It appeared in the nineteenth century as a way of contrasting the purity and ethical simplicity of the prophetic vision--a vision of peace on earth, justice and compassion--with the supposedly pettier, more legalistic and narrow focus of the rabbis on ritual and study. As Christianity tried to characterize the Jewish Bible as preoccupied with law and not spirit, and its God as one of anger and not love, so did emerging Reform and Wissenschaft (the academic study of Judaism) try to establish the idea that the rabbis of the first millennium created a new brand of Judaism that was legalistic and very different from its predecessors. One corollary was that if one abandoned Talmudic laws for the simple ethical message of the Prophets, one was being truer to the original revelation of Judaism than if one adhered to the petty details of rabbinic law.

There have always been challenges to Rabbinic authority, from Samaritans, Sadducees, Dead Sea Sectarians, Christians and Kaarites. It is hardly surprising that rabbinic texts insisted that they were not innovators, but simply continuing an ancient tradition. Hence the formula that opens the Ethics of the Fathers, part of the Talmud, "Moshe received the Torah from Sinai, handed it to Joshua, Joshua to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets and the Prophets handed it down to the Men of The Great Assembly." This "Great Assembly" was, of course, the forerunner of the Sanhedrin. It was all part of a continuous chain with, admittedly, a built-in capacity to innovate, as well as the important element of passing on received tradition.

Certainly the rabbis of the Talmud interpreted Biblical texts through their eyes and traditions. If we concede that this reinterpreting took place as part of a rabbinic polemic, does this mean that their version of the development of Jewish Law is completely wrong? Of course not, any more than Cromwell's reading of English history was. It was his reading, indeed, but not totally imaginary.

Yet that is precisely what the Rabbinic Judaism scholars claim. If we cannot at all trust anything they say, who do we think is more reliable?

Our sources are sparse. Apart from the Talmud we only have Josephus the renegade Jewish traitor. The Dead Sea Scrolls are great on texts but not on history, so there is plenty of room to argue. Some scholars have claimed to be able to peel away layers of late rabbinic additions to get back to the source, but the method is often pretty arbitrary, akin to Biblical scholars reconstructing the Bible text to conform to their theories of multiple authors.

There is no doubt that after the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, the leaders of Judaism switched the focus of Jewish life from Temple rites to prayer and study. They were accused of inventing a new form of Judaism, just as Christianity was beginning to emerge. And there is a lot of merit in the argument of scholars like Daniel Boyarin that for the first three hundred years of Christianity there was considerable overlap in ideas and attitudes as both sides rebuilt themselves to face new realities. A great deal of what we call 'Christian' ideology, such as 'turn the other cheek' can be found in the Talmud.

The leaders of post-Temple Judaism did, indeed, make adaptations in prayer and ritual. Simchat Torah was a new emphasis on Torah rather than sacrifice. Shavuot becomes the anniversary of Sinai rather than just a harvest festival. Neither of these ways of looking at these festivals can be found in the Torah or even in the Talmud. But that doesn't mean everything was a complete innovation.

Regardless of the debate as to when the Torah was written down, someone at the time must have understood what Moshe meant by the "fruit of a fine tree" that we now assume is an etrog, or what a judge did when faced with a toothless man who had knocked out the teeth of another. How did he take a tooth for a tooth? And how did the prophets experience their religious life differently from the priests? Some sort of Oral (rabbinic) tradition must have been around.

The fact is that it is just as difficult to verify, scientifically or historically, what happened three thousand years ago as it is to know precisely how the world was created or man evolved. The best of experts can only hazard guesses. Just as when an art expert argues as to the authenticity of a painting he often relies on intuition, experience, and intangible senses, the same goes for how I feel God speaking to me through Torah.

If the rabbis calculated that Shavuot coincided with the Sinai Revelation, even though the Torah is not explicit, why do we have to assume they "invented" it, rather than simply changed the emphasis once Jews were divorced from their land and the agricultural aspects religion? It is perfectly feasible to assume that the Babylonian exile required adjustments hundreds of years before "the rabbis". If the Sinai covenant underlay all religious ritual, there is a connection between Torah in its original form and Shavuot as we celebrate it now, with its Tikkun (all night study--itself a recent Kabbalistic innovation), as well as its harvest dimension. There is, indeed, a link to the way and the atmosphere in which it was celebrated two thousand and even three thousand years ago.

I have recently come across this academic bias that insists that Rabbinic Judaism is a brand new innovation and no truer to Biblical Judaism than Christianity in the comments a college lecturer made to student's essay I was shown. This sort of doctrinaire thinking merely underlines to me the total unreliability of huge chunks of academe (as if we needed reminding).

Research must continue and we need to hear and read different ideas and theories. Having to defend one's position can even be a very validating process. But in the same way that I strongly despise fundamentalists' opposition to ideas they don't like, so too I abhor an academic political correctness that marks down any student who dares to suggest that the main elements of what is called Rabbinic Judaism can be found long before the Talmudic era.