A novel argument for the existence of God is presented, based on demonstrating that prior to its puzzling emergence, the seven-day week was unimaginable, undesirable, and (socially) infeasible. Indeed, we argue that game theory reveals that the launch of a Sabbath-cycle, like the seven-day week initially was, cannot have occurred without extra-human support. The argument gains additional force by a) noting how the Pentateuch is an insightful "sociological witness" to the infeasibility of the Sabbath-cycle's inauguration; b) integrating it with the (weaker, but complementary) Kuzari argument, on the infeasibility of propagating a false myth of mass revelation; c) considering two unattested possibilities-that a human king might legislate a Sabbath- cycle and that it might emerge via an iterated game; and d) noting theologically attractive features of the argument, including that the week's spread means that a divine gift to one people became a blessing for humankind.
Abstract The theory of the election that has emerged up until this point of the book is an amalgamation of Rabbi Sacks’ Two-Track Model with the Genesis and Priesthood Models of the Bible. In this chapter, we examine how well this amalgamated theory sits alongside the Rabbinic data mined in Part II of the book. In all respects but one, the fit turns out to be very snug indeed. The only contentious consequence of our theory is that it must reject the cosmic-eternal school of Rabbis in favour of the historical-relative school. The chapter then goes on to contend that if one is willing to embrace the wackiness of Hassidic idealism, then this one contentious consequence of our theory of the election will evaporate. This is because the Hassidic idealist has the resources to reconcile the debate between these two Rabbinic schools.
Abstract Our historical survey has unearthed two medieval schools of thought: (1) the reductionism of Saadya Gaon and Maimonides; and (2) the expansionism of Rabbi Yehuda Ha-Levi. This chapter argues that both schools, which conflict with so much of the Biblical narrative and Rabbinic thought, are a response to the same philosophical problem. All three of these medieval thinkers were committed to an impersonal theology according to which God is not a personal being who can enter into interpersonal relationships, nor is He the sort of being who can respond in real time to the unfolding events of history. This chapter charts how that one assumption—i.e., that God isn’t a person—gives rise to both revisionary schools of thought. The chapter then seeks to undermine that assumption, to free Jewish philosophy from the spectre of these extremely revisionary theories of the election.
Russell’s An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry (1897) certainly has the appearance of an idealist tract. In the face of challenges posed by non-Euclidean geometry Russell proposed to update Kant’s doctrine that geometry is a priori by claiming that it is projective rather than Euclidean geometry which is a priori. Russell relies on the transcendental argument that we cannot have experience of numerical diversity unless the axioms of projective geometry apply to the diverse things experienced. But, the authors argue, it is a mistake to interpret Foundations as an idealist tract. It is neither idealist nor realist but metaphysically agnostic—because Russell leaves open whether the diversity of things experienced is ideal or real. The authors’ interpretation shows that the development of early analytic philosophy was as much evolution as revolution. Russell did not shift abruptly from idealism to realism but only via a state of agnosticism.
Abstract If we agree to treat the Hebrew Bible as a coherent and unified document, then we cannot ignore the narrative frame within which all of its stories occur. That narrative frame is what bookends the Bible’s other narratives. The first part of that frame is constituted by the first 11 chapters of Genesis, which are saturated with universalist themes, and its contention that all of humanity descends from a common origin and is created in God’s image. The second part of the Bible’s narrative frame is constituted by the prophets’ description of eschatological peace in the end of days. When one commits resolutely to reading the Bible’s narratives as taking place within that frame, a much less parochial and more ethically satisfying picture begins to emerge.
Abstract In Chapter 15, our survey turns to the work of Moses Maimonides. As with Saadya Gaon, it is surprising how little emphasis Maimonides places on the notion of the election. What emerges, once the pieces are put together, is the following picture. God didn’t choose Abraham. Rather, Abraham discovered God and rose to the status of a prophet through his own merit. The Jews are lucky to descend from such a person and to inherit, from him, and from Moses, knowledge of the true religion. This knowledge will eventually spread to encompass all people. In a sense, it isn’t the Jews who were chosen, but the Jewish religion itself; a religion that will one day be the inheritance of all of humanity. This chapter presents this Maimonidean theory of the election and subjects it to scrutiny.
Abstract The Zohar, and the mystical tradition that it helped to establish, are integral parts of the Oral Torah, and yet they seem to be rife with supremacism and racism. This chapter documents this troubling phenomenon and then responds with three considerations: (1) just because we recognize that the mystical tradition is an integral part of the Oral Torah doesn’t mean that we have to accept all of its teachings; (2) the teachings in question (taken at face value) are dangerously close to the Gnosticism that Rabbinic Judaism vehemently rejected; and (3) the mystical tradition itself is committed to a metaphysical monism according to which all of its racist-sounding pronouncements must be reinterpreted as referring to some sort of appearance that doesn’t truthfully reflect the underlying reality.
