According to traditional rabbinic chronology, God revealed the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai in the Hebrew year 2448, which corresponds to 1313 BCE. This event occurred 50 days after the Exodus from Egypt on the 6th day of the Hebrew month of Sivan. The prophet Ezekiel begins to prophesize in the year 593 BCE with his vision of the future Temple in the year 573 BCE. Between 720 and 740 years elapsed between Revelation on Mount Sinai and Ezekiel’s prophecy. On daf TB Menakhot 45 the rabbis had a problem with the book of Ezekiel. If this chronology is correct, how could Ezekiel contradict the earlier and more authoritative Revelation?
“The Gemara discusses the meaning of another difficult verse
in Ezekiel: “So says the Lord God: In the first month, on the first day of
the month, you shall take a young bull without blemish; and you shall purify [veḥitteita]
the Sanctuary” (Ezekiel 45:18). The Gemara asks: Since this verse speaks of
the first of Nisan, which is a New Moon, why does it state “you shall purify
[ḥitteita],” which indicates the sacrifice of a sin offering [ḥatat],
when in fact each of the two bulls sacrificed on the New Moon is a burnt
offering (see Numbers 28:11)? Rabbi Yoḥanan says: This passage is
indeed difficult, and in the future Elijah the prophet will interpret
it.” (Sefaria.org translation) Even though Rabbi
Yoḥanan couldn’t explain this contradiction Rav Ashi does.
“The Gemara
discusses the meaning of another difficult verse in Ezekiel: “The priests
shall not eat of anything that dies of itself, or is torn, whether it be fowl
or beast” (Ezekiel 44:31). The Gemara asks: Is it only the priests
who may not eat an unslaughtered animal carcass or an animal that was torn
and now has a wound that will cause it to die within twelve months [tereifa],
but an ordinary Jew may eat them? In fact, these items are
prohibited for consumption by all. Rabbi Yoḥanan says: This passage is
indeed difficult, but in the future Elijah the prophet will interpret
it.” (Sefaria.org translation) This time Ravina
reconciles the contradiction.
“The Gemara discusses the meaning of
another difficult verse in Ezekiel: “And so shall you do on the seventh of
the month for every one that errs, and for him that is simple; so shall you
make atonement for the house” (Ezekiel 45:20). The Gemara asks: What is the
meaning of the expression “on the seventh of the month”? There are no
special offerings that are sacrificed on the seventh day of any month.” (Sefaria.org translation)
This time Rabbi Yoḥanan is able to resolve the contradiction.
All these
and more contradictions raised serious concern by the rabbis. How could Ezekiel
contradict the Torah?! “The Gemara concludes the discussion of specific
difficult verses in Ezekiel with the following general statement: Rav Yehuda
says that Rav says: That man is remembered for good, and in is his name.
As were it not for him, the book of Ezekiel would have been suppressed and
not included in the biblical canon, because various details of its
contents appear to contradict statements of the Torah. What did
Ḥanina ben Ḥizkiyya do? He brought up to his upper story three
hundred jugs [garbei] of oil for light so that he could study even
at night, and he sat isolated in the upper story and did not move
from there until he homiletically interpreted all of those verses in the
book of Ezekiel that seemed to contradict verses in the Torah.” (Sefaria.org
translation)
“Hananiah
ben Hezekiah ben Garon was a 1st-century CE Tannaitic sage and
contemporary of the Houses of Hillel and Shammai, known for his instrumental
role in preserving the Book of Ezekiel. He is credited with reconciling the
book's contradictions with the Torah and is associated with the early, often
tumultuous, period of the Second Temple's end” (Wikipedia) TB Haggigah 13a records
another occasion on which Ḥanina ben Ḥizkiyya saved the book of Ezekiel from
being suppressed, that time for different reason.
These contradictions
disappear if one understands the documentary hypothesis that the Torah is a
collection of 4 sources, JEP and D[1]
compiled a different times. Many people believe that Ezra was the redactor who
put the sources together because he read the entire Torah to the people in
Jerusalem (See Nehemiah 8)
Yehezkel
Kaufmann writes in his book The Religion of Israel abridged and translated
by Moshe Greenberg:
“The laws
themselves are intended to bring up to date provisions of the Torah which had
by then become obsolete; they contain a series of novellae to an archaic code.
“Thus
Ezekiel supplies the law of the Temple to replace the obsolete tent-sanctuary
of P. Ezekiel’s Temple, however, has no ark; the ark served no purpose after
the stone tablets it housed were lost in the destruction. Ezekiel combines the
sanctuary plan of P with D’s idea of a fixed site, and for the first time
specifies the site of the sanctuary. It is Jerusalem, as he says expressly in
40:1 f. (cf, 43:2)
“… The
detail laws concerning the sanctuary, priests, and sacrifices diverge in many
ways from those of the Torah, but the divergence do not appear to have any
particular pattern. Here Ezekiel incorporated various bodies of the priestly
literature which contained the same sort of divergences from P as can be found
among the collections that make up P itself. This means only that at that time
the literature of P had not yet been crystallized into one book.” (Pages
444-445)
[1] J stands
for the source containing God's name YHVH (this theory originated in Germany
where they don't have the letter Y. In German God's name in translation is
Jehovah. E stands for the source that contains God's name as Elohim. P is the
Priestly code. D is the Deuteronomy source.
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