult challenge. Yet, although the Akedah presents Abraham with two supremely taxing tests in one, the biblical text indicates that the primary focus and purpose of the test as far as God is concerned is the personal aspect. God directs Abraham to take ‘your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac’.24 Thus the very formulation of the instruction to sacriﬁce Isaac emphasises the deep signiﬁcance that Isaac possesses for Abraham. Similarly, notice what is said to Abraham once he has passed the test: ‘for now I know that you are a God-fearing man, for you did not withhold your son, your only son, from Me’.25 Equally telling is the language of the blessing given to Abraham at the end of the Akedah: ‘because you have done this thing, and did not withhold your son, your only son, I will surely bless you’.26 There are two further important textual considerations in this context. First, the words ‘father’ (av) and ‘son’ (ben) occur no fewer than twelve times in the episode, which spans only the nineteen verses that comprise Genesis 22 in the biblical text.27 Of these twelve occurrences, ben appears ten times in the ﬁfteen verses from verse 2 to verse 16 inclusive. Second, as Korn points out, the language deployed by the biblical text in Genesis 22 ‘contains no hint of a conﬂict between morality and religious imperative. In contrast to the vocabulary employed in

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Abraham’s dialogue with God regarding Sodom, which is saturated with moral terminology . . . the akeida contains only descriptive language’.28 It is unsurprising that the personal aspect of the Akedah should be so important if we look at Genesis 22 as it ought to be looked at: in context. The Akedah cannot fully be understood unless it is viewed as an integral part of the Book of Genesis. In particular, when assessing the signiﬁcance of the Akedah story, it is crucial not to overlook the fundamental datum of who the participants are. If Chapter 22 were about God commanding someone x, of whom we had not previously heard, to murder the innocent y whom we had also not yet encountered in our reading of Genesis, then Korn’s analysis would be more attractive: the chapter might plausibly be about the dilemma of someone who has conﬂicting religious and moral obligations. But the Akedah story is about people and about relationships of which we already know too much for this to be the case. We have already met God, Abraham and Isaac in our reading of Genesis, and we are already well acquainted with the nature of the relationships between these characters. We know of the signiﬁcance of Isaac to Abraham and of Isaac’s signiﬁcance for the future of the Abrahamic family. We know about the unique relationship between God and Abraham. All this makes it impossible, when the reader of Genesis arrives at Chapter 22, for him or her to understand it as if it were simply about morally problematic divine commands, about the relationships between human beings, God and morality. All the characters and relationships that appear in Genesis 22 arrive there with a history, and one with which we are familiar. In terms of the Genesis text both in Chapter 22 and before it, then, it seems to me that what I have called the personal aspect of Abraham’s trial is undoubtedly predominant over the moral dimension. Somewhat ironically, given the attention enjoyed by his interpretation of the Akedah in terms of the conﬂict between God’s command and morality, it is Kierkegaard who, as much as any other writer, captures the full import of the personal dimension of the test: All was lost! Seventy years of faithful expectation, the brief joy at the fulﬁlment of faith . . . And yet Abraham was God’s elect, and it was the Lord who imposed the trial. All would now be lost. The glorious memory to be preserved by the human race, the promise in Abraham’s seed – this was only a whim, a ﬂeeting thought which the Lord had had, which Abraham should now obliterate. That glorious treasure which was just as old as faith in Abraham’s heart, many, many years older than Isaac, the fruit of Abraham’s life, sanctiﬁed by prayers, matured in conﬂict – the blessing upon Abraham’s lips, this fruit was now to be plucked prematurely and remain without signiﬁcance. For what significance had it when Isaac was to be sacriﬁced? . . . Isaac, his dearest thing in life, whom he embraced with a love for which it would be a poor expression to say that he loyally fulﬁlled the father’s duty of loving the

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son, as indeed is evinced in the words of the summons, ‘the son whom thou lovest’. Jacob had twelve sons, and one of them he loved; Abraham had only one, the son whom he loved.29 The primacy of the personal aspect of the Akedah story is further conﬁrmed by a seemingly small detail which I have ignored until this juncture. I have sometimes talked of Abraham as being commanded or directed by God to sacriﬁce Isaac. Such terminology, however, is not entirely faithful to the Genesis text. On a more accurate reading of the biblical text, God does not command but requests of Abraham that he offer up Isaac as a burnt-offering.30 The nineteenthcentury work Sefat Emet emphasises this point: It would appear that since He had promised him [i.e. Abraham] that ‘Through Isaac shall seed be called to you’, it [the instruction to sacriﬁce Isaac] was framed as a question, i.e. God requested of Abraham to give up the gift and offer him [Isaac] up as a burnt-offering, and this is the cause of the great praise [due to Abraham] for [his behaviour in] this trial, for he was not instructed regarding this matter but given an option. Yet Abraham in his love of fulﬁlling the will of the Almighty went gladly to slaughter him.31 That God requests of Abraham that he sacriﬁce Isaac further underlines the point that the personal dimension of Abraham’s test is the essential one. If the ethical aspect were the crucial element, a request would not be appropriate. Unless Abraham is commanded to commit an apparently immoral act in obedience to God, there is no real ethical test, for Abraham can simply decline a mere request that stops short of a full imperative. The fact that Abraham is asked to give up Isaac strongly indicates, therefore, that the central test of the Akedah is the personal one. Abraham is essentially asked to give up something precious rather than commanded to perform an apparently immoral act. The above considerations go some way towards narrowing the gap between the Akedah story and Genesis 18. That the personal facet of the Akedah test is critical explains, at least to some extent, Abraham’s submissive posture in that episode. Self-assertion and moral argument are appropriate behaviour for Abraham in Genesis 18, but not in Genesis 22, for in the Akedah episode Abraham is not so much being commanded to commit a seemingly immoral act as being invited to give up that which he loves most to God. And once we see the personal component in the Akedah trial as its central focus, we begin to view God’s proposal to Abraham to sacriﬁce Isaac not primarily as a morally jarring phenomenon that requires explanation in terms of a broader theoretical framework that clariﬁes the nature of the relationship between God and morality, but rather as a speciﬁc request made within the context of totally unique circumstances. If the personal dimension of the Akedah test is the primary one, then the Akedah story is not really about a divine instruction to perform a seemingly immoral act, an instruction that

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would seem to invite explanation in terms of ontic will DCT or the conﬂict thesis. If the personal element of the Akedah trial is what is important, and the episode is fundamentally about God testing his faithful servant Abraham concerning whether Abraham is willing to give up his most precious divine gift, rather than about God commanding Abraham to do something immoral, then the natural foothold for DCT or the conﬂict thesis that an immoral command provides, appears far less secure. It then begins to seem quite plausible to read Genesis 22 independently of either ontic will DCT or the conﬂict thesis. At this point, however, an obvious objection might be forthcoming. Even if the primary aspect of the Akedah trial is the personal, it might be said, there is still a residual moral dimension to the test that is inescapable. In asking Abraham to sacriﬁce Isaac, God is asking him to perform an apparently egregiously immoral act. This ethical dimension may be less signiﬁcant than the fact that Abraham is being asked to return to God his most precious possession, but the fact remains that the act of returning this precious gift is inevitably also apparently the act of murder of an innocent person. Why, then, we can still ask, does Abraham not morally challenge God as he did in Chapter 18, and does not God’s request cry out for explanation in terms of DCT or the conﬂict thesis? We might attempt to counter this objection by stressing what is sometimes referred to in the literature as the ‘happy ending’ of the Akedah story. After all, the biblical story does not end with God requesting the sacriﬁce of Isaac, neither does it continue with Isaac’s sacriﬁce. Rather, Abraham is commanded at ‘the eleventh hour’ not to slaughter his son,32 and thus it turns out that, apparently, God never intended that Abraham actually go through with the killing of Isaac. Thus the end of the Akedah episode brings God back into the realm of the morally comprehensible. It turns out, then, that there is no divine instruction to perform an apparently immoral act that requires explanation in terms of DCT or the conﬂict thesis. Quinn’s reference to ‘the divine command to Abraham, recorded in Genesis 22:1–2, to sacriﬁce Isaac’ omits the end of the story. On the reading of Genesis 22 that I am suggesting, then, God’s purpose in testing Abraham has to do with Abraham’s willingness to give up his most precious divine gift. This test involves asking Abraham to perform an act which God also deems immoral, and which He never intends that Abraham actually carry out. Once Abraham has passed the test, therefore, and it is clear that he is willing to give up Isaac at God’s bidding, God naturally instructs Abraham not to perform the immoral act. On this reading of the episode, God at no point desires or intends that Abraham kill Isaac (even when He tells Abraham to do this in 22:2), and there is thus nothing that DCT or the conﬂict thesis is required to explain. (The biblical text as it stands could be read as God changing His mind and ultimately deciding to withdraw an original request which was indeed that Abraham kill Isaac, but I believe that it is more plausible to understand the story as I am suggesting.) However, this rebuttal in terms of the Akedah’s ‘happy ending’ still fails to explain why the Abraham of Chapter 22 unhesitatingly agrees to commit

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apparent murder and does not challenge God on moral grounds. Abraham’s silent compliance with God’s seemingly immoral directive perhaps suggests that, after all, the Akedah should be explained in terms of ontic will DCT or the conﬂict thesis. For it seems plausible to explain Abraham’s unwillingness to challenge God in the moral arena in terms of either: 1

2

Abraham realises that there are no moral standards, either independent of God or that He has freely willed, that bind Him or according to which He can reasonably be expected to act – i.e. Abraham realises that (DCTNW) and (DCTSW) together with (DCTB) is true; or Abraham realises that divine commands can conﬂict with morality and that, when they do conﬂict, divine commands override moral requirements.

In my view, however, this line of argument can be successfully countered. For there is an equally plausible explanation for Abraham’s reluctance to challenge God in Genesis 22 that does not involve ontic will DCT or the conﬂict thesis. In order to see this, we need to take into account an obvious difference between the Akedah story and the Sodom episode. In Genesis 18, Abraham can legitimately object on moral grounds to God’s proposed action against Sodom and Gomorrah because he is not himself directly involved in carrying out the proposed divine action. But in the Akedah episode, Abraham himself is told by God to perform an immoral action. And for Abraham to dispute a divine instruction (or even request) directed at him personally, even if that instruction is apparently immoral, is perhaps not religiously legitimate. Perhaps, in such a context, utter submission is the only religiously acceptable response. Abraham is assertive in Genesis 18 and submissive in Genesis 22 because, while moral challenge to God is religiously appropriate, the religious believer cannot disobey a direct instruction from God. To do so, in fact, would be to no longer recognise Him as God.33 Viewed in this light, Abraham’s failure to challenge God on ethical grounds in Genesis 22 in no way compromises the inferences that we derived in Chapter 3 from his successful challenge in Genesis 18. Genesis 18, I argued, supports either (SMUN) together with (SMUB) or (DCTNW) together with (M) (or (M′)). The only element added by Genesis 22 is the qualiﬁcation that a direct divine instruction can never be ignored or disobeyed. The recipient of such an instruction must set out to obey it in the faith that all will become clear later – as was the case in the Akedah. God made a request that appeared immoral, but by the end of the story we know that that was not His last word on the matter. If the reading that I have suggested of Genesis 22 is a plausible one, then, based on everything that has so far been said, the Akedah can plausibly be read in any one of the following different ways: a) as supporting the conﬂict thesis (which denies ontic DCT and also (DCTB), (M) and (SMUB)); b) as supporting ontic will DCT (i.e. (DCTNW) and (DCTSW) together with (DCTB)); c) as supporting neither ontic will DCT nor the conﬂict thesis and as consistent with either (DCTNW) and (M) (or (M′)), or (SMUN) and (SMUB).34

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In conclusion, it appears that the Akedah episode taken as it stands in the biblical text does not unambiguously support ontic will DCT; there are other plausible readings. Moreover, the range of those readings is so wide that we cannot justiﬁably take the Akedah as clearly supporting any particular view on the DCT/SMU issue. Genesis 22 is undoubtedly a directly relevant text to this issue, but it is open to such a wide spectrum of reasonable interpretations that it does not justify any amendment to the analysis of biblical texts offered in Chapter 3.

6.3

Interpretations of Genesis 22 in rabbinic and post-Talmudic rabbinic thought

The Akedah has been the focus of much attention in rabbinic and post-Talmudic rabbinic writings. In Chapters 4 and 5, I argued that careful examination of rabbinic and post-Talmudic sources relevant to the DCT/SMU issue reveals a complex picture of the attitudes of these texts to DCT/SMU. Does this picture require further reﬁnement in the light of the ways in which the Akedah has been interpreted in rabbinic and post-Talmudic thought? In order to respond to this question, I shall ﬁrst attempt to identify the relevant central trends or features in rabbinic and post-Talmudic interpretation of the Akedah.35 The ﬁrst important trend to notice is what might be termed ethical neutralisation of the divine command to sacriﬁce Isaac. Typical of this phenomenon is Rashi’s comment on the word vehaaleihu (‘offer him up’): He [God] did not say to him ‘Slaughter him’, because God did not want [Abraham] to slaughter him but [only] to take him up to the mountain to make an offering of him; and once he [Abraham] had taken him [Isaac] up, He said to him: ‘Take him down’.36 Rashi’s comment is striking in its departure from the plain meaning of the biblical text. Genesis 22:2 reports that God says to Abraham about Isaac: vehaaleihu sham leolah, the straightforward translation of which is: ‘Offer him up as an offering’. The words that require emphasis in Rashi’s comment are ‘God did not want Abraham to slaughter him’. It seems clear that Rashi, deeply concerned about how God could command something that is apparently grossly immoral, interprets the biblical text in a way that takes the moral sting out of God’s command to Abraham. Prima facie, this interpretive strategy indicates rejection of both ontic DCT and the conﬂict thesis. For, if God’s command determines morality or overrides it, then moral neutralisation of the content of His command is superﬂuous. Moral neutralisation of the command suggests the desire to leave nothing for DCT or the conﬂict thesis to explain. However, on further reﬂection, it seems that while the strategy of morally neutralising God’s command to sacriﬁce Isaac probably does indicate rejection

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of the conﬂict thesis, such a strategy is not necessarily indicative of opposition to ontic DCT. How can that be so? In section 6.2, I argued from a reading of Genesis 22 that took the text as essentially morally unproblematic to the conclusion that the episode does not have to be read as endorsing DCT or the conﬂict thesis. The premise of a morally unproblematic text leads smoothly to the conclusion because once there is nothing morally difﬁcult in the text, there is nothing for DCT or the conﬂict thesis to get a foothold on, no datum for them to be called upon to explain. Yet the fact that it is both possible and plausible to interpret morally unproblematic texts without recourse to DCT or the conﬂict thesis does not entail that one cannot interpret such texts in these ways. When a text has nothing morally difﬁcult about it, it is true that it might not occur to one to appeal to DCT or the conﬂict thesis in order to explain it; but such explanations are possible nevertheless. Take, for example, the prohibitions against murder and stealing in the Decalogue. These clearly raise no moral problem. But it is clear, though it might not strike one immediately on reading these prohibitions, that they are quite consistent with ontic DCT. Perhaps murder and stealing are wrong because, and only because, God forbids them. The biblical text of the Decalogue merely lists these moral prohibitions (among others); the text is silent, and therefore neutral, on the question of their dependence or otherwise on God’s command. These prohibitions, as they appear in the Decalogue, are also perfectly consistent with the idea that moral and religious requirements can conﬂict, and that when they do, the religious requirement takes precedence. So, if one can take the moral sting out of a text, as I tried to do in the instance of Genesis 22 in section 6.2, then one has shown that the text need not be read as supporting DCT or the conﬂict thesis, but one has not shown that that text is incompatible with these views. We have seen that Rashi and others interpret God’s instruction to sacriﬁce Isaac in such a way as to render it morally unproblematic, and that this achieves the result that God’s command no longer provides a natural anchor for DCT or the conﬂict thesis. But we can now see that, even on this kind of reading, God’s command is still compatible with DCT and the conﬂict thesis. The issue that must now be considered is one of the plausibility of ethical neutralisation not indicating rejection of DCT and the conﬂict thesis. Granted that it is possible morally to neutralise God’s command to Abraham without being committed to such rejection, is there any reasonable likelihood that a writer would attempt ethical neutralisation without being so committed? As indicated above, it does seem probable that attempted ethical neutralisation indicates eschewal of the conﬂict thesis. What about rejection of DCT? It appears that there is at least one alternative to the rejection of DCT that might very plausibly be indicated by the moral neutralisation of God’s command to sacriﬁce Isaac by Rashi and other writers. This is, simply, commitment to ontic DCT and to the idea that the morality that God has freely determined never sanctions the murder of an innocent person.

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To sum up: it seems that the determination to avoid reading Genesis 22 as reporting that God commands something immoral – a central feature of Jewish interpretation of the Akedah – is probably indicative of opposition to the conﬂict thesis, but is not necessarily indicative of opposition to DCT. A second important and relevant feature of rabbinic and post-Talmudic interpretation of the Akedah is the focus on Genesis 22 as the paradigm case of Jewish martyrdom. A well-known example is the midrashic passage which tells the story of the mother and her seven sons who accept death rather than prostrate themselves before an idol. Before the last son is executed, his mother says to him: My son, go to your father Abraham and say to him: ‘My mother says: Do not be proud and say, I built an altar and offered up my son Isaac. For our mother built seven altars, and offered up seven sons on one day. Yours [Abraham] was a test, but mine actual [maaseh]’.37 Ronald Green claims that the frequent deployment of the Akedah as the supreme model of Jewish martyrdom shows that ‘it is the lesson of self-sacriﬁcial and willing martyrdom, not a commanded violation of the ethical, that Jewish sources derive from the Genesis episode’.38 For Green, it seems, the Akedah story could easily have been interpreted as a powerful afﬁrmation of DCT or the conﬂict thesis. That Jewish tradition tended to read the Akedah as a paradigm of martyrdom rather than in these other ways indicates the tradition’s lack of enthusiasm for DCT and the conﬂict thesis. But does an emphasis in rabbinic and post-Talmudic sources on interpretation of the Akedah as a model for martyrdom really suggest that these sources were reluctant to read the Akedah as endorsing DCT or the conﬂict thesis? Perhaps all that this emphasis shows is that martyrdom was not uncommon during the eras in which rabbinic and post-Talmudic literature came into being (which we know is historically true); and that it was natural to connect the martyrdoms of these periods with a very well-known biblical episode that enjoyed a strong hold on the popular imagination, so as to lend much-needed succour to persecuted Jewish communities. It is as likely that the emphasis on the motif of martyrdom in interpretation of Genesis 22 is conditioned by historical circumstances as that it is driven by rejection of DCT or the conﬂict thesis. Reading the Akedah as the archetypal instance of Jewish martyrdom renders the episode morally unproblematic. But it does not logically involve opposition to DCT or the conﬂict thesis. Neither is opposition to either DCT or the conﬂict thesis by any means the only plausible explanation for this mode of interpretation of Genesis 22. A third relevant feature of rabbinic and post-Talmudic interpretation of the Akedah is the tendency to see God’s trial of Abraham and his instruction to sacriﬁce Isaac as rational rather than arbitrary.39 An example of this tendency is Rashi’s statement at the beginning of his commentary on Genesis 22, on the phrase ‘after these things (devarim)’ in Genesis 22:1, which draws on an earlier Talmudic tradition:

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Some of our rabbis say: After the words (devarav)40 of Satan, who was accusing and saying: ‘From the whole feast which Abraham made [on the day that Isaac was weaned (Gen. 21:8)], he did not offer before You a single bullock or ram!’ God replied: ‘He made it all for the sake of his son: if I were to say to him, “Sacriﬁce him to Me”, he would not refuse’.41 In this kind of passage, the divine command to sacriﬁce Isaac is perceived as possessing a rational basis, unlike the Kierkegaardian reading on which the directive is absurd. A fourth trend in later Jewish interpretation of Genesis 22 is the emphasis on what I termed, in section 6.2, the personal dimension of the Akedah test. In section 6.2, I argued that the biblical text of Genesis 22 as it stands is most plausibly read as stressing the personal aspect of Abraham’s trial. I now wish to argue that, whether this claim is true or not, it is the case that rabbinic and postTalmudic interpretation of the Akedah perceived Abraham’s test as concerned with the personal rather than the moral dimension. An example is the commentary of Bahya ben Asher to Genesis 22:1, where Bahya totally ignores the moral facet of the trial and instead characterises it in the following way: This test was not like the other tests . . . that a man should be barren and a hundred years old, and have riches and possessions and honour, and long for a son with the utmost longing, and have a son after giving up hope – one can imagine the power of the great love [that he possessed] for that son, and that love would have enormously increased at the end of a year over what it was when the child was eight days old . . . and it would have increased even more when he was commanded to slaughter this son himself, with his own hands, and nothing in the world could surpass this love. Yet Abraham, because he had complete faith, notwithstanding his immense love for Isaac, recognised that it was proper that the love of God should prevail over the love of Isaac.42 As already indicated, morally defusing the Akedah by stressing the personal facet of Abraham’s test makes the episode compatible with readings that are not informed by DCT or the conﬂict thesis. Yet, at the same time, such moral neutralisation does not make the story logically incompatible with these positions. In terms of plausibility, it seems to me that an emphasis on the personal dimension of Abraham’s test may well be motivated by concerns other than opposition to DCT or the conﬂict thesis. Such an emphasis might stem, for example, from the conviction that it is the personal dimension of the trial, and how Abraham responded to it, that constitutes the key religious message to be gleaned from the Akedah episode. Alternatively, underlining the personal aspect of Abraham’s test may simply reﬂect the view that doing so yields the most faithful interpretation of the biblical text.

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The four features of rabbinic and post-Talmudic interpretation of the Akedah outlined thus indicate that Jewish interpretation of Genesis 22 often rationalises or morally defuses the episode, and that it radically opposes the ‘absurdist’ element of Kierkegaard’s perspective on the Akedah. Yet, I have tried to argue, rationalisation and moral neutralisation do not logically involve opposition to DCT or the conﬂict thesis. Moreover, rejection of either of these theses is not the only plausible motivation for most modes of ethical neutralisation or rationalisation that we have analysed. And I have argued that rejection of DCT is not the only plausible motivation behind any of the four features of Jewish interpretation that we have discussed. It might still be objected that, given the plausibility with which Genesis 22 could be read as supporting ontic DCT, the fact that Jewish interpretation consistently eschewed this option is indicative of opposition to ontic DCT.43 Yet, while it is true that Jewish interpretations of the Akedah do not read it as endorsing ontic DCT, neither, to the best of my knowledge, do they explicitly reject such a reading. If Jewish interpretation of the Akedah were anxious to dispel possible readings of the story that favoured DCT, there would surely be sources that warned openly against interpreting the story in this way. But such texts are not to be found. In the ﬁnal analysis, what we discover in Jewish interpretation of Genesis 22 is rationalisation and moral neutralisation of the story that is compatible, both logically and from the perspective of plausibility, with both DCT and SMU. In conclusion, the ways in which the Akedah has been interpreted in rabbinic and post-Talmudic literature do not, I believe, necessitate any further reﬁnement of the picture presented in Chapters 4 and 5 of rabbinic and post-Talmudic attitudes to DCT/SMU.

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7 DCT/SMU AND THE COMMANDMENT TO WIPE OUT AMALEK

7.1

Introduction

Quite apart from the Akedah, discussed in Chapter 6, the Torah contains a number of commandments and episodes that, prima facie at least, are profoundly troubling from the perspective of morality. Most problematic of all are those in which God appears to permit, or even command, the killing of innocent people, including children. The instance that I shall focus upon in this chapter is a central one: the Torah’s command to wipe out the Amalekites.1 Morally difﬁcult Torah commandments and episodes are obviously relevant to DCT/SMU, since they apparently furnish a good foothold for DCT or the conﬂict thesis. As we saw in the Introduction to Chapter 6, Sagi claims that the way in which Jewish tradition interpreted these passages is evidence of its support for SMU. In this chapter I shall consider two central questions, parallel to those posed in Chapter 6. First (section 7.2), does the analysis of the Bible’s position on DCT/SMU offered in Chapter 3 require amendment in the light of biblical passages such as the commandment to obliterate Amalek?2 Second (section 7.3), does the way in which the commandment has been interpreted in rabbinic and post-Talmudic rabbinic thought necessitate any reﬁnement of the analysis of Chapters 4 and 5?3 If Sagi is right that later Jewish interpretation of the Amalek commandment endorses SMU, reﬁnement will be required.

7.2

The biblical commandment to exterminate Amalek as it stands

Deuteronomy 25:19 states: And it shall come to pass, when the Lord your God gives you rest from all your enemies round about, in the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance to possess it, you shall wipe out the memory of Amalek from beneath the heavens; you shall not forget. The directive to ‘wipe out the memory of Amalek from beneath the heavens’ certainly sounds as if it includes exterminating all Amalekite life, including children

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and animals. Such a reading is buttressed by I Samuel 15:2–3, where Samuel, acting as God’s messenger, says to Saul: Thus says the Lord of Hosts: I have remembered what Amalek did to Israel on the way out of Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek and destroy everything that belongs to it, and take no pity on it, and put to death man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and lamb, camel and donkey.4 Thus, the Deuteronomy commandment as it stands mandates the killing of innocent people, including children, simply because they are descended from the tribe that attacked the Israelites after the Exodus. What the Torah apparently commands, then, is racially motivated genocide. What theoretical strategies might be deployed in order to explain such a command? As in the case of the Akedah, an obvious candidate is DCT; more precisely, in this instance, ontic command DCT.5 If it is God’s Torah command that, in the view of the biblical text, determines the moral rightness or wrongness of actions, then we have one way of understanding how the Torah can command genocide, for what the Torah commands is, on ontic command DCT, ipso facto right. In terms of the analytical framework presented in Chapter 1, then, the command to wipe out Amalek is plausibly explained by the following three propositions: (DCTNR) God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act; (DCTSR) God’s revealed Torah command is a sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an act; and (DCTB) Morality depends upon God, and He is absolutely unbound by morality. If the Torah’s command to exterminate Amalek indeed supports ontic command DCT, revision of the analysis offered in Chapter 3 of the Bible’s position on DCT/SMU would certainly be required, since I did not identify any text in Chapter 3 that supported command DCT in any form, let alone a form as strong as ontic command DCT. On the contrary, I argued that several biblical texts involve the denial of various forms of command DCT, including ontic command DCT. If the command to wipe out Amalek really does endorse ontic command DCT, it would show that the trend of denial of command DCT that I argued in Chapter 3 is a feature of the biblical treatment of the DCT/SMU issue is not entirely uniform. Again as in the case of the Akedah, however, the conﬂict thesis is an obvious and attractive rival to DCT for the task of explaining the morally troubling divine command.6 Perhaps, that is, the biblical text also considers the genocide of Amalek as morally wrong; it is just that God’s command clashes with, and

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ultimately supersedes, the moral imperative. And by now we are familiar with the idea that the conﬂict thesis involves the denial of ontic DCT. So if the Torah’s command to destroy Amalek indeed supports the conﬂict thesis, then it involves the rejection of ontic command DCT. An alternative theory to both DCT and the conﬂict thesis for explaining the command to destroy Amalek, one which is at least logically possible, is that the command is a Satanic interpolation into the biblical text. On this suggestion, the Bible naturally views genocide as deeply immoral. Satan, however, who enjoys nothing better than confusing humanity, has succeeded in accomplishing a particularly dastardly but brilliant ruse: he has somehow managed to insert a ‘Satanic verse’ into the Bible, which, in our naivety, we accept on a par with the rest of the biblical text, referring to it simply as ‘Deuteronomy Chapter 25 verse 19’ out of ignorance of its sinister origins. What Satan gains from this deception, of course, is that he persuades the ancient Israelites to commit genocide, and gets everyone else to think that the Bible sometimes mandates genocide, thus undermining the revulsion for the taking of innocent life which the Bible in fact wishes to foster in us.7 We have thus seen that there exist a number of possible theoretical options for explaining the biblical commandment to exterminate Amalek as it stands. It can be explained in accordance with DCT; with the conﬂict thesis, which involves the denial of DCT; or with the ‘Satanic verse’ theory, which involves neither DCT nor the conﬂict thesis. I conclude that the biblical commandment to wipe out Amalek as it stands cannot justiﬁably be taken to support any particular view on DCT/SMU, and thus that no revision to the analysis offered in Chapter 3 is required.

