This post is based on the episode with Professor Benjamin Sommer. He’s a Professor of Bible at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America and a Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. Professor Sommer is the author of the book Revelation & Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition, which examines how the biblical authors conceived of the revelation at Sinai as both a collaborative and participatory event. The post was generated by AI but edited by a human.
What exactly happened when God revealed the Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai?
For many Jews and Christians, the traditional answer seems straightforward. God spoke, Moses received the divine commandments, and the words of the Torah were transmitted to the people of Israel.
But what if the biblical texts themselves suggest something more complicated?
What if divine revelation was not simply a matter of God dictating words to Moses?
What if Moses had to interpret what God communicated?
And what if the Torah, from its very beginning, was understood by some biblical authors as the product of both divine revelation and human participation?
These questions are central to Revelation and Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition, a book by biblical scholar and Jewish theologian Benjamin D. Sommer.
Sommer is a professor of Bible at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute.
In my conversation with Sommer on The Levantini Podcast, we explored the Documentary Hypothesis, the authorship of the Torah, ancient concepts of literary authority, and the meaning of revelation at Mount Sinai.
We also discussed the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides, the biblical description of prophets seeing through mirrors, and the possibility that divine revelation may require human interpretation from the very moment it occurs.
At the heart of the discussion is a remarkable proposition: the Torah can possess divine authority even if its precise wording reflects human involvement.
What Is the Documentary Hypothesis?
To understand Sommer's argument about revelation, we first need to understand how biblical scholars approach the composition of the Torah.
The Torah, also known as the Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses, consists of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
Traditional Jewish and Christian understandings have often associated these books with Moses and divine revelation at Sinai.
But beginning in the eighteenth century, scholars increasingly noticed literary features that complicated the idea of a single author.
Stories appeared more than once.
Sometimes different versions of the same event contained substantial contradictions.
The language, vocabulary, and theological assumptions also varied between passages.
Scholars developed the theory that the Pentateuch was composed by combining several originally distinct literary traditions.
This approach became known as the Documentary Hypothesis.
In its classical form, the hypothesis identifies four principal sources: J, E, P, and D.
Sommer continues to find the classical source model useful, although he acknowledges that many contemporary scholars dispute the division between J and E.
The Documentary Hypothesis does not merely claim that the Torah contains editorial additions.
It proposes that substantial portions of the Pentateuch originated in different literary traditions, each preserving its own understanding of Israel's history, laws, and relationship with God.
What Do J, E, P, and D Mean?
The letters used in the Documentary Hypothesis refer to different literary sources.
J — The Yahwistic Source
J is named after the divine name traditionally represented by the consonants YHWH.
The letter J comes from German scholarly convention, where the divine name was historically written beginning with J.
In Sommer's description, the J source assumes that God's personal name was known to humanity long before Moses.
Consequently, J uses that name in stories set in the earliest generations of human history.
E — The Elohistic Source
E takes its name from Elohim, a Hebrew term for God.
In Sommer's reconstruction, E does not use God's personal name in its Genesis narratives because it understands that name as being revealed to Moses later.
The E source becomes particularly important in Sommer's interpretation of Sinai.
He argues that E presents revelation as an event whose meaning may require human interpretation.
P — The Priestly Source
P refers to the Priestly source.
It is distinguished by its vocabulary, literary style, interest in ritual, and concern with sacrifices and sacred institutions.
Sommer associates its composition with ancient Israelite priestly circles.
The opening creation account in Genesis 1 belongs to P in the classical source analysis.
D — The Deuteronomic Source
D refers primarily to Deuteronomy.
Its distinctive language, legal emphases, and literary style distinguish it from much of the material in the preceding four books.
The precise relationship between D and the other sources remains an important subject of scholarly debate.
Sommer emphasizes that while the Priestly and Deuteronomic materials are comparatively recognizable, the nature and division of the remaining non-Priestly material are disputed.
Some scholars continue to distinguish J and E.
Others prefer different models of literary development.
The important point is that the Torah preserves more than one way of narrating Israel's relationship with God.
When Was the Torah Written?
One of the most debated questions in biblical scholarship concerns the dating of the Torah's literary sources.
Sommer argues that all four major sources were composed before the Babylonian exile.
He places their development broadly between the ninth or eighth centuries BCE and the early sixth century BCE.
His argument relies partly on linguistic evidence.
Sommer believes that the Hebrew of the Pentateuch is predominantly pre-exilic and lacks many features associated with later Hebrew.
He also points to passages that describe a future exile in severe and graphic terms.
