The authentic text of the Torah is not to be found by the "historical critical" method which excavates ancient pointed texts from archaeological digs. It is rather to be found in the authentic kosher Torah Scroll, which is present in the 'aron of every synagogue in the world. The very rules and regulations for writing a Torah Scroll are part of the Oral Torah rather than the Written, and a Scroll must be written strictly in accordance to these rules. One rule is that an already-written Torah Scroll be kept before the scribe as he writes the new one. Another is that he must keep his mind purely focused on his task. To miscopy a single letter, or even to write something while thinking of something else, invalidates the entire thing and it has to be buried and the task begun again. Interestingly, the text of the Seifer Torah are identical throughout the world in both 'Ashkenazi and Sefaradi worlds (only the Teimanim [Yemenites], who lived for so many centuries out of contact with the rest of the Jewish world, have a few difference in the letters of the Torah and these never change the meaning of a word). Since every Torah scroll must be written on organic material, decay inevitably sets in and it must be reverently buried in a Jewish cemetary. Thus it is not the age of any Scroll that guarantees its accuracy but rather the writing process itself.
Incidentally, the text of the Torah Scroll contains only consonants. There are no vowels or punctuation. These (for which the Masoretes created symbols of their own) are actually a part of the Oral Torah even though they appear in all printed Rabbinic Bibles. Unlike Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, Orthodox Judaism has this perfect justification for its Oral Tradition!
I'm not making light; obviously there are as many embarrassing splinter groups in the Catholic/Christian churches, if not more. My point, though, is that there is an understood repository of Tradition within the Catholic Faith. Where is the repository that holds that your dating system? Am I wrong in supposing it cannot be the Talmud? (I suppose that, despite not having read the entire Talmud, or even an entire abridgment of it, but because other Talmudic Jews don't seem to agree with you.)
The translation of the Hebrew Bible into a foreign language, which removed it from its true context and made all today's false interpretations possible, is actually mourned as a tragedy (on the fast day of `Asarah BeTevet). For the Catholic Church to vouch only for the Septuagint is really not much different from cultural Protestants who insist that only the King James Version is the "true Bible."
Now, as to your claim that "other Talmudic Jews don't seem to agree" with me. First, I'm not Jewish. Second, what do you mean by "Talmudic Jews?" Do you mean actual Orthodox Jews? There are secular and non-Orthodox Jews who study the Talmud academically; these of course would not agree with the traditional chronology. It is also true that there are some Jews who call themselves "orthodox" or "traditional" but who have accepted such foreign concepts as the documentary hypothesis and who basically fit in perfectly with American secular academic culture. However (and forgive me for putting this so bluntly), this is blatant heresy. Other than this group ALL Orthodox Jews accept this chronology--even the ones who accept evolution! Did you know that one of the foremost Orthodox Jewish Theistic evolutionists, Dr. Gerald Schroeder, becomes a literalist once the text arrives at the Sixth Day and even accepts such things as a real Adam and Eve who lived precisely as Torah and Tradition teach. He even accepts the Tradition that Adam divorced Eve after Cain killed Abel and that they remained apart for 130 years until Adam presided at the divorce of Cain's descendant Lamekh, after which he went back to her and fathered Shet. And this is a man of science!!! So again, which "Talmudic Jews" disagree with "me?"
If on the other hand you are asking why don't Orthodox Jews ever talk about this stuff, I'll tell you--
I don't know! (With apologies to Tevye!)
