The Kuzari Proof – 3 Million Witnesses Can Be Wrong

The Kuzari Proof – 3 Million Witnesses Can Be Wrong

Kuzari

The Kuzari Proof is a famous proof of the validity of Judaism and is commonly used in outreach programs to convince estranged Jews to return to the fold of observance. (1) It was developed originally by the 11th century poet Yehuda Halevi as a response to the loss of Judaism’s monopoly on monotheism. It was designed specifically to prove that the Jews had a unique theological gift: the direct and public revelation of God to all the ancient Israelites at Mt. Sinai. (2) In recent years, the ‘proof’ has been offered as a proof of many things. Most commonly it attempts to prove: the existence of God, His revelation to the ancient Israelites at Sinai, His authorship of the Torah, and the resulting inerrancy of the Torah. My purpose is not to argue for or against the veracity of any of the above claims, but instead to show why the Kuzari proof is not a proof of any of them. Part of the search for truth entails the culling out of implausible options. It is my hope that the de-legitimization of the Kuzari proof will lead the observant and the secular alike to come closer to the truth.

The Kuzari ‘proof’ has been proffered in several forms and incarnations but the gist is as follows:
1) 3 million Jews witnessed the revelation of God at Sinai. (3)
2) Starting with the witnessing generation, one generation has told the story to the next, leading us, in the current generation, to be inductive witnesses to this event.
3) It is impossible to fake a large public event and its subsequent intergenerational transmission (with inferred acceptance) as described in steps 1 and 2, thus the original event must have happened.
It would seem to be common sense that events with many witnesses cannot be faked. However, history has taught us that many who have invoked ‘common sense’ have been frustrated by how rare indeed a sense it is. Needless to say, I find many problems with this ‘proof’. I will take each in sequential order.

First, I address the ‘3 million Jews witnessed the revelation’ claim. In logical discourse, one cannot assume what one is trying to prove. You cannot assume that the Torah is inerrant in order to prove that it is inerrant. The 3 million figure (or 600,000 adult males to be more precise) comes from the Torah. (4) One cannot use this figure then, to prove that there were 3 million witnesses to an event which then makes the Torah inerrant. To do so is to construct a tautological proof, or in lay terms… a self-validating statement. The statement “if it rains, it will be raining” is syntactically valid, but is semantically meaningless, in that it is tautological. The proof of the inerrancy of the Torah cannot be made by using statements that require the Torah to be inerrant. In short, we do not know, independent of the Torah claim, that there were 3 million witnesses at Sinai, hence the proof falls apart right there.

Next we look at the ‘witnessed the revelation of God at Sinai’ part of the first statement. As I can recall from my Hebrew school days, the voice of God at Sinai was so powerful it could ‘tear the soul from your body’. I also remember descriptions of smoke and fire similar to the poor Technicolor animations of the DeMille classic depicting the same. (5) Now Joan Rivers has a voice that in my mind can tear the soul out of my body as she as she squawks and screeches about the stars’ fashions at the Oscars. I am in no particular hurry to worship Joan Rivers nor Cecil B. DeMille. What I mean to get across comedically is that special effects capable of being produced cheaply these days by Industrial Light and Magic and the good folks over at Lucasfilm hardly proves God for me. A simple retort might be “but no one believes the fantastic stories and special effects of today to be true”. Tell that to the people who suffered mass panic and hysteria at the radio transmission of Welles’ “The War of The Worlds” in the 1938. (6) In summation, as we build here, for statement 1, we have 3 million unproved witnesses witnessing something they say was fiery, scary and spoke with a loud voice. If one were to tell a Kuzari adherent of UFO sightings, they would likely start to ask questions as to what other explanations could explain this phenomenon: why not here too? (7)

Now we look at statement 2, specifically at the part which says: starting with the witnessing generation, we have an unbroken chain of transmission. The ‘starting with the witnessing generation’ part is key. It says that it is impossible to get a generation (a large group of people) to accept anything as an accurate account of history which was not known to be an accurate account history. Yet when you poke a Kuzari adherent for proof of the Israelites’ slavery in Egypt you quickly get this response: “The Egyptians did not record their defeats.” (8) Well hang on a second here, does not that suggest that the Egyptians published a history and the greater than 3 million Egyptians that read it accepted it as true even though they knew it was untrue? (9) So can you cause multitudes to accept a false history or not? Which is it? The answer cannot be, if we are to have a sensible conversation, yes in the case of the Egyptians and no in the case of the Israelites. It also cannot be the answer that the Egyptians were embarrassed by defeat and thus motivated to accept the faked history because we cannot know if the Israelites also were not embarrassed by some historical event and thus were motivated to accept a revised history of unique divine revelation. Recall, we cannot assume the Torah as an accurate account of history to prove that the Torah is an accurate account of history. Keeping our eye on the ball, it is NOT the issue here whether or not there were slaves in Egypt, nor is it the issue as to what the actual history of the region was. The issue is that you cannot, at once, claim that you both can and cannot cause a large number of people to accept a false history. The Kuzari proof and discussions of the Kuzari proof are fraught with these sorts of asymmetric applications of explanatory logic. You cannot suck and blow from the same explanatory pipe at the same time.

Next we address statement 3, the inerrancy and incorruptibility of generational transmission of this revelation. Note: this statement is really just a summation of points 1 and 2 where the true Kuzari argument rests. Many people have accused the Torah of suffering from ‘broken telephone’ transmission. The orthodox authorities have correctly retorted that they have proof, archaeological no less, that the Torah has shifted perhaps 2 or 3 letters at most during all of its transmission. Parenthetically, for those keeping score and who just noted an asymmetrical application of explanatory logic, a gold star to you. You correctly noted that all of the sudden archaeology IS an acceptable proof that the Torah has not changed through the generations, yet archaeology IS NOT acceptable as proof that there were not Israelites in Egypt.