7.3 Interpretations of the commandment to wipe out Amalek in rabbinic and post-Talmudic rabbinic thought In this section I shall address the issue of whether my analysis in Chapters 4 and 5 of the attitude of rabbinic and post-Talmudic rabbinic texts towards DCT/SMU requires any alteration in the light of the way in which such texts have interpreted the biblical commandment to destroy Amalek. Though my approach differs substantially from that of Sagi, in this section I shall adopt the convenient structure employed by Sagi in an essay on Amalek in the Jewish tradition,8 ﬁrst discussing traditional Jewish exegesis of the biblical text (section 7.3.a) and thereafter focusing on halakhic treatment of the Amalek commandment (section 7.3.b).

7.3.a

Traditional Jewish exegesis of the biblical text

The task to which I must ﬁrst turn is to attempt to identify the relevant ways in which traditional Jewish biblical exegesis has read the injunction concerning Amalek. As in some previous parts of this book, I shall make explicit and quite frequent reference to the work of Sagi. This is because he has recently provided

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a comprehensive and sophisticated analysis of the ways in which Jewish tradition has interpreted the Amalek commandment, but an analysis which I believe to be mistaken in certain important respects. My own position can thus often be clearly expressed through contrast with the views of Sagi. I shall argue, ﬁrst, that Sagi has overlooked one signiﬁcant trend in traditional Jewish biblical exegesis of the Amalek commandment, and second, that he misconstrues the signiﬁcance of the trends that he has (correctly) identiﬁed. The trend that Sagi fails to mention at all in his analysis of Jewish biblical exegesis of the Amalek commandment is what might be termed the ‘silent’ trend. That is to say: many traditional Jewish biblical commentators simply do not refer, even implicitly, to the moral difﬁculties raised by the Amalek commandment. A good example of the ‘silent’ trend is the approach of Rashi, widely considered to be the traditional Jewish biblical exegete par excellence. In his commentary to the passage concerning Amalek in Exodus 17:8–16, Rashi mentions several considerations of a broadly ethical nature. These include the Israelites’ lack of gratitude towards God (commentary to verse 8); the necessity of showing respect even to one’s disciples (commentary to verse 9);9 Moses’s improper lack of enthusiasm in following the divine command, as evidenced by his appointing Joshua to lead the Israelites into battle against the Amalekites instead of leading them himself (commentary to verse 12);10 and Moses’s empathy with the distress suffered by the warring Israelites (loc. cit.).11 Given the fact that Rashi, despite the characteristic brevity with which he expounds this passage, does not ignore ethical themes and indeed highlights them, one might have expected some reference to the apparently acute moral dilemmas attendant upon the Bible’s instructions regarding the treatment of Amalek. Yet no such reference is forthcoming, even implicitly. A similar analysis can be offered regarding Rashi’s commentary on the passage that discusses Amalek in Deuteronomy 25:17–19. Here, once more, Rashi alludes to broadly ethical concerns: the need for honest weights and measures (commentary to verse 17); Amalek’s sexual immorality (commentary to verse 18);12 Amalek’s blasphemy (loc. cit.);13 and Amalek’s lack of fear of God (loc. cit.).14 And here, not only does Rashi make no mention of the moral problems attendant upon the direct command to wipe out Amalek in verse 19; on the contrary, his only comment to verse 19 emphasises the lengths to which the extermination of Amalek is to go: Man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and lamb, so that Amalek’s name is not remembered even through an animal, by [someone] saying: ‘This animal belonged to the Amalekites’. Rashi is not the only classical Jewish biblical exegete to make no reference to the moral difﬁculties surrounding the Amalek commandment. Others include Rashbam and Kli Yakar.15 To be sure, it is often very difﬁcult to draw conclusions from silence. It would be hazardous to suggest that the reticence of the ‘silent’ exegetes should be explained by saying that, in the view of these biblical commentators, a divine

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command cannot be immoral, since it is God who determines morality. Yet it is still true that the ‘silent’ trend in traditional Jewish biblical exegesis of the Amalek commandment does not appear to sit easily with SMU. If it were characteristic of the traditional exegesis to point to the moral perplexities surrounding the Amalek commandment, SMU would at least be a candidate (though, as I shall later argue, only a candidate) for explaining why the moral problems are highlighted. But when exegetes do not even draw attention to the moral difﬁculties, it is very hard to see how SMU might enter the picture. Sagi gives the impression that all traditional Jewish exegesis of the Amalek commandment falls into the various categories that he proposes, even going so far as to claim that ‘all the exegeses strive to present the story as abiding by moral standards’.16 As we have seen, this is very misleading, for there is a signiﬁcant ‘silent’ trend that Sagi entirely overlooks that makes no attempt to portray the Amalek story in a morally acceptable light. A further trend in traditional Jewish exegesis of the Amalek commandment involves the attempt to moralise17 the divine directive. This trend, of course, parallels one of the central features that, I argued in Chapter 6, characterises Jewish exegesis of the Akedah. Yet there is an interesting difference of emphasis. Whereas the instances of exegetical moralisation of the Akedah highlighted in Chapter 6 tend to attempt ethical neutralisation of the divine command to sacriﬁce Isaac, the ﬁrst kind of moralisation that I shall consider here in the context of interpretation of the Amalek commandment often takes the form of attempted moral justiﬁcation of the biblical imperative.18 This attempted justiﬁcation, unlike the ‘silent’ trend, is a phenomenon discussed by Sagi. One aspect of this phenomenon that Sagi does not note, however, but which is worth highlighting, is that even those exegetes who offer moral justiﬁcations of the Amalek commandment almost invariably make no explicit reference to the moral difﬁculties surrounding it. Taken in conjunction with the ‘silent’ trend, this suggests that the moral problems inherent in the Amalek commandment do not constitute a central focus of traditional Jewish exegetical interest. To be sure, the classical commentators write about the biblical verses concerning Amalek in both Exodus and Deuteronomy; but when they do so, it is not the moral dimension of the subject that primarily commands their attention. Sagi claims that ‘expressions of unease regarding the punishment of Amalek are a recurring feature in exegetical literature’.19 On the contrary: overall, what is truly striking when one reads traditional Jewish biblical exegesis of the Amalek commandment is the under-emphasis on the moral difﬁculties surrounding the commandment. If Sagi were correct that SMU underlies such exegesis, one would expect attention to the moral difﬁculties to occupy a far more central role. I begin my own analysis of the ‘moral justiﬁcation’ trend with a representative of it not mentioned by Sagi in this context, namely the author of Sefer Hahinukh. Citing a midrash20 on the relevant Deuteronomy passage about a vat of boiling liquid that nobody dared enter until a fool jumped into it and, though scalding himself, thereby cooled it down for others, Sefer Hahinukh states:

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because he [Amalek] did great evil to Israel, being the ﬁrst to harm them, God commanded us to erase their memory from the earth and to destroy them completely.21 Once Amalek had set a precedent for attacking Israel, others were prepared to follow. Here, the attempted moral justiﬁcation focuses solely on the harm done by Amalek to Israel. A similar approach, though with a slight nuance, is adopted by Abarbanel. Immediately prior to the passage concerning Amalek in Deuteronomy 25, the Torah declares a strict interdict on the use of dishonest weights and measures, characterising the employment of such instruments, and similar unjust acts (avel), as ‘abomination’ (toevah).22 Emphasising the biblical text’s juxtaposition of apparently radically disparate themes,23 Abarbanel writes: The text placed here [i.e. immediately following the passage concerning weights and measures] the commandment to remember the war of Amalek, who did a great injustice (avel) to Israel when they came out to ﬁght against them on the way [out of Egypt]; this was an abomination (toevah) before God. And because of this it was commanded to wipe out his [i.e. Amalek’s] name, and for this reason it is ﬁtting for every man to distance himself from injustice (avel), for [if he does not] he will be wiped out from the book of the living.24 For Abarbanel, then, God commands that Amalek be exterminated as punishment for its abominable and unjust behaviour, and later in his commentary to the same passage, Abarbanel lists four features of Amalek’s conduct which, he thinks, render it especially reprehensible. The nuance in Abarbanel’s approach compared with that of Sefer Hahinukh consists in the fact that, on Abarbanel’s view, one of these four features centres not on the wrong done by Amalek to Israel but on its sinful attitude towards God, in that Amalek feared only the Israelites and not God.25 It is worth highlighting that, on the view of Abarbanel, the juxtaposition of the weights and measures passage and the Amalek passage sheds light in both directions. According to Abarbanel, the juxtaposition not only enables us better to understand the reason for Amalek’s punishment (i.e. its acts of toevah and avel); it also facilitates our appreciation of the fact that just as Amalek deserves to be wiped out, so does anyone who commits toevah and avel, e.g. by using dishonest weights and measures. Abarbanel, therefore, is clearly attempting moral justiﬁcation of the Amalek commandment: anyone who is guilty of similar offences to those committed by Amalek in relevantly similar circumstances would be liable to similar punishment.26 Some of the classic medieval rabbinic commentators remain within the tradition of attempted moral justiﬁcation of the Amalek commandment but shift the emphasis more strongly than Abarbanel towards Amalek’s improper attitude to God. An example is Nachmanides:

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The reason that Amalek was punished more than any other nation is that all the [other] nations heard [of God’s miracles in delivering the Israelites from Egypt] and trembled . . . from terror of God and from the splendour of His might, yet Amalek came [to attack the Israelites] from afar as if to make himself God’s master, and therefore Scripture says of them [i.e. Amalek] ‘and [they] did not fear God’ (Deut. 25:18).27 As noted above, Abarbanel also mentions Amalek’s sin against God. But, whereas for Abarbanel this constitutes only a small part of the justiﬁcation for Amalek’s extermination, according to Nachmanides, Amalek’s arrogance towards God is the central focus of the justiﬁcation for its destruction.28 This idea is even more clearly expressed by Sforno,29 who comments on the phrase ‘you shall wipe out the memory of Amalek’: Ox and lamb, camel and donkey, as He commanded Saul, and this in order to punish Amalek for its effrontery against God, as ones who are jealous for His honour.30 Notice that, despite the shift in emphasis away from Amalek’s behaviour towards the Israelites and towards its attitude to God, this putative justiﬁcation of Amalek’s punishment is still distinctively moral in nature. For Nachmanides and Sforno, the justiﬁcation would hold good for the punishment of anyone who behaved like Amalek in relevantly similar circumstances. The signiﬁcance of the ‘moral justiﬁcation’ trend is misconstrued by Sagi. He writes: The very need to justify the harshness of Amalek’s punishment rests on the assumption that morality is autonomous; were morality dependent on religion, no further justiﬁcation than a divine command would be needed, even for a punishment calling for the slaying of women, children and future generations.31 This claim is unwarranted; attempts to justify morally the severity of Amalek’s punishment might quite plausibly rest not on an autonomous morality but rather on a revealed morality that opposes genocide.32 Traditional biblical exegetes who offer moral justiﬁcations of the Amalek commandment may do so only because they understand the revealed Torah itself as rejecting genocide, in the light of the Decalogue’s prohibition on murder33 and other laws and statements in the Torah which reﬂect a deep regard for human life. These exegetes might well resist the notion that the Amalek commandment requires moral justiﬁcation because of some revelation-independent moral standard. There is a further, related objection to Sagi’s argument here. Sagi assumes that if traditional exegetes advocated DCT, they would not bother to attempt any moral justiﬁcation of the Amalek commandment; the mere fact of the

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commandment’s divine source would already constitute sufﬁcient justiﬁcation. But why should this be so? Such exegetes might very conceivably wish to make sense of the Amalek commandment in the context of their understanding of the revealed Torah as a whole. And since they understand the Torah as a whole to oppose the taking of innocent life (and maintain, as advocates of DCT, that it is only because of this opposition that taking innocent life is wrong), they might endeavour to explain the Amalek commandment in a way that is consonant with that understanding. In other words, what lies behind the traditional exegetes’ attempted moral justiﬁcation of the Amalek commandment might very plausibly be not SMU, but merely the desire to achieve – and to present to the reader of the exegesis – an understanding of the Torah as an internally coherent document that consistently opposes killing the innocent.34 Another trend in traditional Jewish exegesis of the Amalek commandment that involves moralisation understands Israel’s war of extermination against Amalek in metaphorical terms. Sagi calls this ‘the symbolic trend’.35 I shall take as an example of this trend Hirsch’s commentary to the Exodus and Deuteronomy passages dealing with Amalek.36 (Though Sagi brieﬂy discusses Hirsch’s writings in this context, he mostly cites not Hirsch’s Torah commentary but other works.) The choice of Hirsch as representative of the symbolic approach is motivated by twin considerations. First, he is a very clear exponent of the ‘symbolic trend’. Second, it is Hirsch’s approach to the Amalek commandment that seems to me best to ﬁt Sagi’s analysis of the relevance of the symbolic trend to DCT/SMU. Thus, if Sagi can be shown to have misconstrued the signiﬁcance of Hirsch’s approach for DCT/SMU, his analysis of the ‘symbolic trend’ as a whole will have been substantially undermined. The crux of Hirsch’s position lies in the radical idea that the Amalek commandment is not to be interpreted as mandating the physical annihilation of the Amalekites. On the phrase in Exodus 17:14 ‘I [God] will wipe out the memory of Amalek’, Hirsch comments: ‘It is not Amalek who is so pernicious for the moral future of mankind but zekher Amalek, the glorifying of the memory of Amalek which is the danger’.37 But if it is not to be an actual military confrontation, what precise form is Israel’s battle with Amalek to take? For Hirsch, in his commentary to Exodus 17, the struggle of Israel against Amalek is not a physical confrontation but rather an uncompromising contest between two conﬂicting sets of values: between peace and militarism (the sword), between spiritual–moral values and brute force, and between ‘building’ and destruction. Amalek ‘chose the sword as his lot . . . seeking renown in laurels of blood . . . seeking renown by the force of arms’.38 Furthermore: [I]n Israel he sees an object of mortal hate and complete disdain, where one dares to think the sword is dispensable, where one dares to trust in spiritual-moral powers, powers of which the sword has no idea, and which are beyond its reach. In the representative of the idea of the greatness which Man can attain by Peace, Amalek sees the utter scorn of all

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his principles, sees in it his one real enemy, and senses somehow his own ultimate collapse.39 And, in a similar vein, Hirsch characterises the conﬂict between Israel and Amalek in the following way: Amalek’s greatness lies in ‘destruction’. Israel’s mission is ‘building’, the peaceful human building up of everything earthly up to God. This building an altar, this ﬁnal raising up of the whole earth to form an altar to God, is the antithesis of Amalek’s Sword.40 Clearly, the effect of this kind of reading of the Amalek commandment is one of radical moralisation. Not only is there no longer any divine directive to Israel to engage in any bloodshed, not only is the war against Amalek transferred to the realm of ideas, so that it no longer involves the actual Amalekite nation, but even in the conceptual confrontation with Amalek which replaces the physical one, it is precisely the values of morality that Israel is to champion. Hirsch even goes so far as to characterise Israel’s posture in this struggle as defensive: The object of the building up of the nation of Israel on the development of every humane feeling and ideal is to ﬁght and overcome everything ungodly and inhumane on earth. This development does not attack, but it is attacked, as by Amalek here, and in this defensive ﬁght, Amalek gets defeated.41 In his commentary to Deuteronomy 25, Hirsch adopts a similar approach, contrasting ‘the national character of a people [like Israel] woven out of justice and the duties of love’ with ‘Amalek, which only ﬁnds its strength in the might of its sword and its love of glory in treading down all unprepared weaker ones’.42 Again, however, Sagi goes much too far in asserting that the symbolic trend ‘indicates the commitment of Jewish tradition to the notion of moral autonomy’.43 The crucial question for our purposes concerns the nature of the motivation that lies behind the radical moralisation of the Amalek commandment involved in an approach like that of Hirsch. And here, it is once again unclear why revealed morality should not be considered a plausible explanatory candidate for that motivation. It is, of course, possible to speculate that Hirsch, in his exegesis of the Amalek commandment, is engaged in apologetics, animated by a desire, particularly given his setting in nineteenth-century Western Europe, to ‘defuse’ the apparent biblical endorsement of genocide and to portray Judaism as a morally sophisticated faith. Such motives might lead him to attempt to square the Amalek commandment with a revelation-independent morality. Yet what is at least equally plausible is a more charitable reading of Hirsch, on which Hirsch genuinely understands the thrust of the revealed Torah in a way that precludes him interpreting the biblical Amalek commandment at face value, as a directive to

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genocide. It seems quite likely that non-literal readings of the Amalek commandment always appealed to Hirsch because of the way that he grasped the ethos of the Torah as a whole, and that the interpretation that he ultimately developed was the metaphorical approach described above. In short, then, Sagi’s claim that the approach of traditional Jewish exegetes to the Amalek commandment ‘implies that they reject . . . the thesis of morality’s dependence on religion’44 is unjustiﬁed. The ‘silent trend’ among the exegetes certainly involves no necessary rejection of DCT, and even the ‘moral justiﬁcation’ and metaphorical approaches, I have argued, are consistent with DCT. I conclude that, thus far, we have seen no compelling reason to revise the analysis offered in Chapters 4 and 5.

7.3.b

Halakhic treatment of the Amalek commandment

Let us now turn to a consideration of how the Halakhah has dealt with the Amalek commandment. Somewhat parallel to my argument in section 7.3.a, I shall attempt in the present section to defend two claims. First, I shall argue that Sagi misconstrues the signiﬁcance of one feature of the halakhic treatment of the Amalek commandment that he correctly identiﬁes. Second, I shall argue that this feature is far less central to the halakhic treatment of Amalek than Sagi is prepared to admit. It thus turns out, I shall urge, that the halakhic approach to the Amalek commandment does not imply commitment to SMU, nor to any other particular view on the DCT/SMU continuum. The feature of the halakhic treatment of the Amalek commandment that Sagi correctly identiﬁes consists in approaches that serve to limit the scope or applicability of the injunction. There are at least three different such approaches. I shall now brieﬂy discuss each of them. First, though Sagi does not mention it, some halakhists limit the applicability of the Amalek commandment to an eschatological future. Thus, R. Meir Hakohen45 writes: This commandment does not apply until the Messianic Age, after the conquest of the Land, as it says [Deut. 25:19]: ‘And it shall come to pass, when the Lord your God gives you rest from all your enemies round about, in the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance to possess it, you shall wipe out the memory of Amalek’.46 This is obviously a radical limitation on the applicability of the Amalek commandment; it renders the law merely theoretical until the end of history. There is a precedent for this limitation in rabbinic literature. Commenting on the phrase in Exodus 17:16 ‘God is at war with Amalek’, a midrashic passage states: Rabbi Joshua says: When God will sit on His throne and sovereignty will be His, at that time ‘God will be at war with Amalek’.47

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Yet it should be noted that this limitation to the applicability of the Amalek commandment is resisted by another prominent halakhist, Rabbi David ibn Zimra:48 I have read an opinion that this commandment does not apply until the days of the Messiah, but the episode of Samuel and Saul [i.e. I Samuel Chapter 15] constitutes a decisive rejection [of this opinion].49 A second approach is, however, discussed by Sagi. This approach involves restricting the applicability of the Amalek commandment not to the eschatological future but instead to the distant past. Thus, some comparatively recent halakhists advance the claim that the Amalek commandment cannot be complied with in contemporary times. The origins of this line of thought are to be found in a Mishnaic passage which states that ‘Judah, an Ammonite proselyte’ was permitted to marry a Jewess, despite the Torah law that no Ammonite or Moabite proselyte may enter into such a marriage,50 on the grounds that ‘Sennacherib, king of Assyria, has already mixed up all the nations’.51 In other words, because Sennacherib exiled peoples from their original territories and intermingled them,52 the Ammonites are assumed to have assimilated into other peoples and the original biblical prohibition no longer applies. The Mishna upholds this view, which is the position of Rabbi Joshua, against the dissenting opinion of Rabbi Gamliel. Although the Mishna does not apply what might be termed ‘the Sennacherib principle’ to the Amalek commandment, some comparatively recent halakhists did. For Rabbi Yosef Babad53 in his Minhat Hinukh, the commandment to wipe out Amalek no longer applies: Nowadays we are not commanded to do this, for Sennacherib has already mixed up the [populations of the] world, and ‘whoever separates, separates from the majority’.54,55 Yet overlooked by Sagi is the fact that Soloveitchik takes a different position on this issue.56 Soloveitchik points out that regarding the seven Canaanite nations, whom the Israelites were commanded to destroy,57 Maimonides employs the Sennacherib principle and rules that this directive no longer applies. The words that Maimonides uses concerning the Canaanite nations are ‘their memory has already been lost’ (ukhevar avad zikhram).58 When it comes to his discussion of the Amalek commandment, however, these words are omitted by Maimonides.59 Soloveitchik infers that, for Maimonides, whereas the seven Canaanite nations have disappeared, Amalek is still at large. Why this distinction? Why does Maimonides not extend the Sennacherib principle to Amalek as well? Soloveitchik’s reply is that the Torah explicitly states that Amalek has not disappeared: ‘God is at war with Amalek in every generation’.60 In Maimonides’s view,

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Amalek will only be totally wiped out in the Messianic era. But if Amalek is at large, where is it? In reply to this question, Soloveitchik, citing his father, Rabbi Moses Soloveitchik, suggests a radical extension of the concept of Amalek. Any people that attempts to destroy the Jewish nation assumes the halakhic status of Amalek.61 Soloveitchik goes on to say that, on his father’s view, there are two commandments that obligate the Jewish people regarding the actual Amalekites: 1) each individual Jew is obliged to wipe out any Amalekite; 2) the Jewish people as a whole is obliged to wage war against the Amalekite nation as a whole. Regarding any other people that threatens to exterminate the Jews, however, only 2) applies: there is a collective obligation to wage war against that people at the time that it makes the attempt to destroy the Jews, but no obligation to kill individual members of that people. According to Soloveitchik, though Maimonides in Hilkhot Melakhim 5:5 is discussing 1) (which does not apply to non-Amalekite peoples) as well as 2), he does not employ the phrase ‘their memory has already been lost’, since war against these peoples, if they intend to destroy the Jewish people, is halakhically considered war against Amalek. To use the expression ‘their memory has already been lost’ would imply that, postSennacherib, Amalek has ceased to exist. Since obligation 2), which is halakhically deemed war against Amalek, remains, Maimonides omitted this phrase. Soloveitchik’s position thus issues in an interesting paradox, in which the Amalek commandment is both expanded and contracted. More precisely, the scope of the Amalek commandment is greatly extended; it now applies to any group of people that attempts genocide against the Jews, at least at the time that the attempt is made. At the same time, however, the content of the Amalek commandment is severely limited, at least as far as the contemporary era is concerned, effectively to wars of self-defence by the Jewish people. The overall outcome is a radical moralisation of the Amalek commandment. Thus, though Soloveitchik rejects the position of Babad and others that the Amalek commandment simply no longer applies, the moralising effect of Soloveitchik’s position is, admittedly, similar. In practice, it now mandates nothing more ethically troubling than wars of self-defence, since the disturbing directive to exterminate individual Amalekites has been restricted to actual Amalekite individuals, and these can no longer be identiﬁed. Of course, neither of the approaches discussed so far entirely moralises the Amalek commandment. Whether the applicability of the commandment is limited to the distant past or to a messianic future, there remains some period of history at which there is an obligation to commit racial genocide. Nevertheless, the applicability of the commandment is profoundly restricted in these approaches, and both approaches prevent the commandment from possessing any contemporary force. A third approach that issues in a limitation on the scope of the Amalek commandment is Maimonides’s ruling that Amalek is to be spared if it accepts the terms of peace, which comprise various forms of subjugation to Israel:

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War must not be waged against anyone in the world until peace is offered, whether the war is optional (reshut) or mandatory (mitzvah) . . .62 Amalekites who do not make peace, none of them is left alive, as it says . . . ‘You shall wipe out the memory of Amalek’ (Deut. 25:19).63 Maimonides’s stance here is more moderate than the two approaches considered above, in the sense that it does not, in theory at any rate, limit the application of the Amalek commandment either to the distant past or to an eschatological future. At the same time, this third approach is more radical in the sense that the two previous approaches limit the Amalek commandment only in terms of time, whereas Maimonides’s position restricts the application of the Amalek commandment in terms of its content. Even when the Amalek commandment is in force, on Maimonides’s view, its application is conditional: the imperative to exterminate the Amalekites applies only if they refuse the terms of peace. The third approach has in common with the ﬁrst two approaches both that it moralises the Amalek commandment and that the nature of the moralisation is partial. It moralises the commandment because it makes the application of the commandment conditional on Amalek refusing to make peace. Yet the moralisation is not total, because the terms of peace are very demanding, and also because if those terms are not accepted, innocent people, including children, are killed. Maimonides’s conditional reading of the Amalek commandment is endorsed by Rabbi Abraham b. David (Raavad)64 who, though he understands the terms of peace more extensively than Maimonides appears to (i.e. as including a commitment to observe the Seven Noahide Laws), agrees that if the Amalekites accept those terms they are to be spared.65 Sagi makes a great deal of this Maimonidean ruling, terming it a ‘revolutionary innovation’.66 As Sagi himself notes, the ‘revolutionary’ nature of Maimonides’s ruling lies in the fact that ‘[n]o rabbinic source includes the Amalekites in this ruling [that the terms of peace are to be offered]’.67 Thus, Maimonides’s conditional reading of the Amalek commandment represents a departure from the standard halakhic treatment of the commandment rather than an approach that typiﬁes the stance of Halakhah. Moreover, as Gerald Blidstein points out, even Maimonides apparently does not consistently adopt this conditional interpretation of the Amalek commandment.68 In his discussion of war against the Amalekites and the Seven Canaanite nations in Sefer Hamitzvot, Maimonides makes no mention of offering terms of peace to these peoples.69 In his analysis of optional war (milhemet reshut) in the same work, however, Maimonides deals in detail with offering the terms of peace.70 It thus seems that, in Sefer Hamitzvot, Maimonides understands the Amalek commandment as unconditional.71 How should we interpret the fact that the Halakhah thus contains various approaches that limit the scope and applicability of the Amalek commandment and have the effect of moralising it at least to a signiﬁcant degree? We encountered the phenomenon of moral neutralisation in Chapter 6,72 in the context of our discussion of rabbinic and post-Talmudic interpretation of

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the Akedah. An instance that corresponds more precisely to the present context, however, is the halakhic phenomenon of limiting the scope and applicability of the law of mamzerut, discussed in Chapter 4.73 For, unlike the Akedah, both mamzerut and Amalek are morally difﬁcult laws given collectively to the Jewish people on a permanent basis, rather than constituting a sui generis command to an individual, and therefore Halakhah has a signiﬁcant role to play. I argued in Chapter 4, as against Sagi, that in the absence of any motivation for halakhic limitations on the mamzer law being articulated, including any moral motivation, it is merely speculative to assert that those limitations are prompted by moral considerations. A fortiori, I argued, it is speculative to ascribe the limitations to sympathy for SMU.74 Referring to the application of ‘the Sennacherib principle’ by Babad and others to the Amalek commandment, Sagi writes: This . . . shows that halakhists, facing a tension between a canonical text they recognize as compelling and their own beliefs, can resort to a transitional principle . . . [they] use an ‘empirical’ fact cited in the sources – ‘the commingling of the nations’ – as a vehicle for their moral intuitions. Aware of their limited ability to reinterpret the canonical text so as to make halakhic norms accord with their moral views, they rely on a fact that allows them to restrict the scope of a ruling about which they have moral reservations.75 Yet, similar considerations to those which apply in the instance of the mamzer law are germane in the case of the Amalek commandment. To be sure, the various halakhic approaches outlined above restrict the scope of the commandment and have the effect of substantially moralising it. Yet, in the absence of any ethical motivation being explicitly articulated, it is difﬁcult conﬁdently to ascribe such motivation to the restrictions. Perhaps we should take the restrictive approaches at face value, understanding, for example, the approach that limits the Amalek commandment to the messianic future as doing so simply for the stated reason that the biblical text alludes to the law applying only at a future time when Israel is otherwise at peace. And if it is unsafe to ascribe moral motivation to the limitations on the Amalek commandment absent their explicit formulation, it is that much more problematic to attempt to trace the origin of the restrictions to support for SMU. Parallel to an argument that I presented in the mamzerut context, it can be urged that even if the express motivation for the restrictions on the Amalek law were moral, the morality in question might be revealed morality. The moral basis for restrictions on the scope of the Amalek commandment would presumably be discomfort with the idea of killing innocent people. Yet, as mentioned earlier, precisely that is forbidden in the sixth commandment of the Decalogue. Even if the motivation for halakhic limitations on the Amalek commandment is moral, perhaps the ‘moral intuitions’ and ‘reservations’ to which Sagi refers are grounded in revelation.76