This paper explores the debate between F.H. Bradley and Bertrand Russell that helped to ignite the tradition of analytical philosophy in the English-speaking world. Bradley forcefully argued for existence monism. Russell equally forcefully argued for existence pluralism. My surprising contention is that the Jewish intellectual tradition has the resources to integrate both sides of their debate without contradiction.
Abstract This chapter examines two conflicting Rabbinic schools of thought regarding the election. The cosmic-eternal school argues that, in some sense or other, the election of Israel preceded the creation of the world. This view has very little support from Scripture but was widely endorsed by many of the great sages of the Talmud and Midrash. The historical-relative account, by contrast, argues that the election of Israel was a historical contingency that might never have happened, had history unfolded ever so slightly differently. This view is more robustly rooted in Scripture, but its Rabbinic supporters often took it to speculative extremes, suggesting—for example—that God only chose the Israelites by drawing lots, or that God offered the Torah to multiple nations but only the Israelites accepted. David Novak has tried to reconcile the two sides of this debate, but this chapter argues that he was unsuccessful. The debate remains open.
Abstract Part II of this book turns from the Bible to the Rabbis (roughly from the year 0 until 500 ce). It has sometimes been alleged that the Rabbis were racial supremacists. This was apparently evident in the ‘fact’ that they had one law for the gentile, and one law for the Jew; that they allegedly permitted a Jew to be kind to a gentile only if the Jew gets something in return; and that they would, purportedly, rather let a gentile die a painful death than desecrate the Sabbath. But these antisemitic canards against the Rabbis were either fabricated from nothing, or from scraps of the Talmud taken radically out of context. This chapter defends the Rabbis against these disturbing accusations and then outlines the extraordinary extent to which the Rabbis think that all Jews should be concerned for the welfare of gentiles.
Abstract Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all believe that God, at least at some point in time, had a special relationship with the ‘Children of Israel’. He reportedly freed them from slavery in Egypt and revealed the Torah to them through Moses, His prophet. The Jews are a remnant of the Biblical Children of Israel, and Judaism is a religion which traditionally presents itself as the Divine calling of that remnant. Understanding the doctrine of the election involves charting the terms and conditions of the special relationship that God is said to have with Israel. Once those terms and conditions are understood, a picture of the purpose of Judaism comes into focus, with its own understanding of what the Jews have been called upon to achieve. Grappling with the relevant Biblical and Rabbinic sources, and exploring the various understandings of the election that Jewish philosophers have developed over the centuries, this book seeks to provide compelling answers, on behalf of Jewish theology, to a number of thorny questions. Is the doctrine of the election inherently xenophobic and objectionably exclusionary? Is the doctrine compatible with belief in a just and loving God? Why were the Jews chosen? And why were all other people left out? What is Judaism’s attitude to those who were not chosen? What is Judaism for, and how might contemporary Jews better live up to the calling of their election? These questions, and more, form the backbone of this daring work of constructive analytic Jewish theology.
The standard history states: Bertrand Russell provided us with the basis for a systematic semantics for definite descriptions. Some have sought to develop this semantics; others have criticized it. A new emerging orthodoxy says otherwise. Russell’s theory of propositions, and their logical form, really had no connection to the philosophy of language at all. In this paper, I propose a compromise position. Russell wasn’t interested in providing a systematic semantics that led from sentences of a language to their semantic values, but that isn’t to say that he had no interest in meaning. He was interested not in what we would today call formal semantics, or even in pragmatics, but in the metaphysics of meaning.
In this article, an exercise in Jewish philosophy, I propose a taxonomy that can account for and organize all of the many species of holiness that we find in the Hebrew Bible. Each species admits of precise definition. Moreover, the genus as a whole can be unified by a guiding metaphor, suggested by the Bible itself. Holiness, according to this metaphor, is bestowed by a certain type of gaze, and ultimately by occupying the centre of the field of God's attention.
In this critical review I outline the three main themes of Gellman’s The People, The Torah, The God, and explore the extent to which it lives up to its subtitle, as a “neo-traditional Jewish Theology.” The book is a summary of three volumes of Gellman’s previous work. The summary and the trilogy make an important contribution to contemporary Jewish thought. On some matters, I argue, Gellman’s thinking is more traditional than he realises. But irrespective of whether his theories live up to his own subtitle, they are eminently worthy of our attention.
Saul Smilansky presents us with a puzzle which, in combination with a small number of premises, is supposed to generate a reversal of Pascal's wager: the wagerer should bet on a secular lifestyle, and reject religion, as the surest way of pleasing God (if God exists). In this article, we argue that the puzzle, once unpacked, isn't particularly puzzling, that the premises aren't true, and that Smilansky's wager is open to both reductio and a reversal of its own.
