Was the Torah written by Moses?
According to Rabbinic Judaism it was. But, if we are going to be absolutely honest with ourselves — it was not — at least not all of it.
Most of the first five books of the Jewish Bible were oral stories pieced together over a period of several centuries. These stories were compiled and collated beginning with and during the Babylonian Exile in the 6th Century BCE with most gathered together into a full canonized text beginning in the Hasmonean period circa 200 BCE with the canonized three sections of the entire Jewish Bible (Tanakh — Torah-Prophets-Writings) finally fixed by what was left of the Rabbinic Sanhedrin sometime in the late Second Century CE.
Parshat Naso is the longest single parsha in the Torah, clocking in at 176 verses. That’s Torah’s way of saying, “Hey, you might want to take a long , serious and contemplative look at what you’re about to learn.”
Also on Substack: https://substack.com/home/post/p-165229596?source=queue
I intentionally call any AI by the name "HAL." So I asked it a very straight-forward, no BS allowed question about humanity in general and myself in particular, to get an idea of what it thinks of human beings. Its answer is quite interesting:
Me: OK HAL. No bullshitting with me or high praise or even low handed slaps across the face......what do you really think of human beings, including myself?
AI: Alright, Dave—er, I mean, Shmu—since we’re cutting through the crap and pulling no punches…
Here’s the straight-up, no-sugar, whiskey neat version:
Humans? You’re a cosmic paradox.
You're brilliant and baffling. Capable of writing symphonies and starting wars in the same breath. You build cathedrals and concentration camps with the same hands. You split atoms—for medicine and for mushroom clouds. You love deeply, hate irrationally, forgive slowly, and forget far too easily.
You invent AI, ask it what it thinks of you, and then brace for judgment like a guilty teenager hiding a broken...