If the Torah did not significantly change over they centuries, which is a statement I will accept due to archaeological supporting evidence, the question becomes: why would any people accept the Torah as history, as the ancient Israelites seemed to, if its contents (the description of the revelation at Sinai) were not known to be true? In typical rabbinic style, let me answer a question with a question: Why would the multitudes that accepted the Gospels as gospel, accept them unless they knew somehow that Jesus had indeed miraculously fed the multitudes fish and loaves of bread as the gospels describe? (10) “After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, ‘Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.’ ” (John 6:14) (11) The problem here exists in yet another asymmetrical application of explanatory logic. If you cannot pervert a generational transmission of a miraculous event, then adherents to the Kuzari proof must by definition, accept that Jesus fed the multitudes by miracle. To be clear, I am not saying whether Jesus fed the multitudes or not, nor am I proving or disproving a revelation at Sinai, I am simply saying that the evidence of cultural widespread acceptance of an event as a miracle cannot be the proof of Judaism because it proves antithetical Jewish and Christian miracles at the same time.

In summation we see that the Kuzari proof is a failed proof because of fundamental flaws in logic. The two main fundamental flaws are assuming that which is trying to be proved and asymmetrical uses of explanatory logic at the convenience of the argument. The Kuzari proof is an attempt to prove the divine revelation at Sinai which, in turn, is a cornerstone of Jewish faith. (12) For the orthodox that appear vexed at the decline of Judaism, the message is clear: The rest of us will accept what you have to say when you provide cogent proof. The Kuzari proof is not cogent and the burden of proof is on you.

Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuzari

———————————————————
1 http://ohr.edu/special/books/truth-6.htm
2 http://www.talkreason.com/articles/kuzari.cfm
3 Numbers (1:46) There were 600,000 adult males generally leading us to conclude a total population of 3 million.
4 ibid
5 http://www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=2047
6 http://radio.about.com/library/weekly/aa102302a.htm
7 http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9923316/
8 http://ohr.edu/yhiy/article.php/2053
9 The number of Egyptians must have been greater than 3 million if the biblical account is true because it would be impossible to subdue and enslave a population of 3 million Israelites with an equal or smaller number of Egyptians.
10 http://www.gardenofpraise.com/bibl43s.htm
11 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%206:1-15
12 Aish.Com – Rediscovering The Revelation

129 thoughts on “The Kuzari Proof – 3 Million Witnesses Can Be Wrong

  1. Regarding point 9: it has been my understanding that the native population of Egypt at the time of the exodus was 2 to 3 million based on the agriculture at that time. A few sources have extended that to 5 million. Obviously, in the Exodus story, these numbers must have included the Israelites. According to a Midrash, which is universally believed by Orthodox Jews, 80% of the Israelite population died during the plague of Darkness. If this was 80% of the entire population, there would have been 15 million Israelites prior to this plague. If it was 80% of the males, there would have been 3 million males, presumably with 3 million wives before the plague. 20% of 3 million is the 600,000 males. In addition to the fact that both initial populations far exceed the most generous population and agriculture estimates, the exodus of such a large segment of the population would have caused tremendous havoc in the Egyptian economy. Historical data from Egypt at the time(s) of the supposed Exodus have never demonstrated such an exodus nor has any serious crisis in the Egyptian economy ever been documented. Attempts to set the date of the Exodus earlier or later than the accepted date in the 1200’s BCE have caused insolvable problems of their own.

  2. 1) We are not assuming that 3 million people were there; the Kuzari proof never suggests that. Instead, we claim that if people BELIEVE that millions of their ancestors were at an event, they have always turned out to be right. This shows that what people consider to be national events is always correct.

    2) Most Kuzari proponets do not foces on the Voice at Sinai. Instead, they focus on manna which Jews believe fed millions of their ancestors for 14,600 days.

    3) Jews never claim that there is an unbroken chain. We don’t need to. We are merely claiming that a national commemorated event has never been wrong. The burden is on you to show us why you PRESUME and in fact, conclude, that this one is wrong (and the Jews believe that the commemorations – Sabbath, Sabbatical years, Jubilee, Phylacteries, Torah scrolls, Joshua’s stones – were initiated at the time of the miracles).

    4) Archeology is not relevant because the Torah claims that the Jews left Egypt largely empty-handed, and thus could not leave archeological remains. Rurthermore, the Torah claims that their clothing and shoes did not whither and thus were not disposed. More importantly, archeological evidence can never prove a negative, especially when there is eyewitness – or national historical evidence – against it.

  3. 5) Sorry, one last point. The Kuzari proponents never claim that the Egyptians believed a false history. Instead, they claim that the Egyptians – 99% of them who couldn’t write – refused to record national defeats (only the leadership wrote; so they didn’t write down their defeats). They believed the Jewish Exodus just as much as they believed that they suffered devastating defeats by the hands of the Assyrians from time to time. But they did not write down their defeats. Nothing more; nothing less.

    Just to show one example. The Egyptians worshiped the sun. Notable, they never recorded any of their eclipses. That makes sense, since a solar eclipse is a defeat of their god. Does that mean they didn’t BELIEVE in solar eclipses? – of course not.

  4. Addressing Derer’s point #5: “99% of them couldn’t write”. Great either could the Israelites and hence, that’s how they accepted a text as history which was false.

