I think I finally figured out that the Kuzari proof might indeed work, though maybe not in the direction that some people hope.
The Kuzari ‘proof’ goes like this:
The story of Sinai is so huge - 600,000 males (approx 2.5 million people) all experiencing God’s revelation (in some fashion)- that it could not have been made up and then accepted by the public. Nobody in ancient Israel would have believed such a story if it wasn’t common knowledge already. Hence it must be true.
R Dovid Gosselieb has a long essay about this, and adds that a further argument for this proof is that no other religion has such an origin story. All the other religions start with a revelation to a small group of people, or just one ‘prophet’. If a mass revelation story is easy to fabricate, then why didn’t every other religion start such a story? The fact that there are no parallels shows that such a story could not be ‘sold’ unless it was actually true.
The issue with this argument is of course that ‘Myth-Formation’ is a well known phenomenon (which even Gossleib admits is real and proven). Basically, myths develop over the centuries and are not deliberately invented to fool people. Hence each generation believes in only an incrementally larger myth. There is no huge deception involved.
As to why only Judaism has an origins story on such a grand scale, there are many possible reasons. Firstly, maybe the Jews had more chutzpah than everyone else! Secondly, and more seriously, critical historical writing started with the Greeks around 400 BC. Mass produced paper (papyrus) started around 100 BC (or thereabouts). Before that, most religious traditions were passed down orally, and there was not a clear notion of critically examined history. Early Judaism would have been able to evolve a myth on the scale of Sinai, whereas later religions would not. Finally, so maybe Judaism evolved a unique story. Unique things do happen, and do not in themselves prove anything.
However the Kuzari proof might work in the opposite direction. An event of such magnitude - 2.5 million people fleeing Egypt and witnessing a Divine revelation - would have left some evidence somewhere, either in archeology, history or similar. Yet no such evidence exists. There is no independent corroboration whatsoever.
In other words, we have two possible arguments here
1. The scale of the Sinai story is so huge that it could not have been invented, hence it must be true.
2. The scale of the Sinai story is so huge it would have left evidence somewhere, yet none has ever been found. Hence it must be false.
Given what we know about myth formation and ancient history, which argument do you think is stronger? At best, it’s a tie. At worst, argument 2 is way stronger.
However, there is no denying that we have an amazing and unique story here. A group of nomadic people, (or possibly a smaller sub-group settled within Israel), created a unique monotheistic religion which changed the world. The Old Testament has been called the most influential book ever. For those people who believe that God exists, and has a hand in shaping history, it’s hard not to think that God was somehow quite intensely involved here, in some fashion.
I think this correlates with the Science & Torah view of evolution. The reconciliators argue that even though all the evidence seems to show 15 billion years of purely random evolution, a believer will still say that God is behind it all. (I will discuss the issue of whether this means God is a trickster in another post). Likewise, one could argue that even though the evolution of Judaism/Torah looks random and/or man made, God was really behind it all.
Of course you could also argue the same for any other religion too, that God was really behind it all. I suppose that if you have an intense feeling that God arranges everything for a reason, then maybe your particular task is to follow the religion you are born into, and that’s God’s will. Then again, maybe you were put here to be skeptical, and prove to your co-religionists that your particular religion is false. That could be God's will too. Hard to say really.
And of course this line of argument only works if God (the classical Jewish God) actually exists, in any sense of the word. Some people seem to think that there is good proof for Sinai (i.e. Torah Min Hashamayim), but no proof for God. This makes no sense, since if TMS is true, then God must exist. So, you can hold there is no proof for either concept, or good proof for both concepts, or maybe good proof for God but not for TMS. But it is logically impossible to have good proof for TMS yet not for God.
On my previous blog I came to the conclusion that since there was no way to know any of this for sure, the only possible option is ‘shev ve’al taaseh’. But this just leads to paralysis, and isn’t very practical when your kids are about to start 15+ years of Jewish education. So, we have to come up with something.
The question is, what?
