Matter of Interpretation

Although there exists a multiplicity of interpretations for every passage of the Bible, some are considered acceptable within mainstream Judaism, and some are decidedly "outside the pale." Thus, when Orthodox Jews talk about "Torah," they mean not so much the literal Five Books of Moses as they do the corpus of Jewish scripture as understood by the traditional Rabbinic sources, or at least, in a way not openly conflicting with them. For example, someone who reads the following passage:

When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.

-Deuteronomy 25:11-12 (King James Version)

and concludes that it means what it says, would be shunned as a heretic (as the Sadducees were).

Conversely, doubting that adultery should be punished by stoning, as in Deuteronomy 22

²³ If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, ²⁴ you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man's wife. You must purge the evil from among you.

would likely be lumped together with the Christians