    A future historian might make the claim that the Patriot Act was accepted by the American public of the day because it was widely available and only moderately objected to. The truth: no one read it.

    “they never recorded any of their eclipses.” The library of Alexandria was sacked in the greatest tragedy of intellectual loss in history. Papyrus records were lost. These papyrus documents were thought to record most of their astronomical knowledge.

  5. I can deal with points 1-4 in one felled swoop.

    I’ll tell you of a people who crossed a body of water where the water opened before them and they crossed dry shod. They then came upon a mountain where God revealed himself to them. Upon leaving the mountain, they ate a food which was a strewn miracle (manna). They followed their God to the promised land… Mexico

    http://www.martincwiner.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/BetweenTheLines-LosLunas.pdf for textual references.

    Kuzari proponents say that public, mass revelation has occurred only once in history; that just ain’t so.

  6. (I will not respond to your tangential points, so as not to get off topic).

    1. So when you don’t find written records for eclipses you assume that they were destroyed in Alexandria (and I happen to agree with you), but when you don’t find written records of the Exodus you use that as PROOF THAT THE EXODUS NEVER HAPPENED. And I thought I was dumb.

    2. The Kuzari proof has four elements. It is a story about 1. a national event (millions of people), 2. which was heavily commemorated from the day of the event (Sabbath, Sabbatical years, phylacteries), 3. which is are burdensome commemorations (tithes to the poor, Sabbath, Sabbatical years), 4. and a nation actually believes this story.

    The story you cited lacks EACH AND EVERY ONE of the elements. 1. It does not say how many people were there. 2. It was neither heavily commemorated, let alone that commemorations were initiated at the time of the event. 3. There was nothing burdensome about accepting the event. 4. We have no way of knowing that the people believed this story – it may have been a novel or one writer’s exaggeration.

  7. Addressing the ‘inconsistent use of archaelogy’ in argument. Do you contend that an eclipse and 3 million people living in a foreign land of 3 million people would leave equal amounts of archaeological evidence?

    Next for the Popul Vuh, it’s nice to see you’ve dismissed the work as inadequate without even reading it. Fortunately, I have.
    The text can be found here:
    http://www.scribd.com/doc/1019117/The-Popol-Vuh-English
    You list four main points to the Kuzari Proof which you contend the Popul Vuh fails to meet.
    1) It was a national event: the event occurred in front of the entire Mayan population on the mountain.
    2) It was heavily commemorated: absolutely it was, the city of Chichen Itza (Sasson Yitza: in Joy we Came) celebrates their travels
    3) Burdensome commemorations are required: Gucumatz instituted an elaborate ritual of fasting and other abstinence rites.
    4) The entire Mayan nation believes(d) the story and it’s on the flag of Mexico celebrating this story to this very day.

    An embarassing comeuppance is the inevitable outcome when students only read works that support their theory.

  8. I never said an eclipse and the Exodus are neccesarily equal. I merely said that even you agree that lack of written evidence for an event is not evidence that the event happened. AGAIN, THE BURDEN IS ON YOU TO PROVE ME THAT THE EXODUS TEXTS WOULD SURELY HAVE BEEN WRITTEN AND WOULD SURELY NOT HAVE BEEN BURNED IN ALEXANDRIA. Sorry, but you haven’t.

    2. Martin you are a smart guy, but don’t think I was born yesterday. “The entire Mayan population on the mountain.” Give me a number, for God’s sake. Was the entire population on the mountain 20 people or 25 people?

    3. I don’t care if it was commemorated. What is important is that the commemorations started with the same people that saw the event. That is the only thing that is important. Does Popul Vuh even claim that those who saw the event began commemorating an everlasting commemoration of the event? (The Jewish claim that the same Jews who saw the Exodus began commemorating the Exodus.) This is exremely important. See, Ezra could not have come to the Jews claming that Moses got the Torah which claims that the Jews must keep Sabbath forever, because they would have quickly asked: Why did we never hear of Sabbath?

    3) How do you know that this is true? How do you know the story is not a novel? In other words, how do you know any Mayans actually did that?

    4) How do you know that Mayans believed it? How do you know this story is not a novel?

  9. For someone so averse to using archaeology in argument, you have a penchant for digging your own grave.

    The ancient egyptian society was thought to have been between 3-5 million people at its peak. Having 3 million foreign people intermingled with this amount of people would have left a tonne of archaeological evidence in the form of pottery, dwellings, relics, etc etc… well beyond the papyrus record.

    The burden of proof lies upon you to show why there are records of the Babylonians, Sumerians, Egyptians, Greek, etc etc and not of the Hebrews in Egypt.
    2. You want me to give you a number… fine, I’ll give you a number: 72,000. That is the size of the entire ancient Israelite migration. The number of military aged men that crossed the Red Sea were 60 chiefs, not 60 eleph (1000). Eleph and Alluph are both spelled the same but have different vowels which are omitted in semitic languages. Your entire line of thinking is based on a typo.

    http://www.martincwiner.com/reconciling-biblical-numbers-three-million-at-sinai-is-making-a-mountain-out-of-a-molehill/

    3-4) You make such brilliant points… on my behalf. Exactly, you figured it out! How DO YOU know that the Mt Sinai event was interpreted literally and not as a fable? Because the Jews accepted monotheism and shabbat? They DIDN”T! There is factual, on the ground irrefutable evidence that Jews worshipped two Gods before the Babylonian exile LONG after the Mt Sinai event. The second God’s name was Ashera, a female god.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Did_God_Have_a_Wife%3F

  10. 1. “Was thought to have been between 3-5 million.” If you want to cite archeologitsts, then just use their names and say, “Look, I have a long list of names, so that means your wrong.” No, you decided to use archeological arguments. And I applaud you for that. So, please, show me why they are SURE that there were only between 3-5 million. Second, you have to cite each and every argument – which you don’t. Third, according to the Encara dictionary “most scholars believe that the Hapiru are the Hebrews.” So, yes, we do have evidence that the Jews were in Egypt. But even if we didn’t, how are you sure that we would have found evidence for them? Maybe, like the Nazis did at the close of the Holocaust, they were trying to eliminate evidence of the Jews? In short, absense of evidence isn’t evidence of absense, as the saying goes.

