Jon D. Levenson thinks Yonatan Adler's thesis is very learned but problematic because Pentateuchal law is prescriptive and pre-Hellenistic

 Much more problematic, however, is Adler’s claim that before the Hellenistic period biblical law was perceived as descriptive and iconic, rather than prescriptive and to be obeyed by individuals. This misses the fact that the law collections in the Pentateuch appear within a framework of covenant, with their particular norms thus revalorized as covenantal stipulations. And covenantal stipulations are very much intended to be obeyed.

Thus, Deuteronomy, the book most imbued with the conceptions and idioms of covenant, time and again insists that its laws be carefully practiced and continually kept in mind. It promises blessings to those who heed that counsel and curses to those who violate it, proving faithless to the covenant. “For the word is very close to you,” reads the conclusion to one of its most memorable exhortations, “in your mouth and in your heart to practice it” (Deuteronomy 30:14). This was written long before anyone ever heard of Ptolemy II or the Hasmoneans.

More.

A Talmudic picture of heaven shares with Plato's Socrates that the debate continues in the afterlife

 

 

What Happens in Heaven? Study. Of What? Jewish Law:

But, in one particular text [Bava Metzia 86a], the Talmud presents a picture of heaven quite unlike anything in the Bible, an image that is indeed unthinkable, if not blasphemous, outside of its uniquely rabbinic context . . . :

They were arguing in the Academy of Heaven. If the blotch on the [individual’s] skin preceded the white hair, he is impure. If the white hair preceded the blotch on the skin, he is pure.

Not only does the Academy of Heaven forgo any discussion of ultimate truths, but the question being debated at this highest imaginable institution of learning centers on an issue of law—and not just any issue, but one involving some of the most obscure, picayune, and technical details that can be found in the entire rabbinic canon. 

The picture is hardly unthinkable, nor is it uniquely rabbinic.

Plato's Socrates [Apology 40f.]:

But on the other hand, if death is, as it were, a change of habitation from here to some other place, and if what we are told is true, that all the dead are there, what greater blessing could there be, judges? For if a man when he reaches the other world, after leaving behind these who claim to be judges, shall find those who are really judges who are said to sit in judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and all the other demigods who were just men in their lives, would the change of habitation be undesirable? Or again, what would any of you give to meet with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? I am willing to die many times over, if these things are true; for I personally should find the life there wonderful, when I met Palamedes or Ajax, the son of Telamon, or any other men of old who lost their lives through an unjust judgement, and compared my experience with theirs. I think that would not be unpleasant.

And the greatest pleasure would be to pass my time in examining and investigating the people there, as I do those here, to find out who among them is wise and who thinks he is when he is not. What price would any of you pay, judges, to examine him who led the great army against Troy, or Odysseus, or Sisyphus, or countless others, both men and women, whom I might mention? To converse and associate with them and examine them would be immeasurable happiness. At any rate, the folk there do not kill people for it; since, if what we are told is true, they are immortal for all future time, besides being happier in other respects than men are here.

One value of religion may be that its calendar is a reminder that human progress is debatable

Jon Levenson, once upon a time of the University of Chicago, here:

In this calendar, there is thus a cyclicality of feasting and fasting, of celebrating and mourning, of high success and abysmal failure, that stands in tension with, and relativizes, any “progress of mankind toward an accomplished purpose.” The messianic consummation is indeed promised and, for the believer, draws closer with each passing day. But whether humankind is making progress toward it is a very different question.