Is the Torah literature?

Lots of people want to treat the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, as another piece of literature. Sometime ago,
I considered this question of why our Torah is foundational to three religions. What is it about this
book that distinguishes it from all other books? How is it different from the Iliad, King Lear, Don
Quixote, or Finnegan's Wake? Whatever you think of as great literature, how is the Torah different?
I'm fighting really hard not to talk about the Torah as a book or as literature because it is like no other
book and it is not a literary creation. Yes, we talk about its writers, but what kind of writers could write
such an astounding work (notice I didn't say book)? Tradition ascribes the work to God. The Torah is
God's word transcribed by Moses. As Reform Jews, we quickly brush that explanation aside as fanciful.
But, why did our ancestors want us to believe that? Here's a guess: the Torah was so powerful, so rich
in meaning, so transformative, so beyond human capabilities, that the only explanation that made sense
was that it came from God. Otherwise, we would have to claim that our ancestors had a writer or
writers that was (were) more capable than any writers before them or since.
Biblical scholars claim that the Torah is a weaving together of various strands that were written
(collected?) from different sources over a long period of time. They know this from their ability to
decipher different writing styles reflecting different periods of Israelite history. They also identify
overlapping stories and themes, duplications, and textual errors.
I don't think we will ever know who wrote the Bible. What I do know is that it exists in a realm of its
own. It looks like narrative with it's texture of rich and meaningful stories and in that resembles a book.
It's also full of poetry. Yes, it has these literary elements. But it also has elements that no other literary
work aspires to. Take your favorite author as a example. What book of this author attempts to tell the
story of how the world came to be? Or what is man/humankind? What book makes an airtight case
for how we are to live? What book makes the case that humans were created in the image of God and
that these humans can be like God in the sense that God expects: I am holy and you shall be holy?
What book establishes a people, a people that has defied the odds of national/cultural survival?
Certainly not anything written by the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, Egyptians. True,
they wrote foundational myths, but no one continues to believe in their stories. They left behind records
of marvelous cultural achievements, but they are gone. They live in museums and books, and, yes,
they have become part of our culture.
Unlike these earlier cultures, Judaism, against all odds, is alive. Why? We like to say it is because of
the Book, the Book that we have carried with us for more than 2,000 years and to the far ends of the
earth. A Book we have been willing to die for, that has brought us unspeakable pain, and made us
outcasts and objects of derision. Is it a book in the sense of a work of literature? Who would be
willing to die over a copy of the Iliad, or King Lear, or any other book? The whole idea is preposterous.
There are only two other books that I know of that people have died for and continue to die for: The
New Testament and the Koran. Are they books in the sense of literary works? I don't think so. Their
believers consider them holy texts coming from God.
Like them, the Torah is not a piece of literature. It is something else that stands outside of literature,
perhaps even outside of time. It is a moral, ethical, and religious guide to how to live in a God-centered
universe, and is ultimately transcendent. It's truths are embedded in stories that we read again and
again, each time discovering new meaning. You don't have to take my word for it, ask any devout
Christian or Muslim. Ultimately, I believe, the Torah possesses meanings beyond our world, yes,

beyond our senses. It reaches out into the mysterious, the escatological. (No, we don't live in a sensate
world. If we did, we would be no higher than the animals. It is our human nature to venture beyond the
senses and explore the outer reaches of our minds and the unfathomable spaces that lie beyond and
within us.)