Paul Shaviv writes: "I am always struck when reading these two great magazines at the almost total absence of Orthodox Jewish scholars from the field. Why aren't we interested in archaeology?"
Very easy but very painful answer. To be Orthodox means to ignore scholarship on difficult issues such as the historicity of the Exodus, the literary composition of the Torah etc. To be a scholar (in the secular sense), means to be not Orthodox. Those who try to be both, like James Kugel and the other Bar Ilan Bible scholars, are being neither true scholars nor true Orthodox Jews.
Anyone who says they've reconciled Orthodox Judaism (or orthodox Christianity or any form of normative Islam) with modern scholarship (literary, historical, etc) is either ignorant, self-deceived or lying. Please list in the comments those scholars who you believe have reconciled the two. JB Soleveitchik, for instance, simply ignored Bible scholarship. He didn't rebutt it. He just ignored the Higher Criticism, as have most of his followers (and YU). One is welcome to ignore evidence, scholarship and truth. Just don't expect to be respected for doing so by those who value truth.
I talk to the best minds in Modern Orthodoxy in LA about these matters and they give me such fatuous answers as:
* The latest Bible scholarship no longer follows Julius Wellhausen and rejects the Documentary Hypothesis.
Well, yeah, Bible scholarship, like all other scholarship has advanced over the past 130 years, but not towards the doxy of Orthodoxy.
I ask for great Orthodox Bible scholars and I get the names of 19th Century Germans such as David Hoffman.
Some of Halacah is based upon faulty science. I wonder how many people want to get operated on by doctors following the medical dictates and cures of the Talmud?
It reminds me of talking to Christian Bible scholars. I ask them if the Apostle Paul knew Hebrew.
"Well, yes," they say. "He was a Pharisee. He was a student of Rabbi Gamliel."
"Really? How do you know?"
"Because he said so."
In fact, there is no evidence that Paul knew Hebrew, that he was a student of R. Gamliel, and there is considerable internal evidence from Paul's writings that he did not know Hebrew, was not a Pharisee, was not learned in Jewish text, and that his created religion of Christianity was a mixture of Hellenic mystery cults and other forms of paganism with a Hebraic gloss.
Joe Schick writes: To say that someone can't be Orthodox and a secular scholar who deals with "difficult issues" that question the Torah is an exaggeration. To be Orthodox need not be to "ignore scholarship."
On the issue of the Exodus, see the piece by Lawrence Schiffman, professor at NYU.
For an article about an Orthodox archeologist, see...
The Wicked Priest writes: "For a fantastic piece on this issue, see Prof. Moshe Bernstein's seminal piece in Torah UMadda Journal 3."
Shmarya writes: "Lawrence Schiffman's piece is frightening. He misstates the thesis of Biblical 'minimalists' in order to 'prove' his point. The is no evidence for any
armed conquest by Benei Yisrael as described in Yehoshua. 'Evidence' for the Exodus is also lacking. Then we come to the 'unchanged' Torah. Marc Shapiro has some interesting quotes from Rishonim that indicate a much higher degree of editing and compilation than most of us have been taught. The point is thar Schiffman's piece would be laughable, if it were not for the issue of his position. Clearly, what Luke wrote is true: In this day and age, one can either be an Orthodox Jew ***or*** a
Bible scholar (or archeologist, etc.), but not both. As Orthodoxy is currently (mis-)defined, there is no other choice. It's either the pusuit of truth or the defence of dogma. Always the apologist, Schiffman has chosen the latter."
