Louis Jacobs and the Building Blocks of a Theology of Revelation

Louis Jacobs (1920-2006) was a prominent British scholar-rabbi who sought to offer an account of belief in Torah min Hashamayim that built on the twin pillars of faith and scholarship. Unwilling to give up on his religious belief in the principle of divine revelation, he was equally incapable of ignoring the challenges to his faith raised by academic biblical studies. Examining the theology he developed offers a case study for a consideration of some of the varied building blocks that can be used to try to bring academic Jewish studies and biblical criticism into a constructive conversation with differents accounts of revelation within Judaism.