The Biblical Meaning of Truth

In Knowledge through Ritual, the theologian Dru Johnson argues that people come to true knowledge through deeds rather than through reflection. To ground this argument in the Bible, he cites Yoram Hazony’s understanding of the Hebrew word emet, usually translated as “truth.” Peter Leithart writes:

Johnson points out that, in the Bible, the word “truth” can apply to actions such as treatment of a servant, anointing, or walking; to statements; and to things like tent pegs, roads, and seeds. A concept that covers so much diverges from our normal understandings of truth. . . .

For the Hebrew Bible . . . truth is primarily “reliability”: “A true cut (or maintaining a true course in a ship) is one that reliably ‘is what it ought to be.’” Quoting Hazony, [Johnson] adds that “in the Hebrew Bible, that which is true is that which proves, in the face of time and circumstance, to be what it ought; whereas that which is false is that which fails . . . to be what it ought.”

This is quite a striking definition, [according to which truth] is evident only over time, as true things prove themselves against the ravages of circumstance. . . . A tent peg is true because it’s reliable over time, just as a statement is true. . . .

As Hazony puts it: “On the biblical conception . . . it would seem that the truth or falsity of the spoken word . . . cannot be known until it has proved itself reliable in the course of investigation, which is to say, in the course of time.”

Read more at First Things

More about: Biblical Hebrew, Hebrew Bible, Religion & Holidays

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF