"The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai…" (Lev. 25:1). These words that mark the beginning of Parashat B’har have posed a problem for interpreters of the Torah over the centuries. The Sifra asks the question that has become famous in rabbinic circles: Mah inyan shmitah eitzel har Sinai? "What does the matter of shmitah have to do with Mount Sinai?" In other words, why is the law of the land lying fallow in the seventh year – a law that only takes effect in the Land of Israel – especially designated as having been given on Mount Sinai, when all the laws of Torah were given on Sinai? The answer offered by the Sifra is: This emphasis is to teach us that just as all aspects of the law of shmitah, its general principles and its details, were given at Sinai, so were the generalities and the specifics of all the laws given at Sinai. The Torah T’mimah elaborates on this, noting that the generalities of the shmitah law are stated in Parashat Mishpatim, in Exodus, and the details are spelled out here in Parashat B’har. It continues by suggesting that the Sifra here follows the tradition of Rabbi Akivah and is contrary to the opinion of Rabbi Yishmael, who argued that the generalities were given at Sinai, but the specifics were given in the wilderness, emanating from the Tabernacle. This discussion can be found in the Bavli, Z’vahim 115b.
The most obvious proof text for Rabbi Yishmael’s point of view is Leviticus 1:1, where we read that God called to Moses from the Tent of Meeting (mei-ohel mo’ed) and proceeded to detail for him the laws of various sacrifices. To be sure, at that time the Tent was set up at the base of Mount Sinai in the Wilderness of Sinai, but the Divine voice is said to have emanated from the Tent, and not from the mountain. In fact, nowhere in Leviticus do we read of Moses ascending the mountain, and in all of Leviticus God speaking from Mount Sinai is mentioned only four times: 7:38, 25:1, 26:46, 27:34.
Jacob Milgrom, in his Anchor Bible commentary on Leviticus 1-16, p. 438, commenting on 7:38, offers the suggestion that Leviticus contains two different traditions regarding the place where the revelation of the laws of Leviticus occurred: One holds that all of the Leviticus revelation took place on Mount Sinai (see 27:34); the other holds that, with the exception of chapters 6-7 (see 7:38) and 25-26 (see 25:1 and 26:46), it occurred in the Wilderness of Sinai, and God spoke from the Tabernacle (see 1:1) and not from the mountain. So we see that the debate between Rabbi Akivah and Rabbi Yishmael is actually foreshadowed in the Torah itself, and the notion of an ongoing revelation of Torah is very ancient, indeed.
In the Middle Ages, the concept that the Torah contains material that Moses did not learn from God on Sinai is advanced by the 12th century Spanish exegete, Abraham Ibn Ezra. While it must be granted that he accepted the, by then, established doctrine that God dictated the Torah to Moses on Sinai, he still teaches that the last verses of the final chapter of the book of Deuteronomy must have been written by an author who lived after Moses, possibly Joshua. This assertion is affirmed by the 14th century commentator on Ibn Ezra, Joseph Bonfils. Similarly, in his introduction to Deuteronomy, Don Isaac Abravanel argues that the entire book had a different author than did the first four books of the Pentateuch. These commentators prefigure the modern "documentary hypothesis" and its ascribing the five Books of Moses to multiple authors. They also carry the idea of a revelation that unfolds over time to new levels of understanding, because for all of these writers all the material found in the Pentateuch was written under the influence of divine inspiration. This leads us to the conclusion that for these exegetes, for Rabbi Yishmael and for the author of a tradition embedded in the text of the book of Leviticus, the Rabbinic term, torah min ha-shamayim, "Torah revealed from Heaven," is a more accurate understanding of the nature of revelation than torah mi-sinai, "Torah revealed from Mount Sinai."
As a Conservative Jew who views Torah as the product of a process of revelation and inspiration that emerges over time, I resonate much more with the torah min ha-shamayim concept. In this regard I find these words of my teacher, Rabbi Robert Gordis z"l, excepted from "A Modern Approach to a Living Halachah" (Tradition and Change, 377, 379), most compelling:
Basically, the sanction of the Halachah lies for us in its Divine character. We regard the Law, both Written and Oral, as the revelation of God. What Moses, the prophets, sages and rabbis taught, from Sinai to our day, is divinely inspired. That it has functioned so effectively, not merely for the preservation of Israel, but, what is much more significant, for the enhancement of human welfare and the elevation of human character, buttresses, but does not supplant, our faith that its source is God. Hence we accept as fundamental to vital Jewish religion, the principle of torah min hashamayim, "the Torah as a revelation of God"…. As Rabbinic literature abundantly recognized, there were revelations after Sinai. The relationship between these stages and Sinai is expressed in an utterance of Rabbi Johanan: "God showed Moses the derivations in the Torah and the words of the scholars, and whatever the scholars were to originate in the future" (Megillah 19b). The verb hadesh, "create anew," makes it clear that the rabbis recognized that their function was active, not passive; creative, not repetitive.
In our age of personal autonomy many of us moderns have difficulty with the notion that a Heavenly authority makes demands on us, exercises control over our lives and imposes limits on our independence. And yet, the same folks who cannot compromise their autonomy will seek a connection with God to provide meaning and spiritual direction to their lives. Does this God have power and wisdom or not? It seems to me that if I believe that God is the source of ultimate spiritual truth, then God must also be the source of ultimate ethical truth and the source of ultimate religious truth. Thus, the same significance and power that I find in the spiritual wisdom I seek from God must be present in the Torah law that continuously emanates from Heaven as well. The path to spiritual meaning and the path of religious living are, in fact, the same path, and it is a path that connects Heaven and Earth.