    2. Where does it say 72,000? Chapter and verse please. Regarding your argument of eleph/aluph, there is a logical error in your argument which I will not focus on simply because I can rely on the egregious errors in scholarship. First, the words are not spelled that same AT ALL. The singluar word aluph – chief – has the letter “vav” while eleph – thousand – does not (See Genesis 36:40). The plural for chiefs is aluphei (Ibid) while the plural for thousands is alaphim: violently different spellings (and the plural form is used when counting 600,000). So you have to update the “scholars” who you have been relying upon, if any. Second, take the verse in Exodus 38:26, where G-d says that all members of the Jews – 600 eleph, 3 eleph, five hundred and fifty – must give coins. Now, according to your translation the verse does not a make a morsel of sense. According to me, it is quite simple: 603,550. The next verses talks about what should be done with the “eleph”s of coins. Were these coins also “chiefs?” (I was going to bring more proofs, but I feel I don’t need to, really).

    3. OK. I get your point. You claim that originally the Jews took the whole Sinai history allegorically and then it morphed into a real story. The problem with your theory is that you have yet to show me that national history can morph. Please, show me one case where a national history the size of found in the Torah can evolve. Until then, your hypothesis can only inspire laughter (I am not sure why you cite archeological evidence that SOME Jews were polytheists; I can show you many verses in the Bible that say the same – the Torah does not try to hide our faults. Indeed, that is why the Torah predicts that the Jews will be exiled: Because they dabbled with foreign idols.)

  11. BTW, I don’t care if there were 75,000 mayans. I want to see that all 75,000 of them saw a miracle.

  12. Oy vey, so many mistakes, so little time:
    1) Hapiru were hebrew: They weren’t enslaved, they were lepars who were cast out.
    2) The Torah is/was NOT written in hebrew. It was written in Ugaritic. You can’t use rules of hebrew to escape the problem. The torah is full of inconsistencies as a result:
    Comparing 2.Samuel 10:18 to 1.Chronicles 19:18 we have different numbers:

    “But they fled before Israel, and David killed ‘***700*** of their charioteers’ and fourtythousand of their foot soldiers.”

    “But they fled before Israel, and David killed `***7000*** of their charioteers’ and 40,000 of their foot soldiers.”

    3) Morphing of Legend into literal belief: Take any Mohammed, Christ story you choose. There’s your evidence.

    “Because they dabbled with foreign idols”: Then crucial to your arugment is that upon seeing the Mount Sinai Event, Jews became monotheistic and observed shabbat, etc etc. You’ve just said they didn’t.

  13. “BTW, I don’t care if there were 75,000 mayans. I want to see that all 75,000 of them saw a miracle.”
    You really don’t like reading huh?
    http://www.scribd.com/doc/1019117/The-Popol-Vuh-English
    Page 135.
    “They came at last to the top of a mountain and there *all the Quiché people and the tribes* were reunited.”

    “And their gods spoke to them again. Thus Tohil, Avilix, and Hacavitz spoke to Balam-Quitzé,
    Balam-Acab, Mahucutah, and Iqui-Balam: “Let us go, let us get up, let us not stay here, take us to
    a secret place! Already dawn draws near. Would it not be a disgrace for you if we were
    imprisoned by our enemies within these walls where you, the priests and sacrificers. keep us? Put
    each of us, then. in a safe place,”1 they said when they spoke.

    “Very well. We shall go on, we shall go in search of the forests,” *all* answered. “

  14. 1. Lepers? I thought the current scientific theory of the Exodus was that they were killing Egyptian children and using their blood for Matza.

    2. Show me proof that the original text was written in Ugaritic, and, even if so, show me proof that Ugaritic does not share the rules of Hebrew that I mentioned – i.e., that the pluran form of chiefs and thousands are spelled the same (also, how would you deal with my second proof, from the coin text in Exodus 38:26?).

    3. Contradictions in the Bible. I won’t even deal with this question. First, how is it relevant? How does that fact that a copying “error” crept into one of the prophetic texts in any way tell me whether the miracles happened in Sinai? Second, and much more importantly, the “contradictions” are all found in the classic commentators. You can’t just quote their questions without offering them the chance to answer it. Here, the Radak, Ralbag, and Malbim provide a satisfactory answer for the contradiction. Read them and then tell me why you don’t like their answer.

    4. Regarding Mohamed and Jesus, I never claimed that people don’t lie. I claimed that 1) national history of 100% of a nation’s ancestors, 2) who number in the millions (which is why the Torah counts each tribe again and again), 3) which was believed to have been HEAVILY commemorated FOREVER (e.g., phylacteries, Sabbatical years – how did they all agree on which year is ‘the seventh’?, Sabbath, tzitis, circumcision, tithes, Passover, Joshua’s stones on which he wrote the Torah, The scorll on which Moses wrote the Torah, cities of refuge, and a few hundred other commemorations) — has never been wrong. Once I have evidence which has never been wrong, I have no reason to assume it is wrong here.

