Separate But "Equal" Weights And Measures

The antimissionary Moshe Shulman of Judaism's answer has been kind enough to respond to Michael L Brown's article called "Unequal Weights and Measures." In this article, Dr. Brown explains the gross double standard by which anti-Missionaries operate. Dr. Brown's article is here. My video summary of it is here.

In short, Jewish antimissionaries are willing to grant leniency when evaluating issues in the Tanakh which they are not willing to grant when evaluating the New Testament. They are quick to harmonize Exodus 20:8 which states "Remember the Sabbath" and Deuteronomy 6:4 which states "Guard the Sabbath" and harmonize them by saying "God said both at the same time."

However, these same anti-missionaries complain about the baptism of Jesus. Matthew 3:17 reads "This is my beloved son" while Mark 1:11 reads "You are my beloved son." They will shout: "holy crap. This is a major contradiction. How could you possibly think this is the word of God?" This reeks of a fallacy called special pleading, when you are willing to hold other views in extreme skepticism without applying it to your own.

Shulman has responded here, on his website. It's a short article, one that will only take a few minutes to read through. But let me give you a quick summary of his article in my own fake New York accent (which is apparently a really bad Joe Pesci impersonation):

Dr. Michael Brown has written an article stating that anti-missionaries criticize the New Testament in ways that they would never criticize their own Tanakh or Rabbinic literature. Brown argues that we should hold one standard for criticizing both the Tanakh and the New Testament. But that's no fun! Rabbinic Judaism came first. Therefore, we should begin with the assumption that Rabbinic Judaism is innocent until proven guilty, and that Christianity is guilty until proven innocent. There is nothing unfair about this method.

Secondly, Rabbinic Judaism and Evangelical Christianity interpret the Bible through different means. Because Rabbinic Judaism has a set of authoritative interpreters, they can address Biblical problems, such as harmonization, alledged misquation, and hyper-literality issues, and come up with solutions which can be accepted without question. However, because Christianity holds to a doctrine called "sola scriptura" which means that only the Bible is written by God, we can be as skeptical as we want to be regarding any Christian solution. After all, we, the Rabbis, get to decide how you Christians are allowed to interpret Scripture.

I'm then going to go through several sections of Michael Brown's article with this methodology.

For example, Judaism has an interpretation to reconcile "an eye for an eye" Evangelical Christianity has no authoritative teaching magesterium, and therefore is not allowed to give a non-literal interpretation. Judaism has a harmonization in its teaching magesterium for reconciling Geneis 1 and 2. Christianity does not. So Judaism wins again! Who killed Goliath? Judaism has an answer in Rabbinic Tradition. Christianity has no Rabbinic Tradition, so Christianity has no answer!

That's right, Christianity is bound to a literal interpretation because it doesn't have Rabbinic Tradition. Christianity is not allowed to harmonize. Christianity is not allowed to engage in non-literal interpretation. Christianity is not allowed to engage in textual criticism. Why? BECAUSE I SAID SO!!

I am not kidding when I say that this is basically how the article goes. Shulman is admitting that he is indeed holding a double standard, but then saying that it's okay for him to do that, because Rabbinic Tradition says it is. And since we all know for a fact Rabbinic Tradition is the absolute word of God, it is not even possible to argue that Rabbinic Tradition is incoherent or that any part of it is false. Shulman's case against Dr. Brown is circular. It assumes that the Tanakh and Rabbinic Tradition are from God, while the New Testament is not from God, in order to establish that the Tanakh and Rabbinic Tradition are from God, while the New Testament is not.

In the interest of charity, I am going to assume that Shulman is engaging in a type of presuppositional apologetics, specifically, a system where you hold up your worldview as a whole and then hold up your opponent's worldview as a whole. You then compare the two for internal consistency and correspondence with reality. I think that Shulman is taking the Rabbinic interpretive system as a whole, including its presupposition of an authoritative Rabbinic Tradition, and testing it against Biblical problems. Because this interpretive system begins with the assumption that the Tanakh and Rabbinic tradition are from God and are therefore infallible, it cannot be falsified from within the system. Shulman is then attempting to hold up Evangelical Christianity, testing it as well for internal consistency and correspondence with reality. Problem is, he is engaging in a straw man fallacy by misrepresenting the Evangelical position.

To those who read books on Evangelical Bible interpretation, such as in Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology, you'll notice that we bring several presuppositions to the text itself, which are considered authenticated by the inner witness of the Holy Spirit.

1 All 66 books of the Bible are Scripture
2 All Scripture is infallible and inerrant (incapable of being wrong)
3 Textual criticism, harmonization, and non-literal are perfectly valid as long as there is some justification for using them

And when you include these assumptions when evaluating the Christian system, all the Biblical problems posed by the anti-missionaries just disappear in a poof of logic. However, we soon realize that this system, too, is unfalsifiable when evaluated from within the system. So that when we compare the to systems, granting each its own internal assumptions, we quickly realize that there is no way of falsifying either.

But the two systems are irreconcilable. They cannot both be true, yet neither can be falsified from within. So how do we break the deadlock? By abandoning the assumptions of both systems, and holding both to some third standard. Problem is, when we do that, when we stop assuming divine authorship of our own texts, all of Dr. Browns arguments come right back on the table. It really is hypocritical to use liberal criticism of your opponent's worldview without letting your opponent use it of your view. It really is deceptive to say that the Tanakh gets a free pass for all its Bible difficulties, but the New Testament does not. There is no getting around it. If you want to compare the Rabbinic and Christian systems, the only way to do so fairly is to hold both systems to the same standard.

In short, Shulman's case is that Rabbinic tradition has an authoritative answer to every conceivable objection, while the New Testament does not. This response collapses the entire anti-missionary case into a single accusation: "You need a divinely inspired authoritative oral tradition in order to make sense of Scripture."

If this really is the anti-missionary case, is seems strange that they concentrate all their attacks on the New Testament. If the only problem is that Christianity lacks the authoritative Rabbinic tradition, as these Rabbis claim, then why not spread out your accusations over the entire Bible? There is plenty to attack in the Tanakh, and pointing out its difficulties as well will help the audience understand that the Rabbinic objection to the New Testament is not that there is anything inherently wrong in the text itself, but that the book does not have authoritative Rabbinic answers to its difficulties.

We know why the Rabbis do not do this. They avoid mentioning the Tanakh difficulties because they want to make it look like it is the text of the New Testament, not the lack of Rabbinic tradition that is the problem.