Tanach Thoughts

Another paper recommendation, this time a recent one by Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, who reviewed a volume dealing with the question of why Hashem is described in Tanach as uniquely greater and more powerful (and singular) than other (false) pagan deities, if in extra-biblical sources those other deities are described much in the same way as Hashem. I concur with him that this is a thorny, or at least somewhat thorny issue. I am weary of the whole topic of parallelomania - how far do the parallels between the Tanach (as well as later Jewish sources) actually go? I.e., are Jewish sources entirely unoriginal and are built in their entirety, or largely built on older pagan/non-Jewish sources? A popular modern explanation is that Jewish texts, particularly the Tanach, is built upon previous sources as a polemic technique to move Am Yisrael away from idolatry. However, as I said, I am weary of accepting that pretty much all of Tanach is just a tactic to get Yisrael away from idolatry, and tha...

 I was originally planning for the post title to be "Zecher Leyetziat Mitzrayim or Zecher Leyetziat Mitzrayim?" but you can't emphasize words in post titles, so I nixed that. This post is a callback to one of my very first posts, almost a year ago, here . I was troubled then by the implications of claims made by various people that basically the whole Torah was based on the culture and religion of other ancient nations, Egypt in particular. Well, actually, I wasn't really troubled by the implications. B"H my faith is strong. I was more troubled about the fact that more and more people were coming to accept this notion as though it was the simple, clear truth. The main problem I see is that not only it makes out Hashem to be a copyist and unoriginal, but it also seems to remove from the Torah its eternal aspect: How could it be eternal if everything in it came to reflect some such civilization that the Israelites had happened to come into contact with and decided ...