In his view, those descriptions do not closely resemble the circumstances of many Judean exiles once they had settled in Babylonia.
He therefore interprets them as predictions written before the exile.
But Sommer is explicit that this position is not the prevailing view among all biblical scholars.
Many scholars date at least the final form of the Priestly material to the exilic or post-exilic periods.
Other scholars also identify later layers of composition and revision elsewhere in the Pentateuch.
The dating of the sources remains contested.
Sommer's contribution is not simply to assign dates to documents. He also proposes that different textual traditions may have developed simultaneously.
Rather than imagining one complete source followed by another, he envisions generations of scribes transmitting, revising, and debating traditions.
In his reconstruction, priestly and Levitical scribes associated with the Jerusalem Temple could have developed different accounts of Israel's history and law while remaining aware of each other's work.
The resulting texts preserve both agreement and disagreement.
Why Ancient Authorship Was Different from Modern Authorship
One of the most illuminating parts of our conversation concerned the meaning of authorship in the ancient Near East.
Today, we generally imagine an author as an individual who creates a text and takes responsibility for its precise wording.
Once published, the work is treated as a relatively stable product.
Ancient literary culture operated differently.
Texts were copied by hand.
Stories circulated orally.
Scribes memorized and recited traditions.
And new copies provided opportunities for expansion, revision, and interpretation.
Sommer emphasizes that people encountered many important traditions through hearing rather than silent reading.
The distinction matters.
Oral traditions can develop multiple versions as they pass between generations and communities.
Different groups may remember the same event in different ways.
Sommer offers the example of traditions about the mountain where God revealed the law.
Some biblical sources call the mountain Sinai.
Others call it Horeb.
He regards the difference in name as relatively minor, but it illustrates how separate traditions could preserve distinct memories of the same foundational event.
A more substantial difference concerns where Moses first received his prophetic commission.
In the Priestly account, the encounter takes place in Egypt.
In other strands, Moses encounters God after leaving Egypt, in the region of Midian.
For Sommer, these differences are not necessarily evidence that ancient scribes were careless.
They reflect the development of multiple streams of historical and religious memory.
Did Ancient Scribes Think They Were Forging Scripture?
The question of authorship becomes especially interesting when ancient texts are attributed to revered figures.
Scholars use the term pseudepigraphy for writings attributed to someone other than their actual composer.
To modern readers, this may sound like deliberate deception.
If a scribe wrote a law and attributed it to Moses, wasn't that forgery?
Sommer argues that ancient concepts of authorship and originality were sufficiently different that modern assumptions do not always apply.
Ancient writers often understood themselves as participating in an inherited tradition.
Their task was not necessarily to produce something unprecedented.
Instead, they preserved, elaborated, and transmitted material received from earlier generations.
Sommer compares this process to traditional blues music.
A song can develop through generations of performers who borrow melodies, structures, and phrases while introducing their own variations.
It may be difficult to identify a single author responsible for every element of the final work.
Similarly, ancient Israelite legal traditions were associated with Moses.
Wisdom traditions were associated with Solomon.
And poetic prayers were associated with David.
Attributing a text to a foundational figure could communicate its relationship to an authoritative tradition rather than identify the individual who physically wrote every word.
Sommer even compares this process with the transmission of medieval biblical commentaries.
Works associated with a major commentator could incorporate material transmitted or added by students and later generations.
His argument is that a text could be considered Mosaic because it belonged to a tradition understood to originate with Moses, even if later scribes contributed to its wording.
This is an interpretation of ancient literary culture, not a claim that every ancient pseudonymous text was produced without any intention to deceive.
Did God Speak in Thunder or in a Voice at Mount Sinai?
The most important part of Sommer's argument concerns a single Hebrew word: qol.
The word can mean voice, sound, or thunder, depending on context.
It appears repeatedly in the biblical accounts of revelation.
Sommer notes that it occurs seven times in the relevant Sinai narrative in Exodus 19–20 and seven times in the parallel revelation narrative in Deuteronomy 5.
He sees this repetition as a deliberate literary signal.
The meaning of qol matters because it affects how we understand the relationship between divine revelation and the words of the Torah.
Consider two possibilities.
First possibility: God spoke in a voice.
If God communicated using recognizable words, then Moses may have received the precise wording of the commandments.
Under this interpretation, Moses' role resembles that of a scribe recording a divine message.
The specific language of the law originates directly with God.
Second possibility: God communicated through thunder.
Thunder does not convey ordinary verbal propositions.
It can communicate power, urgency, or presence, but it does not provide a clear legal text.
