l history and Biblical history are not the same. He says that "biblical narrative itself is basically different in character from all that we usually classify as serviceable historical sources. The happenings recorded there can never have come about, in the historical world as we know it, after the fashion in which they are described" (Buber 149). That means liberals do not believe in the miracles of the Hebrew Bible. It also means liberals do not think everything in the Hebrew Bible is literal.
An example of a miracle is the parting of the Red Sea (Exod. 14.19-31). According to science in the real world, that could not have really happened. The only way it could happen is in a world of theology. Another example of why it is wrong to be literal to liberals is that the different ways the Hebrew Bible tells the same story. These different ways come from different "texts" that do not agree, the J, E, H, D, P texts (Campbell 101-102). But, all texts are in one Bible!
Conservatives who think the Hebrew Bible is mainly holy have a different idea about God and history. Friedman gives a summary.
The Torah's theology is thus inseparable from its history and from its literary qualities. Ultimately, there is no such thing as "The Bible as Literature" or "The Bible as History" or "The Bible as . . . anything." There is: the Bible (Friedman 296).
Friedman has another statement about the Hebrew Bible. That is that the whole Bible is about the "relationship between God and the Israelites" (Friedman 300). Thus, the conservative Jewish theological idea about the Hebrew Bible is that it is all about the Jews and God.
So far all of the statements about the bible are from Jews. But Jews are not the only ones who are liberal or conservative on the Hebrew Bible. Christians can be liberal or conservative on the Hebrew Bible, between Christians only. Christians and Jews also debate between each other the best way to understand the Hebrew Bible.<...