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It is instructive to compare one aspect of the halakhic treatment of the rebellious son, the ben sorer umoreh,77 to the limitations on scope and applicability that, as we have seen, are a feature of the halakhic attitude towards the Amalek and mamzer commandments. As mentioned in Chapter 4,78 the Torah directs that the ben sorer umoreh be put to death, even though he has not committed any offence that would usually be considered deserving of the death penalty. Moreover, I noted there that Talmudic discussions of the ben sorer umoreh law often attempt to render that commandment totally non-applicable. One well-known passage of this kind runs as follows: Rabbi Shimon said: ‘Because he [the ben sorer umoreh] eats a half mannah of meat and drinks half a log of wine, can his parents take him and have him stoned?! [Obviously not!] Therefore [we are forced to conclude that an actual ben sorer umoreh] has never existed and will never exist. Why, then, is the law written? That you may study it and receive reward [for doing so]’.79 In this passage, the applicability of the ben sorer umoreh commandment is restricted in the most radical way possible: the law is conﬁned entirely to the realm of theory. But this passage does not differ from the halakhic approaches to the Amalek and mamzer commandments analysed above merely regarding the extent of the restriction that it places upon the applicability of a morally troubling biblical law. It differs also in that the moral motivation for the radical restriction on the law is explicitly articulated. The Sanhedrin 71a passage is thus very signiﬁcant, because it demonstrates that rabbinic literature is perfectly able and willing explicitly to formulate the moral grounds of halakhic restrictions on the scope and applicability of Torah laws.80 This makes it much more difﬁcult, in instances such as the Amalek commandment and mamzerut where the restrictions are not provided with an explicitly moral basis, to argue convincingly that such restrictions are, nevertheless, rooted in ethical considerations. Sagi and Statman write concerning the Sanhedrin 71a passage: [t]his radical interpretation of the Torah is obviously hard to reconcile with DCM. In DCM terms, if God commands the stoning of the stubborn and rebellious son, then this act is morally correct and attempts to mitigate it have no place. The explanations adduced by the Sages reﬂect their perception of a conﬂict between justice and the Torah, which they attempt to resolve by resorting to exegesis.81 But again, even in a passage such as Sanhedrin 71a, the explicit moral motivation for the limitation on an ethically difﬁcult Torah law need not necessarily presuppose SMU. Rabbi Shimon’s objection might just as well be grounded in the ethics revealed in the Torah as in an independent morality. Interpretations such as those of R. Shimon might reﬂect his perception of a conﬂict between

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the concern for justice that he understands to be characteristic of the Torah and the validity of which is grounded in the Torah, and the law of ben sorer umoreh, in which the Torah appears radically to depart from this concern. As I argued in Chapter 4,82 command DCT, will DCT and SMU are all logical candidates and, indeed, equally plausible candidates, for explaining Talmudic moral challenges to divine commands. (Even though R. Shimon’s response to his own ethical query in Sanhedrin 71a is more radical than the responses to Talmudic moral challenges discussed in Chapter 4, it might still be explainable by DCT).83 And if SMU cannot safely be said to underpin the moral motivation for restrictions on the applicability of a morally difﬁcult commandment when that motivation is explicit, a fortiori it cannot safely be said to inform the limitations on Amalek and mamzerut, where no moral motivation is articulated. Thus far, I have argued that Sagi correctly identiﬁes, as a feature of the halakhic treatment of the Amalek commandment, approaches that serve to limit the scope or applicability of the directive – though he misconstrues the signiﬁcance of this feature. I shall now urge that this feature is not, in fact, that central to the halakhic attitude towards the Amalek commandment. It is most important to note that the limitations placed by Halakhah on the Amalek commandment are really relatively few. Sagi himself concedes that Talmudic restrictions on the obligation to exterminate Amalek are rare.84 In fact, not a single clear restriction on the applicability of the Amalek commandment can be found in the entire Talmud.85 If restrictions on the applicability of a Torah law are a barometer for measuring moral unease with that law, then it appears that the Talmud is not ethically troubled by the Amalek commandment. Moreover, even some of the limitations on the Amalek commandment that we have discussed are resisted by other halakhists, as I have noted, and Sagi has not pointed to wide support for them in the history of halakhic literature. This last observation further weakens the notion that SMU lies behind halakhic restrictions on the scope of the Amalek law. It is a necessary condition (though not a sufﬁcient condition) of SMU’s underlying halakhic restrictions on the applicability of a Torah law that those restrictions are morally motivated. Yet if the restrictions are only modestly supported in halakhic literature and, indeed, if some of them are controversial, then, in the absence of explicit moral motivations being provided for them, it seems that even those restrictions which do exist are less likely to be informed by SMU. If there were an outcry in halakhic sources about the Amalek commandment, and the law were pervasively limited in halakhic sources and moral grounds for the limitations expressed, then SMU would be a candidate (though even then, only a candidate) for explaining the limitations. But halakhic sources reveal only sporadic and disputed restrictions on the Amalek commandment, and even these are not explicitly morally motivated. It thus appears unlikely that SMU underpins the restrictions. In conclusion, it appears that, notwithstanding Sagi’s view, halakhic treatment of the Amalek commandment does not necessarily imply commitment to SMU, nor to any other particular view on the DCT/SMU continuum. The way in which

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the Amalek commandment has been interpreted in rabbinic and post-Talmudic rabbinic exegetical and halakhic thought therefore necessitates no qualiﬁcation of the analysis of Chapters 4 and 5. We have thus seen that a central instance of an apparently morally troubling Torah passage, taken both as it stands in the biblical text and as interpreted in Jewish tradition, requires no revision of our analysis of the stance of the texts of Jewish tradition on the DCT/SMU issue.

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CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS

This book has primarily focused upon the response of Jewish tradition to the Euthyphro dilemma, concentrating mostly on the positions taken by different traditional texts on the DCT/SMU issue. Of course, this issue is not the only one to be considered if one wishes to assess the relationship between Jewish tradition and morality. In these concluding remarks, I shall offer a few thoughts about the broader question of this relationship which are prompted by the discussion thus far. As we have seen, Sagi and some others consistently argue that Jewish tradition rejects both DCT and the conﬂict thesis, and that it almost unequivocally supports SMU. I have argued that this position is substantially ﬂawed. However, let us suppose, for argument’s sake, that Sagi is right. A question then arises: why is it that Jewish tradition contains so much that requires explanation? If Jewish tradition supports SMU, we might expect it to look much less morally problematic than it does. Why is there so much that prima facie provides a good foothold for DCT or the conﬂict thesis? Why is there so much in the tradition that morally jolts us as we read? A brief and incomplete inventory illustrates the point: to items already mentioned like the Akedah, the Amalek commandment, mamzerut and the law of ben sorer umoreh, we might add the law of the idolatrous city (ir hanidahat), the laws concerning the destruction of the Seven Canaanite nations, the instruction in the Book of Numbers to take vengeance against the Midianites, and laws which discriminate against women. Some of the items on this list primarily belong to the biblical text as it stands. But others carry over into rabbinic and later tradition. The truth of the matter is that both the biblical text as it stands, and later Jewish tradition, contain both a good deal that accords with our modern Western moral sensibilities and a good deal which does not. Indeed, in reading the texts of the tradition, we sometimes ﬁnd ourselves catapulted back and forth between these two poles.1 To mix the metaphors: reading a traditional text, one can sometimes feel as if one is on a moral rollercoaster.2 Even if Sagi is right, then, and DCT and the conﬂict thesis are not what explains the moral ‘rollercoaster’, we need some explanation of this phenomenon. The phrase ‘modern Western moral sensibilities’ (let us add ‘secular’ to the adjectives qualifying ‘moral’) suggests obvious items that a distinctively modern

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ethical sensibility would ﬁnd morally jarring in Jewish tradition. Examples are biblical and halakhic attitudes to homosexuality and adultery, and some halakhic restrictions on abortion and euthanasia. Regarding items like these, it seems clear that the cause of the moral jolt lies in the radical conﬂict between the assumptions of a distinctively modern secular morality and those of traditional Jewish morality on these issues.3 (Interestingly, there seem to be different levels of conﬂict involved in the examples cited. Whereas homosexual conduct would be seen by modern secular morality as an inalienable right, it might be agreed that morally negative dimensions such as betrayal attach to adultery. What really jars a modern ethical sensibility is that the Torah renders adultery a capital offence.) I would like to tentatively suggest, however, that the clash between the morality embodied in traditional Jewish sources and modern Western moral consciousness runs deeper than examples such as those just mentioned, and that this fact helps to account for the moral ‘rollercoaster’ feeling that we sometimes experience when reading traditional sources. Two related and germane areas seem to be warfare and vengeance. In Numbers 31:2, God tells Moses to conduct a war of vengeance against the Midianites. After the war, in Numbers 31:17, Moses instructs that the Midianite male children be killed, presumably with divine sanction, since no divine objection is recorded in the biblical text. In Deuteronomy 2:34, Moses says that women and children were killed by the Israelites in the war with Sihon, again presumably with divine sanction, since no divine objection is cited either here or in the account of the war in Numbers. Similar considerations apply to Deuteronomy 3:6, where we are told that innocent people were killed in the war with Og, and also to passages in Joshua and elsewhere in the Bible. Not only is vengeance against the Midianites commanded in the biblical text, but many traditional Jewish biblical exegetes make no attempt to moralise the vengeance. In this way, the episode of the Midianites differs from, say, lex talionis, where the biblical text appears to mandate vengeance but the Halakhah requires only monetary compensation. One senses that, perhaps, vengeance is perceived as substantially less morally problematic by traditional Jewish sources than it is by modern ethical consciousness, and, relatedly, that the same might be true of the killing of enemy non-combatants in war. Perhaps these considerations also partly explain the biblical Amalek commandment and those exegetical and halakhic approaches that remain silent about it. One should not overstate the case concerning the gap between the morality embodied in traditional Jewish sources and modern moral sensibilities. Traditional Jewish sources, despite some of the material mentioned here and discussed earlier in this book which tend to cluster around the issue of warfare, stress respect for human life. They also emphasise justice, compassion, promisekeeping and the rule of law. Yet, despite the large degree of overlap, there remain areas in which the morality of traditional Jewish sources and modern ethical consciousness cannot be reconciled. And this, I am suggesting, is part of the explanation for what I have called the moral ‘rollercoaster’.

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To be sure, it is not the whole of the explanation: Rabbi Shimon and other Sages experienced the rollercoaster and expressed their moral puzzlement with certain Torah passages, and I have emphasised in this book that the source of this puzzlement might well be the apparent conﬂict between certain Torah passages and what appears to be the central thrust of revealed morality. But the gap between traditional Jewish and modern morality in some areas remains part of the explanation. Some of the writers discussed in this book – e.g. Jacobs, Spero, Hartman, Sagi and Statman – are keen to stress the rational, and particularly the moral, character of Jewish tradition. This is a laudable enterprise, but care must be taken not to attempt an impossible reduction of traditional Jewish ethics to modern Western secular morality. There is large, perhaps even ‘majority overlap’ between the two – but no more. To conclude with some speculation of my own: it seems to me that it is this desire to portray Jewish tradition as moral that informs Sagi and Statman’s enthusiasm for SMU and their (so I have argued) over-simplistic view of Jewish tradition as almost totally supportive of SMU. For, though I have argued that DCT is logically reconcilable with a moral Jewish tradition, Sagi and Statman believe that a moral tradition can be underpinned only by SMU. Sagi and Statman’s determination to perceive and portray Jewish tradition as morally sensitive and pro-SMU is, I believe, motivated to a signiﬁcant degree by the political, social and cultural milieu in which they are working. Their work on DCT/SMU was published in the 1990s. By that decade, some in the religious Zionist community in Israel had become deeply troubled by the muchpublicised radicalisation of the religious Zionist right, as manifested in such phenomena as Kahane-ism and the Jewish underground, which had carried out attacks on Arab civilians. The sense of foreboding concerning the direction of religious Zionism reached its apogee with the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995 by Yigal Amir, a religious Zionist Jew who, coincidentally, was a student at the liberal Orthodox university at which Sagi and Statman teach. Sagi’s work Judaism: Between Religion and Morality was published in 1998. It is difﬁcult not to read this work against the background of events in Israel and, particularly, the struggle within the religious Zionist community in the years prior to its publication – particularly given some of Sagi’s disputes in the book with ﬁgures on the political right of that community. The work of Sagi and Statman, then, is partly shaped by the desire, within the political and cultural setting in which they are writing, to emphasise what they perceive as the correct view of the relationship of Jewish tradition to morality.4 Like all philosophical reﬂection, theirs is not divorced from the social, cultural and political context in which it occurs. So there are powerful motives for wishing to portray Jewish tradition as radically pro-SMU. Interestingly, there are also powerful reasons for wanting to portray it as radically pro-DCT, which, perhaps, helps to explain the position of some writers other than Sagi and Statman discussed in this book. These have

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to do with the centrality of the concepts of divine command, divine will and obedience to God in Judaism,5 and perhaps also with a phenomenon common in certain contemporary religious Jewish circles termed by one writer ‘the ethic of submission’.6 Needless to say, the existence of these motives (if indeed they are what animate the various writers) does not necessarily undermine the truth of their positions. Nevertheless, I have tried to argue in this study on other grounds that neither DCT nor SMU are unambiguously supported by Jewish tradition and that all attempts to present such a monochromatic view are ﬂawed. No doubt my own position possesses its hidden motives too, but I hope that this does not detract from its veracity.

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NOTES

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DIVINE COMMAND THEORY AND THE SHARED MORAL UNIVERSE OF GOD AND HUMANITY

1 Plato, Euthyphro 10a. 2 For examples of formulations that include this kind of terminology, see Meynell (1972), p. 223; Burch (1980), p. 279; Paul Helm, ‘Introduction’ in Helm (ed.) (1981), p. 2; Sagi and Statman (1995), p. 11. 3 I discuss the question of whether examining what the central texts of Jewish tradition say about a particular issue is a salutary way of assessing the position of ‘Jewish tradition’ on that issue in Chapter 3, section 3.2. 4 The reason for my preference of the term ‘SMU’ over the more usual ‘autonomy’ is that ‘autonomy’ is a very ambiguous notion that carries, inter alia, Kantian and Sartrean overtones, and is on balance, I believe, more problematic than ‘SMU’. One inﬂuential interpretation of ‘autonomy’ that I select ‘SMU’ in order to avoid is the radical subjectivism of Sartre and R.M. Hare, on which the human subject freely creates his or her moral values. This kind of view ﬁnds little, if any, echo in traditional Jewish texts. Cf. Bleich, who writes that we can answer the question ‘Does Judaism recognize a subjective morality?’ with ‘an emphatic no’ (Bleich (1986), C, p. 57); and Wurzburger: ‘Obviously, within a theocentric framework there is no room for autonomy in the literal sense of the term – that is, a human self that is self-legislating and its own source of obligation. Human beings are responsible to God rather than to themselves’ (Wurzburger (1994), p. 28). The term ‘SMU’ is itself not free of difﬁculty, since one could say that God’s freely determining morality and then commanding it to human beings issues in a moral universe shared by Him and us. Nevertheless, the kind of picture envisaged by SMU perhaps involves a more genuine and deeper kind of divine–human sharing and commonality, particularly on the version of SMU in which both God and humanity are bound by an independent morality. 5 I do not discuss directly in this book either the concept of natural law or the issue, much debated in contemporary Jewish scholarship, of whether or not classic Jewish texts (or some such texts) support some kind of natural law conception. Though natural law is a similar concept to SMU, it is a broader concept, and thus the issue of whether or not Jewish texts support a natural law doctrine is a broader issue than that of whether or not they support SMU. Marvin Fox’s celebrated article ‘Maimonides and Aquinas on Natural Law’ (Fox (1972); reprinted as ch. 6 in Fox (1990), pp. 124–151; all page references which follow in this work are to the latter version) is interesting in this connection. Fox argues that the concept of natural law, as developed by Stoic philosophy and by Aquinas, receives very little endorsement in biblical, rabbinic and medieval Jewish philosophical thought. It seems to me that Fox fails to

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7 8

9

distinguish sufﬁciently between the moral principles that natural law is said to dictate, on the one hand, and other key elements of the doctrine, e.g. that it is obviously a doctrine about a law of some kind, on the other. This results in Fox’s rejection not only of the idea that support for natural law can be found in traditional Jewish sources, but in his rejection also of the less ambitious notion that natural morality is endorsed by traditional texts. Fox overlooks as a serious possibility that Jewish sources might support the idea of natural morality (or in the terminology of this book, one or more forms of SMU), even if they do not buttress a natural law view. But this is a possibility worth considering, and we shall see in Chapter 2 that several contemporary Jewish thinkers have indeed considered it. Cf. Lichtenstein (1978), p. 103: ‘even if one accepts the thesis, recently advanced by Marvin Fox, that the concept of natural law, in its classical and Thomistic sense, is actually inconsistent with rabbinic . . . thought . . . At most, the Rabbis rejected natural law, not natural morality. They may conceivably have felt one could not ground speciﬁc binding and universal rules in nature but they hardly regarded uncommanded man as ethically neutral’. While this book makes no direct attempt to consider the position of Jewish texts concerning natural law, it is clear that, since the concepts of natural law and SMU overlap, some of the texts and considerations that feature in the debate about the place of natural law in Jewish texts are relevant to the issue of the position of these sources on DCT/SMU. Where this is the case, I have dealt with the relevant texts and considerations. Moreover, it might be the case that one would be more favourably disposed to the idea that natural law is supported by Jewish texts if one were convinced that such texts endorsed SMU. But there is an important asymmetry here: while it might be beneﬁcial to a consideration of the status of natural law in Jewish texts to discuss SMU ﬁrst, the issue of the attitude of the texts towards SMU is not best approached through attempting an assessment of its position on the broader concept of natural law. If God’s command is a necessary and sufﬁcient condition of the moral rightness of an act, then the following equivalence holds: (x) (Rx Cx) where R = ‘right’ and C = ‘commanded by God’. On this equivalence, the actions that God has commanded are co-extensive with whatever actions are morally right. But this still does not capture the idea that an action is right because God has commanded it; the equivalence does not express what these philosophers term the ‘asymmetry’ of DCT. See, e.g., Burch (1980), pp. 281–284; Wierenga (1983), p. 389; idem. (1984), p. 312; Sagi and Statman (1995), p. 20. For a detailed analysis of several different ‘full’ versions of DCT, including some not considered here, see Sagi and Statman, ibid., ch. 1. One important recent interpretation of DCT in the philosophical literature is a moderate version on which it is assumed 1) that God is loving and is moved by concern for His creatures and 2) that DCT applies only to deontological and not to axiological concepts. On 2), DCT claims only that whether an act is right or wrong depends upon God, and not that whether it is good or bad depends upon God. See, e.g., Adams (1981). This interpretation is worth mentioning because, a priori, one might expect to ﬁnd this kind of reading of DCT in classical Jewish texts. However, this kind of interpretation does not, in fact, feature in the relevant texts, which I analyse in Chapters 3–5. I discuss this ‘modiﬁed DCT’ in detail in Chapter 2, section 2.2.d. Other aspects of Adams’s position in this article are considered in section 1.2.e. As noted above (n. 8), there are versions of DCT on which the theory applies only to deontological and not to axiological concepts. See, e.g., Adams (1981), pp. 93–97; Quinn (1979), pp. 309–310. Nevertheless, here and throughout this work, I intend the category of rightness of actions to stand for all moral ascriptions to any kind of thing to which they can properly be ascribed.

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10 (DCTN), and all interpretations of DCT of which (DCTN) is a component, encounter the much-discussed problem of the ‘Karamazov thesis’: it follows from them that without God, everything is allowed (this notion is formulated in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov). The difﬁculty lies in the fact that (DCTN) thus entails the possibility that torture and murder are morally permissible in possible worlds in which God does not exist. Yet it seems plausible that morally wrong acts such as torture and murder are necessarily wrong, i.e. wrong in all possible worlds. A possible world that resembles ours in every relevant respect except for the fact that, in that world, torture and murder are not morally wrong, seems inconceivable. See, e.g., Burch (1980), p. 289; Wierenga (1984), pp. 314–315, who inter alia traces the issue back to Aristotle and Cudworth; Sagi and Statman (1995), pp. 55–61; Adams (1979), pp. 119–121. 11 Exceptions include Quinn (1990), p. 293; and, especially, Murphy (1998). Murphy does not mention Paley, Austin or Meynell, whom I discuss below, but he emphasises the distinction, considered below, between forms of DCT that focus on divine command and forms of DCT that concentrate on the divine will. 12 Paley (1786), Bk. II, ch. 4; cited in Idziak (1979), p. 215. Paley goes on to explain the thought behind the notion that God’s will can be discovered through the principle of utility: since God presumably wishes the happiness of His creatures, those actions which promote their happiness must be in accordance with His wishes. Cf. Gay (1758), Sect. II; cited in Idziak (1979), p. 206. 13 Austin (1998), p. 104. Austin expresses the distinction between those wishes of God concerning human moral behaviour that He explicitly commands in Revelation and those that He does not inform us about by means of Revelation in terms of a distinction between two kinds of divine commands: 1) ‘revealed’ or ‘express’ commands; 2) ‘unrevealed’ or ‘tacit’ commands. The concept of an unrevealed command may not be coherent: arguably, it is part of what a command is that it is revealed. For this reason, I do not follow Austin’s taxonomy in the text, and I reserve the term ‘command’ solely for an explicit, revealed command. 14 Meynell (1972), pp. 228–231. Meynell does not mention Paley or Austin, but he distinguishes between what he calls two aspects of the divine will: 1) God’s will as communicated by special revelation; 2) ‘that which is to be inferred from the conditions under which creatures may ﬁnd individually and collectively happiness and fulﬁlment in the world . . . what human actions are good in fact very largely depends on what states of affairs are most conducive to human happiness and fulﬁlment’. Meynell attempts to deploy this distinction in order to solve the Euthyphro dilemma. 15 Some Hasidic writers recognise a distinction between God’s will and God’s Torah command, acknowledging that not everything that God wills us to do does He command in the Torah. Indeed, it is suggested by these writers that sometimes God’s will may conﬂict with His Torah commands. This intriguing notion is bound up with the concept of averah lishmah, ‘sin for the sake of Heaven’. See Gellman (1994), pp. 35–43; 52–54; 60–62. 16 As well as divine wishes concerning human moral behaviour that are communicated to us in the Torah and in no other way, 1) is intended to include divine wishes concerning human moral behaviour that God both reveals explicitly in the Torah and communicates to us in other ways. Such wishes are clearly possible: for example, God might wish that human beings not punish the innocent and communicate this wish to Abraham, and later command in the Torah, as a general command to the entire Jewish people, that the innocent not be punished. In Abraham’s time, such a wish, having not yet been revealed in the Torah, obviously belongs in category 2). 17 It might be objected that expressing DCT in terms of the dependence of morality on God’s will rather than His command is simply not a coherent option. A possible stimulus for this worry is the idea that there is no way other than by God’s commands of knowing what His will is. (Cf. Murphy (1998), p. 8). However, it is arguable that

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28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37

38

not only is it coherent to construe morality as dependent on God’s will, but that it is, in fact, more cogent to interpret DCT as morality’s dependence on God’s will than as its dependence upon His command. The central thesis of Murphy’s article is precisely that formulations of DCT in terms of God’s will are more successful than formulations in terms of His command. Quinn also prefers to read DCT in terms of God’s will, arguing that ‘it is at the deepest level God’s will, and not His commands, which merely express His will, that determines the deontological status of actions’ ((1990), p. 293). Cf. Wierenga (1983), p. 390. The issue of which of these interpretations of DCT is preferable is controversial. Adams, for example, favours a command interpretation: see Adams (1979a), pp. 76–77. For the purposes of this book, I shall assume that a will interpretation of DCT is at least as coherent as a command interpretation, even if a command interpretation might ultimately emerge as preferable. The term ‘Divine Command Theory’ tends to be used in the literature as a broad description of any theory that asserts the dependence of morality on God. Cf. Murphy (1998), p. 23, n. 9. Sagi and Statman (1995), ch. 1, survey the conceptual possibilities inherent in the dependence relation of morality upon God but almost entirely ignore the possibilities contained within the notion of God. Sagi and Statman ((1995), p. 20) adopt this position, though they do not address the objection that I raise here. Ibid., p. 85. Ibid., pp. 85–86. Though interestingly, as noted above in section 1.2.b, Paley and others claim that morality (in the form of the principle of utility) gives us access to what God’s will is, rather than vice versa. Saadia Gaon (1955), p. 146. This objection originates with Kant. See Kant (1964), p. 76; page references to this work that follow are to this edition. Cf. Sagi and Statman (1995), p. 88. See Hart (1977), pp. 22–29; see also idem. (1961), pp. 123–129. Hart argues that in applying legal rules, there must be a central or standard case, but that there will always be, in addition, a penumbra of uncertain, debatable cases which share some features with the standard instance but which lack others, or which are accompanied by features not present in the standard case. The judge must take the responsibility of deciding whether the rule shall apply to the penumbra case before him or not. See, e.g., Sagi and Statman (1995), pp. 88–90. Adams (1981), p. 83; emphasis in original. Ibid., p. 84. Sagi and Statman (1995), p. 29. Idziak (1979), p. 20, points out that this objection is, in fact, much older than the modern analytic tradition. It can be traced back to Francis Hutcheson, Richard Price and William Paley in the eighteenth century. One version of the ‘open question argument’ appears in Moore (1962), p. 16. Sagi and Statman (1995), p. 30. Rooney (1996), p. 18. Loc. cit. Adams (1981), p. 84. (6a′) does not by any means comprise Adams’s entire theory in ‘A Modiﬁed Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness’. It is, however, the claim of Adams’s that I wish to concentrate upon here, since the focus of this section is DCT as a semantic thesis. Adams develops his position in (1979a). Adams (1981), pp. 103–107.

