[Avodah] Open Orthodoxy, again

[Zev Sero]

On 31/07/2013 6:14 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 05:09:40PM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
>> This is exactly what the Malbim says about Devarim.  That Hashem took Moshe's
>> words, redacted them, and dictated His version to Moshe to write down.
>
> And the Abarbanel. I don't see the major chiddush, though. Nearly all
> of the seifer is a collection of speaches (and a poem) said by Moshe
> anyway.

The chidush is how it becomes Hashem's words: the words themselves were
originally Moshe's, but what we have is not a transcript of his original
words, it's an edited work in which the choice of which words to use and
which to cut, and in what order to arrange them, was Hashem's.   And, at
least in the Malbim's version, it was Hashem's redacted speech that Moshe
delivered that Rosh Chodesh Shevat.  The original material from which it
was crafted was 11 speeches Moshe had delivered over the course of the
39 years since Chorev.


> Saying that part of Bereishis was redacted from something Avraham wrote,
> or that the collection of scrolls dictated to Moshe in the midbar were
> then redacted together in Arvos Mo'av...

Is not in principle any different.


-- 
Zev Sero               A citizen may not be required to offer a 'good and
zev at sero.name          substantial reason' why he should be permitted to
                        exercise his rights. The right's existence is all
                        the reason he needs.
                            - Judge Benson E. Legg, Woollard v. Sheridan