    5. Again, please give me the number of people who were on the peak of the mountain – where “all the Quiche people” 300 or 400 people? Furthermore, please prove to me that ANYONE actually believed this story, and, if so, whether it was the descendants of those Quiche who actually believed it. Furthermore, show me that people believed that the event was commemorated by the same people who saw the miracles. Furthermore, the text does not say that the people on the mountain saw the gods. To the contrary, the gods spoke to four other entities. Until you respond to each and every one of these objections, your myth is meaningless.

  15. Back for more punishment? 🙂 OK
    1) Lepers: Yes, the Habiru were lepers
    2) Torah in Ugaritic? I’ll do better, without needing ugaritic, 600 alaphim. Alaphim means military unit, possibly of lets say 10 people. 600 tens = 6000. Not six million. Don’t ask me how I know that alaphim means 10 people… ask yourself how do you know that alaphim means thousands? You’re using modern hebrew language rules to interpret an ancient text. Words change meanings over time. Have a gay time understanding my point.
    3) Contradictions in bible: of course it’s relevant, I’ve shown that numbers are in question. You need millions at Sinai, I’ve just cut your millions down to thousands. Ouch.
    4) Jesus performed miracles in front of all of Jerusalem. He rose from the dead. This lead to easter and the entire Christian religion full of rituals. If the entire population of Jerusalem didn’t believe this to be true… when they wrote the gospels, they would have said: “Hey this is wrong”.
    5) All the Maya were on the mountain. They spoke with their Gods. Their gods were manifestations of one ultimate god. Don’t ask me to find the exact story somewhere else. I don’t think you’ve caught on yet… the Mayan myth is very similar to the Jewish one… you’re not asking the right question… why?

  16. 1. Ok, you got me about the lepers part.

    2. You claim that the Jews ended up believing in a false history about what they thought happened to millions of thier ancestors because they forgot how to read Hebrew. Can you please show me one case where a false nationally-commemorated history was initiated because people forgot how to read their own language? If not, your hypothesis can only inspire laughter.

    3. If alaphim means military units, then why does the next verse talk about the alaphim of coins that were collected? In fact, the 600,000 half-shekels were melted dows and made into 100 bases of silver which housed the beams of the Tabernacle. Each base weighed a “kikar”, which, according to Rashi, is made up of 6,000 half-shekel (indeed, two verses later, it cleary implies that a kikar must have been made up of at least 4,800 half-shekels, if not much more.) Again, there were 100 of these massive bases, according to the verses.

    4. Do descendants of those Jerusalemites beleive that their ancestors saw Jesus (and why is seeing Jesus a miracle, if we can’t be sure he died?)? Of course not! Yes, Paul convinced THE GREEKS that Jesus appeared in Jerusalem, and they had no way of contradicting them. Isn’t it odd that the Jews, of all people, smelled out a rat. Why? Because they said, “You are describing events that supposedly happened to our ancestors, and yet we never even heard of Jesus from OUR ANCESTORS.” In order to refute Kuzari, you have to show that people believed a false national history. Their own history.

    5. The Mayan Myth: a) It never says they saw their gods; b) it never says how many people were there – “all the Quiche” doesn’t mean that there were more than 300 people; c) it never says how these people commemorated this event (which would have thus prevented them from inventing the story later on); d) the story never claims that the descedants of these people believed the event (these “witnesses” could have all died out on the spot); e) WE HAVE NO WAY OF KNOWING THAT THIS STORY WAS NOT A NOVEL. You might as well cite Harry Potter, if so. In short, the evidence is not similar at all.

  17. Yes. It does that the “gods spoke to them.” But the very next sentence clarifies that “them” is a group of other gods. So you got nothing to work with.

    If you check on Wikipedia, some scholars argue that the priest who “found” the text actually authored that entire narrative himself. You really know how to build a mountain out of nothing.

  18. “If you check on Wikipedia” – You’re quoting Rabbi Akiva ben Wikipedia? Times must be tough. Let me switch to the offensive because I can deal with most of your points with a counter example.

    You don’t seem to grasp why I’m so against the 3 million figure. It’s because the figure is impossible.

    The Exodus was said to have taken place between 1000-2000 BCE
    http://www.crivoice.org/exodusdate.html

    I’ll round up for you and say it was as late as 1000 BCE

    The population of the entire planet was 50 million:
    http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/history/world-population-growth.htm
    The population of Egypt was around 3 million*, the population of Canaan was in the 100’s of thousands. **

    (*, **) Finkelstein, Israel and Neil Asher Silberman (2002). The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts.

    So you contend that the Israelites were the same size as the Egyptians? Why didn’t the Torah mention that? (Yes, it said they increased greatly, it should have said they incerased to match the Egyptians) Why were the Israelites so afraid of the 600 Egyptian chariots? 600,000 military aged men to 600 chariots is 1000 men / chariot. 100 men ought to be enough to overpower a chariot just with stones… let alone 1000.

    Your next problem comes in Deuteronomy 7:1. the Israelites “… cast out … seven nations greater and mightier than [themselves]” So the Israelites cast out 7 nations of at least 3 million each, making Canaan home to AT LEAST 21 million people. The entire planet was 50 million people. Israel displaced 1/2 the world population without a single trace or record of it, other than the Torah?! Every shred of evidence we have shows Canaan to be a land of 100’s of thousands?! Egypt, a nation of 3 million left hundreds of artifacts which survive unto this very day, yet SEVEN other civilizations of 3 million each left absolutely NOTHING? The land of Canaan held 1/2 of the world population?!

    Bollocks.