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39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46 47

48 49 50 51

52 53

Ibid., p. 93 (emphases added). Ibid., p. 108 (emphases added). Ibid., p. 89. See below, Chapter 4, n. 48. See below, Chapter 2, section 2.3.a. Sagi and Statman (1995), pp. 30–31. The second thought is not necessarily implied by the ﬁrst because God might be an entity of a kind that cannot logically be said to be bound by any obligations and thus cannot be said to be under an obligation to do or command anything. See, e.g., Sagi and Statman (1995), p. 62; Alston (1989), pp. 261–262. (SMUB) falls foul of the Kantian idea that the concept of obligation cannot intelligibly be applied to God; see the discussion of Sagi and Statman (1995), p. 48. See also Alston, loc. cit.; Morris (1984), pp. 265–267; Mann (1989), p. 97. Hart discusses this question in (1961), pp. 149–151. Hart takes issue with the Austinian view that it is logically necessary that a legislature be sovereign in the sense that it is always free of its own prior legislation: ‘That Parliament is sovereign in this sense may now be regarded as established, and . . . no earlier Parliament can preclude its “successors” from repealing its legislation . . . It is, however, important to see that no necessity of logic, still less of nature, dictates that there should be such a Parliament; it is only one arrangement among others, equally conceivable . . . Among these others is another principle which might equally well, perhaps better, deserve the name of “sovereignty”. This is the principle that Parliament should not be incapable of limiting irrevocably the legislative competence of its successors but, on the contrary, should have this wider self-limiting power. Parliament would then at least once in its history be capable of exercising an even larger sphere of legislative competence than the accepted established doctrine allows to it’ (p. 149; emphasis in original). Hart goes on to distinguish between two notions of legal omnipotence: 1) ‘continuing’ omnipotence, on which Parliament cannot bind its successors and enjoys ongoing omnipotence in all matters not affecting the legislative competence of future parliaments, and 2) ‘self-embracing’ omnipotence, which can be exercised only once and which enables Parliament to bind its successors. Meynell (1972), p. 224. Ewing (1961), pp. 33–49; extract reprinted in Idziak (1979), pp. 224–230; the citation is on p. 228. Idziak (ibid., p. 9) cites Ewing’s view and indicates some precedents for it in the historical literature. Sagi and Statman (1995), p. 15 and passim. E.g.: ‘The mathematical truths . . . have been laid down by God and depend on Him entirely no less than the rest of his creatures. Indeed to say that these truths are independent of God is to talk of Him as if He were Jupiter or Saturn and to subject Him to the Styx and the Fates’ (Letter to Mersenne, 15 April 1630, in Descartes (1970), p. 11); ‘just as He was free not to create the world, so He was no less free to make it untrue that all the lines drawn from the center of a circle to its circumference are equal’ (Letter to Mersenne, 27 May 1630 in Descartes (1970), p. 15). Summa Theologiae Ia.25.3. Richard Swinburne follows Aquinas’s view in Swinburne (1973), pp. 231–237, esp. p. 231. Saadia Gaon (1955), Treatise II, ch. 13 (p. 134): ‘It [the soul of the pious] will not . . . praise Him for being able to cause ﬁve to be more than ten without adding anything to the former, nor for being able to put the world through the hollow of a signet ring without making the one narrower and the other wider, nor for being able to bring back the day gone by in its original condition. For all these things are absurd’. Albo (1929), vol. I (Bk. I, ch. 22), p. 179, writes: ‘we can not conceive that God can make the part equal to the whole, or the diagonal of a square to the side, or the angles of a triangle equal to more than two right angles, or two contradic-

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56 57 58

tory propositions to be true at the same time about the same subject . . . Such impossibilities can never be accredited by tradition . . . Such things . . . should not be believed’. Saadia, loc. cit. Horowitz (1820), Sha’ar 3, ch. 14, p. 15a, takes issue with the position that God cannot do the logically impossible, which he attributes to Abraham ibn Ezra. The view that God can do the logically impossible is also attributed to the better-known Hasidic master R. Nahman of Bratslav (1772–1811); see Weiss (5708–5712), p. 248. Weiss (pp. 245–291) argues that R. Nahman’s thought on this issue is inﬂuenced by Lurianic kabbalah and that for Nahman, paradox lies at the heart of Jewish faith. Sagi and Statman (1995), pp. 81–83. Sagi and Statman construe epistemic dependence as a type of weak dependence whereas I have treated it here as a version of DCT, but nothing hangs on this point. Ibid., p. 97. Other possibilities may include the notion of God as the Moral Being par excellence, the imitation of Whose ways will enhance our moral behaviour. In classic rabbinic thought, emphasis is placed upon the doctrine of imitatio dei (e.g. Mekhilta, Shira 3; B.T. Shabbat 133b). If SMU turned out to be supported by Jewish texts, imitatio (though also consistent with DCT) would lend God a clear and central role in the moral sphere, as the supreme model of ethical excellence. Rooney (1996), p. 48 expresses a similar point in a Christian context. He argues that even for Christian opponents of DCT, for whom ‘God’s expressed will is . . . not in itself what constitutes the foundations of morality’, it remains the case that ‘there is a religious aspect to morality, for example in that Jesus is the moral role model par excellence’. 2 ANALYTIC DISCUSSION OF POSITIONS ON DCT AND SMU IN PHILOSOPHY AND CONTEMPORARY JEWISH THOUGHT

1 It is not always possible fully to characterise the position of a thinker in terms of one (or more) of the particular forms of DCT or SMU enumerated in Chapter 1 because sometimes those positions are expressed in ways that are quite broad and thus neutral between different forms. For example, a thinker may clearly deny a command interpretation of DCT but leave us unsure about whether he would also reject a will interpretation. Or, more radically, there may be instances in which it is clear that a writer’s broad sympathies lie with, say, DCT, but in which it is very difﬁcult to identify his position with any greater degree of precision. In all such instances, as in the case of the texts analysed in subsequent chapters, I have tried to provide as accurate a characterisation as possible, sometimes deﬁning a view as, e.g., ontic or epistemic DCT/SMU if no more precise identiﬁcation is possible. 2 Sometimes (e.g. in the case of David Hartman, discussed in section 2.3.e below) a writer primarily presents his own view on DCT/SMU in a Jewish setting rather than claiming to explain what Jewish tradition says on this issue, and does not seem really to distinguish between these two things. 3 Idziak (1979) is a comprehensive anthology which also refers to further secondary literature on some of the ﬁgures highlighted in this section. 4 In several passages, Scotus appears to espouse a radical kind of ontic DCT. For instance: ‘The divine will, which is the ﬁrst rule of all works and of all acts, and the activity of the divine will, of which the ﬁrst rule consists, is the ﬁrst principle of righteousness. For from the fact that something is suitable to the divine will, it is right; and whatever action God could perform, is right absolutely’ (translated and cited in Idziak (1979), p. 54). Again: ‘it can become legitimate to kill . . . a man, namely, if God should revoke this precept, Do not kill . . . and not only legitimate,

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5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18

19 20 21

but meritorious, namely, if God should give a command to kill, as He gave a command to Abraham concerning Isaac’ (translated and cited in Idziak (1979), p. 52). Idziak indicates that there are several other passages that could be cited to illustrate Scotus’s support for DCT ((1979), p. 4; p. 27, n. 25). At the same time, however, she notes that several medievalists have challenged the claim that Scotus espouses DCT ((1979), p. 4, p. 27, n. 24). Copleston also insists that ‘the accusation which has been brought against him [Scotus] of teaching the purely arbitrary character of the moral law, as though it depended simply and solely on the divine will, is, in the main, an unjust accusation’ (Copleston (1959), p. 545; Copleston defends this claim on pp. 546–550 and argues that Scotus’s position substantially differs from that of Ockham ((1979), p. 550)). Adams (1986), p. 1. Translated and cited in Idziak (1979), pp. 56–57. Cited and translated in Urban (1973), p. 312. Cited and translated in Copleston (1953), p. 103. For example: Idziak (1979), p. 4; Helm (1981), p. 3; Rooney (1996), p. 29; p. 102. Coplestone (1953), p. 107. See ibid., p. 107ff. Oakley (1961), p. 70. Clark (1971). Urban (1973). Adams (1986), pp. 1–35. This Christian tradition of support for DCT continued in the twentieth century with writers including Emil Brunner, Karl Barth and Carl Henry; I shall return brieﬂy to the views of Brunner in Chapter 3. By highlighting the existence of this tradition in Christian thought, I do not intend necessarily to suggest that support for DCT has been the only or even the dominant tradition concerning DCT/SMU. On conﬂicting traditions within Christianity, see, e.g., Rooney (1996), chs 4–5. The DCT/ SMU issue was also keenly debated in Islamic theology, with the Asharites endorsing DCT and the Mutazilites SMU: see, e.g., Leaman, (1990), pp. 129–130. Cited in Idziak (1979), p. 95. Despite the apparent emphasis in passage A) on God’s will, Luther does not attempt to make any distinction between divine will and divine command in order to exclude the latter. It is therefore safer to attribute to him the broader (DCTS) rather than the narrower (DCTSW). Cited in Idziak (1979), p. 97. I prefer these broader formulations for similar reasons to those given in n. 18 above. Cf. Sagi and Statman (1995), p. 117: ‘A conﬂict between religion and morality necessarily assumes a lack of strong dependence as, if God determines morality, no conﬂict is possible between His command and moral obligations’. Sagi and Statman call the view that such conﬂict is possible ‘the conﬂict thesis’. I shall henceforth adopt this terminology when referring to this view. Sagi and Statman develop a distinction between two basic types of conﬂict between religion and morality, which they term ‘normative conﬂict’ and ‘essential conﬂict’. In normative conﬂict, some religious demands conﬂict with some moral obligations. In essential conﬂict, religion and morality conﬂict at some other level even when, at the normative plane, they entirely overlap. The kind of conﬂict that I shall be concerned with at various points in this book is what Sagi and Statman would term normative conﬂict. Although, from a logical perspective, DCT and the conﬂict thesis are mutually exclusive, Sagi and Statman correctly point out (loc. cit.) that the conﬂict thesis expresses similar religious intuitions to DCT, e.g. God’s sovereignty and His freedom. God is sovereign according to the conﬂict thesis because He alone determines how human beings ought to behave; He is free because no law, not even the moral law, limits His actions

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23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39

40

or commands. The conﬂict thesis involves certain assumptions about how morality is to be deﬁned; I discuss this matter in Chapter 6, section 6.2. In general, Calvin emphasises the epistemic rather than the ontic signiﬁcance of God’s command for morality; because of our ignorance of morality, we need divine commands. This is one reason why, in general, the interpretation of Calvin as a thoroughgoing divine command theorist may not ultimately be the most plausible reading of him. Nevertheless, in the passages cited in the text, at least, it seems clear to me that Calvin is advocating an ontic version of DCT. Cited in Idziak (1979), p. 101. Cited in Idziak (1979), p. 102. Cited in Idziak, loc. cit. Rachels (1981). Meynell (1972), p. 232. On Descartes, see Sagi and Statman (1995), pp. 13–15; p. 21; p. 44. On Locke, see Idziak (1979), pp. 6–7 and passim; p. 29, notes 47–50. On Berkeley, see ibid., p. 6; p. 28, n. 43; p. 34; p. 112. Austin (1998), p. 6; emphases in original. (1998) p. 104; emphases in original. Loc. cit. See Wittgenstein (1965), pp. 3–12. On Wittgenstein’s view see also Merantz (1993), pp. 95–103; Ross (1990), pp. 330–335. See the various articles by Robert Adams already cited and also (1987), pp. 448–461; Quinn (1979) and (1979); Clark (1977), (1982); Burch (1980); Wierenga (1983) and (1984); Rooney (1996). Cudworth (1731). Price (1974). See, e.g., Kant (1964), p. 100. It is important not to confuse Kant’s view with the radical subjectivist position of, e.g., Sartre and Hare, referred to in Chapter 1. Although Kant insists upon autonomy as a sine qua non of the moral, speaking of the moral agent as a legislator who enacts the moral law for himself, the moral agent nevertheless wills only what he can consistently require of all rational beings as rational beings. Kant is thus concerned to emphasise both autonomy and the compatibility of that autonomy with the rationality of the moral law. Radical subjectivism shares with Kant the perception of the moral subject as lawgiver but sees the moral subject as enjoying a stronger kind of autonomy: the moral subject, for the radical subjectivist, is an arbitrary sovereign who actually creates his or her own values. Of course, radical subjectivism, like all views which deny that God is at the foundation of morality, shares with Kant the rejection of DCT. N. 8. See, e.g., Psalms 145: 8–9; 15–17; and descriptions of God in the liturgy such as merahem al habriyot – ‘merciful to His creatures’. For further discussion of God’s moral characteristics, see Chapter 4, section 4.5. Adams (1981) and (1979a). For an analysis of another central aspect of the ﬁrst article, namely its advocacy of a semantic version of DCT, see Ch. 1, section 1.2.e. In the present section I ignore this dimension of Adams’s position, since the semantic and ‘loving God’ aspects of Adams’s view seem to be largely independent. The semantic nature of the divine command theory that Adams proposes in the ﬁrst article is reﬂected, however, in some of the citations from him in this section. In the second article, Adams abandons the semantic interpretation of divine command theory. But his new position preserves both his commitment to the idea that morality depends on the commands of a loving God and his refusal to say that if God commanded cruelty, it would be wrong to disobey Him. Adams (1973), p. 86.

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41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

Ibid., p. 87. See ibid., p. 86. See Ch. 1, section 1.4. Adams (1981), p. 93. Ibid., pp. 96–97; emphasis in original. Ibid., p. 95. Hare (2001), Ch. 2. Ibid., p. 53. Cited ibid., p. 75. On pp. 68–69, Hare considers the possibility of God commanding us to kill each other at a young age, following which God would immediately bring us back to life. This is intended as an illustration of how God’s actual moral commands cannot be deduced from our nature. Hare is reluctant to claim that we know that God could have commanded such a thing, and is prepared to say only that we do not know that He could not have. Adams (1981), p. 88. Ibid., p. 85. Levine (1994). Ibid., p. 71. Ibid., p. 72. Ibid., p. 73. Cf. Sagi and Statman (1995), p. 47. Cf. Ch. 4, section 4.5. Some examples: 1) as discussed later in this chapter, many contemporary Jewish thinkers argue that Jewish tradition clearly supports SMU. Among them are Lichtenstein, Hartman, Spero, Wurzburger, Jacobs, Sagi and Statman. Sagi and Statman, in their various discussions of the view of Jewish tradition on DCT/SMU, make no mention of Wurzburger, Spero or Jacobs, who had earlier taken similar positions on this issue. 2) Wurzburger and Spero do not refer to the earlier and similar view of Jacobs. 3) The analyses of Lenn Goodman and David Hartman omit reference to much of the contemporary Jewish literature. Leibowitz (1979), p. 58. The translations from Leibowitz are my own. Ibid., p. 309. See also, e.g., p. 312. Ibid., p. 66. See, e.g., ibid., p. 67. The Akedah is the focus of Chapter 6 below. Leibowitz (1979), p. 23. Ibid., p. 16. Leviticus 19:18. Leibowitz (1979), p. 306. Loc. cit.; emphasis in original. Leibowitz (1979), p. 310. This is not intended to imply that morality, for Leibowitz, is unimportant in Jewish life at either the individual or the national level. As Eliezer Goldman strikingly puts it, Leibowitz is not ‘an halakhic totalitarian’. According to Leibowitz, there are many aspects of human life towards which Halakhah adopts a neutral stance, taking no position whatsoever. There are many areas in which autonomous moral considerations have a role in the life of the religious Jew: in those areas in which there is an absence of halakhic obligation, moral norms apply to the religious Jew also. It is only in cases of conﬂicts between religious and moral values that religious values, for Leibowitz, take precedence. See Goldman (1993), esp. p. 112. The central thesis of Goldman’s article is that Leibowitz’s conception of the relationship between religion and morality is more nuanced than is usually thought and that, in particular,

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72 73 74 75

76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

92 93

Leibowitz recognises the importance of morality even in Jewish religious life. It is difﬁcult to deny that there are passages in Yahadut in which Leibowitz does seem to adopt such a view. Whether that view is compatible with the more radical position that Leibowitz seems clearly to espouse in passages such as those that I cite in the text – as Goldman seems to think they are – is another matter, detailed consideration of which would take us too far aﬁeld. Unlike Goldman, I am not convinced that Leibowitz has one consistent view on this matter. In any event, what does seem clear about Leibowitz’s position and what is central to this discussion of him are the often overlooked facts that, as I shall argue, Leibowitz 1) denies DCT and 2) endorses the conﬂict thesis. Sagi and Statman (1995), p. 117 and passim. See n. 4 above. Jakobovits (1979), p. 119. A position similar to Jakobovits’s is espoused by Twersky, who writes: ‘Autonomous morality according to Kant’s ethical theory is morality that is created by man himself; the independence of morality ﬁnds expression in the fact that it is not indissolubly linked to divine command. This conception has no counterpart in Judaism: it [Judaism] recognizes only a heteronomous-theonomous conception, which sees in the Creator of the world the source of morality’ (Twersky (1991), p. 338, n. 237. The passage cited is part of a supplement added to the Hebrew edition; it does not appear in the English edition of the work. The translation is my own.) Twersky here endorses an ontic command interpretation of DCT: God is the ‘source’ of morality, and morality is inextricably connected to divine command. Jakobovits (1967), p. 292, n. 5. The ﬁnal words of the citation from Jakobovits are quoted from Don Isaac Abarbanel’s Commentary to the Torah, Leviticus 19:18. Fox, ‘Maimonides and Aquinas on Natural Law’. Ibid., p. 126. Loc. cit. Although Fox says ‘ancient Hebrew thought’, it is clear from the remainder of his essay that he would apply the same judgement to Jewish tradition as a whole. Fox (1990), pp. 202–203. Ibid., p. 208. Lichtenstein (1978), pp. 102–103. Ibid., p. 103. The question ‘Shall, then . . .’ is Abraham’s to God in Genesis 18:25 concerning God’s proposed destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. I shall return to both the biblical episode and Lichtenstein’s views on it, as expressed in this passage, in Chapter 3. Exodus 21:14. Mishpatim, Massekhta Dinezikin, iv. The translation is from Lichtenstein (1978), p. 105. Commentary on the Mishna, Hullin 7:6. The translation is from Lichtenstein, loc. cit. Hartman (1985), p. 98. Loc. cit. Hartman (1985), pp. 98–99. Spero (1983), pp. 69–70. Guttman (1955), p. 266, also argues that the Bible supports SMU. Wurzburger (1994), p. 17, states that his own theory of Jewish ethics accords with SMU: ‘The conception of theocentric ethics advocated here is fully compatible with the Platonic thesis set forth in the Euthyphro: what makes an action or motive right or good is not the fact that it is commanded by God. On the contrary, it is commanded by God because it is right or good’. Heschel (1955), p. 17. Goodman (1996).

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94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101

Ibid., Preface, p. ix. Ibid., p. 102. See above, Chapter 1, p. 3. Goodman (1996), p. 81. Ibid., p. 87. Section 1.2.e. Jacobs (1978). Cf. Jacobs’s restatement of Socrates’s response to the Euthyphro dilemma in Jewish terms: ‘a thing is not good because it is in the Torah. It is in the Torah because it is good’, in Jacobs (1973), p. 241. 102 Sagi and Statman (1995a). 103 Sagi (1998). All translations from Sagi’s book in this work are my own. 3

BIBLICAL TEXTS

1 All translations from classical Jewish sources in this study are my own, except where indicated. 2 Since my focus in this work is DCT/SMU in Jewish tradition, ‘Bible’, ‘biblical’, etc. here and throughout the book refer only to the Old Testament. 3 Sometimes I shall argue that a text can be plausibly read as supporting (M), which, as explained above in Chapter 1, I understand as a view distinct from both DCT and SMU. 4 Brunner (cited in Idziak (1979), p. 133) writes of the Hebrew Bible: ‘Here there is no “intrinsic” Good. What God does and wills is good; all that opposes the will of God is bad. The Good has its basis and its existence solely in the will of God. An idea like that in the religion of Zarathustra: that God became Lord because He chose the Good, the idea of a law which is even higher than God Himself is unthinkable in the Old Testament. God is not merely the guardian of the Moral Law and of the moral ordinances, but their Creator’. Later, Brunner speaks of ‘the truth of the Bible, namely, that only that which God wills is good; and thus that we are to will what God wills, because He wills it’ (ibid., p. 137). 5 On Spero’s view of the Bible as clearly supporting SMU, see ch. 2, section 2.3.f. 6 Cf. Spero (1983), p. xiv: ‘The Bible itself has no word for “morality” or “ethics”’. Also Jacobs (1978), p. 41: ‘it would be futile to examine the Bible in order to discover any kind of direct treatment of the relationship between religion and ethics. There are, in fact, no words for these concepts in classical Hebrew’. The Modern Hebrew term for morality, mussar, does not denote what we call ‘morality’ in the biblical passages in which it appears, but rather ‘correction’, ‘discipline’ or ‘chastisement’. See Brown, Driver and Briggs (1977), p. 416, s.v. mussar. 7 This way of looking at the Bible has recently been emphasised within the ﬁeld of biblical studies itself. Cf. Bernstein (1997), esp. p. 67: ‘One of the dominant trends in biblical scholarship of recent years has been the so-called “literary” approach, the attempt to deal with the works included in the Bible in a manner and with a methodology similar to those which are applied to other works of literature. Unlike most earlier and a good deal of contemporary biblical research, which begins with the text as fragmented into its hypothetical sources, or whose goal is the discovery of those sources, the starting point of this approach is generally the biblical text as it appears’. Cf. also Sacks (1992), pp. 240–241: ‘There has been a shift of emphasis from historicist concern with the writing of the Bible to hermeneutic interest in how it is to be read’. Examples of the ‘literary’ approach are Fishbane (1979); Alter and Kermode (eds) (1987). 8 Cf. Jacobs at the very beginning of ‘The Relationship between Religion and Ethics’ (1978), p. 41: ‘This essay seeks to explore the relationship between religion and

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9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19

ethics as conceived of in the Jewish tradition. As in every other investigation of a great Jewish theme it must begin with the Bible, the source book of the Jewish faith’. Cf. also Spero (1983), p. 21: ‘The Pentateuch . . . is the scriptural source and legislative core of Judaism . . . the prophetic writings have a vital contribution to make to our understanding of . . .Jewish morality . . . In attempting to understand the place of morality in Judaism, it is essential that we begin our survey with the Pentateuch, for it is here that the basic material and behavioral content are to be found’. Sagi, chs 2–4. Ibid., p. 11; p. 12; p. 13; p. 75; p. 100 and passim. Private conversation, 26 November 1998. See, e.g., some of Jacobs’s discussion in Jacobs (1978); Falk (1991); Carlebach (1963). I discuss some of the arguments of these three writers below. Sagi (1998), pp. 14–15. As we shall see in section 3.3.c, Genesis Chapter 18 is, prima facie, a text very supportive of SMU. It is highly revealing that Sagi, who as we saw in Chapter 2 is ﬁrmly of the view that SMU is the position of Jewish tradition, cannot resist a reference to Genesis 18’s (apparent) endorsement of SMU in the Introduction to Judaism (1998). There he writes (p. 14): ‘God and man are partners in the moral community; they are bound by morality in equal measure . . . Only in a tradition which recognises the moral partnership between man and God could the discussion between Abraham and God concerning Sodom take place, a discussion in which Abraham demands of God (Gen. 18:25): “Far be it from you to do such a thing, to kill the righteous with the wicked, so that righteous and wicked are alike; far be it from you. Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?”’ Sagi’s reference to Genesis 18:25 suggests, of course, that there is no good reason not to include biblical texts in an analysis of the position of Jewish tradition on DCT/SMU. They do not use the term SMU, which is my own. Falk (1991), p. 11; emphasis in original. Spero (1983), p. 81. Ibid., pp. 81–82. In the passage cited from Falk, part of the argument consists in the implication that had God directly given commandments to Israel in the Torah, unmediated by a covenant, instead of placing those commandments in the context of a covenant with Israel, the Torah would not imply the existence of moral obligations prior to revelation. In fact, some kind of morality might still be implied, since, as Hare points out (Hare (1972), pp. 2–3), God’s commanding me to do something does not entail that I ought to do it without the additional premise that I ought always to do what God commands. Thus, even God’s communication of non-covenantal commands would require Israel’s general moral judgement that God’s commands ought always to be obeyed, if obedience to those commands is to be given a moral basis. When Falk says, therefore, that ‘the obligation of humanity to observe divine commands is based on mankind’s own commitment’, this would be true even if God’s commands in the Torah were not covenantally mediated. However, if God’s commands in the Torah were outside a covenantal framework, independent, prior human moral assent to obey His commands would ultimately not necessarily be implied, since there might be a non-moral basis for obedience, e.g. a prudential one. Falk is thus ultimately right that the covenantally mediated nature of God’s Torah commands implies ethics whereas a system of non-covenantally mediated commands would not have, though his argument, I believe, requires the reﬁnement indicated here. In any event, the essence of Falk’s (and Spero’s) argument remains the claim that Torah’s covenantally-mediated system of divine commands assumes an antecedent obligation to honour covenants.

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20 Establishing a general obligation to obey divine commands based on gratitude is highly problematic, for reasons discussed by Sagi and Statman (1995), pp. 76–78. Because of this, I prefer to strengthen the Falk–Spero argument by omitting reference to gratitude and focusing solely on the notion of covenant. Whether the Torah does, in fact, attempt to establish a general obligation to obey divine commands based on gratitude and, if it does, whether such a manoeuvre might turn out ultimately to be defensible are questions that I shall leave open here. 21 E.g. Exodus 19:5. 22 In my discussion of Genesis 3, as in all other textual discussions in this study, I take the text at face value and understand it literally. There are, however, strong prima facie reasons for understanding Genesis 3 in particular as metaphor, in which case my analysis here would not apply. See, e.g., Spero (1999). 23 Gen. 3:5. Some of the classical Jewish commentators understand ‘Elohim’, which I translate as ‘God’ here, as some non-divine agent, e.g. Ibn Ezra, Saadia, Kimche and Hizkuni in their respective commentaries to 3:5, who translate it as ‘angels’, as well as Targum Onkelos to 3:5 and Maimonides (1963), Part I, ch. 2; all page references to the Guide that follow in this work are to this edition and all translations from the Guide are from this edition) who understand it to mean human princes or judges. I prefer to follow other commentators (and the usual meaning of ‘Elohim’) in translating the term as ‘God’, particularly in the light of 3:22 (cited in the text below) which I think militates strongly in favour of the standard translation. 24 Gen. 3:22. 25 Cf. Kimche, Commentary to Genesis 2:17 (my translation): ‘ “The knowledge of good and evil” ’ has been explained to mean sexual awareness, for the fruit of that tree brought about sexual desire in man, and “good” means the permitted [regarding sex] and “evil” means the forbidden. Adam was well able [lit: “full of knowledge”] to distinguish between good and evil, but he lacked sexual desire, and the proof is that after they [Adam and Eve] ate it [Scripture] says: “And the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked” ’ (3:7). 26 Gen. 2:17. 27 ‘Now the serpent was deceitful’ (Chapter 3, verse 1). The consensus among classical Jewish Bible commentators is that the serpent was literally that. For those commentators who dissent, taking the ‘serpent’ as Satan (e.g. Sforno, commentary to 3:1), the paradox that human achievement of moral cognition is bound up with sin is clearly more acute still. 28 Gen. 3:11, 13–19. 29 Gen. 3:22–24. A closely related point is discussed by Maimonides at the beginning of Part I, ch. 2 of The Guide. Maimonides addresses the issue of how the ability to differentiate between good and evil can be a punishment for Adam and Eve’s sin of disobedience in eating the forbidden fruit. Abarbanel (cited and translated in Leibowitz (1972), p. 17) raises the question of why God declared it a sin to perform an action that would bring about human knowledge of good. 30 Falk suggests a similar argument, (1991), p. 13. 31 D. Saragossa, Spain, c. 1340. 32 Commentary to the Torah, cited and translated in Leibowitz (1972), p. 25. 33 Maimonides’s celebrated analysis of Genesis 3 and its relation to human moral awareness in Guide 1:2 is brieﬂy discussed below, Chapter 4, section 4.4.d. In the present section, I have conﬁned myself to an analysis of the biblical text as it stands, introducing biblical commentators only when they are directly relevant to that analysis. 34 Gen. 18:25, cited and translated in n. 14 above. 35 Lichtenstein (1978), p. 103; see Chapter 2, section 2.3.d. 36 Others who share Lichtenstein’s basic view include Sagi (see n. 14 above); Jacobs (1978), pp. 42–43; and Spero (1983), pp. 69–70.