If Moses received revelation in the form of thunder, he would have needed to interpret that experience and express its meaning in human language.
The words of the Torah would therefore reflect a process involving both God and Moses.
Sommer argues that Exodus leaves room for both interpretations.
The ambiguity may be intentional.
The biblical author, in his reading, invites the audience to consider whether divine authority extends to every specific word or whether human beings participate in formulating the law.
This is not a minor linguistic question.
It affects how one understands the authority and interpretation of Jewish law.
Why Does Exodus Say the Israelites Saw the Sounds?
Exodus 20:15 in traditional Hebrew verse numbering—20:18 in many English Bibles—contains a remarkable description of the Sinai revelation.
The people are said to have seen the sounds or thunder.
Normally, people hear sounds.
They do not see them.
Sommer argues that this unusual language signals that the revelation at Sinai exceeded ordinary human perception.
The biblical author may be describing an experience that could not be adequately captured by conventional categories of hearing and sight.
The entire community participates in an event that transcends normal cognition.
Sommer suggests that we might describe it as a collective mystical experience.
But the important point is that the experience is not equivalent to hearing another person deliver a speech.
Something extraordinary occurs.
The people encounter the divine.
Yet the content of that encounter still requires interpretation.
For Sommer, this reinforces the possibility that revelation cannot be reduced to a straightforward act of dictation.
Was Moses a Stenographer or an Interpreter?
This distinction leads to one of the central questions of Sommer's book.
Was Moses simply recording words that God spoke?
Or was Moses translating an encounter with the divine into human language?
Sommer's interpretation of the Elohistic source favors the possibility that Moses had an active role in revelation.
If God communicated through thunder, then Moses' contribution was essential.
Without interpretation, the revelation could not become a legal and narrative text.
That would mean human participation was not a later development that began after the Torah had been revealed.
It was present from the beginning.
Sommer believes this has important consequences for contemporary Judaism.
If the law originally required human interpretation, then the interpretive work of later Jewish sages may be understood as continuing an activity that began with Moses.
The question is not whether divine authority exists.
It is how divine authority operates through human beings.
What Did Maimonides Believe About Revelation?
Our conversation then turned to Maimonides, the influential medieval Jewish philosopher.
Maimonides devoted considerable attention to the nature of God, prophecy, and revelation in The Guide of the Perplexed.
Sommer explained that Maimonides rejected literal descriptions of God as possessing human characteristics.
God does not have a physical body.
And, in this philosophical framework, statements describing God as speaking in the ordinary human sense cannot be understood literally.
Sommer draws on interpretations by scholars of Maimonides who argue that the Torah's precise wording must therefore be understood as the product of Moses' prophetic imagination.
In this reading, revelation is genuinely divine, but its verbal expression comes through Moses.
Sommer contrasts this with the familiar description of Moses as a scribe taking dictation.
He notes that Maimonides himself uses language comparing the transmission of the Torah to a scribe receiving dictation, while also acknowledging that the precise mechanism of revelation is beyond ordinary understanding.
Sommer argues that this comparison should not automatically be treated as a literal description.
Maimonides' position is complex, and scholars disagree over how to reconcile his philosophical writings with his statements about the divine origin of the Torah.
Nevertheless, Sommer sees a meaningful connection between Maimonides' theology and the biblical ambiguity surrounding qol.
Both leave room for the possibility that divine revelation cannot be understood as ordinary speech.
Why Does Numbers Compare Prophecy to Looking Through a Mirror?
Another passage that plays an important role in Sommer's interpretation is Numbers 12:6–8.
In this passage, God distinguishes Moses from other prophets.
Ordinary prophets receive revelation through visions and dreams.
Moses, by contrast, is granted a more direct form of communication.
Sommer discusses the imagery of a mirror to explain the distinction.
Ancient mirrors were generally made from polished metal, such as copper.
They did not produce the same clear reflection as modern glass mirrors.
An image reflected in ancient metal could be distorted, blurred, or colored by the surface.
For Sommer, this provides a useful metaphor for prophecy.
Prophets receive genuine insight, but their perception may be imperfect.
Moses is portrayed as exceptional because his encounter with God is more direct.
Yet Sommer extends the metaphor.
Even if Moses understands the revelation more clearly than other prophets, communicating it to other human beings still requires translation.
The resulting words may not perfectly reproduce the divine reality.
Sommer therefore raises the possibility that even the Torah reflects the limitations of human language and understanding.
This is one of the book's more provocative theological conclusions.
Why Would God Require Human Participation in Revelation?