If you are assuming that the Orthodox Jews on this forum don't agree with the chronology I summarized, then that is merely an assumption. Do they? I don't know. Perhaps they do and never talk about it outside the shul. Perhaps there are some here who really do reject it (though again, it isn't "me" they're disagreeing with). I can only say that the mystery you have highlighted, why Orthodox Jews don't make this known to the outside world is one that has plagued and befuddled me for my entire life. You can go into any Orthodox synagogue in America, ask the name of Noah's wife, and be told (as I was), yet when these same Orthodox Jews speak to the outside world it is always about prejudice, the Holocaust, or Israel, with the actual contents of Jewish teaching assumed by the outside world to be the invention of the Southern Baptist Convention. Perhaps, as I have specualated, the image of the "sophisticated secular skeptical Jewish intellectual" is so powerful that Orthodox spokesmen literally have to tiptoe to avoid offending potential returnees to Jewish practice. But ask yourself this: isn't the entire Jewish religion a mystery to most people? Everyone knows it's there but most of those people know very little about it. Do they know what a lulav cluster or a hosha`'na' bundle or seider hazkarat neshamot are? Do they know that before reading the Megillah (the Book of Esther) on Purim they recite a blessing thanking G-d for actually doing the things related in it, which would be a terrible sin (called a birkat shav') if they didn't actually happen? Unfortunately Judaism is known to the outside world almost entirely as an ethnoculture.
Once again, I assure you that whoever does or does not agree with the chronology I gave in the lead post to this thread, it is not my creation. It is entirely indirect quotations from my sources. If you go to the original post you will see a link to an online Jewish chronology. Have you clicked on it to check it out? I urge you to do so if you believe I'm making this stuff up. Some of my information came from books which I own. Rabbi Rotenberg's (zt"l) work on `Am `Olam is being translated into English and being made available. Volume I is the main source of everything I said and Rabbi Rotenberg insists over and over that this chronology is absolutely certain and sure and "we cannot do without it." He also critiques the flimsy grounds on which our "common era" count is based. This book as well as Bible Basics are available from Feldheim. Look over their inventory if you are interested in purchasing copies. I also own books published by ArtScroll. Interestingly, one of my books from this source (The Wisdom of the Hebrew Alphabet by Rabbi Michael L. Munk) has material on an issue no one has yet raised: the problem of a Phoenician-drived "palaeo-Hebrew" script as a forerunner of today's Hebrew script.
If you don't want to invest in purchasing these books then visit any Orthodox Jewish acquaintance who may have one or more of these books in his personal library. Perhaps he will allow you to borrow them. Or if it doesn't violate your conscience, attend an Orthodox shul some time and look at the books available in the library. If they have a Stone TaNa"KH be sure to look at the chronological tables in the back. Ask any member of the congregation the name of Moses' wife, or if Methuselah really did live 969 years, or how `Og Melekh HaBashan (a giant from before the Flood who was killed by Moses) survived the Flood without actually being inside the ark. Go ahead, ask. Or find an Orthodox rabbi online and ask him. I did!
With regard to your questions about the nature and authority of Jewish Tradition and in whom it is vested, I direct you to the Shavu`ot page at Aish.com. It has all sorts of material on the transmission and accuracy of the text and transmission of the Written and Oral Torah.
Finally, while you and I have sparred a bit recently, I appreciate the fact that this post of yours was respectful. I hope that, however much you disagree with me, you find this response to be equally respectful.
As for the first two paragraphs you wrote: The counter-claim is that this fantastic meticulousness which you describe originated as a response to exile. How should a non-believer know that this has always been the case, especially given the multiple variants?
>> The translation of the Hebrew Bible into a foreign language, which removed it from its true context and made all today's false interpretations possible, is actually mourned as a tragedy (on the fast day of `Asarah BeTevet). For the Catholic Church to vouch only for the Septuagint is really not much different from cultural Protestants who insist that only the King James Version is the "true Bible." <<
Actually, there is one sense in which this statement quite hits the nail on the head, but also important distinctions. And I certainly can see where the Hebrew people would mourn such a day; since the Septuagint became the basis for another religion.
The Protestants cannot claim the King James predates the Vulgate; and the Vulgate provided precisely the needed uniformity. Contrariwise, the Catholic position is that the Septuagint established a canon at a time when there was no agreement as to a Hebrew canon (The Pharisees v. The Saducees v. The Essenes v. the Diaspora), and a relative conformity of word usage at a time before the Masoretic text existed. (Obviously, you, most Jews, and even, ironically, the Vulgate's translator, believed otherwise; I also must note that such a conformity is lost to history. Nonetheless, it seems obvious to have existed at one time, since the Septuagint represents a single translation project.); contrariwise, the Council of Jamnia conceded the prevalence of the Septuagint's canon and usage among world Jewry.
