Thielen , Crowder , or Crowell ? <| sep |> Oh god you were right ! <| sep |> Whats in room 101 ? <| sep |> I ' m a Heterodox convert , and I believe in Torah . Torah has proven itself to be extraordinary in so many different ways and for so many generations that I don ' t think it can be labeled just some book as its critics tend to do . I personally do not consider the Mishna the Oral Torah but rather documentation of an ongoing struggle to make sense of Torah by various authoritiesThe origins of Torah and the degree to which religious stories hew to actual historical events are utterly immaterial to me there is no way to prove or disprove these things . You can try to argue one way or another , but these arguments almost always simply represent what the arguer wishes to be the truth or needs to be truth . The way I see it , those who read things literally and those who don ' t read it that way both have it right . And it ' s worth mentioning that a divine being can create a powerful narrative that inspires and motivates a population to action , without needing to make that narrative historic or the divine nature of that being conform to any particular standard other than oneness , which I consider essential . What ' s indisputable is that Torah was given to the Jews . Whether Moses actually existed , whether Torah was transmitted to Israel through him , are questions that are unresolvable and don ' t change the way we treat Torah .