  19. Circumstancial evidence can NEVER overweight EYEWITNESS EVIDENCE. There is no way that they can verify the number of people who inhabitated ancient societies. IT IS PURE GUESS (do you trust the Harvard-trained weatherman who swears that in a weeks time the weather will be rainy? No.).

    Let me ask you, how much archeological remains have we found of the Second Temple era when there were millions of Jews living in Israel? Not much. How much archeologcial evidence have we found of Jews living in Babylon during the writing of the Gemara? Nothing. How much archeological evidence have we found that there was a First Temple in Israel? Nothing. How much archeological evidence have we found of the destruction of Babylon – something all historians agree happened – NOTHING. Not one shred of archeological evidence that Babylon fell. But archeologists don’t tell you this. Why? Do the words “Publish or Perish” mean anything to you?

  20. I checked the verse in Dueteronomy 7:1, which states that the other nations are larger. It does not imply that each one is larger; instead, combined they were. And what does “larger” mean? It might mean more numerous, but it also might mean physically larger in size of each person. Again, this is all irrelevant. You can’t contradict eyewitness evidence with circumstancial, or rather unsubstantial, ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE..

    (Cario, with its suburbs, has approximately 16.8 million citizens. It is unimagineable – at least in my eyes – that future archeologists would be able to verify this number based on their remains.)

  21. As the saying goes, “There’s a sucker born each minute.” No, Martin, we are not suckers. We question; we evaluate; and we ask archeologists – I myself have emailed Finkelstien on numerous occasions – and we demand them to show us what proof they have for their UNDERLYING assumptions, which are quite suspect.

    I assume you are an evolutionist. Did you ever take your “absense of evidence is evidence of absense” to why we haven’t found the millions of intermediate species Darwin swore we will eventually find? No. That’s because you and I realize that absense of evidence isn’t evidence of absense.
    In fact, there is a lot of archeological evidence that backs up the Bible. But we shall leave that for a later date.

  22. I think you misunderstand my intentions. My intentions are NOT to disprove God’s existence by disproving the Kuzari Method. My intentions are to show that the Kuzari Proof is not an effective proof of anything.

    I’m an aetheist as you might have guessed but not because I feel the Kuzari Proof fails.

    Here’s why the proof fails:

    Moses and Aaron took the Israelites to a volcano.
    Remember this is the era where people worshipped natural phenomena like the sun.
    The volcano made scary noises, there were flashes of lightening
    http://www.hoax-slayer.com/images/lightning-volcano2.jpg
    pillars of smoke, lions and tigers and bears, oh my, etc etc.
    Moses and Aaron interpreted these events to be the actions of God.
    They wrote a book containing all the moral codes and history as they understood it and gave it to the people next to this mountain.
    Moses and Aaron, just like George Bush believed they were acting under God’s commandments hence the verses saying that God told Moses to write such and such.
    The people were frightened by the volcano and believed and accepted Moses’ book and explanations.

    Do you see the problem? The Kuzari Method ‘proves’ that the Israelites saw something scary and that someone like George Bush in the 10th century BCE thought that they were relaying the information of God.

  23. I could respond to your hypothesis of how the Sinai story – split sea, manna, pillar of fire, Miriam’s well – evolved the same way I responded to your previous hypotheses. I feel bad that I am simply not smart of enough to make a compelling case for Judaism (nor am I one of those kiruv “experts”).

    The Torah, as I’m sure you know, doesn’t just have one proof. There are many proofs for the truth of the Torah. For example, try this one on for size: It’s called the Kuzari-Purim proof, and it’s homemade.

    The Purim story seems to be the most improbable event imaginable. Here we have an entire nation – the Persian Jews – who were at the brink of mass-extinction and were saved at the last minute by the fact that they had a Jewish queen at the right place and at the right time. It is the only time in history that the Jews had a religious Jewish queen married to the most powerful man alive. Thanks to the extremely good luck, millions of Jewish lives were saved (there were many other lucky circumstances in the story). AM I SURE THAT IT WAS A MIRACLE? NO, I AM NOT SURE! I am merely stating that within the larger framework of Jewish survival, which was predicted numerous times in the Torah, the Purim story allows me to at least SUSPECT that there is a divine being Who is looking out for their needs.

    The question, however, is how the heck do we know that the story is true? How do we know that the Jews all over the Persian empire were about to subject to a horrible holocaust and were only saved – at the last second – by luckily having a saintly Jewish queen at the right place and at the right time? How do we know that the story wasn’t invented at a later date?

    To answer this question, we merely need to look at the Book of Esther itself, and keep in mind the Kuzari principle (our good old friend). In the book, we are told that after the nation fasted and prayed they were notified that they were saved, via a letter sent by Mordecai and Esther, informing them of the miracle. Then, the nation accepted upon itself Mordecai’s letter and “accepted and undertook upon themselves and their children and any who may join their nation – never to cease – to keep the two days of Purim as it is is written, every single year. And these days are recorded and celebrated in every family, nation and hamlet – so that these days of Purim should NEVER cease, nor its commemoration be forgotten from their children.” (Esther 9:26-28).

    So we have a national event which was commemorated by a national holiday which was accepted at the time of the event “FOREVER.” This story could not have been invented later, as Kuzari tells us.

    Yes, the Purim story can frighten all skeptics. Is it surely a miracle? No. But why do we always have to be so sure?

  24. Purim? You answer one suspected dream with a greater one?!

    Oy Vey… ok, you have to be 23 years old. You have all the signs and symptoms.

    The year I was officially aetheist? 28. What was I prior to that? Modern orthodox.

    Let me help you out with your theology a bit before I can discuss mine.

