Biblical Study and the Believing Jew

For more than a decade, Professor Benjamin Sommer of JTS and Professor Joshua Berman of Israel’s Bar-Ilan University have discussed the way each, one Conservative and one Orthodox, approaches academic study of the Bible as a believing Jew. Recently they took this conversation public, in a virtual discussion hosted by Iggrot Ha’Ari, a journal of religious scholarship produced by students at Columbia University.

In this fascinating video, Professors Sommer and Berman eloquently explain their shared view that one can indeed be both a critical scholar and a believing Jew, while illuminating their individual approaches to understanding subjects like the documentary hypothesis and the divine authority of the Torah.

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