At one point in our conversation, I asked Sommer why God might choose to reveal the divine will in a way that required interpretation.
Why not communicate everything perfectly and unambiguously?
Sommer suggested that human participation may be part of the purpose of revelation.
In his view, God does not merely permit human beings to interpret.
God requires them to take responsibility.
He illustrated the idea through a personal analogy.
When teaching a child to ride a bicycle, a parent eventually has to release the bicycle.
The parent remains close enough to help.
But the child must begin to balance and steer independently.
Sommer suggests that revelation may function in a similar way.
Rather than permanently controlling every detail of human religious life, God gives human beings responsibility for understanding and applying divine instruction.
Under this model, revelation is not a completed transaction followed by centuries of secondary interpretation.
Interpretation belongs to the revelatory process itself.
The human role is not an unfortunate imperfection that enters the tradition after Sinai.
It is a necessary element of the relationship between God and humanity.
What Does the Still, Small Voice of Elijah Mean?
Sommer concludes his book by turning from the thunder of Sinai to another biblical revelation.
In 1 Kings 19, the prophet Elijah encounters God at Horeb.
The narrative describes a powerful wind, an earthquake, and a fire.
But the divine encounter is associated with a qol demamah daqqah, a phrase often translated as a still, small voice or a sound of fine silence.
Sommer emphasizes that demamah need not mean complete silence.
It can suggest a faint murmur or a sound so quiet that it is difficult to distinguish.
The contrast with Sinai is striking.
At Sinai, revelation may be difficult to interpret because it is overwhelming.
It is thunderous.
In Elijah's experience, revelation is difficult to interpret because it is so quiet.
But in both cases, human beings must struggle to understand what has been communicated.
Sommer does not interpret this as proof that revelation is an entirely human invention.
His theological position is that something real is being encountered.
The problem is that human beings cannot be certain they have understood it correctly.
Revelation, Authority, and Religious Humility
The final part of our conversation returned to the meaning of religious authority.
If divine revelation requires human interpretation, then even sincere religious communities must acknowledge the possibility of misunderstanding.
Sommer argues that this uncertainty should produce humility.
A community may believe that God exists and that divine commandments matter.
But it should also recognize that its understanding of those commandments may be incomplete.
This does not eliminate religious obligation.
Instead, it changes the attitude with which that obligation is approached.
For Sommer, the Documentary Hypothesis becomes especially meaningful in this context.
The Torah preserves multiple accounts of Israel's earliest history and its encounter with God.
These accounts overlap.
They also differ.
Rather than treating the differences only as problems to be solved, Sommer sees them as evidence of the complexity of transmitting revelation through human communities.
We may never know exactly what was experienced at Sinai.
We may never reconstruct precisely what Moses heard or understood.
But the surviving traditions can still help us approach those questions.
Sommer's conclusion is that religious authority and human uncertainty need not be mutually exclusive.
A tradition can be rooted in divine revelation while acknowledging that human interpretation is fallible.
Conclusion: Did God Write the Torah?
Benjamin Sommer's answer challenges the assumption that divine revelation must mean divine dictation.
The Documentary Hypothesis suggests that the Torah developed through multiple literary traditions.
Ancient concepts of authorship help explain why texts could be associated with Moses even if their wording developed across generations.
The ambiguous Hebrew word qol raises the possibility that God's revelation was experienced as thunder rather than ordinary speech.
And the biblical portrayal of Moses as an exceptional prophet leaves room for an active human role in expressing revelation.
Sommer brings these observations together into a theological argument.
Perhaps revelation was always collaborative.
Perhaps the Torah's authority does not depend on every word having been dictated directly from heaven.
And perhaps recognizing the human element in Scripture is not a rejection of divine authority, but a way of taking human religious responsibility more seriously.
Ultimately, Sommer's book asks us to reconsider what it means to receive revelation.
Not merely to hear it.
But to interpret it, transmit it, and accept responsibility for how we understand it.
The Torah, Mount Sinai, and Divine Revelation: Frequently Asked Questions
1. Did God write the Torah?
Traditional Jewish belief associates the Torah with divine revelation to Moses. Benjamin Sommer explores the possibility that revelation was divine in origin but required Moses and later human communities to express it in words.
2. Who is Benjamin D. Sommer?
Benjamin D. Sommer is a biblical scholar and Jewish theologian who teaches at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He is the author of Revelation and Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition.
3. What is Revelation and Authority about?
The book examines how biblical texts and later Jewish thinkers understood revelation at Sinai, the authority of the Torah, and the role of human interpretation in the development of Jewish law.