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37 The ambiguity in Abraham’s request is implicitly noted by Rashi to verse 25, s.v. Halila lekha (see the supercommentary Siftei Hakhamim ad. loc.). Rashi views the two versions of the request as the articulation of an order of preference: Abraham asks God to save the wicked because of the righteous, and if not, at least to save the innocent righteous. 38 On the problematic issue of the deontological status of mercy and other serious philosophical difﬁculties surrounding this concept, see Statman (1994). 39 Leibowitz (1972), p. 181. 40 Gen. 18:20–21. 41 Commentary to Gen. 18:18. 42 Gen. 18:23. 43 France, 1040–1105. 44 Gen. 19:24–25. 45 Sacks (1982), p. 5; emphases in original. 46 Gen. 19:4. 47 R. Samuel ben Meir, France, c. 1085–1174. 48 Commentary to Gen. 19:4. 49 Rashi, commentary to Gen. ad. loc., s.v. kol haam mikatzeh. 50 Fox (1990), p. 203. 51 Gen. 18:19. 52 Section 1.4. 53 Gen. 20:2–3 54 Gen. 20:4–5. 55 Gen. 20:6–7. 56 See above, pp. 82–83. 57 Gen. 20:17–18. 58 In addition to the passages discussed in this and in the preceding section, there are several other instances in the Torah, and indeed in the Bible as a whole, of human beings questioning, challenging or arguing with God on moral matters. Some of these instances are susceptible to a similar analysis to that offered for Genesis 18 and 20 and might be read as supporting either SMU or a weaker, non-SMU interpretation, and are thus directly relevant in the present context. These passages are as follows: 1 Moses’s prayer on behalf of the Israelites after the sin of the Golden Calf (Exodus 32:11–13). In the ﬁnal part of his prayer, having already argued that God should not destroy Israel because of the way in which the Egyptians will respond if He does, Moses pleads with God: ‘Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel your servants to whom You swore by Yourself, and You said to them: I will increase your seed as the stars of the heavens, and all this land about which I have spoken I shall give to your seed and they shall inherit [it] for ever’. Moses employs an implicit moral argument here. God has made promises that involve the survival, indeed the ﬂourishing, of the Israelite nation; promises ought to be kept; therefore God ought not to annihilate the Israelites. Corresponding to a point made in my discussion of Genesis 18 and 20, deriving either SMU or a weaker view from Moses’s challenge to God is dependent on how the biblical episode continues. Once again, the continuation of the text ratiﬁes that analysis. The very next verse (Ex. 32:14) reports that God ‘changes His mind’ concerning the destruction of His people. The juxtaposition clearly suggests that the speciﬁcally ethical considerations adduced by Moses in his plea are, at least partially, what motivates the divine ‘change of heart’. Incidentally, the explicit reference in Ex. 32:14 to God ‘changing His mind’ or undergoing a ‘change of heart’ – the Hebrew vayinahem in our text can actu-

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ally be translated in these ways – prompts an important question relevant not only here but to the Genesis passages also. In all three episodes, God, in response to the human moral objection, apparently revises His view or His intended course of action in the light of the ethical critique presented to Him. What, from a theological angle, is occurring in these instances? If God shares the moral presuppositions that lie, in each case, behind the challenge, why does He initially propose courses of action that run counter to them? It would strengthen my analysis of the relevant passages if a plausible explanation could be suggested. Discussing the Exodus passage, Falk (1991, p. 15) writes: ‘we could . . . argue that from the beginning God wanted to let Moses have a share in the decision, and therefore challenged him by a seemingly unjust declaration of intention’. Read in this (I think plausible) way, what happens in the Exodus text is that a God already committed to the same value of promise-keeping as human beings (whether because He is bound by an external and independent morality or whether He is now bound by, or acts in accordance with, a morality that He freely determined) ‘pretends’ not to take this value into account in order to prompt Moses into interceding on behalf of Israel and into reafﬁrming the moral value of promise-keeping. The point of God’s undertaking this subterfuge, as it were, would, on this explanation, be something like His desire to sharpen Moses’s moral awareness or to strengthen Moses’s sense of empathy for the Israelites, or perhaps His wish to bring Moses near to Him in prayer (Cf. B.T. Yevamot 64a: ‘The Holy One, blessed be He, longs for the prayer of the righteous’; for some ampliﬁcations of this notion in Hasidic thought, see Lamm (1999), pp. 187–191). On this view, had Moses not interceded, God, committed as He is to the moral value of promise-keeping, would not have exterminated the Israelites in any event. A similar explanation could be offered, mutatis mutandis, for the Genesis 18 and Genesis 20 episodes, and for several of the biblical texts discussed below. 2 The plea of Moses and Aaron during the rebellion of Korah (Numbers 16:22–24). Korah incites the entire people against Moses and Aaron (16:19), and God threatens to annihilate them all (16:21). Moses and Aaron intercede: ‘And they fell upon their faces and said: Lord, the God of the spirits of all ﬂesh, shall one man sin and You be wrath upon all the congregation?’ (16:22). The rhetorical question posed by Moses and Aaron appears to be based, in part, on the claim that although the people have allowed themselves to be incited by Korah, they have not, in truth, committed any serious offence, and the real responsibility is Korah’s alone, or, at most, is shared only by his most devoted followers. Once again, divine vindication of the human moral challenge is forthcoming. God acknowledges the validity of Moses and Aaron’s plea and tells Moses to instruct the people to move away from the vicinity of Korah and his followers (16:23–24), upon whom punishment is about to be visited. Rashi (commentary to 16:22, s.v. ha-ish ehad, following Tanhuma, Vayera, 7) brings out the divine response to Moses and Aaron that is implicit in His directive to Moses: ‘Said the Holy One, blessed be He: You (Moses) have spoken well; I know and shall make known who has sinned and who has not sinned.’ A criticism that can be mounted against my reading of this text takes Moses and Aaron simply to have misunderstood God’s intentions. In the verse preceding their rhetorical question, God says to Moses and Aaron: ‘Separate yourselves from the midst of this congregation, and I shall destroy them in a moment’ (16:21). Moses and Aaron – so the objection runs – misunderstand God and interpret the ‘congregation’ threatened with destruction as the entire Israelite people, thus interceding with God on behalf of the whole nation. In fact, what God means by ‘congregation’ is merely Korah and his followers. Thus, when the divine instruction comes to move away from the vicinity of Korah and his supporters, and when

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they are subsequently punished, God is not amending His original plans in accordance with the plea of Moses and Aaron. Rather, He is simply clarifying that the only ‘congregation’ that He ever intended to wipe out was that constituted by Korah and his followers. This reading of the biblical text is suggested by Yehiel Moskowitz in the Da’at Mikra [Hebrew] commentary to Numbers 16:24 (1988), following some of the medieval Jewish exegetes. However, it seems to me that this objection is based upon an interpretation of the biblical text that is simply implausible. Cf. Nachmanides, commentary to 16:21, who rejects the interpretation followed by Moskowitz partly for this reason. A potentially more damaging objection to my reading of Numbers 16 is that when the punishment of Korah and his followers arrives and the earth swallows them up, their little children die also. This makes the import of the passage very unclear. However, the biblical text is somewhat ambiguous about whether or not small children indeed perished in this incident. 16:27 mentions small children as standing at the entrance of the tents of Dathan and Aviram (two of Korah’s followers) before the punishment occurs. 16:32 reports that the earth swallowed up the households (bateihem) of Korah’s followers and all the people (haadam) who were with him. Later, in Numbers 26:11, the text says explicitly that Korah’s own children were not consumed. The classical Jewish commentators are divided as to whether or not small children died. Rashi to 16:27 assumes that they did; Nachmanides to 16:32 understands from the text that Korah had no small children, otherwise (so he argues) this fact would have been mentioned; Ibn Ezra takes the word bateihem in 16:32 to include small children. Hizkuni (R. Chizkiyah Hizkuni, Provence, c. 1250) to 16:32 takes haadam to include small children but Nachmanides and others understand this term differently. A passage which appears, prima facie, to be susceptible to a similar analysis to that offered for Gen. 18, Gen. 20, etc. is the complaint of the daughters of Zelophhad (Numbers 27:1–11; on this occasion, the human moral objection is to divine command or legislation rather than to God’s proposed course of action). After learning that the Promised Land is to be divided only among the men (Num. 26:53), Zelophhad’s daughters protest to Moses and the Israelites: ‘Our father died in the wilderness . . . and he had no sons. Why should the name of our father be omitted from the midst of his family because he had no son? Give us a possession among our father’s brothers’ (Num. 27:3–4). This plea apparently depends upon an implicit moral appeal to the concept of justice or fairness: it is this, it might be urged, that gives the rhetorical question of the daughters of Zelophhad its force. Despite the lack of any explicit mention of a moral notion, what Zelophhad’s daughters intend, it might be argued, is that the divine law as it stands is unfair because it discriminates against women without apparent justiﬁcation. Again, it might be added, God’s reply validates the human ethical critique. The appeal is dramatically successful: God declares to Moses that ‘the daughters of Zelophhad have spoken properly’ (Num. 27:7) and that they are indeed to receive an inheritance, and He even brings the laws of inheritance in general into line with their challenge. The structure of this episode thus turns out to be similar to that of other passages discussed in this chapter. First, God makes a proposal; next, this proposal is confronted by a human ethical critique; ﬁnally, God amends His proposal in accordance with the human objection. On this reading of Numbers 27, the question arises of why God does not reveal the law in its ultimate form immediately. An explanation along similar lines to that suggested above might be offered in response. God deliberately issues a law that is morally imperfect in order to give the opportunity to those that He knows are dealt with unjustly by the law to object on ethical grounds, the validity of which He

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recognises. God then completes the law, ﬁlling in the ethical lacunae. In this way, God sharpens the moral sense of human beings or satisﬁes His ‘longing’ for the prayers of the righteous. However, it can be argued that Numbers 27 ultimately does not bear the kind of analysis offered for Genesis 18, Genesis 20, etc. The daughters of Zelophhad do not really appeal to justice or fairness, for their argument is not simply that women, like men, should be allowed to inherit. Elchanan Samet (‘Were the Daughters of Tzelofchad Early Jewish Feminists?’, available at http://www.vbm-torah.org/parsha. 60/41pinhas.htm) suggests that the daughters only make their demand because their father has no male children: ‘our father . . . had no sons; why should our father’s name be lacking from his family because he has no son – give us an inheritance among our father’s brothers’! (27:3–4). The daughters’ concern is not with equal inheritance rights for women but that, in this instance, because he had no sons, their father’s name will not continue unless they are permitted to inherit him. Thus they present the essence of their plea as: ‘Why should our father’s name be lacking from his family’ (27:4). Similarly, Samet argues, God’s reply does not accord women equal inheritance rights with men. Rather, it only allows women to inherit in a case like that of Zelophhad, where there are no sons: ‘If a man dies, and has no son, then you shall pass his inheritance to his daughter’ (27:8). The focus of the appeal of the daughters of Zelophhad thus appears to be not justice for women but the continuation of their father’s name, which is not obviously an ethical concern. A further episode that should not be analysed like Genesis 18, Genesis 20, etc. is that of the second Passover offering in Numbers 9:6–13. In that passage, a group of men who, because of their ritual impurity, are not permitted to make the Passover offering with the other Israelites, ask Moses why they cannot, in fact, join the community in bringing the sacriﬁce. God then reveals to Moses the law of the second Passover offering: those who are ritually impure at the time of the ﬁrst Passover offering can make a substitute sacriﬁce one month later. At ﬁrst glance, it appears that the structure of this episode is as follows: a complaint is made by a certain group of people that God’s law discriminates unjustiﬁably against them; the law is then revised (Falk takes Numbers 9 in this way, Falk (1991), p. 15). Such an understanding of Numbers 9 might emphasise that although the law of the second Passover offering is ritual in nature, the criticism levelled at the law is a moral one – the law is argued to be unfair. However, it seems doubtful whether Numbers 9 can justiﬁably be understood in this way. The plain sense of the text seems to be that the ritually impure men are not complaining that the law is unjust; they know and accept that ritual impurity is an obstacle to bringing the Passover offering. They merely request an opportunity to make the sacriﬁce, and such an opportunity is indeed subsequently granted to them: they are told that they may bring the Passover offering at a later date. Moreover, no law is really amended because of the statement of the impure men. It is merely that provision is made for them. 59 Carlebach (1963), pp. 9–10. 60 One immediate objection to Carlebach that might be raised at certain other points in this chapter as well is based on the doctrine of the Seven Noahide Laws (sheva mitzvot benei noah), which asserts that as a result of a pre-Sinaitic revelation, seven moral commandments were somehow given to humanity. The seven are 1) the obligation to establish courts of justice; and the prohibitions of 2) blasphemy; 3) idolatry; 4) certain sexual offences; 5) bloodshed; 6) robbery and 7) eating ﬂesh taken from a living animal. However, though based upon the Torah, this doctrine is rabbinic (see B.T. Sanhedrin 56a–b) and is not rooted in the plain meaning of the biblical text. I shall return to the Seven Noahide Laws in Chapter 4. 61 I do not mean by this that God punishes only those whose ignorance He considers culpable. If that were the case, presumably He would consider it culpable because

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63 64 65 66

67 68 69

70 71 72 73 74 75

moral knowledge is available; and if moral knowledge is available to pre-Sinaitic Genesis personalities, then the biblical text is assuming the denial of (DCTER), which is what Carlebach wishes to claim. Rather, I mean to suggest the possibility that the biblical text assumes that God does sometimes punish the morally ignorant and that He does not deem it relevant whether or not the ignorance is morally culpable. My claim is that Carlebach’s argument rests on the unstated and undefended assumption that the biblical text does not take this view. A similar criticism can be levelled at Jacobs, who argues ((1978), p. 45 and (1999), p. 108) that the Book of Amos, chs 1–2, attributes moral knowledge to certain heathen peoples, because Amos ‘castigates’ them for morally repugnant actions that they have committed even though they have received no divine revelation. Jacobs obscures matters by using the term ‘castigates’ in both the works cited. What Amos in fact does is to prophesy that punishment will befall these heathen nations because of their conduct. And this means that the biblical text does not imply that these people possess moral understanding without the additional premise that God does not punish the morally ignorant. Gen. 27:36. Gen. 31:30. Gen. 31:7. Gen. 31:41. One could add to this list of examples 1) Joseph’s rejection of Potiphar’s wife’s attempted seduction (Gen. 39:8–9). Although, at the end of his response, Joseph says that by committing adultery ‘I would have sinned against God’, which perhaps muddies the waters by suggesting that the sin would be purely religious rather than moral in nature, the considerations that he articulates before this ﬁnale, based on the loyalty and gratitude that he owes to Potiphar, are clearly moral ones. 2) The dialogue between Joseph’s messenger and his brothers in Gen. 44:4–9, in which all the protagonists clearly seem to possess understanding concerning theft, gratitude and ingratitude, desert and punishment, and indeed (v. 4) the fundamental concepts of good and evil themselves. The translation is from Jacobs (1978), p. 44. Loc. cit.; emphasis in original. Jacobs and Falk, in the works cited (particularly Falk), present a large number of similar arguments for SMU based on prophetic texts. To my mind, all these arguments suffer from the same lack of cogency, and, again in Falk’s case in particular, are vitiated by a constant failure to distinguish between different types of SMU. Sagi and Statman (1995), p. 41. Ibid., p. 42. Job 38:4–5. See above, section 3.3.c. Though I argue in section 3.3.c that ultimately Genesis 18 does not unambiguously support SMU. Job 40:3–5; 42:1–6. 4

SMU: RABBINIC TEXTS AND CONCEPTS AND POST-TALMUDIC RABBINIC THOUGHT

1 Some midrashim are dated, historically, in the post-Talmudic era, but these are often based on much earlier material. For the purposes of this study, I include midrashic sources in the category of ‘rabbinic’ rather than what I have termed ‘post-Talmudic’ literature. 2 During the last two centuries or so, Jewish religious afﬁliation has splintered along various denominational lines – Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, etc. In my discussion in this chapter of rabbinic sources drawn from this period, I have conﬁned myself

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3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12

13 14 15

16

to uncontroversial writings that would be accepted as a legitimate part of rabbinic tradition by all denominations. The same is true for my discussion in Chapter 5 and throughout this book. All Talmudic texts discussed in this section are from the Babylonian Talmud, which has been more inﬂuential than the Palestinian Talmud and whose texts have attracted greater scholarly attention in the present context. See, e.g., Jacobs (1978), pp. 45–46, who cites this passage in support of ‘[t]he autonomy of ethics’. Leviticus 18:4. Ibid. Ibid. A parallel passage appears in Sifra, Aharei Mot, 13:9. Cf. also Rashi’s comment to Gen. 26:5, which echoes the language of Yoma 67b and can be analysed in similar fashion. Rashi’s distinction is between mitzvot (rather than mishpatim) and hukkim. Blidstein (1975), pp. 29–30, construes this passage in similar fashion: ‘The rabbis knew full well that the mishpatim were not yet universally observed, nor even universally acknowledged: Roman idolatry alone testiﬁed to that. But . . . by afﬁrming that had these imperatives not been written in the Torah they “would have had to be written”, they were declaring the reasonableness and necessity of these imperatives and the ability of humanity guided by innate conscience to discover them’. Blidstein’s formulation reﬂects the ambiguity regarding whether Yoma supports SMU or will versions of DCT, because, from a religious perspective, it is quite plausible that ‘innate conscience’ ‘guides’ humanity by providing it with access to the unrevealed divine will. Halbertal (1999), p. 24. Urbach (1987), pp. 320–321. Fox (1990), p. 127, articulates something close to, if not identical with, the Halbertal/Urbach objection. He writes concerning the mishpatim listed in Yoma 67b: ‘There is no suggestion here that human reason could have known by itself that these acts are evil . . . What is asserted is only that, having been commanded to avoid these prohibited acts, we can now see, after the fact, that these prohibitions are useful and desirable. It is instructive that the [Talmudic] passage goes on to contrast these rules, which civilized people have learned to value, with other ritual commandments that do not seem to serve any useful purpose. The conclusion is that both types of commandments bind and obligate the Jews because they come from God and that ultimately no fruitful distinctions can be drawn between them’. Fox’s remarks appear very forced, since the whole point of this Talmudic passage is to distinguish the two types of commandments. Lev. 20:2, 4–5. Interestingly, Onkelos to Lev. 20:5 circumvents the moral problem by a radical translation of mishpahto as saadohi, ‘those who assisted him’, rather than ‘his family’. A parallel passage appears in Sifra, Kedoshim 8:13. Although Rabbi Shimon’s question and answer form part of a larger argument in the context of Shevuot 39a, they may be taken out of that context for our purposes without distortion. Rashi cites R. Shimon’s question and answer as a sequence capable of being independently understood in his commentary to Leviticus 20:5, s.v. uvemishpahto. It might be objected that R. Shimon’s response to his ethical challenge in Shevuot decisively militates in favour of an SMU-based interpretation of that challenge. For R. Shimon’s response is not something like: ‘We learn from the fact that the Molekhworshipper’s innocent family is punished that God freely determines morality, and that He is not bound by moral obligations such as not punishing the innocent’. Rather, R. Shimon’s response to the ethical difﬁculty he has identiﬁed with God’s proposed behaviour towards the Molekh-worshipper’s family is to claim that they, too, are guilty, because they have protected the idolater.

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It will help us here to set things out more formally. Consider the following syllogism: 1 No innocent person ought to be punished. 2 The Molekh-worshipper’s family is innocent. Therefore 3 The Molekh-worshipper’s family ought not to be punished. The objection would then be that since R. Shimon’s response disputes only the minor premise of this syllogism, i.e. (2), and does not object to the major premise, i.e. (1), his challenge supports SMU. But is it really the case that R. Shimon’s query supports SMU because he attacks (2) and not (1)? The assumption that if R. Shimon supported DCT, he would criticise (1), appears ﬂawed. For (1) is perfectly compatible with DCT: perhaps no innocent person ought to be punished only because God willed/commanded this. R. Shimon’s challenge and response can quite plausibly be read in terms of both will and command DCT. In terms of will DCT: Challenge: How can God, who freely willed at some pre-Sinaitic point in time that the innocent ought not to be punished, threaten the innocent family of the Molekh-worshipper with punishment? Response: The family is not innocent – they are certain to have aided and abetted the idolater. In terms of command DCT: Challenge: My (R. Shimon’s) moral sense, formed by divine revelation of Torah (which includes principles of justice), tells me that no innocent person ought to be punished. So how can God threaten the innocent family of the Molekh-worshipper with punishment? Response: The family is not innocent. There is a radical version of DCT on which God can freely alter morality at any time, so that, e.g., an act that was previously morally wrong becomes morally permissible or even obligatory. (We saw in Chapter 2 that there is at least one passage in which Scotus appears to support such a view.) On this kind of radical DCT, God could, at any time, turn killing innocent people into a moral obligation (and subsequently turn it back again – and so on – if He so wished). If R. Shimon advocated this kind of radical DCT, he might have replied to his moral question by saying that God threatens the Molekh-worshipper’s family with punishment because He has now determined that it is morally permissible or obligatory to punish the innocent. It might be argued that R. Shimon’s response to his challenge at least shows that He does not espouse this radical form of DCT, for if he did, he would have formulated his response based upon it. However, even this is not necessarily the case. R. Shimon might not wish to espouse his radical DCT in a context in which a much simpler answer to his moral challenge (i.e. the one that he in fact provides) is available. Alternatively, his motivation for giving the answer that he does give even if he holds this radical version of DCT to be true might be that he does not perceive, or wish to depict, the Torah as a confused and confusing document that conveys conﬂicting ethical teachings. In other words, it might be R. Shimon’s view that God can alter morality at any time, and that He could therefore have included conﬂicting moral teachings in the Torah itself, but that in fact, throughout the Torah, God maintains one consistent moral line, and, e.g., consistently says that stealing is wrong and that the innocent ought not to be punished. 17 Similar analyses could be offered for several other Talmudic passages which are not usually mentioned in the literature, e.g.: 1 B.T. Shabbat 54b-55a. ‘Said R. Hanina: What is the meaning of the verse, “The Lord will enter judgement with the elders of His people and its princes” (Isaiah 3:14)? If the princes have sinned, how have the elders (Rashi ad loc.: i.e. the Sanhedrin) sinned? Because the elders did not rebuke the princes’.

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2 B.T. Sanhedrin 54a. The Torah commands: ‘And a man who places his seed in an animal shall surely be put to death; and you shall kill the animal’ (Lev. 20:15). The Mishna in Tractate Sanhedrin 54a reads: ‘If the person has sinned, how has the animal sinned? [The answer is that] because a person came to sin by it, therefore Scripture said it should be stoned. Another explanation: [the animal is put to death] in order that the animal not pass through the street and people say: that is the one [i.e. the animal] due to which so-and-so was stoned’. The Mishna’s moral challenge echoes that of Zelophhad’s daughters mentioned in Chapter 3 in that it questions divine legislation or command rather than a proposed divine action. An interesting difference between the Sanhedrin passage and Shevuot 39a is that in Sanhedrin, the Talmud answers the ethical question regarding the justiﬁcation of punishment not by asserting that the animal, too, is guilty but by attempting moral justiﬁcation of the animal’s being put to death on the grounds of the safeguarding of human dignity – even that of a person put to death for gross immorality. In fact, it would appear from the Mishna’s two answers that the animal involved in bestiality is not punished so much as sacriﬁced, as it were, for the sake of human dignity. (In a similar context, Rashi formulates the principle involved as has Hamakom al kevod habriyot – ‘God took into account [lit. had pity on] human dignity’. See Rashi to Numbers 22:33, s.v. veota heheyeiti. The context is the episode of Balaam and his ass, but in his comment Rashi refers to Leviticus 20:15, the text which is the subject of the Mishna in Sanhedrin). The Mishna’s answers invite us to understand that there may be reasons for the animal to be killed which, while yet ethical, lie beyond the reach of the concept of punishment. However, this answer to the moral question in Sanhedrin still does not necessarily favour an SMU-based reading of the passage: the ethical concern for human dignity might exist solely because of God’s will or command. 3 B.T. Sanhedrin 35a. Immediately following the episode of Balaam, the Torah reports that the Israelites dwelt in Shittim and became attached to idolatry (Num. 25:1–3). The biblical text continues: ‘And God said to Moses: Take all the leaders of the people and hang them to the Lord against the sun, so that the Lord’s anger be removed from Israel’ (Num. 25:4). The relevant Talmudic passage in Sanhedrin 35a reads: ‘If the people sinned, how had the leaders sinned? Rabbi Judah answered in the name of Rav: God said to Moses, “Appoint courts of justice for them . . . in order that [divine] anger be removed from Israel.” ’ The Talmudic strategy in response to the ethical question about God’s apparently unjust act differs interestingly from the approach in the two Talmudic passages discussed above. The Talmud here does not assert the guilt of the leaders nor introduce another moral principle which must be balanced against the principle of not punishing the innocent. Rather, the Talmud at Sanhedrin 35a offers a radically novel reading of the biblical text. The natural reading of the biblical text is that God tells Moses to hang the leaders of the people. Rabbi Judah’s response to the ethical difﬁculty raised is a radical reinterpretation of the Torah text: God is telling Moses to bring the leaders to courts of law as judges who will sentence others, who are guilty of idol-worship, to hang (see Rashi to B.T. Sanhedrin 35a, s.v. halek lahem batei dinim, and to Numbers 25:4). In this response, we encounter a striking phenomenon, namely assumptions about divine justice determining the way in which a biblical text is read. The Talmud’s commitment to the idea that God would not order the punishment of the innocent is so powerful that it abandons what is by far the most plausible reading of Numbers 25:4 in favour of a much less likely interpretation. The Talmud in effect claims that the most plausible reading of the biblical text cannot be sustained, because such a reading runs counter to assumptions about divine justice to which the Talmud is committed and, indeed, which it understands the biblical text itself to share. (Cf.

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Lichtenstein on natural morality as a constraint on Scriptural interpretation, discussed in Chapter 2, section 2.3.d.) The most natural reading of Numbers 25 has God ordering the punishment of the innocent: therefore it must be jettisoned in favour of a reading which, though far less likely, does not depict God as punishing the innocent. Again, however, and despite its striking nature, the Talmud’s response by no means necessarily supports SMU. Consider a parallel syllogism to that presented in n. 16 above regarding the case of the family of the Molekh-worshipper: 1 No innocent person ought to be punished. 2 The leaders of the people are innocent. Therefore 3 The leaders ought not to be punished. The Talmud might be presenting this moral argument on the basis of will DCT (God freely determined by a pre-Sinaitic act of His will that it is wrong to punish the innocent, so why is He now ordering precisely that) or command DCT (our moral sense, fashioned by revelation, tells us that it is wrong to punish the innocent, so why does God order this?). The Talmud’s response on either alternative is: the leaders are not punished – the question ‘Why does God order the punishment of the innocent?’ is based upon a misreading of the biblical episode. (Recall that the response in the case of the family of the Molekh-worshipper was: ‘The family is not innocent’ – rather than ‘not punished’. This difference brings out the radical nature of the strategy behind the Talmud’s answer to the ethical challenge in the present instance – fundamental reinterpretation of the problematic biblical text.) Clearly, there is no good reason why this Talmudic challenge and response should be thought to support SMU rather than either type of DCT.

