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Book review: Questioning Belief: Torah and tradition in an age of doubt by Raphael Zarum

by
27 September 2024

A nuanced rejection of biblical literalism and its perils, says Robin Gill

THIS book was recommended to me enthusiastically by Jewish friends; otherwise, I might have missed it. Their enthusiasm was thoroughly justified. It is a splendid book, by the Dean of the London School of Jewish Studies and holder of the Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Chair of Jewish Thought there.

The late, great Jonathan Sacks was also Dean at this academy before being appointed Chief Rabbi of Britain. Zarum matches Sacks’s written and oral articulacy, but he is bolder. Sacks (like Rowan Williams) always felt bound by his office to take a more conservative position on scripture or doctrine than he might otherwise have done. Raphael Zarum, thankfully, is not bound by the same constraint, and, as a result, is more open with his doubts and ready to admit inconsistencies within the Bible. He also, remarkably, has a Ph.D. from King’s College, London, in theoretical physics.

Sacks did make occasional use of the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides, particularly his Mishneh Torah, but Zarum uses his writings constantly, especially his more radical Guide for the Perplexed, together with modern critical biblical scholarship (which Sacks seldom made explicit). In the Guide, Maimonides, writing in Arabic in about 1200 CE, set out at considerable length the biblical anthropomorphisms about God (e.g. that God has a voice, hands, feet, etc.), arguing that they are metaphors and are not to be taken literally.

Zarum takes a similar line in his comparison of the accounts in Genesis of creation with current scientific cosmology, writing repeatedly that the former are “not to be understood completely literally”, especially when they clash with the latter. Maimonides, in his day, was just as bold in following a very similar position taken by Islamic philosophers such as Averroes (born, like Maimonides, in Córdoba), Avicenna and, earlier, al-Farabi. A century later, Aquinas was to follow suit, quoting these Jewish and Islamic scholars often with approval and, like them, using Aristotle/Plotinus (preserved in Arabic but, by then, translated into Latin).

Unsurprisingly, all of them in their day were regarded with considerable suspicion within their own faith traditions for colluding with “heretical” sources. Zarum, too, risks the wrath of the faithful, but he is clearly convinced that this is essential when relating to modern science and avoiding current religious extremism. He sets out, at some length, the way in which biblical literalism in the past gave support to slavery and continues to contribute to racism and exclusivism.

Throughout this attractive book, Zarum is conscious that he is writing for intelligent fellow Jews in an age of doubt: “We tend to expect people to either believe in God or not, or just to say they don’t know. We might ask them: ‘Do you believe in God or are you an atheist or an agnostic?’ But the truth is that we are not any of these consistently. They are not hard and fast categories.

“In life we move within and between them, traversing shades of devotion and skepticism, disillusionment and acceptance. And so religious doubt and despondency are not supressed in Judaism. On the contrary, the book of Psalms gives them a compelling voice.”

At another point, he explores the non-Jewish writings of Paul Tillich on God as Being (something that Sacks was more reluctant to do), while opting, in the end, for a more specifically Jewish idea of God as Presence or Shekina.

He also, frankly admits doubts about the effectiveness or credibility of prayer, concluding that, whatever else it does, regular corporate prayer moulds our characters: “It is faith spoken out loud, and it serves to focus our thoughts and fills out our days with purpose. . . In our prayers, we articulate our ideals. We give voice to our national hopes and aspirations. We express who we are as a people.”

In a more sceptical age, scriptural literalism — Jewish, Christian, or Muslim — blights both our credibility as people of faith and encourages sectarian distortions by our extremists. Zarum’s ongoing more nuanced contribution is very welcome indeed.

Canon Robin Gill is Emeritus Professor of Applied Theology at the University of Kent, and Editor of Theology.

Questioning Belief: Torah and tradition in an age of doubt
Raphael Zarum
Toby Press £22.99
(978-1-59264-619-7)

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