Veracity of the Torah
Question
I teach Torah to some women from different backgrounds. As we study questions come up as to how do the Rabbi’s and sages know what happened during Adams time and Noah’s time? The particularly question stories about the soul preexisting and for what reason HaShem created the world. Things that are not specifically in the Torah. Some women have come out of catholic backgrounds.
Answers
The narratives that appear in the Written Torah were dictated to Moses by God, Himself. That means that the narratives are all accurate and exact. However, there is also an Oral Torah that contains masses of additional information, without which the Written Torah would not be understandable. And it is from the Oral Torah that much of the detail that is “missing” from the Written Torah is found. This includes all of the details of what happened at the beginning of the Creation and onward.
Our Sages teach that God created the world in order to bestow goodness and reward on Mankind. A central attribute of God is the desire to give to others, and, without the creation of the world there would be no “others” to give to!
However, Mankind must act properly and morally to deserve this goodness. Otherwise, this reward of goodness would be a source of embarrassment to Mankind instead of a source of pleasure and satisfaction. A person who earns his reward is much happier with his accomplishments and his compensation than a person who receives something for nothing. In fact, our Sages refer to undeserved reward as “the bread of embarrassment.”
Best wishes from the AskTheRabbi.org Team