The English do not, and never have, represented the bulk of Christianity, whereas Greek and Latin have each been the dominant language of Christendom.
Actually, as I consider it, the conflict between the Vulgate and the Septuagint/Greek bible would be a much better example, except the Catholic church concedes the superiority of the Greek bible.
Btw, I shall have to look up Dr. Gerald Schroeder; any degree to which literalism and science can be reconciled makes easier my purpose of shrinking the divide between Christianity and science. And, astonishingly, mitrochondrial DNA (which is genetic inheritance which does not get "reshuffled" [recombined] each generation) actually attests to the existence of a single woman who is mother to all humans whose estimated time of life was less than an order of magnitude different from the literal Eve. ("Time of life?" why does that sound like a euphemism for menopause?)
>> Second, what do you mean by "Talmudic Jews?" <<
It *is* my understanding that nearly all modern Jews are Talmudic, except for certain Messianic Jews who are Christian, and long-isolated sects of Jews. My memory is a little off; I would've guessed that they were some among the Ethiopian Jews, not Yemeni. However, historically, the Talmudic Jews were a conciliation between the two largest sects that excluded Hellenic, Essene, Christianized-but-still-Jewish, and Zealotic Jews. Most of these other Jews either died out or assimilated into mainstream Christianity or Talmudic Judaism.
I would consider most of whom you call "heretics" among modern Jews to still be Jews, as I would consider Protestants to still be Christians. However, when saying that all Jews are creationist, it creates circular reason to anathematize (OK, that's a Christian term, but at least it beats "excommunicated" :^D) all Jews who aren't creationist.
>> If you are assuming that the Orthodox Jews on this forum don't agree with the chronology I summarized, then that is merely an assumption. <<
It is my understanding that there is some disagreement among Orthodox Jews about the Chronology, but it's also my vague understanding that even the concept of "Orthodox" presumes a fairly literalist belief system. However, if I were brought up Orthodox, yet came to my conclusions about Creationism, I would like to think I wouldn't be regarded as a heretic.
>> yet when these same Orthodox Jews speak to the outside world it is always about prejudice, the Holocaust, or Israel, with the actual contents of Jewish teaching assumed by the outside world to be the invention of the Southern Baptist Convention. <<
Sadly, I think you may be answering your own question about why Jews are reluctant to promote hyper-literalism among Christians. As you know, There are many not-nice things said about Jews in the New Testament. In context, these things cannot mean all Jews, but rather refer strictly the leadership of the non-Christianized and non-Hellenic Jews, and were written when there were some fresh wounds among Christians, such as the expulsion of Christians from the synagogues which left them vulnerable to the draft and the encompanying mandatory pagan rituals. The founders of Christianity were Jewish however, so anti-semitism as a racial issue is absurd; and the days when the only non-professing-Christians a Christian typically ever met was Jewish are long past, and Jews must be seen as allies in todays geopolitical struggles, so religious-based hatred of Jews is absurd.
Nonetheless, anti-semites can still abuse selected quotes of New Testament scripture; and these bases for tolerance (and even love) of Jews are not in the scripture. For this reason, I think sola scriptura, and Christian hyper-literalism both kinda give many Jews the willies. (I certainly do NOT mean to make Christian anti-semitism to be a Protestant phenomenon!) I also think any rigid ideology, especially one wherein God seems OK with destroying billions of people (a la Left Behind) probably would freak me out if I were Jewish.
>> I hope that, however much you disagree with me, you find this response to be equally respectful. <<
Certainly, I did have to struggle to not be defensive from your initial posts (and I don't know how successful that would seem from an outsider's point of view, but this post has been extremely informative, and will spur much research on my part.
If I might ask, if you are not Jewish, what religion (or lack thereof*) are you? And how did you become so knowledgeable about Judaism, even to the point of being so protective of it?
(* You certainly seem to be a religious person, but I also would have presumed you to be, specifically, a Jewish religious person.)