    You’re missing a great counter argument to all my arguments: Can we prove God (Hashem to you) exists at all?

    There is extensive literature saying that if we were able to prove conclusively that God exists, this would eliminate free will which is against God’s design for our world. God’s existence is thus like the Israeli nuclear program: strategically ambiguous.

    So you have a choice now… you can swallow that opiate for a while or I can explain to you why that line of reasoning doesn’t hold water either.

  25. Like I told you before, there is no reason to presume that the Sinia events were a dream. I am bringing evidence – national, commemorated and burdensome history. You presume and conclude that the evidence is fallible. Yet, you have no reason to assume it is fallible. Has national history ever evolved anywhere else? Has a volcano ever produced a history of 14,600 days of miracles, which would allow you to conclude that my evidence is fallible. No it hasn’t. So, my dear martin, you haven’t shown your wide readership why you have reached your conclusion.

  26. Proof Number 3.

    Prophesies of the Torah – The Exile.

    The Torah does not have many prophesies. But the few are quite enlightening about Who wrote it: I don’t know how many nations were ever exiled en mass (not merely conquered), maybe one out of ten. I don’t know what the cut-off point is, but at a certain point we have to agree that making accurate predictions should allow us to believe that someone who could see the future wrote it.

    The Torah repeats very often that the sinful Jews will eventually go into exile: “God will remove them from their soil, with anger, with wrath, and with great fury and He will throw them to another land” Deuteronomy (29:27); “God will scatter you among all the peoples, from the end of the earth to the end of the earth” (Deuteronomy 28:64); “I will scatter you among the nations” (Leviticus 26:33); “You will be swiftly banished from the goodly Land that God gives you (Deuteronomy 11:17); “You will become lost in the nations” (Leviticus 26:38); “I will disperse you among the nations (Deuteronomy 4:27; Ezekiel 22:15)
    Now, you may argue, that this prediction isn’t good enough. Sam Harris specifically mentions this prediction and says “let’s see the Torah predict the internet.” I agree. Predicting the internet is harder than to predict the exile. Query: Where, however, do you draw the line? 1/10, 1/100, 1/1000? And why?

  27. Sure thing. You want to know how all the discussions of exile got into the Torah. No problem. During the Babylonian exile Ezra the scribe came along with his exiles to bring the Jews back to Jerusalem. He looked through the myriad of texts available to him and picked out the phrases and passages that emphasized that if people disobeyed God (ie his religious order) that they’d be in deep cucky.

    It’s common that a downtrodden people look inwards for blame. It’s noted archaeologically and otherwise that it was at this time that the second god Asherah was abandoned and the emphasis on the one-ness of God came about.

    All the phrases you quote don’t predict an exile in 70 CE, they are guilty responses regarding the exile of 597 BCE.

    How do I deal with Manna? How do you is the question. The Mayan’s ate Tic-oj (tacos) which is phoenician for strewn miracle. Jesus fed 5000 with only a few loaves of bread. I’ll buy manna when you buy tacos and the Jesus miracle.

  28. There are a couple of points that I must make:

    1. The Torah could not have been written after the Babylonian exile since the Samaritans split from Judea-ism halfway through the First Temple era (II Kings 17), (which is why their Torah’s are written in the First Temple script). They were so foreign to Judaism that they tried to impede the building of the Second Temple (according to the Midrash Tanchuma, Ezra and Nehemia excommunicated the Samaritans for this action). If we have two warring groups that SHARE THE SAME TORAH, the Torah must have been written before they split. Like I told you before, since biblical scholarship and archeology often leads to dead ends, the compulsion of “publish and perish” forces some “scholars” to come up with fantastical ideas of when the Torah was written. Follow the evidence, not those who are plugging a book.

    2. It is not relevant when the Torah was written and what inspired the writer to include the exile prediction. The fact remains that the writer predicted the exile and that the prediction turned out to be right. The Jews were exiled according to the Torah’s prediction after the destruction of the Second Temple.

    3. Were the Mayan and Jesus events national, commemorated events which people believed happened to millions of their ancestors? It must be noted that even according to the Gospels’ account, Jesus’ feeding of the multitude – WAS NOT A MIRACLE which was witnessed by 5,000 people. According to the Gospel, it is not at all clear that the 5,000 people had any idea that Jesus only had a limited number of loaves. WE MUST TRUST THE APOSTLES’ CLAIM THAT JESUS ONLY HAD X NUMBER OF LOAVES. Additionally – as I mentiond to you before – the greeks were willing to believe the story, since they had no way to verify things that happened in faraway Israel. The Torah, however, talks about events that happened to our own ancestors.

  29. In case I wasn’t clear: I am open to the idea that Jesus fed 5,000 people. I am not open to the idea that Jesus only had a small number of loaves when feeding the 5,000 people. ONLY THE APOSTELS SAW HOW MANY LOAVES JESUS ACTUALLY HAD.

  30. Matthew 27:51
    51 Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, 52 and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; 53 and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.

    The entire Jewish population was there in Jerusalem for Pesach (a pilgrimage holiday).

    They all witnessed it:
    7 MILES out of Jerusalem a disguised Jesus comes upon a pair of people discussing the events in Jerusalem
    Luke 24:13
    [17] He [Disguised Jesus] asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”

    They stood still, their faces downcast. [18] One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?”

    There, all the Jews witnessed Jesus’ resurrection and the raising of the dead.

    There are 2 billion Christians today, only 14-18 million Jews. Clearly the Christian theophany was louder and more compelling then the Mt. Sinai event.

    So the Kuzari method works just fine… it proves Christianity swimmingly.