4. What is the Documentary Hypothesis?
The Documentary Hypothesis proposes that the Pentateuch developed through the combination of several literary sources rather than being composed entirely by one author.
5. What do J, E, P, and D stand for?
J is the Yahwistic source, E the Elohistic source, P the Priestly source, and D the Deuteronomic source. These labels belong to the classical Documentary Hypothesis.
6. Do all biblical scholars agree on the Documentary Hypothesis?
No. Scholars widely recognize literary complexity in the Pentateuch, but disagree about the number, boundaries, dates, and relationships of its sources. The classical separation of J and E is particularly contested.
7. When does Benjamin Sommer believe the Torah's sources were written?
Sommer argues that the principal sources developed before the Babylonian exile, broadly between the ninth or eighth and early sixth centuries BCE. Many scholars instead date substantial Priestly material to the exilic or post-exilic periods.
8. Did Moses write the Five Books of Moses?
Traditional understandings attribute the Torah to Moses. Historical-critical scholarship generally understands the Pentateuch as the product of extended literary development. Sommer distinguishes the physical composition of the text from its association with Mosaic tradition.
9. What does the Hebrew word qol mean?
Qol can mean voice, sound, or thunder. Sommer argues that its ambiguity in the Sinai narratives is important for understanding the nature of revelation.
10. Did God speak in thunder at Mount Sinai?
Sommer suggests that Exodus 19–20 allows the possibility that divine communication was experienced as thunder rather than ordinary speech. This is a literary and theological interpretation, not a demonstrable description of the historical event.
11. Why does Exodus say the Israelites saw the sounds?
Exodus 20:15 in Hebrew numbering, corresponding to 20:18 in many English Bibles, describes the people seeing the sounds or thunder. Sommer interprets the unusual wording as a signal that revelation exceeded ordinary human perception.
12. What is the difference between Sinai and Horeb?
Both names are used in biblical traditions for the mountain associated with divine revelation. Sommer discusses their distribution among the proposed literary sources as an example of different inherited traditions.
13. What is pseudepigraphy?
Pseudepigraphy is the attribution of a written work to someone other than its actual composer. Sommer emphasizes that ancient ideas of authorship, originality, and inherited tradition differed from modern expectations.
14. Why were ancient texts attributed to Moses, David, or Solomon?
In Sommer's account, Moses became associated with legal tradition, David with poetic prayers, and Solomon with wisdom. Attribution could express a work's place within an authoritative tradition rather than identify every individual contributor.
15. What did Maimonides believe about revelation?
Maimonides rejected literal anthropomorphic descriptions of God. Sommer discusses scholarly interpretations suggesting that Moses' prophetic intellect or imagination played a role in expressing revelation as the words of the Torah.
16. Did Maimonides believe God dictated the Torah?
Maimonides uses a comparison involving a scribe receiving dictation, but his philosophical account of prophecy is complex. Sommer argues that the comparison should not necessarily be read as a literal description of divine speech.
17. What does Numbers 12 say about Moses and other prophets?
Numbers 12:6–8 distinguishes Moses from other prophets by describing his access to God as more direct. Sommer uses the imagery of indirect or imperfect perception to explore the limits of prophetic communication.
18. What were ancient mirrors made from?
Ancient Near Eastern mirrors were often made from polished metal, including copper or bronze. Their reflections could be less clear than those produced by modern mirrors.
19. What is human participation in revelation?
It is the idea that human beings do not merely receive a fully formed message but participate in understanding, interpreting, and expressing divine communication. This is central to Sommer's theological argument.
20. Does the Documentary Hypothesis disprove divine revelation?
The Documentary Hypothesis addresses the literary composition of the Torah. Whether a text developed through human authors can also convey divine revelation is a theological question. Sommer argues that the two ideas can be compatible.
21. What does qol demamah daqqah mean?
The phrase appears in 1 Kings 19:12 and is often translated as a still, small voice or a sound of fine silence. Sommer interprets it as a faint, difficult-to-discern communication rather than absolute emptiness.
22. What happened to Elijah at Mount Horeb?
According to 1 Kings 19, Elijah experienced wind, an earthquake, and fire, followed by the subtle sound associated with the divine encounter.
23. What does Sommer mean by religious humility?
Sommer argues that believers can affirm divine authority while recognizing that human interpretations of God's will may be incomplete or mistaken.
24. How does Sommer connect biblical scholarship with Jewish theology?
He uses historical-critical analysis of the Torah's literary sources to explore theological questions about revelation, legal authority, human agency, and the continuing interpretation of Jewish tradition.