18 19 20 21

The famous passage in B.T. Sanhedrin 71a in which Rabbi Shimon ethically challenges the law of ben sorer umoreh is cited below (n. 36) and will be discussed in Chapter 7. A shorter version of this passage appears in Ecclesiastes Rabbah 4:1. Ecclesiastes 4:1. Deut. 23:3. So surprising, indeed, is this midrashic passage that its very authenticity has been doubted. Louis Jacobs (1984), p. 267 writes that Daniel was ‘not evidently a rabbi’ and tentatively suggests that this passage may have originally been an anti-rabbinic polemic that ‘somehow slipped into’ the midrashic text. However, there are a number of factors that cast doubt on Jacobs’s position. First and most obviously, Jacobs’s view is entirely speculative. Second, it is by no means uncommon in rabbinic literature for a person whose teaching is cited, although a rabbi, to be titled by profession or simply named without title. The fact that Daniel is referred to as ‘the Tailor’ is not, therefore, signiﬁcant. Third, Leviticus Rabbah, in which our passage appears, is an early midrashic work whose author would not have quoted Daniel unless he held him to be authoritative. Finally, since Leviticus Rabbah is an original midrash with an author or editor, rather than a collection of earlier midrashim, it is less likely that extraneous material could have entered the text. (I owe most of these criticisms of Louis Jacobs’s position to a private conversation with Rabbi Dr. Irving Jacobs in approximately 1990.) Louis Jacobs (private conversation, 27 September 1999) has responded that Daniel’s position is atypical of rabbinic thought concerning mamzerut; we encounter no other explicit rabbinic criticism of the mamzer law. This response does not deﬂect the full force of the objections, however, and, as indicated above, Louis Jacobs himself seems clearly to intend his suggestion as merely tentative. In any event, as I argue in the text, even if this midrashic passage is fully authentic, it provides no more

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support for SMU than for DCT. 22 See, e.g., Lichtenstein (1978), p. 102; Jacobs (1978), p. 46. 23 The cat’s modesty (tzniut) referred to by R. Yohanan concerns, at least according to Rashi, ad loc., s.v. tzniut mi-hatul, modest behaviour in the discharge of bodily functions. 24 Fox (1990), p. 128. 25 Spero (1983), p. 66 presents two objections to understanding Eruvin 100b as supporting SMU. The ﬁrst objection (which applies equally to understanding it as endorsing (SMUE) or (DCTEW)) is that ‘[t]he signiﬁcance of this teaching is limited by its context, which is to explain a passage in Job which seems to indicate that some wisdom can be learned from animals’. This objection seems ineffective. The Talmudic passage is still saying that we could have learned certain moral traits from animals, and if it is claiming that this is also the view of the Book of Job, so much the better: the Talmud is then attributing SMUE/DCTEW to a biblical text. Spero’s second objection is very unclear: ‘at best, these creatures can only be said to provide in their behavior patterns examples of similarities to certain well-known and admired human traits. In the actual absence of any moral sensitivity, would anyone really be able to generate a moral “ought” merely from the behavior of the ant or the dove?’ Spero may have in mind here Fox’s objection discussed in the text. 26 Proverbs 3:17. 27 Lichtenstein (1978), p. 103. 28 Mamzerut is one of three issues concerning which Sagi argues ((1998), ch. 11) that its treatment in rabbinic or post-Talmudic rabbinic literature implies endorsement of SMU. The others are lex talionis and agunah. Since we have already encountered one passage concerning mamzerut in section 4.2.c, I have selected this issue as the focus of my analysis of Sagi’s approach in ch. 11. I have not included separate treatments of Sagi’s view on lex talionis and agunah because my critique of his analysis of mamzerut applies broadly to his discussion of these topics also. Most of the literature does not consider any of the three issues directly relevant to the Talmudic position on DCT/SMU. 29 Jacobs (1984), p. 257. 30 B.T. Sotah 27a. 31 Sagi (1998), pp. 241–255. 32 B.T. Kiddushin 71a. 33 Sagi (1998), p. 248. 34 Deut. 21:18–21. 35 Sagi (1998), p. 247. 36 In the case of the Talmudic discussion of the ben sorer umoreh, the connection between ﬁnding the law ethically difﬁcult and conﬁning it to the theoretical realm is, at least sometimes, explicit. For example, B.T. Sanhedrin 71a: ‘R. Shimon said: “Because he [the rebellious son] eats a half mannah of meat and drinks half a log of wine his parents can take him and have him stoned?! [Obviously not!] Therefore [we are forced to conclude that the ben sorer umoreh] has never existed and will never exist. Why, then, is the law written? That you may study it and receive reward [for doing so]” ’. I discuss this passage further in Chapter 7. 37 Sagi (1998), p. 255. 38 Deut. 24:16. The Talmud (B.T. Berakhot 7a and B.T. Sanhedrin 27b) reconciles this verse with the concept of visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children mentioned in the Decalogue by suggesting that the latter notion applies only when the children follow in their parents’ sinful footsteps. Ex. 34:7 reiterates the notion of God’s visiting the sins of parents upon children. Opposition to this concept is articulated in Jeremiah 31:28–29 and Ezekiel 18:2–4; 20. 39 R. Yehudah Loeve, Eastern Europe, 1526–1609.

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40 Netivot Olam, Netiv Derekh Eretz, ch. 1. The translation is from Lichtenstein (1978), p. 119, n. 2. 41 Leviticus Rabbah 9:3. 42 Lichtenstein ((1978), p. 103) believes that there are ‘undertones’ of logical and axiological priority in this midrashic statement. Halbertal ((1999), p. 24) takes this Midrash as positing derekh eretz not only as chronologically prior to Torah but as a prior condition of the realisation of the Torah. 43 Spero (1983), p.66. 44 N. 60. 45 B.T. Sanhedrin 56a–b. See also Tosefta, Avodah Zarah ch. 9. 46 The passage in Sanhedrin also records dissenting opinions concerning the identity of the seven commandments and regarding additional commandments that may have been given. 47 Spero (1983), p. 65. 48 A cluster of Talmudic concepts that might be thought relevant to my analysis centre on the notion of supralegality. These concepts include lifnim mishurat hadin (‘beyond the line of the law’, midat hasidut (‘the standard of saintliness’), (ein) ruakh hakhamim nokheh hemenu (‘the spirit of the sages is (not) pleased with him’) and others. Such notions might appear, prima facie, to imply SMU. Let us focus upon lifnim mishurat hadin, the most important of these concepts. The existence of a supralegal category, the idea that one can, in various contexts, go beyond one’s strict legal obligation and do morally better, might seem to imply recognition of revelation-independent ethics, since it maintains that there are acts which are not commanded in the Torah that are nevertheless morally right. In other words, lifnim appears to deny (DCTNR) – God’s revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act. But this suggestion rests upon a mistake. Let us suppose (controversially) that acts prompted by the principle of lifnim are indeed uncommanded and nonmandatory. This would still be consistent with (DCTNR) in a slightly modiﬁed form: God’s revealed Torah recommendation of act A is a necessary condition of act A’s being morally recommended. 49 Following most of the contemporary Jewish literature on DCT/SMU, I conﬁne myself here to an analysis of Saadia’s position as it emerges in Saadia (1955). A full treatment of Saadia’s view on DCT/SMU would also need to take account of Saadia (1988). See also Oliver Leaman’s discussion of Saadia’s approach to Job in Leaman (1995), ch. 3. 50 Saadia Gaon (1955), Treatise III, chs 1–3 (pp. 137–147). 51 E.g. Jacobs (1978), p. 48. Jacobs does not distinguish between ontic and epistemic versions of what he terms ‘autonomous’ ethics, but it is clear that if Saadia’s ‘rational commandments’ support any version of SMU, it is (SMUE). 52 Wurzburger (1994), p. 28; emphasis in original. 53 Fox (1975), p. 183. 54 Saadia (1955), p. 164. 55 Sagi and Statman (1995a), pp. 52–53 (cf. Sagi (1998) pp. 75–76), argue that this passage clearly embraces ontic SMU. I believe, however, that its language – ‘reason’, ‘approval’, ‘disapproval’ – suggests that its focus is on the epistemic issue. 56 Halbertal (1999), p. 25, n. 26. 57 Saadia (1955), p. 146. The relevant passage is cited in Chapter 1, section 1.2.d. 58 Ibid., p. 147. 59 Ibid., p. 146. 60 Introduction to Sefer Hamafteah Lemanulei Hatalmud. 61 A similar analysis can be offered for a passage that, to the best of my knowledge, has been overlooked in the literature. Tosafot say that what human beings have in common is ‘a heart . . . to distinguish between good and evil’. (Tosafot to B.T. Berakhot 17a, s.v. ani.) The Talmud ad loc. reports that the Sages of Yavneh had a saying which began: ‘I am a human being [beriyah] and my fellow is a human-being’.

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62 63 64 65

66 67 68 69

Tosafot paraphrases this as: ‘He has a heart, as I do, [that enables him] to distinguish between good and evil’. I.e. the Seven Noahide commandments. The Hebrew is hekhreia hadaat. The translation is from Fox (1990), pp. 131–132. Spinoza, in a celebrated passage in the Tractatus, uses this Maimonidean text as the starting-point for a sharp critique of Judaism. See Spinoza (1951), p. 80; p. 115. On the discussion between Moses Mendelssohn and Rabbi Jacob Emden concerning this Maimonidean passage, see Altmann (1973), p. 249. See also Twersky (1980), p. 339, n. 239 and the references cited there. On the textual problem, see Fox (1990), p. 132 and loc. cit., n. 19 and the references cited there, and Leaman (1987), p. 80, p. 86; and p. 80, nn. 8–11. On the textual and the broader issues arising from this passage, see Korn (1994). See, e.g., Twersky (1980), p. 339; Fox (1990), p. 132. I deal with the objection that one cannot so readily prise apart the issues of the motivation for an action and its moral rightness in Chapter 5, section 5.3.a. Onaah lacks a precise English translation: it can denote both mistreating others in monetary matters, e.g. by overcharging when selling goods, and hurtful speech. The translation is my own, from the Hebrew edition of Maimonides’s introductions to his Commentary to the Mishna (5721), pp. 192–193. The statement of the Sages referred to by Maimonides is the passage in B.T. Yoma 67b discussed in section 4.2.a. It is clear from this passage in Maimonides, incidentally, that he understands the commandments termed mishpatim in Yoma 67b as moral, pace Halbertal’s objection discussed in 4.2.a. In the sentence that follows passage A in the Eight Chapters, Maimonides writes: ‘Some of our later sages, who were infected with the unsound principles of the mutakallimu¯n, called these rational laws’ (translation from Fox (1990), p.135. The mutakallimu¯n were the Islamic philosopher–theologians who developed the Kala¯m.) This sentence is generally understood as a criticism of Saadia. Maimonides rejects Saadia’s description of moral commandments as ‘rational’, replacing this with the category of ‘convention’ (e.g. in ch. 8 of his Treatise on Logic (see Maimonides (1938)) and in a widely-discussed passage in Guide 1:2, in which Maimonides states that ‘[t]hrough the intellect one distinguishes between truth and falsehood, and that was found in Adam [prior to eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden] in its perfection and integrity. Fine and bad, on the other hand, belong to the things generally accepted as known, not to those cognized by the intellect’ ((1963), vol. 1, p. 24). Fox (1990), pp. 133–137 and passim, argues that, for Maimonides in Passage A and in general, there is no rational foundation at all to moral rules and that such rules are not available to human beings through reason. If Fox is correct, my claim that Maimonides denies (DCTER) in Passage A is undermined: Maimonides cannot believe that we would have at least some moral knowledge without God’s revealed Torah commands, since Maimonides does not consider morality to be something that is known at all. Rather, moral rules are conventions, and neither true nor false. Fox’s interpretation of Maimonides as rejecting the rational basis of morality requires further discussion, but it should be noted that it is highly controversial. Scholars who take issue with his position include Sagi and Statman (1995a), p. 54: ‘Although Maimonides is opposed to a particular kind of rationality regarding moral duties, he does not rule out the rational basis of moral obligations altogether’; Novak (1998), p. 132: ‘Maimonides’ criticism of Saadiah’s concept of “rational commandments” has often been misinterpreted to mean that he rejects the notion of rational commandments altogether’; and Leaman (1990), ch. 9; (1987); (1985), pp. 148–165. Sagi ((1998), pp. 83–84) is reminiscent of Leaman when he argues that, for Maimonides, the rationality in which the moral commandments are grounded is of a different and

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weaker kind to that involved in certain non-moral kinds of human intellectual endeavour. 70 (5721), p. 194. 71 See, e.g., Sagi and Statman (1995a), p. 53; Sagi (1998), pp. 80–81; Jacobs (1978), pp. 49–50. All of these writers use the term ‘autonomy’. 72 Guide 3:17; vol. 2, p. 470. 73 Guide 3:27. 74 Sagi and Statman (1995a), p. 53. Cf. Sagi (1998), p. 81. 75 Guide 3:27; vol. 2, p. 511. 76 See especially Guide 3:25 and 3:26. Near the beginning of 3:26, Maimonides writes: ‘there are people who do not seek for them [i.e. the mitzvot] any cause at all, saying that all Laws are consequent upon the [divine] will alone. There are also people who say that every commandment and prohibition in these Laws is consequent upon wisdom and aims at some end, and that all Laws have causes and were given in view of some utility. It is, however, the doctrine of all of us – both of the multitude and of the elite – that all the Laws have a cause . . . there is . . . a cause for all the commandments; I mean to say that any particular commandment or prohibition has a useful end’. Maimonides goes on to distinguish between the mishpatim, for which ‘it is clear to us in what way they are useful – as in the case of the prohibition of killing and stealing’, and the hukkim, which have a purpose but ‘whose utility is not clear to the multitude’ (vol. 2, pp. 506–507). 77 Hilkhot Teshuvah 5:4. 78 Fox (1987), pp. 105–120. (An expanded version of this article appears as ch. 8 of Fox (1990). All page references that follow are to the former version.) 79 Ibid., p. 120. By ‘divine law’, Fox intends here Halakhah, which of course is broader than just the revealed Torah, the Pentateuch. However, following Maimonides, he takes the Halakhah as an extension of the revealed Torah – that is why he terms it ‘divine law’ – and thus it is fair to understand Fox as attributing command DCT to Maimonides. One might object, further, that Fox does not ascribe command DCT to Maimonides on the grounds that a mere statement of identity – ‘divine law is morality’ – is not yet DCT. However, Fox clearly awards the explanatory priority to divine law. 80 Ibid., p. 119. 81 Loc. cit. 82 Loc. cit. 83 Spain, c. 1080–c. 1142. 84 See, e.g., Sagi and Statman (1995a), p. 53, who attribute the thesis of ‘the autonomy of morality’ to Halevi on the basis of Kuzari 2:48. 85 Micah 6:8. 86 Halevi (1946), pp. 97–98. 87 Halevi’s terminology in classifying the commandments seems to vary somewhat between different passages in the Kuzari. In 2:48, the distinction is between the rational commandments, a category which is clearly intended to include the ethical, and the ‘divine’, which signiﬁes the ritual commandments. At one point in 2:48, however, and in 3:7, Halevi refers to ‘the social and rational laws’. In 3:11, Halevi offers a clear tripartite classiﬁcation into ‘divine’ laws, which are ritual, ‘social’ laws, which are ethical, and, confusingly, ‘ethical’ laws (in Hirschfeld’s translation) which have to do with faith in God. 88 Kuzari 3:7 (p. 124 in the Hirschfeld translation). 89 Loc. cit. 90 Spain, Israel 1194–1270. 91 Commentary to Genesis 6:2. 92 Commentary to Genesis 6:13. Cf. Rabbi Yehudah Loeve (1972), ch. 41, who argues that honouring parents is known to be appropriate independently of divine

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93 94 95 96 97 98 99

100 101

102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109

110 111 112

command, since one’s parents brought one into the world. (Maharal’s intriguing thesis in this chapter is that honouring parents is the rational mitzvah par excellence.) Maharal’s position excludes (DCTER) but is compatible with both (DCTEW) and (SMUE). See Deut. 13:13–19. Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Akum 4:6. Known as Ramah; Spain, c. 1180–1244. B.T. Pesahim 113b; Makkot 11a. In Lifshitz (1968), p. 186. Lifshitz (1968), p. 282. Regarding Sagi’s comment about interpreting the biblical text in the light of assumptions about divine justice, cf. my analysis of B.T. Sanhedrin 35a, n. 17 above. The passage cited from Sagi also suggests that the claim that God possesses a moral nature supports SMU. As I argue in section 4.5, however, this is not so; God might have freely willed His moral personality. Palestine, 1865–1935. Cf. Shatz (1997), pp. 93–94: ‘Fear of misrepresentation is especially warranted in the case of Rav Kook, as it is easy to overlook the fact that vigorous endorsements he gives to position X may be part of a dialectic. Elsewhere, or even . . . midspeech, he abruptly shifts the other way. Such shifts reﬂect, variously, an appreciation of “the manifold nature of reality”, dislike for ﬁxity, a penchant for spontaneous, unedited ﬂights of thought, love of balance, diplomacy, and maybe inconsistency of the prosaic kind . . . Again, it is easy to forget that a chronological editorial arrangement of his writing, as distinct from the format of the published texts by Rav Kook that we generally use, would be needed in order to straighten us out on what he believed and when. More frequently lamented are the facts that we have so little of the total corpus in hand and that we cannot always trust the texts we have. For all these reasons, selecting individual quotations to represent Rav Kook’s “views” on individual issues is a path strewn with methodological pitfalls’. Kook is citing the statement in Leviticus Rabbah 9:3 mentioned in section 4.3.a. Kook is alluding to the passage in Eruvin 100b discussed in section 4.2.d. Deut. 32:6. Kook (5733), pp. 64–66. Kook (1962), 1:215. Kook (1938–1950), 3:11; translation in Korn (1997), p. 16. 1843–1926. Meshekh Hokhmah to Deut. 30:11–14. The citation ‘Whatever is hateful’ is Hillel’s celebrated response to a gentile’s challenge to tell him the whole Torah while the gentile remains standing on one leg (B.T. Shabbat 31a). Meir Simhah is claiming that this moral principle is imprinted in man’s very nature, independently of any revelation. Loc. cit. Loc. cit. Loc. cit. There seems to be a tradition stretching back to the Bible of literary metaphors similar to those employed by Meir Simhah in the passages cited. For example, the phrase ‘write them upon the tablet of your heart [kotvem al luah libekha]’ appears in Proverbs 3:3, referring to morally good actions and to virtues. In that verse, however, the expression apparently refers to a tablet hung on the chest or heart externally, as a permanent reminder, for it occurs in parallel to the preceding phrase ‘tie them [on a chain, like an amulet] upon your neck’. Cf. Prov. 6:21. The same is true of the occurrence of the phrase kotvem al luah libekha in Prov. 7:7, where it is parallel to the preceding ‘tie them [like a ring] upon your ﬁnger’. The expression harusha al

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113 114 115 116 117

luah libam, ‘engraved upon the tablet of their heart’ in Jeremiah 17:1, referring to the sin of Judah, also appears to refer to an external ornament. The closest biblical precedent that I am aware of for the kind of metaphor favoured by Meir Simhah occurs, strangely enough, in the New Testament (Romans 2:14): ‘When Gentiles who do not possess the law carry out its precepts by the light of nature, then, although they have no law, they are their own law, for they display the effect of the law inscribed on their hearts’ (translation from Fox (1990), p. 147; emphasis supplied). For example: Ex. 34:6; Deut. 32:4; Ps. 11:7, 96:10, 97:2, 97:6, 98:2. One of the standard Talmudic appellations of God is rahmana, ‘the Merciful One’. Sagi (1998), ch. 13. Sagi and Statman (1995a), pp. 61–63; cf. Sagi (1998), p. 287: ‘Ascription of moral qualities to God means recognition of the existence of an independent moral valuesystem that is not dependent upon God’. Walzer (1985), p. 60. See, e.g., Num. 11:1; I Sam. 6:19; II Sam. 6:6–7. Cf. Chapter 2, section 2.2.d. Cf. also Rooney (1996), p. 117: ‘that God could act cruelly, or command cruelty, is not to be taken as evidence that the theist’s trust in His loving nature is misplaced . . . What matters is whether He would or does act in that way’. 5

DIVINE COMMAND THEORY IN THE TEXTS OF JEWISH TRADITION

1 All texts discussed in this section are from the Babylonian Talmud. 2 A similar passage appears in Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:33; and a shorter version of the Yoma passage appears in B.T. Shabbat 56b. 3 I Sam. 15:3. 4 I Sam. 15:5. 5 The plain sense of the phrase ‘And he fought in the valley’, in context, is that Saul did battle with the Amalekites. R. Mani’s suggestion is that the phrase denotes a ‘struggle’ between Saul and God concerning the morality of the divine command to destroy the Amalekites. 6 I Sam. 15:3. 7 Deut. 21:1–9. If a corpse is discovered in the open countryside and the identity of the killer is unknown, a special ritual is carried out in which the elders of the city nearest to the site where the corpse was found break the neck of a heifer. The heifer is known as eglah arufah, the ‘heifer whose neck is broken’. 8 Ecclesiastes 7:16. 9 I Sam. 22:18. Doeg was Saul’s chief servant. At Saul’s command, he massacred 85 priests and all the inhabitants – men, women, children and animals – of the priestly city of Nov. See I Sam. 22:18–19. 10 Ecclesiastes 7:17. 11 Saul might have objected, moreover, that the adult Amalekites were innocent as well, since it was not they but their ancestors who, in the words of God’s instructions to Saul, ‘set themselves against him [Israel] on the way, when he came up out of Egypt’ (I Sam. 15:2). Perhaps Saul conﬁnes his protest to the proposed extermination of children and animals rather than questioning the moral propriety of the entire command to wipe out Amalek for rhetorical purposes: he argues that even if some justiﬁcation might ultimately be found for destroying the adult Amalekites, there can certainly be none for killing the children and animals. 12 Reines (1963), p. 49. 13 Hartman (1985), p. 52. 14 Cf. the parallel passage to Yoma 22b in Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:33: ‘Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish says: Whoever is merciful when cruelty is appropriate will eventually become

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15

16 17 18

19 20

21

cruel when mercy is appropriate . . . as it says: “And smite Nov, city of the priests, by the sword” ’. Or perhaps almost always mere hubris – the Yoma passage might wish to make very rare exceptions, e.g. Abraham and Moses in the Torah. This is quite plausible, for the text would still convey the message to the audience to which it is directed that moral criticism of God issuing from them is never legitimate. Or almost any: see n. 15 above. The relevant passage also appears in B.T. Megillah 25a. The reference is to the commandment in Deut. 22:6–7 of shiluah hakan, sending away the mother bird before taking her offspring. The prayer, according to Rashi (B.T. Berakhot 33b, s.v. al kan tsippor yagiu rahamekha), is a praise of God Whose mercies extend as far as the mother bird, for He commands that her young are not to be taken while she is present. For Maimonides and Bartenura in their respective commentaries to this Mishna, the prayer is a plea for God to have mercy upon us just as He has mercy on the mother bird. B.T. Berakhot 33b. Rashi, commentary to B.T. Berakhot 33b, s.v. midotav. Rashi evidently does not understand the Talmud to be asserting that there is no overall point to the mitzvot, for he makes it clear that there is an overall rationale that motivates God’s commanding of the mitzvot, namely His wish to publicise the loyalty of the Jewish people in observing all the commandments, even those which apparently lack any purpose. Yet Rashi does seem to understand the Talmud as claiming that individual commandments are arbitrary. Even if the content of individual mitzvot were other than it in fact is, their overriding purpose could still be achieved. And mitzvot such as sending away the mother bird are therefore to be read not as reﬂections of divine mercy, but as individual components in a system for which there is a rationale only at the systemic level. In the passage cited from Rashi in the text, it is clear that Rashi understands the Talmud to be saying that all the commandments of the Torah are arbitrary divine edicts. His expression ‘matters about which Satan and idolaters can respond’ is a standard way, in rabbinic literature, of referring to hukkim – cf. the passage from Yoma 67b discussed in Chapter 4, section 4.2.a. Thus, Rashi understands both moral and non-moral mitzvot of the Torah to be arbitrary decrees, whose content could have been other than it is, and which possess a rationale only when taken together. This also seems to be the most plausible reading of what the Talmud says in its second explanation of the Mishna. It is interesting to consider Maimonides’s position on this issue. In the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides appears to disagree with Rashi. In Hilkhot Teﬁllah 9:7, he writes: ‘Someone who says in prayer: “He who had mercy on the bird’s nest, [commanding us] to send away the mother bird” or “[commanding us] not to slaughter certain animals and their offspring on the same day [Lev. 22:28], may He have mercy upon us”, and similar things, is silenced, for these commandments are divine decrees (gezerat hakatuv) and not [based upon divine] mercy. For if the reason for these [commandments] were [divine] mercy, He would not have permitted us to slaughter animals at all’ (emphasis supplied). For Maimonides, the error of the person who employs the forbidden formulations in prayer consists in the suggestion that these few commandments are motivated by divine mercy. It does not consist in the assertion that the commandments in general are prompted by God’s mercy – for to say this is not to err. Thus, Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah would understand the einan ela gezerot of the Talmud to refer not to all the mitzvot but only to a very few. However, in Guide 3:48, Maimonides, in contrast to his approach in Mishneh Torah (and in his Commentary to the Mishna, Berakhot 5:3), states that the commandment to send away the mother bird is motivated by divine compassion. (The question of why Maimonides’s stance in the Guide differs so sharply

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22

23 24 25 26 27

28

29 30 31 32 33

34 35

from his approach in his legal works is beyond the scope of this discussion). He then writes in the Guide: ‘You must not allege as an objection against me the dictum of [the Sages] . . . “He who says: Thy mercy extendeth to young birds, and so on”. For this is one of the two opinions mentioned by us – I mean the opinion of those who think that there is no reason for the Law except only the will [of God] – but as for us, we follow only the second opinion’ (vol. 2, p. 600). ‘The two opinions mentioned by us’ is a reference to the issue of whether the commandments of the Torah are based upon God’s wisdom or just upon His will (see Guide 3:26, cited above, Chapter 4, n. 76). Clearly, Maimonides in Guide 3:48, while emphasising his own support for the idea that the Torah’s commandments are based upon divine wisdom, attributes to the Sages in Berakhot 33b the view that the commandments are all based merely upon God’s will. The identity of the author of Sefer Hahinukh is uncertain and the issue remains the subject of scholarly debate. See, e.g., the introductory essay by David Metzger to the Machon Yerushalayim edition of Sefer Hahinukh, vol. I (Jerusalem 5752), pp. 12–20. Sefer Hahinukh, commandment 545 (p. 826 in vol. I of the Machon Yerushalayim edition). Maimonides’s approach in the Commentary to the Mishna and the Mishneh Torah, therefore, broadly follows the second explanation of the Talmud, whereas in the Guide, he follows the Talmud’s ﬁrst explanation. Commentary to Deut. 22:6. Leviticus Rabbah 27:11; Deuteronomy Rabbah 6:1. Nachmanides, Commentary to Deut. 22:6. According to Nachmanides, the mistake of the prayer formulation criticised by the Mishna lies not in its suggestion that the commandment to send away the mother bird is rooted in compassion, but rather in the implication that the rationale of the commandment is mercy towards animals. For Nachmanides, the commandment aims to foster compassion in human beings. This is an instance of R. Kook’s more general position that human reﬂection about taamei hamitzvot, the reasons for the commandments, cannot yield absolute certainty. Human thought can uncover possible reasons for commandments, but no more than that. Kook (1962), introduction by R. Zvi Yehuda Kook, p. 10. A similar position is taken by R. Yom Tov Lipman Heller in his commentary to the Mishna Tosafot Yom Tov, Berakhot 5:3. The statement also appears in B.T. Bava Kama 38a, ibid. 87a and B.T. Avodah Zarah 3a. Cf. Urbach (1987), p. 325: ‘it is not stated here that the deeds of one who is not commanded do not merit reward, nor is their value negated. Only their relative value is emphasized’. Tosafot HaRosh, B.T. Kiddushin 31a, s.v. gadol hametzuveh veoseh. In Guide 3:17, Maimonides states that R. Hanina’s dictum does not deny reward to the person who voluntarily performs a mitzvah, and thus also clearly understands R. Hanina’s statement as comparative. This is also implied in Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Talmud Torah 1:13. In a similar vein, Nachmanides (Hiddushei Haramban to B.T. Kiddushin 31a) comments on R. Hanina’s dictum: ‘This implies that, nevertheless, one does receive reward if one is not commanded yet performs [the mitzvah]’. B.T. Kiddushin 31a, s.v. gadol hametzuveh veoseh. A footnote in the (Hebrew) Steinsaltz edition of B.T. Tractate Kiddushin at 31a, commenting on R. Hanina’s dictum, understands Tosafot as presenting the same analysis as Jacobs (though Jacobs is not mentioned). As indicated, I believe that the explanations are somewhat different. Interestingly, however, Tosafot HaRosh, in the passage immediately preceding the passage from that work cited above in the text, offers the same analysis as Tosafot of R. Hanina’s dictum and in closely similar

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36 37

38

39 40 41

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62

language, but adds the words vetsarikh lakhuf et yitsro yoter (‘and he [the person who is commanded to perform the mitzvah] has to subjugate his [evil] inclination more [than the person who is not commanded]’) which do not appear in Tosafot. Tosafot HaRosh’s version of Tosafot’s analysis is thus identical to Jacobs’s suggestion. Jacobs (1978), p. 46. Jacobs’s explanation is anticipated in Hiddushei HaRitva to B.T. Kiddushin 31a. Cf. Proverbs 9:17: ‘Stolen water is sweet, and bread secreted away pleasant’. There is an echo here of Kant’s thought that the righteous individual is the one who acts out of duty rather than from inclination. On the Tosafot and Jacobs interpretations, R. Hanina’s dictum perceives greater religious merit to attach to someone who performs an act in response to a divine command, out of recognition that the act constitutes a religious duty, and possibly in conﬂict with his inclinations, than to a person who performs a similar act in the absence of divine command and from inclination. On the interpretation of R. Shmuel Eidels (Maharsha), Hiddushei Aggadot to B.T. Hullin 109a, s.v. shara lan kevatei, a passage in Leviticus Rabbah (cited in Sagi (1998), p. 44) is a further rabbinic text that supports DCT. However, I agree with Sagi (loc. cit.) that Maharsha’s interpretation of this text is not a plausible one. Portugal, Spain, Italy, 1437–1508. Jakobovits (1967), p. 292, n. 5 (cited in Chapter 2, section 2.3.b). There is a parallel here to Hilkhot Melakhim 8:11 (discussed in Chapter 4, section 4.4.d), which, I argued, is concerned with motivation, though it has sometimes been read as congenial to DCT. The multiplicity of Abarbanel’s formulations on this issue in his commentary to Leviticus 19 suggests even more strongly than in the case of Hilkhot Melakhim that the focus is solely the issue of motivation. See also n. 42. A similar objection can be made to my analysis in Chapter 4, section 4.4.d of Maimonides’s position in Hilkhot Melakhim 8:11, and a similar reply is also possible. c. 1450–before 1516. Commentary to the Mishna, Avot 1:1. Sagi and Statman (1995a), p. 46. Germany, 1720–1800. Levin (1834), p. 1, n. 2. Sagi and Statman (1995a), p. 48. Ibid., p. 47. Loc. cit. Loc. cit. Loc. cit. Lithuania and Israel, 1878–1953. Karelitz (5744), p. 21. Cf. Chapter 4, n. 79, regarding Fox on Maimonides. I am assuming that Hazon Ish takes the Halakhah to be an extension of the revealed Torah. Lichtenstein (1978), p. 107. Sagi and Statman (1995a), p. 49. Karelitz (5744), p. 27. Sagi and Statman (ibid.) concede that this passage is somewhat problematic for their view. They suggest – unconvincingly, I believe – that it be read as saying that only God, in His inﬁnite wisdom, knows the exact deﬁnition of robbery, which remains the deﬁnition even if it conﬂicts with human views. On this analysis, Hazon Ish is supporting a form of epistemic DCT in this passage. Karelitz (5744), p. 22. Sagi and Statman overlook this passage in their analysis of Hazon Ish’s position. Orot Hakodesh 3:15. See Chapter 1, section 1.4. Germany, 1808–1888.

