It will be claimed here that Jewish and non-Jewish theologians and philosophers – such as Philo of Alexandria, Maimonides, Spinoza, Buber and others – have never been able to supply their students, laymen and philosophers with satisfactory definitions of God.

The same can be said of the writer and her own definition, though she begs the reader to read on, as she offers her own discoveries: discoveries which may be true.

Philo, Maimonides, Spinoza, Buber and non-Jewish theologians, philosophers and thinkers may be right.

In other words, it may be possible to say Philo et al are right.

Philo of Alexandria, Maimonides and Martin Buber were all mystics. Philo used allegory in order to understand who, what God was; Maimonides thought it best not to define God in any way but to get closer to doing so by asserting with negative statements what He was not – and then went ahead any way and gave Him positive characteristics and defined who He was via his own, negative approach.

However, it may also be possible to say, Their, the thinkers’, theses may be wrong.

If you say, It is possible to say they are right, it is possible to say both that It may be possible to say they are right/wrong to say they are right. And the same applies to the sentence in which it is said, It may be possible to say their theses are wrong.

In this way, like the branches, roots and offshoots of two trees which join together and form a third tree-object by so inosculating, a third tree-entity is created.

Not only does inosculation continue ad infinitum, the third tree-entity so created, when applied to the description of God, may be said to be possible or impossible, as above.

The third tree-entity may be inexplicable.

The ad infinitum characteristic is only applicable, in this case, to humans.

The writer’s approach, however, can also be seen through the same lens as that applied above to the philosophers, theologians and thinkers.

In other words, it can be said that It – the writer’s thesis – may/may not be possible.

Inosculation, when writing about two trees, can produce a third or more tree-objects which are either similar or different to the original tree-objects.

So too can it produce, in the world of human beings, better theories.

Maybe the writer’s theory is just such a theory, maybe not.

When talking about trees, it is not possible to say that inosculation can occur ad infinitum, because the space in which it happens is limited. When talking about the philosophical or theological spheres, it is possible; and the ad infinitive aspect casts an inexplicable net over the result.

In this way, the writer’s theory itself has an ad infinitive characteristic.

A theory may be wrong because succeeding theses prove it to be wrong or inadequate. It can also be wrong or inadequate for many other reasons. The above thesis, ie the author’s thesis, for example, may be wrong for these reasons. It may, in other words, be ousted from its place of honor by successive theories, as Moses Mendelssohn’s has been by the new theory propounded above.

Invented in circa 3,200 BCE, writing came to replace oral traditions which, with the Jews, also meant that God – the reality and the concept – would be anthropormorphised and used to move a small nation – towards righteous and upright ways.

The Torah tells us that the Almighty, the Lord God, is so powerful that He created Earth: so weak that he tired after creating for six days.

Right from the start of the story, therefore, God was considered Creator whose ability to create worlds of earth and water, such as Earth, was limited to six days. The all powerful was, it would seem, as vulnerable as man, who He had fashioned out of clay and breathed life into.

Right from the start of the story then, the Torah presents us, its readers, with a contradiction – or, perhaps, concurrent possibilities, antimonies, to better explain the inexplicable. If so, this approach is then picked up and carried by Moses’s successors who themselves give multiple explanations of who, what, where, when and why God is.

Torahic antimonies abound. See the very first chapter of Genesis, of any Tanach, where God sees that His creation is good and moves on to the next stages. These include the creation of Adam and Eve for whom God’s creation is not so good. So God sees that His creation is good, His creation including the tree of knowledge, which sullies His creation.

Not only is His creation both good and, at the same time bad, but according to some commentators, in order to follow the righteous path, the bad had to be created in order that Adam and Eve knew that it was bad and to know what good was.

It can, however, also be inferred that God Himself is self-contradictory – the only conclusion that can be drawn when reading the Sodom and Gomorrah story. For in this part of Genesis, God starts by threatening to kill all its inhabitants and ends up by saving Lot and some of Lot’s family.

If, as is widely acknowledged, Moses was the author of the Torah, then by providing the reader, and Am Israel itself, all possible explanations of who God was, Moses provided himself an exit door should any or all turn out to disappoint.

But from Genesis through to Deuteronomy, moreover, Moses sees himself as an inadequate go-between, his speech impediment and the Israelites’ demands for immediate requittal making him dither himself.

Who can blame him when God Himself says one thing one day and does quite another the next.

Should the God of Abraham be taken at His word? How can anyone operate under such a self-contradicting Being?

Is it any wonder that Israel turned to other gods when the God of their fathers turns out to be fickle, flighty, and showing His full force while demanding that His full force will only be shown if Israel follows impossible demands?

Is the Tanach full of contradictions because it displays to man both righteous and evil ways in order that man can compare, sometimes again and again, and choose the former?

Can God only be found by comparing his good attributes with the bad? Why, in that case, can mystics find Him without such knowledge?

There are instances in the Torah where Moses speaks of what is good and bad which lead one to suspect that they were produced by Moses rather than God if, that is, it was God who dictated and Moses who transcribed the Torah. See his insistence that only those without disabilities be allowed to minister to God; and see his injunction to only present perfect offerings to God. Such demands for perfection are only mentioned in the Torah once Moses appears on its pages. Turn back the pages and you will find the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and you have Lot offering his daughers to the the crowd instead of God’s male emissaries.

If God, the God of Abraham, had agency in either of the above – Moses’s injunction to offer only perfect offerings and Lot’s offer of his daughters to the crowd – would these stories have been different?

If it is concluded from a reading of the foregoing passages that the Bible is not the word of God, then the question arises, Whose words are they? If it is then asserted that Moses wrote the first five books, then it was Moses who presents God as a flighty prevaricator. And the next question must be, whether the five books of the Torah should guide Am Israel – as well as Christians and Mohammedans.

Further, was Moses aware that he was depicting God as picky and unreliable?

The author suspects that she is speaking for many when she claims that Moses’s God is not her God: that her God is not subject to tantrums and vengeful, uncontrollable wrath such as that displayed in the verses recounting the 40-year wanderings of the Israelites.

If it is thus deduced that Moses wrote down his own opinions, then it is here asserted that he could be right – and then he could be wrong.

It is asserted that all the abovementioned theologians, not just Moses, may be right – and they may be wrong.

The same is true when the author’s statements, including this, are taken into consideration.

If it is asserted that the contradictions were the Words of God, the question that has to follow is,

For what purpose, if any, is the Tanach replete with contradictions and the following is an attempt to unravel the arguments.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)