[Avodah] history

[Michael Makovi]

This thread started on Avodah, but traversed to Areivim, but my
comment has brought it back to Avodah. I will quote the comments from
Arevim, followed by my comment that has returned it to Avodah"

I (Mikha'el Makovi) said:
>>> I've never understood the objection, for example, to a certain Chumash
>>> narrative being stam history. If it has a lesson, yofi, but if not,
>>> what's the problem? Suppose there were no lessons to learn from the
>>> Avot and Imot - do you think that then you could dispense with their
>>> history? ...

R' Eli Turkel said:
>>  Not just Chazal... Look how paltry the biographies of the avos and
>>  Moshe Rabbeinu are. Missing decades in Avraham's life... not even his
>>  re-discovery of monotheism is covered. Large chunks missing from
>>  Moshe's life. No description of the majority of the time in the
>>  midbar.
>>
>> Or to rephrase Micah Chumash is not a history book or a science book

I (Mikha'el Makovi) responded tongue-in-cheek:
> Okay, so G-d disagrees with me too. Don't stop me now, I'm on a roll!

Now I will add:

But then I remembered Rav Hirsch to Bereshit perek tet, about Canaan's
sit with Noach, Rav Hirsch says that Canaan himself did nothing, but
that in retrospect, at matan Torah, we already knew Canaan's
licentiousness and sinfulness, and it is understandable, in
retrospect, given what Ham did; the mention of Canaan in Bereshit
there is then a historical retrospective by Moshe (okay okay, at G-d's
behest as Redactor!).

Now, Rav Hirsch explains all this saying that we had a TSBP of
history, not only halacha.

If I take this idea of his a bit further, we can say
that b'vadai, many things were not written in the Torah, but orally
they were still transmitted - not only halacha, but history too! You
think that Avraham's descendants didn't have stories of Avraham's
life of tzidkut, told by Avraham to Yitzchak to Yaakov etc.??!! Heck,
moreover, Avraham probably told a lot of mundane stories about funny
thing that happened when he watering his camels, and...

So perhaps the Torah only wrote the bare essentials, but I'd bet that
there was a lot more history of relevance that unfortunately got lost
along with so much more lost mesorah.

Mikha'el Makovi