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63 64 65 66

Commentary on the Torah, Lev. 18:4; trans. in Hirsch (1982), p. 479. Cited in Heinemann (1951), pp. 33–34. Hirsch (1962), p. 219. Louis Jacobs, in private conversation, has suggested that a Kabbalistic perspective on ethics may support DCT. In the Kabbalistic view, according to Jacobs, the aim of the ethical life is to exert the required inﬂuence on the upper worlds, in the realm of the Seﬁrot (divine emanations). Thus, e.g., the aim of an act of giving charity to a poor person is exactly the same as the objective of a purely ritual religious act such as donning phylacteries, namely to promote cosmic harmony. Thus, for Jacobs, ethical conduct and the cultivation of virtues are not really goals in themselves (‘autonomous’, as Jacobs puts it); instead, they are totally oriented towards God. Duties to other human beings are really duties to God. ( Jacobs develops a similar view in Jacobs (1979)). However, I am not convinced that this Kabbalistic view is even relevant to the DCT/SMU issue. For it is not clear whether a view that makes the goal of morality the enhancement of the upper worlds leaves anything that is genuine morality in place. From the Kabbalistic perspective, it is not clear that, e.g., stealing is morally wrong; it appears to be just divinely prohibited, period, just as, e.g., eating pork (by Jews) is divinely prohibited, period, without being morally wrong as well. Moreover, even if the Kabbalistic view were relevant, it is not clear which side of the DCT/SMU issue it would favour. Did God ordain that giving charity enhances the upper worlds? Or is it a fact, independently of God’s will, that giving charity metaphysically enhances the upper worlds in the way that it does? For these reasons, I do not discuss here the otherwise fascinating literature of Kabbalah. 67 Sagi and Statman (1995a), p. 52. Cf. Sagi (1998), p. 13, p. 104 and passim. 6

THE AKEDAH

1 2 3 4

Sagi (1998), p. 162. Verses 1–19. Gellman (1994), p. xi. Although God commands Abraham to sacriﬁce Isaac (but see the comment of Sefat Emet discussed below), in terms of the conceptual framework suggested in this study, while God’s instruction to Abraham may legitimately be termed a ‘command’, it is ontic will DCT rather than ontic command DCT that Genesis 22 apparently supports. For I have restricted the term ‘command’ in ‘command DCT’ to Sinaitic commandments addressed collectively to, and conceived of as permanently binding upon, the Jewish people as a whole; i.e. to those commands that are called mitzvot in Jewish tradition. A pre-Sinaitic, sui generis command to an individual such as that of Genesis 22 comes under the category of ‘will’ DCT in my analytical framework. See Chapter 1, section 1.2.b. 5 Brown (1967), p. 274; emphasis in original. 6 Quinn (1992), p. 500. The second and third ‘immoralities of the Patriarchs’ are Exodus 11:2 and Hosea 1:2 (and 3:1) respectively. Exodus 11:2 does not clearly involve anything immoral, and has not received anything like the attention that the Akedah has enjoyed in both Jewish and wider literature. The latter claim is also true of Hosea 1:2, though this verse looks more promising as a basis for arguing to ontic DCT, since God explicitly commands Hosea to have sexual relations with a prostitute. A signiﬁcant trend in Jewish biblical exegesis understands the passage metaphorically, including Targum Jonathan ad loc., Maimonides in Guide 2:46 and Ibn Ezra to Hosea 1:1, who maintain that the whole episode is simply a prophetic vision of Hosea’s. However, the Talmud, B.T. Pesahim 87a, takes the episode literally, as do

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7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Abarbanel (commentary to Hosea 1:1–2) and Malbim (commentary to Hosea 1:2, s.v. ki zanoh tizneh haaretz meiaharei hashem). Yet Hosea 1:2 taken as it stands does not seem clearly to lead to ontic DCT. In a prophetic book, the claim that a certain episode is intended metaphorically or as reporting a prophetic vision is obviously quite natural. Moreover, one could easily argue (a possibility that I consider later in this chapter in relation to the Akedah) that Hosea 1:2 as it stands supports not DCT but the conﬂict thesis. The inclusion of Aquinas in this list is controversial. See, e.g., Green (1988), p. 115, who contrasts Aquinas’s interpretation of Genesis 22 with DCT-based readings. Quinn (1992), pp. 500–503. Scotus, The Oxford Commentary on the Four Books of the Sentences, Bk. 3, ch. 38, Q. 1; cited above, Chapter 2, n. 4. Wyschogrod (1992), p. 319. See section 2.3.a on Leibowitz. Section 2.3.a. Leibowitz (1979), p. 23; cited in Chapter 2, section 2.3.a. Kierkegaard (1954). A necessary caveat is that interpretation of Fear and Trembling is notoriously difﬁcult. Cf. Mooney (1986), p. 24: ‘It is not an accident that critics have torn their hair over the text. He [Kierkegaard] is anything but direct in presenting his views; at times he seems committed to incompatible standpoints; and he can revel in apparent contradiction and paradox’. The claim that Kierkegaard supports the conﬂict thesis in Fear and Trembling is also not uncontroversial. The claim is supported by, e.g., Sagi (1992); Sagi and Statman (1995), pp. 119–121. Disagreement with this approach is expressed by Wisdo, for instance, who argues that Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling endorses DCT; see Wisdo (1987). Gellman (1994, ch. 1) argues that the ‘standard interpretation’ of Fear and Trembling in terms of the clash between the moral obligation not to kill Isaac and the divine command to kill him is inadequate and suggests an alternative reading on which Kierkegaard’s concern is with developing an anti-Hegelian view of self-deﬁnition. For my purposes, of course, whether or not Kierkegaard in fact reads Genesis 22 in terms of the conﬂict thesis is relatively unimportant; what matters is that it could quite plausibly be read in this way. An important collection of essays dealing with this issue is Wallace and Walker (eds) (1970). I have only provided a very general and broad sketch of types of views on this question in the text. See Chapter 3, section 3.3.c. The thematic link is underlined by the story of Avimelekh (discussed in Chapter 3, section 3.3.d) which is placed in the biblical text in Genesis 20 (between the episodes of Sodom and the Akedah) and which focuses on similar concerns. See, e.g., Kierkegaard (1954), p. 35; Sarna (1970), p. 159; Spero (1983), p. 94; Gordis (1976), p. 416. Hartman (1985), pp. 43–44. Genesis 17:15–19; 18:10–15; 21:1–12. The biblical text makes explicit that the Akedah is a trial of Abraham by God: ‘And it came to pass after these things that the Lord tested (nissah) Abraham’ (Gen. 22:1). See, however, the rival translation of nissah offered by Rashbam, discussed below. Korn (1975), p. 209. Interestingly, it appears that Korn later changed his mind and adopted a position much closer to the one that I advocate here. In Korn (1997), pp. 23–24, Korn writes: ‘Jewish tradition understood that Abraham experienced the akeida as a dilemma between piety and possession, not mitzvah and morality . . . The biblical narrative of akeidat Yitshak itself supports this interpretation’.

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24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34

35 36

Gen. 22:2. Gen. 22:12. Gen. 22:16–17. I owe this point to remarks by Professor Neil Gillman in a lecture at Limmud Conference, Nottingham, England, in December 1998. Korn (1997), p. 24. Kierkegaard (1954), pp. 34–35. The Hebrew is kah na. Cf. Rashi’s commentary to 22:2, following B.T. Sanhedrin 89b: ‘The term na always denotes a request’. Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib of Ger (5731), vol. 1, p. 63. Gen. 22:11–12. Cf. Rachels (1981), p. 42. Rachels, however, sees no difference between Genesis 18 and Genesis 22, arguing that submission is the only appropriate religious response in both episodes. Thus, while Rachels holds that human moral challenges to God are always religiously inappropriate and indeed involve failing to relate to God as God, my suggestion in this study is that Jewish tradition often (though not always: see Chapter 5, section 5.2.a on Yoma 22b) views such challenges as entirely legitimate. The Akedah is a sui generis instance in which Abraham is asked to perform an apparently immoral act himself. A further way in which Genesis 22 might be read so that it does not support either DCT or the conﬂict thesis might be based on the adoption of Gordis’s suggestion (Gordis (1976), pp. 417–419) that, given the prevalence of child-sacriﬁce in Semitic religion in the Patriarchal age, Abraham would not have perceived any moral difﬁculty in the divine command to sacriﬁce his son. The considerations adduced by Sarna (1970), pp. 158–159, support the notion that Abraham would not necessarily have morally balked at God’s instruction. Cf. also the evidence marshalled in Goodman (1996), pp. 19–21. On p. 21, Goodman concludes: ‘[T]he story of God’s command that Abraham sacriﬁce his long-awaited and beloved son would not have seemed to its ﬁrst audience alien to ideals of piety. Child sacriﬁce was an institution in the land of Abraham’s birth’. Nevertheless, I have preferred not to adopt such a strategy for the following reasons: 1) There is no evidence in the biblical text itself that Abraham would have considered the murder of an innocent person morally unproblematic. Indeed, as we have seen, Abraham objects to God’s proposed destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18 precisely on the grounds that the innocent ought not to be punished. While it is conceivable that someone could insist on justice in the meting out of punishment while seeing nothing morally wrong with a religious act of child-sacriﬁce, the internal evidence of the biblical text is that Abraham ﬁnds the suffering of the innocent morally unacceptable. This makes it less plausible that Abraham would have perceived no moral problem with child-sacriﬁce. 2) Even if Gordis’s suggestion about Abraham’s perspective is correct, it still leaves us with the problem of God’s. On the assumption that child-sacriﬁce is indeed immoral, why does God command Abraham to perform an immoral act? Goodman offers yet a further stimulating interpretation of the Akedah (see Goodman (1996), pp. 21–24) very different from that which I suggest here. On Goodman’s reading, also, Genesis 22 does not support either DCT or the conﬂict thesis. These are only trends; I do not of course mean to imply that rabbinic and postTalmudic interpretation of the Akedah is monolithic or that there are no exceptions to these trends. Commentary to Genesis 22:2, s.v. vehaaleihu. Rashi’s source here is a passage in Pesikta Zutreta, cited in Kasher (1934), p. 776. Cf. Genesis Rabbah 56:8. Cf. also B.T. Taanit 4a, where the Talmud quotes Jeremiah 19:5, in which God is reported as saying of child-sacriﬁce ‘which I have not commanded, nor spoken, nor did it enter My mind’. The Talmud links each of the three expressions, ‘not commanded’, ‘nor

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37

38 39

40 41

42

spoken’ and ‘nor did it enter My mind’ to a different biblical episode involving or apparently involving child-sacriﬁce, and explicitly applies the third phrase to ‘Isaac, son of Abraham’. Rashi (ad loc., s.v. ukhetiv asher lo tziviti) explains: ‘That is to say, even though I commanded him, it never entered my mind that he should slaughter his son’. In this passage, then, the Talmud explicitly morally neutralises God’s command to Abraham to sacriﬁce Isaac. Lamentations Rabbah 1:50. A parallel passage appears in B.T. Gittin 57b. See also Maccabees, Bk. 4, chs 8–16 (in Hadas (1976)). Writing during the First Crusade, R. Ephraim of Bonn developed the notion that the sacriﬁce of Isaac was actual. See Spiegel (1967). Green (1988), p. 93. There is a broad consensus that an emphasis on rationality characterises Jewish interpretation of the Akedah, in contrast to Kierkegaard’s emphasis on its absurdity. See, e.g., Fox (1953); Green (1988), ch. 4; Korn (1997), esp. pp. 23–24. A more nuanced approach is suggested by Jacobs (1981). In this connection, it is interesting to consider the unusual approach to the Akedah of Rashbam in his commentary to Genesis 22:1. Rashbam does not interpret the Akedah as a test at all, but rather as divine punishment of Abraham for entering into a covenant with the Philistine Avimelekh, as reported in the Torah in Genesis Chapter 21, immediately prior to the Akedah. (Rashbam understands the word nissah in 22:1, usually translated as ‘[God] tested (or tried) [Abraham]’ as kintero vetsiaro, ‘[God] vexed and troubled [Abraham]’.) Yet this is still a rationalisation of the Akedah: Rashbam views God’s command to Abraham to sacriﬁce Isaac as not at all arbitrary but motivated by a (punitive) rationale. Cf. Seder Eliahu Rabbah, ch. 7, cited in Kasher (1934), p. 770. The Hebrew noun davar can mean ‘thing’ or ‘word’. Rashi’s source here is B.T. Sanhedrin 89b. There are other, similar passages in rabbinic literature, e.g. Genesis Rabbah 55:4, which has two alternative versions of this midrash, one in which Abraham accuses himself and one in which he is accused by the angels. Cf. Rashi to B.T. Taanit 4a, s.v. ukhetiv asher lo tziviti, where he also indicates that the entire purpose of the trial was to vindicate Abraham after Satan’s accusation. Rabbenu Bachye al HaTorah. Cf. the closely similar approaches in the commentary of Kimche to Genesis 22:1; in the commentary of R. Hayyim ibn Attar, Or Hahayyim, to Genesis 22:2, s.v. et binkha; and in Maimonides, Guide 3:24. Maimonides stresses Abraham’s fear of God as well as his love of Him, but also perceives the test as entirely ‘personal’ rather than moral. According to Maimonides, there are two key lessons that the Akedah narrative imparts: 1) how far the fear and love of God should extend, and 2) that the prophets believe to be true that which comes to them from God in prophetic revelation. Jacobs (1981), p. 6, writes that Maimonides’s assertion in this passage in the Guide ‘that the ﬁnal end of the whole Torah (as he says, including its commandments, which means, the ethical as well as the purely religious commandments) is one thing only, the fear of God, is as close to the idea of, at least, a possibility that the ethical can be suspended for this particular telos as makes no difference’. Thus Jacobs understands Maimonides as offering a Kierkegaardian reading of the Akedah. Yet Maimonides nowhere mentions the moral dimension of Abraham’s trial in this passage. Cf. also Korn (1997), p. 23: ‘[T]he predominant Jewish interpretation expressed in the midrashim [is] that in the akeida, God tested Abraham by forcing him to choose between his love for God and his love for his son’. It is often pointed out that Soloveitchik’s approach to the Akedah shares the emphasis of Kierkegaard and Leibowitz on the motif of the religious believer’s sacriﬁce and surrender to God. While this is true, it is striking that when discussing the Akedah, Soloveitchik consistently stresses the personal dimension of Abraham’s test and, unlike Kierkegaard and Leibowitz, entirely ignores the moral component. A

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clear example of the merging of these two elements is the following passage: ‘In what areas of human endeavor does Judaism recommend self-defeat? Self-defeat is demanded in those areas in which man is most interested, where the individual expects to ﬁnd the summum bonum, the realization of his most cherished dream or vision, where, in the opinion of pragmatic man, it is absolutely necessary for the individual to win, since losing the battle would mean total failure and frustration. It is precisely in those areas that God requires man to withdraw. God tells man to withdraw from whatever man desires the most. It is true of the father of the nation, as well as of plain ordinary people. What was the most precious possession of Abraham; with what was he concerned the most? Isaac. Because the son meant so much to him, God instructed him to retreat, to give the son away: “Take your son, your only son, whom you love – Isaac”’ (Soloveitchik (1978a), p. 36). Cf. Soloveitchik (1978b), p. 71; (1976), p. 428; (1998–1999), pp. 22–23. 43 Cf. Sagi (1998), p. 259: ‘The Scriptural source which appears as the clearest and most important basis for the dependence thesis [i.e. ontic DCT] was not usually interpreted in this way in Jewish tradition’. 7 DCT/SMU AND THE COMMANDMENT TO WIPE OUT AMALEK 1 The commandment appears in Deut. 25:17–19. Ex. 17:5–16 relates the episode of the Israelites’ battle with the Amalekites at Rephidim which, as can be seen from Deut. 25:17, is what prompts the command to annihilate the Amalekites. 2 ‘Amalek’ in Hebrew can refer both to an individual person of that name (see Gen. 36:12) and to the Amalekite people. I use the term in this chapter in the latter sense. 3 Since wiping out Amalek is a commandment, rather than simply a story like the Akedah to which no explicit permanent imperative is attached by the biblical text, how the Torah’s treatment of Amalek is interpreted in halakhic literature will also form an important part of the discussion. 4 Some of the classic medieval Jewish exegetes explicitly interpret the scope of the Deuteronomy command in terms of Samuel’s instruction to Saul. See, e.g., Rashi and Sforno in their respective commentaries to Deut. 25:19. In Chapter 5, section 5.2.a, we saw that Saul’s imagined response to Samuel’s instruction is the subject of a rabbinic midrash. 5 In Chapter Five, section 5.3.c, I argued that this is the most plausible interpretation of the remarks of R. Zvi Hirsch Levin concerning Amalek. 6 I discussed the assumptions concerning the deﬁnition of morality involved in the conﬂict thesis in Chapter 6, section 6.2. 7 I did not consider the ‘Satanic verse’ theory as a candidate for explaining the Akedah in Chapter 6, section 6.2, since it might be argued that Satan would have less reason to interpolate the Akedah, which is a report of a sui generis episode, into the biblical text. He would perhaps be more likely to attempt to maximise confusion and evil outcomes by trying to pass off his interpolation as a permanent command to the Jewish people as a whole, as in the case of the directive to exterminate Amalek. 8 Sagi (1994). A later, slightly revised Hebrew version of this article appears as ch. 10 of Sagi (1998). All references which follow are to the ﬁrst version. 9 S.v. behar lanu. 10 S.v. videi moshe keveidim. 11 S.v. even vayasimu tahtav. 12 S.v. asher karkha baderekh. 13 S.v. vayezaneiv bekha. 14 S.v. velo yarei.

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15 Commentary to the Torah by Rabbi Ephraim Shlomo ben Hayyim of Luntshitz (1550–1619). 16 Sagi (1994), p. 325. 17 The term is borrowed from Roth (1999), ch. 9, ‘Moralization and Demoralization in Jewish Ethics’, though Roth does not discuss the Amalek commandment. 18 At least part of the reason for this difference of emphasis is presumably that it is difﬁcult to morally neutralise the Amalek commandment: for example, there is no ‘happy ending’ such as that which is a feature of the Akedah. 19 Sagi (1994), p. 328. One rabbinic text that Sagi cites in support of this claim is the passage from B.T. Yoma 22b which I discussed in Chapter 5, section 5.2.a. I argued there that the chief concern of that passage is to undermine the legitimacy of human moral criticism of God and that ultimately no support for any particular position on the DCT/SMU issue can be gleaned from the passage. One difﬁculty with Sagi’s interpretation of this text is that it rests on the assumption that the homily commits the logical fallacy of advancing an ad hominem argument. This offends against the principle of charity in interpretation. Instead of claiming that Yoma 22b commits a classic logical error, we should prefer a reading which does not involve attributing a fundamental fallacy to the text. 20 Tanhuma, Ki Teitsei, 9. 21 Sefer Hahinukh, Commandment 603 (p. 912 in vol. 2 of the Machon Yerushalayim edition). Rashi cites the same midrashic passage in his commentary to Deut. 25:18, s.v. asher karkha baderekh, but does not explicitly link it to Amalek’s punishment. In Rashi’s commentary to Ex. 17:14, however, s.v. ketov zot zikaron and s.v. vesim beoznei yehoshua taken together appear to suggest that the reason for Amalek’s extermination is that it was the ﬁrst nation to conduct a military assault on Israel. Once Amalek had set a precedent for attacking Israel, others were prepared to follow. 22 Deut. 25:13–16. 23 Some other commentators note the juxtaposition, but, following Tanhuma, Ki Teitsei, 8, take its signiﬁcance differently, namely as indicating that one who is dishonest regarding weights and measures has reason to fear enemy attack. See, e.g., Rashi to Deut. 25:17; Bahya ad loc., s.v. zakhor et asher assah lekha amalek. Bahya also states that the words kol oseh avel (‘all who perform injustice’) are directly juxtaposed to the passage concerning Amalek in order to suggest that Amalek acted unjustly in travelling from afar for the purpose of attacking Israel. However, unlike Abarbanel, Bahya does not explicitly use Amalek’s injustice as justiﬁcation for its punishment. 24 Abarbanel, commentary to Deut. 25:17–19; emphasis supplied. 25 The other three features, according to Abarbanel, which all centre on Amalek’s evil conduct towards the Israelites, are: 1) Amalek’s attack was entirely groundless, lacking any conventional military or political justiﬁcation, such as the defence of its territory or even the desire for territorial expansion. 2) Amalek gave no warning of its assault but instead attacked suddenly. 3) The attack was cowardly, focusing on the stragglers at the back of the Israelite camp. 26 Abarbanel’s putative justiﬁcation of the Amalek commandment thus removes part of the racial element of the moral difﬁculty with the commandment. Amalek is penalised not simply because it is Amalek but because of its actions, and anyone committing similar offences would be similarly punished. However, another racial component of the moral difﬁculty, one which Abarbanel fails to resolve, is the mandated killing of non-participants in the military attack on the Israelites merely in virtue of their being Amalekites. Moreover, any racial element aside, Abarbanel’s attempted moral justiﬁcation fails to explain why those who have not committed any ‘injustice’ or ‘abomination’ – i.e. every Amalekite throughout history who did not participate in the battle against the Israelites – should be punished.

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27 Commentary to Ex. 17:16; emphasis supplied. 28 Nachmanides does brieﬂy add, immediately following the passage cited, the further reason for Amalek’s punishment that as descendants of Esau and therefore family relatives, the Amalekites should certainly not have needlessly attacked the Israelites. However, Nachmanides’s emphasis appears to be on Amalek’s sin against God rather than its sin against Israel. 29 R. Ovadiah Sforno, Italy, c. 1470–c. 1550. 30 Commentary to Deut. 25:19. For similar views which focus solely on Amalek’s attitude towards God as the justiﬁcation for its punishment, see Ibn Ezra, commentary to Ex. 17:14 (Long Version), s.v. ki maho emhe; Hizkuni ad loc., s.v. et zeher amalek. 31 Sagi (1994), p. 327. 32 The point that I am arguing here in some ways parallels my discussion at various earlier stages in this study, e.g. my analysis of Talmudic challenges to God’s commands in Chapter 4, section 4.2.b(iii) and my discussion in Chapter 6, section 6.3 of possible motivations for moral neutralisation of God’s command to Abraham in Genesis 22 to sacriﬁce Isaac. 33 Ex. 20:13; Deut. 5:17. 34 Cf. Chapter 4, n. 16, end. 35 Sagi (1994), p. 330. 36 Sagi discusses several different types of metaphorical approach under the rubric of ‘the symbolic trend’, including kabbalistic and psychological understandings of the Amalek commandment. I shall not discuss these approaches in detail, since what I say about the signiﬁcance of Hirsch’s reading of the commandment for DCT/SMU applies to these other metaphorical understandings also. 37 Hirsch (1982) (vol. 2, Exodus), 2nd edn, p. 234. 38 Ibid., p. 232. 39 Loc. cit. 40 Hirsch (1982) vol. 2, p. 235. 41 Loc. cit. 42 Hirsch (1982) (vol. 5, Deuteronomy), p. 523. 43 Sagi (1994), p. 336. 44 Loc. cit. 45 Germany, thirteenth century. 46 Hagahot Maimoniyot to Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim 5:5; emphasis supplied. 47 Mekhilta to Ex. 17:16, cited in Kasher (1951), p. 273. 48 Often known as Radvaz, c. 1480–1573, Spain/Egypt/Israel. 49 Radvaz to Hilkhot Melakhim 5:5. 50 Deut. 23:4. 51 Yadayim 4:4. 52 The Mishna relies on Isaiah 10:13 in support of this claim. 53 Poland, 1800–1875. 54 ‘Kol deparish, meruba parish’. According to this halakhic principle, if an individual item becomes separated from a group of items which were mixed up, the individual item is assumed to belong to the majority component of the mixture. Thus, since all nations are intermingled and most people are not of Amalekite origin, any particular individual person is assumed to belong to the non-Amalekite majority. This renders the Amalek commandment totally non-applicable in practice. 55 Babad (5748–5751), vol. 3, commandment 604 (p. 425). See also Hirschensohn (5679), vol. 1, pp. 32–33. Sagi also cites in this connection Rabbi Hayyim Falaggi (1788–1896), Einei Kol Hai (1888), p. 73 (commentary to B.T. Sanhedrin 96b). It seems to me, however, that in this passage Falaggi is merely attempting to reconcile the apparent contradiction between Sanhedrin 96b (cited below), which implies that Amalekites may be accepted as converts to Judaism, and a passage in the Mekhilta

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56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

72 73 74

75 76

which rules against the admission of descendants of Amalek as converts. It is in this context that he invokes ‘the Sennacherib principle’; it is far from clear that he intends to rule halakhically that the Amalek commandment no longer applies. Soloveitchik (1982), pp. 49–50, and loc. cit., n. 23. Sagi does very brieﬂy mention this famous essay of Soloveitchik’s in a footnote reference (Sagi (1994), p. 332, n. 28) in a related but different connection. Deut. 20:16–17. Hilkhot Melakhim 5:4. Hilkhot Melakhim 5:5. Ex. 17:16. Soloveitchik offers as an example the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s. Hilkhot Melakhim 6:1. Hilkhot Melakhim 6:4; emphasis supplied. Provence, 1120–1198. Hassagot Haraavad to Hilkhot Melakhim 6:4. Some commentators on Mishneh Torah argue that Maimonides, in fact, agrees with the position of Raavad: see, e.g., R. Yosef Karo, Kessef Mishneh ad loc. Sagi (1994), p. 342. Loc. cit. Blidstein (1983), p. 220. Maimonides (1967), vol. 1, pp. 200–203 (Positive Commandments 187 and 188). Ibid., p. 204 (Positive Commandment 190). R. Hayyim Heller, in his edition of Maimonides’s Sefer Hamitzvot (New York: Mossad Harav Kook, 1946), p. 82, n. 11, interestingly suggests that Maimonides does not interpret the Amalek commandment conditionally even in ch. 6 of Hilkhot Melakhim. The Hebrew phrase in 6:4 that I translated above as ‘who do not make peace’ is shelo hishlimu, which can also be rendered ‘who did not make peace’. Heller argues that, rather than ruling that the Amalekites are to be offered the terms of peace before any military attack upon them, Maimonides is merely attempting to explain why the Torah is so severe on Amalek and mandates its extermination – i.e. because they did not accept the terms of peace. On Heller’s view, Maimonides does not necessarily commit himself to any future restrictions on the Amalek commandment. As Sagi points out, however ((1998), p. 223), the plausibility of Heller’s novel reading of Maimonides is undermined by the fact that the Torah makes no reference to an historical peace offer to Amalek by the Israelites. Section 6.3. Section 4.2.f. Sacks points out that ‘[t]he halakhic literature, like other legal literature, generally hides its underlying evaluations. It is concerned to demonstrate that its conclusions follow from the antecedent sources, and that apparently conﬂicting texts neither contradict nor compromise the judgement reached’ (Sacks (1993), p. 121). This tendency of halakhic literature in general to conceal its root motivations highlights the hazardous and speculative nature of attempts to ascribe such motivations. Sagi (1994), p. 339. Similar considerations apply to Sagi’s analysis of the signiﬁcance of Maimonides’s conditional reading of the Amalek commandment in Hilkhot Melakhim. Sagi writes that ‘Maimonides . . . restricts textual instructions so as to reconcile them with basic moral assumptions . . . This attempt at accommodation shows that morality operates as an autonomous factor and, furthermore, points to an inverted relation of dependence, whereby religion depends on morality rather than morality on religion. God’s command, as well as the norms ﬂowing from it, are now reinterpreted in this light’ ((1994), pp. 344–345). Even if Sagi is correct that Maimonides’s limitation on the Amalek commandment in Hilkhot Melakhim is based on unstated moral premises, it

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77 78 79 80 81 82 83

84 85

is quite plausible that these premises are grounded in revelation. Interestingly, Sagi at times lapses into formulations which appear to concede this, for example: ‘Maimonides’s moral interpretation is in accordance with the spirit of the Torah and its fundamental premises regarding human justice’ (p. 344); and ‘advocates of the moral approach rely not only on their moral intuitions but also on textual sources . . . the claim that “every man shall die for his own sin”, a prime justiﬁcation of Maimonides’ rulings, is a biblical verse’ (p. 345). Unless Sagi can show that the Torah’s statements about justice merely inform us about some of the contents of an independent morality, there is no reason why such statements cannot be understood in accordance with DCT. Deut. 21:18–21. Section 4.2.f. B.T. Sanhedrin 71a (cited above, Chapter 4, n. 36) and parallels. A similar statement is made about the law of the ir hanidahat (idolatrous city) (Deut. 13:13–19), loc. cit. Cf. Chapter 4, n. 36. Sagi and Statman (1995a), p. 58. Section 4.2.b(iii). Statman (in conversation, 14 May 2000) still insists that objections like that of R. Shimon assume SMU, since along with passages that prohibit murder and mandate respect for human life, the Torah contains items such as the Amalek commandment which instruct us to kill the innocent. Thus, the content of revealed morality is ambiguous, and R. Shimon could not base his objection upon it. However, it seems to me that a fair reading of the Torah reveals that respect for human life is the rule, and items such as the Amalek commandment the exceptions which require explanation (see also my ‘Concluding Remarks’). Thus, R. Shimon might indeed base his objection on revealed morality. Statman replies that R. Shimon’s objection is stronger if it is interpreted as stemming from commitment to SMU, for if it stems from revealed morality, all that R. Shimon is, in effect, doing is pitting some Torah commands against others. Again, this seems to me unconvincing. R. Shimon might still plausibly be read as saying that the thrust of revealed morality as he understands it and his revelation-formed moral intuitions lead him to object to the law of ben sorer umoreh. Sagi (1994), p. 338. This claim is intended to cover the Mishna and the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds. The word ‘Amalek’ appears twice in the Mishna, in Megillah 3:6 and Kiddushin 4:14. In the Babylonian Talmud, it appears in the following places (excluding references to the Mishna): Berakhot 58a; Shabbat 56b; Shabbat 118b; Yoma 22b (the passage discussed in Chapter 5, section 5.2.a); Megillah 31a; Bava Batra 21b; Bava Batra 46b (as a mnemonic); Sanhedrin 20b (four occurrences); Sanhedrin 99b; and Zevahim 116a (two occurrences). In the Palestinian Talmud, ‘Amalek’ occurs (excluding references to the Mishna) in Rosh Hashanah 3:8; Taanit 4:3; Megillah 1:11; Megillah 4:2; and Kiddushin 4:11. In none of these places is any limitation on the Amalek commandment suggested. In one source not included in the above list, the Talmud states that ‘the descendants of Haman studied Torah in Bnei Brak’ (B.T. Sanhedrin 96b; the same teaching is quoted in B.T. Gittin 57b). This does appear to limit the applicability of the Amalek commandment, since it suggests that descendants of Amalek were accepted as converts to Judaism (Haman is traditionally regarded as descended from the Amalekite king Agag) – something that would of course be impossible if the directive to destroy them had been followed. As Sagi ((1994), p. 338) himself concedes, though, ‘this passage, which is basically an aggadah (a nonhalakhic text), can hardly be viewed as a matching counterpart’ to the Talmudic passages which place no restriction on the Amalek commandment and indeed often support its literal interpretation.

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CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS 1 This is to disagree with Roth’s (overly) sanguine view that for traditional Jewish interpreters, ‘the Torah is a law of life and kindness and love and decency and pity. This being the guiding principle, what ever appears contrary to it must be explained away. And it was explained away . . . [this] supreme principle is followed consistently throughout’ (Roth (1999), p. 138, p. 141; emphasis in original). 2 An example is Deut 25:12–19. Deut. 25:12 states that the hand of a woman who seizes the private parts of a man who is ﬁghting with her husband is to be amputated (the Halakhah commutes this to monetary compensation). Deut. 25:13–16 commands the use of honest weights and measures. Deut. 25:17–19 contains the Amalek commandment. 3 Cf. MacIntyre (1981), ch. 2, esp. pp. 6–10. 4 Near the end of Sagi’s book, this ﬁnally becomes almost explicit in his brief remark that ‘this book is an attempt to direct autonomous moral consciousness anew in the face of a reality in which, sometimes, it is precisely religious commitment that causes the dimming or the eradication of moral sensibility’ (p. 352). 5 Sagi and Statman (1995a) develop the idea that a stress on obedience to God sometimes leads to an (in their view) unjustiﬁed espousal of DCT. Cf. Sagi (1998), ch. 1. 6 Kaplan (1992).

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Except where stated otherwise, all references in the text and footnotes to the Mishna, Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, Tosefta, Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah and R. Jacob ben Asher’s Arbaah Turim are to the standard editions.

Talmudic and Midrashic literature Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Kiddushin. Trans. into Modern Hebrew by Adin Steinsaltz. Jerusalem: The Israel Institute for Talmudic Publications, 1989. Mekhilta DeRabbi Ishmael. Edited by H. Horowitz and I.A. Rabin. Jerusalem: Bamberger and Wahrman, 1960. Midrash Rabbah on the Torah and the Five Megillot. 2 vols. Vilna: The Widow and Brothers Romm, 5638. Tanhuma. Edited by S. Buber. Vilna: The Widow and Brothers Romm, 1913. Sifra (Torat Kohanim). Edited by Isaac Hirsch Weiss. Vienna: 1865. Reprint: New York: Om Publishing Company, 1946.

Biblical, Mishnaic and Talmudic commentary Targum Onkelos (Onkelos, second century, Aramaic translation/paraphrase of the Torah) and the Torah commentaries of Rashi, Rashbam, Sforno, Ibn Ezra, Nachmanides, Saadia, Kimche and Hizkuni are in Mordechai Katzenellenbogen (ed.), Torat Hayyim [Hebrew]. 7 vols. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1986–1993. Targum Jonathan (c. seventh century) and the commentary of Ibn Ezra to Hosea are in Mikraot Gedolot, Nach [Hebrew]. Vol. 8, New York: A.I. Freedman, 5726. The commentary of Rabbi Ovadiah of Bertinoro and the commentary Tosafot Yom Tov are printed in the standard editions of the Mishna. The following Talmudic commentaries are printed in the standard editions of the Babylonian Talmud: Rashi, Tosafot and Maharsha. Abarbanel, Isaac. Perush Abarbanel al HaTorah [Hebrew]. 5 vols. Edited by Avishai Schotland. Jerusalem: Horev, 5757. –––– . Perush al Neviim Ukhetuvim [Hebrew]. Tel Aviv: Abarbanel, 5720. Asher ben Yehiel. Tosafot HaRosh [Hebrew]. 3 vols. New York: S. Willman, 5738. Bahya ben Asher. Rabbenu Bahya al HaTorah [Hebrew]. Edited by C. Chavel. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 5742. Ephraim Shlomo ben Hayyim of Luntshitz. Kli Yakar. In Mikraot Gedolot [Hebrew]. 5 vols. New York: A.I. Freedman, 5731.

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Falaggi, Hayyim. Einei Kol Hai [Hebrew]. Izmir: n.p., 1888. Hirsch, Samson Raphael. The Pentateuch translated and explained by Samson Raphael Hirsch. 5 vols. Trans. by Isaac Levy. Gateshead: Judaica Press, 1982. Ibn Attar, Hayyim. Or Hahayyim. In Mikraot Gedolot [Hebrew]. 5 vols. New York: A.I. Freedman, 5731. Kasher, M.M. (ed.). Torah Shelemah [Hebrew]. Genesis vol. 3, part 2, Jerusalem: The Society for the Publication of the Encyclopedia Humash Torah Shelemah, 1934. –––– . Torah Shelemah [Hebrew]. Exodus, vol. 14, New York: American Biblical Encyclopedia Society, 1951. Levin, Zvi Hirsch. Pirkei Avot im Perush Lehem Shamayim [Hebrew]. Berlin: D. Friedlander, 1834. Lifshitz, Y.H. (ed.) Sanhedri Gedolah [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Harry Fischel Institute, 1968. Maimonides, Moses. Commentary to the Mishna. In Babylonian Talmud. Vilna: Romm, 1895. –––– . Hakdamot Leperush Hamishna [Hebrew]. Edited by Mordekhai D. Rabinowitz. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 5721. Meir Leib ben Yehiel Michael (Malbim). Perush Malbim al Tanakh [Hebrew]. 4 vols. Jerusalem: Pardes, 1956. Meir Simhah Hakohen of Dvinsk. Meshekh Hokhmah [Hebrew]. 3 vols. Edited by Judah Copperman. Jerusalem: Michlalah-Jerusalem College for Women, n.d. Moskowitz, Yehiel. Daat Mikra [Hebrew] commentary to Numbers. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1988. Nachmanides, Moses. Hiddushei Haramban [Hebrew]. 2 vols. Jerusalem, 1928. Reprint: New York: Hayyim Uverachah, 5727. Nissim Gaon. Sefer Hamafteah Lemanulei Hatalmud [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Machon Lev Sameach, 1990. Yehudah Aryeh Leib of Gur. Sefat Emet. 2 vols. Jerusalem: n.p., 5731. Yom Tov ben Avraham Ishbili. Hiddushei Haritva [Hebrew]. 3 vols. Munkacs: Kahn and Fried, 1908.

Jewish thought and philosophy Albo, Joseph. Sefer Ha-Ikkarim. Trans. by Isaac Husik. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1929. Halevi, Judah. Book of Kuzari. Trans. by Hartwig Hirschfeld. New York: Pardes Publishing House, 1946. Hirsch, Samson Raphael. Horeb: A Philosophy of Jewish Laws and Observances. 2 vols. Trans. by Isidor Grunfeld. London: The Soncino Press, 1962. Horowitz, Aaron Halevi (of Starosselje). Shaarei Hayihud Veemunah [Hebrew]. Shklov: n.p., 1820. Karelitz, Abraham Isaiah (Hazon Ish). Al Inyanei Emunah, Bitahon Veod [Hebrew]. Tel Aviv: S. Greeneman, 5744. Kook, Abraham Isaac. Orot Hakodesh [Hebrew]. 3 vols. Jerusalem: Agudah Lehotzaat Sifre Haraayah Kook, 1938–1950. –––– . Olat Raayah [Hebrew]. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1962. –––– . Orot HaTorah [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Hoshen, 5733. Maimonides, Moses. Eight Chapters (Shemonah Perakim). In Hakdamot Leperush Hamishna [Hebrew]. Edited by Mordekhai D. Rabinowitz. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 5721. –––– . The Guide of the Perplexed. 2 vols. Trans. by Shlomo Pines. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963. –––– . Maimonides’ Treatises on Logic. Trans. and edited by Israel Efros. New York: American Academy of Jewish Research, 1938.

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Saadia Gaon. The Book of Beliefs and Opinions. Trans. by Samuel Rosenblatt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955. –––– . The Book of Theodicy (Commentary on the Book of Job). Trans. by L.E. Goodman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. Yehuda Loeve ben Betzalel (Maharal). Tiferet Yisrael. Jerusalem: n.p., 1972. –––– . Netivot Olam [Hebrew]. 2 vols. Edited by Hayyim Pardes. Tel Aviv: Machon Yad Mordechai, 5742–5748.

General philosophy and theology Adams, Marilyn McCord. ‘The Structure of Ockham’s Moral Theory’. Franciscan Studies 46 (1986), pp. 1–35. Adams, Robert M. ‘A Modiﬁed Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness’. In Gene Outka and John P. Reeder (eds), Religion and Morality. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1973, pp. 318–347. Reprinted in Paul Helm (ed.), Divine Commands and Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981, pp. 83–108 (all page references in the current volume will be to the reprinted version). –––– . ‘Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief’. In Cornelius F. Delaney (ed.), Rationality and Religious Belief. Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 1979, pp. 116–140. –––– . ‘Divine Command Metaethics Modiﬁed Again’. Journal of Religious Ethics 7:1 (Spring 1979a), pp. 66–79. Reprinted in The Virtue of Faith. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 128–143. Extract reprinted as ‘Divine Command Metaethics as Necessary a posteriori’ in Paul Helm (ed.), Divine Commands and Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981, pp. 109–119. –––– . ‘Divine Commands and the Social Nature of Obligation’. Faith and Philosophy 4 (1987), pp. 448–461. Alston, William P. ‘Some Suggestions for Divine Command Theorists’. In Alston, Divine Nature and Human Language. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989, pp. 253–273. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Trans. by Thomas Gilby et al. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode and New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964–73. Austin, John. The Province of Jurisprudence Determined and The Uses of the Study of Jurisprudence. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998. Brown, Patterson. ‘God and the Good’. Religious Studies 2 (1967), pp. 269–276. Brunner, Emil. The Divine Imperative. Trans. by Olive Wyon. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1947. Burch, Robert. ‘Objective Values and the Divine Command Theory of Morality’. New Scholasticism 54 (1980), pp. 279–304. Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. 2 vols. Trans. by Henry Beveridge. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1962. Clark, David W. ‘Voluntarism and Rationalism in the Ethics of Ockham’. Franciscan Studies 31 (1971), pp. 72–87. Clark, Stephen R.L. ‘God, Good and Evil’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 77 (1977), pp. 247–264. –––– . ‘God’s Law and Morality’. The Philosophical Quarterly 32 (1982), pp. 339–342. Copleston, Frederick. A History of Philosophy. Vol. 3, Tunbridge Wells: Search Press, 1953. –––– . A History of Philosophy. Vol. 2, London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1959. Cudworth, Ralph. A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality. London: J. and J. Knapton, 1731. Descartes, René. Philosophical Letters. Trans. and edited by Anthony Kenny. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970. Ewing, Alfred C. ‘The Autonomy of Ethics’. In Ian Ramsey (ed.), Prospect for Metaphysics. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961, pp. 33–49. Extract reprinted in J.M. Idziak

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Other literature The following commentaries to Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah can be found in the standard editions of that work: Hagahot Maimoniyot, Radvaz, Hassagot Haraavad and Kessef Mishneh. Alter, Robert and Frank Kermode (eds). The Literary Guide to the Bible. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987. Babad, Yosef. Minhat Hinukh [Hebrew]. 3 vols. Jerusalem: Machon Yerushalayim, 5748–5751. Brown, Francis, S.R. Driver and C.A. Briggs. Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Fishbane, Michael. Text and Texture: Close Readings of Selected Biblical Texts. New York: Schocken, 1979. Hadas, Moses (ed. and trans.). The Third and Fourth Books of Maccabees. New York: Ktav, 1976. Hirschensohn, Hayyim. Malki Bakodesh [Hebrew]. 6 vols. St Louis, Missouri: Moinester Printing Co., 5679. Maimonides, Moses. Sefer Hamitzvot. Trans. by Charles B. Chavel as The Commandments. 2 vols. London: The Soncino Press, 1967.

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Also Sefer Hamitzvot [Hebrew]. Edited by Hayyim Heller. New York: Mossad Harav Kook, 1946. Sarna, Nahum M. Understanding Genesis. New York: Schocken, 1970. Sefer Hahinukh [Hebrew]. 2 vols. Edited by Yitzhak Y. Weiss, David Zicherman and Yitzhak Weinstein. Jerusalem: Machon Yerushalayim, 5752. Spiegel, Shalom. The Last Trial. Trans. by Judah Goldin. New York: Pantheon Books, 1967. Walzer, Michael. Exodus and Revolution. Basic Books, 1985.

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1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5111 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 44111

INDEX

Abarbanel, Don Isaac 110–11, 139–40, 164, 167, 185, 187, 191 Abraham 44, 157, 183; and Akedah 39, 120–32, 161, 186, 187–90; in Genesis Eighteen and Genesis Twenty 31, 59–67, 70, 77, 94, 164, 166, 167–8 Abulaﬁa, R. Meir Halevi 98 Adams, Marilyn 27, 29 Adams, Robert 1, 15, 17–19, 32–5, 156–8, 162–3 Akedah 2, 138, 147, 151, 163, 186–91; biblical text 120–9; interpretations of 129–33; Leibowitz on 37–9 Albo, R. Yosef 24, 159 Amalek 103, 105–6, 113–15, 120, 151–2, 182–3, 190–5; biblical text 134–6; interpretations of 136–50 Aquinas 24, 121, 155, 159, 187 Austin, John 6, 31–2, 157, 162 autonomy 32, 93, 120, 122, 140, 142, 155, 162, 164, 173, 178, 180, 193–4

Carlebach, Alexander 52–3, 67–8, 166, 171–2 Clark, David 29, 161 Clark, Stephen 32, 162 conﬂict thesis 39, 49, 95, 151, 161–2, 164; and Akedah 122–3, 127–36, 187–90 Copleston, Frederick 43, 161 Cudworth, Ralph 32, 157, 162

Babad, R. Yosef 144–5, 147, 192–3 Bahya ben Asher 58, 132, 191 ben sorer umoreh 84, 148–9, 151, 176–7, 194 Berkeley, George 31, 162 Bleich, J. David 155 Brown, Patterson 121, 186 Brunner, Emil 50, 53, 71, 161, 165 Burch, Robert 32, 155–7, 162

Falk, Ze’ev 52–5, 166–7, 169, 172 Fox, Marvin 1, 41–2, 164, 168, 173, 182, 189; on Eruvin 100b 82–3, 177; on Genesis Eighteen 63, 65; on Maimonides 94–5, 179–80, 185; on natural law 155–6; on Saadia 88, 178

Calvin, John 1, 29–31, 162 Cambridge Platonists 32

Daniel the Tailor 80–1 Decalogue 34–5, 84, 110, 121, 130, 140, 147, 177 Derekh eretz 85, 99, 178 Descartes, René 24, 31, 159, 162 Duns Scotus, John 1, 27, 34, 39, 121, 160–1, 174, 187 Emden, R. Jacob 113, 179 Euthyphro Dilemma 3, 29, 46–8, 151, 157, 165 Ewing, A.C. 24, 159

Gellman, Jerome I. 120, 157, 186–7 Goldman, Eliezer 163–4 Goodman, Lenn 47–8, 163, 164–5, 188–9 Green, Ronald 131, 187, 189

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Halakhah 42, 44–5, 52, 84, 152, 163, 180, 195; and the Amalek commandment 143–50; and Hazon Ish 115–17, 185; and Maimonides 94–5, 180 Halbertal, Moshe 74–5, 89–90, 173, 178–9 Halevi, R. Judah 96–7, 119, 180 Hare, John 1, 34–5, 163 Hare, R.M. 155, 162, 166 Hart, H.L.A. 14, 158–9 Hartman, David 44–5, 105, 123, 153, 160, 163–4, 182, 187 Heller, R. Hayyim 193 Hirsch, R. Samson Raphael 117–19, 141–3, 186, 192

Leibowitz, Yeshayahu 18, 37–40, 122, 163–4, 187, 189 Levin, R. Zvi Hirsch 113–15, 190 Levine, Michael 35–6, 163 Lichtenstein, Aharon 1, 44–5, 164, 167, 176–8, 185; on Genesis Eighteen 59–61, 63–4; on Hazon Ish 116; and SMU 40–3, 72, 83, 156, 163 lifnim mishurat hadin 178 Locke, John 31, 162 Luther, Martin 1, 29–30, 39, 42, 161

Jacob ben Asher, R. 116 Jacobs, Louis 1, 52–3, 69–72, 153, 165–6, 167; on Daniel the Tailor 176; on Kabbalah 186; on Kiddushin 31a 110, 184–5; on Maimonides and the Akedah 189; on mamzerut 83; and SMU 48–50, 74, 163, 172–3, 178, 180 Jakobovits, Immanuel 1, 37, 40–1, 110, 164, 185 Job 70, 172, 177–8 justice 42–3, 46, 50, 70, 78, 94, 96, 100, 104, 116–18, 142, 170–1, 173–6, 181, 188, 194; and ben sorer umoreh 148–9; Calvin on 30–1; courts of 86, 171; emphasised by traditional Jewish sources 152; and Genesis Eighteen 59–66, 123, 166; and mamzerut 80–1 Kabbalah 160, 186 Kant, Immanuel 32, 155, 158–9, 162, 164, 185 Karelitz, R. Abraham Isaiah (‘Hazon Ish’) 115–17, 185 Kierkegaard, Søren 2, 122, 125, 132–3, 187–90 Kook, R. Abraham Isaac 87, 98–100, 108, 117–18, 181, 184 Korn, Eugene 124–5, 179, 181, 187–9 Leaman, Oliver 161, 178–80 Leibowitz, Nehama 61, 167–8

Maharal 85, 181 Maimonides 43, 45, 91–5, 119, 167, 179–80, 183–5; on the Akedah 189; and Amalek 144–6, 193–4; on Hosea 186; ruling on ir hanidahat 98; on sending away the mother bird 108 mamzer 80–1, 83–5, 147–9, 151, 176–7 Meir Simhah Hakohen of Dvinsk, R. 87, 100–1, 118, 181–2 mercy 50, 69, 96, 102, 107–8; deontological status of 168; and Genesis Eighteen 60–1, 64, 183–4 Meynell, Hugo 6, 24, 31, 155, 157, 159, 162 Moore, G.E. 15, 17, 158 moralisation 138, 141–2, 145–6 Moses 44, 77–9, 91, 105, 112–13, 137, 152, 168–71, 175, 183 motivation 58, 83, 91, 111, 142, 174, 185; for restrictions on morally difﬁcult commandments 147–9, 191–3 Murphy, Mark M. 157–8 Nachmanides: on Amalek 139–40, 192; on the Flood 97; on Genesis Eighteen 61, 64; on Kiddushin 31a 184; on Numbers 16:21 170; on sending away the mother bird 108, 184 neutralisation 129–30, 132–3, 138, 146, 192 Nissim Gaon 90 Oakley, Francis 29, 161 obedience 31–2, 111, 123, 126, 154, 166–7, 195

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INDEX

1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5111 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 44111

Ockham, William of 1, 27–9, 35, 161 ‘open question argument’ 16–17, 158 Ovadiah of Bertinoro, R. 112–13 Paley, William 6–7, 157–8 paradigm case argument 13–14 ‘penumbra’ cases 14, 158 Plato 1–3, 29, 169, 179 Price, Richard 32, 158, 162 Quinn, Philip 32, 121, 127, 156–8, 162, 187 Rachels, James 31, 66, 162, 188 Rashbam 63, 108, 137, 187–9 Rashi 174–5; on the Akedah 129–31, 188–9; on Amalek 137, 190–1; on Berakhot 33b 107–8, 183; on Genesis Eighteen 62–3, 168; on Genesis 26:5 173; on Leviticus 20:5 173; on Numbers 16:22 169; on Numbers 16:27 170; on Yoma 67b 73 rational laws 96–7, 179, 180 Reines, C.W. 105, 182 revelation 6–7, 11–14, 40–1, 43–5, 53–4, 56–8, 60, 65, 67–9, 74–5, 77–9, 81–2, 85, 87–92, 96–7, 99, 101, 104, 112–14, 140, 142, 147, 157, 176, 178, 181, 194; human moral knowledge independent of 119; inner 118; pre-Sinaitic 86, 171–2; prophetic 189 Rooney, Paul 16, 32, 158, 160–2, 182 Roth, Leon 191, 195 Saadia Gaon 12, 24, 87–90, 97, 158–160, 167, 178–79 Sacks, Jonathan 62, 165, 168, 193 Sagi, Avi 1–2, 11–12, 15–16, 18, 24–5, 39, 48–9, 70, 93, 112, 114–16,

119–20, 122, 151, 153, 155–6, 158–67, 172, 177–8, 179–82, 185–7; on Amalek 134, 136–8, 140–4, 146–9, 191–5; ignoring of biblical texts 50–2; on mamzerut 83–5; and SMU 72, 98, 102, 190 Saul 103–6, 135, 140, 144, 182, 190–1 ‘Sennacherib principle’ 144, 147, 193 Seven Noahide Laws 86–7, 101, 146, 171 Sforno, R. Ovadiah 140, 167, 190, 192 Shatz, David 181 shiluah hakan 108, 183 Socrates 3, 32, 165 Soloveitchik, R. Joseph B. 144–5, 189–90, 193 Soloveitchik, R. Moses 145 Spero, Shubert 1, 53–5, 85–6, 153, 164–7, 177–8, 187; and SMU 45–6, 50, 72, 163 Statman, Daniel 11–12, 15–16, 18, 24–5, 39, 48, 51, 70, 93, 112, 114–16, 119, 122, 148, 153, 155–65, 167–8, 172, 178, 179–80, 182, 185–7, 195; and SMU 102, 194 theodicy 70 Tosafot 109–10, 178–9, 184–5 Tosafot HaRosh 109, 184–5 Twersky, Isadore 1, 164, 179 Urbach, Ephraim 75, 173, 184 Urban, Linwood 29, 161 Wierenga, Edward 32, 156–8, 162 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 32, 162 worship 96, 111, 175–6 Wurzburger, Walter 88, 155, 163, 164, 178 Wyschogrod, Michael 121, 187

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