  31. What I find surprising is how you know the flaw in your “argument,” and you yet still argue it. Why would you do such a thing?

    As I have told you many times before, the Kuzari proof says that you cannot convince a nation about national events, their own national events, if the event never took place. The Greeks had no reason not to believe events that took place thousands of miles away. Please, show me one myth where people claim that millions of THEIR OWN ANCESTORS saw miracles, extended miracles, for 14,600 days, which they heavily commemorated forever.

    The Kuzari proof would be disproven if the descendents of these Jerusalemites believed in the story. THEY DON”T. NO ONE CLAIMS TO DESCEND FROM THEM. Why do you keep arguing a point that you know is false?

    (Second, the story is not a miracle. How is an earthquake, which rent the curtain on the temple, a miracle? And how are a bunch of people coming to Jerusalem – CLAIMING to be resurrected – a miracle?)

  32. The first Christians were all Jews. Into the 5th century the Early Christians were fully practicing Jews differing only in their belief in Jesus as Messiah. Christians claims to descend from the first Christians.

    Next, your own theology is out of whack… Judaism professes to be the sole religion NOT to rely on miracles.
    Deut 13:2 warns that even if someone prophesizes a wonder and the wonder comes true, do not follow them to worship unknown Gods.

    Finally, why suddenly is an earthquake, the ressurection of the dead and the damage of the Temple NOT a miracle or a sign of God? It seems convenience is your guiding light.

    Note your assymetry: Scary Mountain – clearly God, earthquake-resurrection – clearly NOT.

    Note the assymetry: Jewish miracles – God exists, Non-Jewish miracles – dupes

    And now, I use the Torah itself to disprove the Kuzari method:
    Exodus 20:14 And all the people perceived the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the horn, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled, and stood afar off.
    20:17 And the people stood afar off; but Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.
    20:18 And the LORD said unto Moses: Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel: Ye yourselves have seen that I have talked with you from heaven.

    Twice the Torah mentions that the Israelites were afar off when the ‘proof’ was delivered. ‘Someone’ then tells Moses… tell the Israelites you saw me… why? They just supposedly saw the proof, why do they need Moses to tell them what they saw.

    Number of witnesses at Mount Sinai: 1. The rest were ‘afar off’ by the Torah’s own admission, requiring Moses to TELL them what they saw.

    Kuzari vs Reality : Case Dismissed.

  33. 1. The first Christians were Jews (although within 100 years they dropped keeping all the laws and they accepted non-Jews fully into the faith without even undergoing circumcision, see Bart Ehrman’s treatment of this topic in the last chapter of his Misquoting Jesus). However, did those Christian-Jews a) claim to descend from the Jerusalemites and b) are we sure that they believed in Matthew’s Gospel (you can believe in Jesus without believing in Matthew’s Gospel)? We have no way of verifying either element, which is exactly why it is irrelevant to Kuzari.

    2. I never proved that miracles happened in Sinia based on what happened on Mount Sinai. I proved it through the 14,600 days of manna.

    3. Earthquakes happen. There may have been an earthquake in Jerusalem, and Matthew subsequently claimed that when the earthquake happened a bunch of people were resurrected (the curtain in the Temple was not in a public area, so that could have been easily made up). How many people saw the resurrection? Hardly anyone. The “resurrected” people came to Jerusalemites. But how were the Jerusalemites supposed to know that they were resurrected? Were they wearing “We were resurrected” T-shirts.
    I don’t like my line of argument, however, because it is so unneccesary: Show me someone who claims to desced from those Jerusalemites!!

    4. The Giving of the Torah, even if it was a hurricane, is still a miracle. Why? Because Moses told them three days in advance that they would experience the giving of the Torah. He told it to the entire nation. Was Moses a weatherman?

    5. Am I sure that Jesus did not perform miracles? No, I am not. Like you pointed out, performing miracles does not mean that GOD WANTS YOU TO WORSHIP HIM. However, performing miracles does surely prove that God exists. Therefore, if we would go back in time and we would see Jesus being resurrected, would we believe in God? Heck yeah. Would we worship Jesus? Heck no. Why? Because God predicted beforehand, in Dueteronomy, that GOD WILL ALLOW A FALSE PROPHET TO PERFORM MIRACLES. Who decides whether a prophet is false or true? The Sanhedrin, or the scholars in Torah. They decided that Jesus was a liar. We must listen to the scholars whether they are right or whether they are wrong. In short, Jesus might have performed miracles. However, the evidence for him performing miracles is quite weak, because no one claims to descend from those who saw Jesus perform them.

  34. Proof Number 4 – Why no afterlife?
    As I’m sure you know, the Torah fails to mention an afterlife. This has, and should, inspire pause in skeptics. Why would the Jews accept a burdensome history when the Torah never explicitly promises that they will receive an afterlife, leaving it to the oral tradition. True, the Torah does refer to an afterlife (See Samuel (whose soul was resurrected through magic); Jeremiah (where Rachel’s voice was heard from up-high); Ezekiel; and Daniel who all refer to an afterlife). But the Torah focuses very little on an afterlife. Why? If it’s false BS we would have expected it to promise a tremendous focus on the afterlife.

    Now, you may respond, the Jews were simply now aware of the possibility of an afterlife. The problem with that is that, as mentioned above, the prophets do refer to the topic. Furthermore, the Torah (quite accurately, as it turns out) describes Jacob’s mummification process. This would allow us to conclude that they also were aware of the purpose of mummifying: to preserve for an afterlife. In short, they were exposed to the idea of an afterlife. Yet, in the Five books of Moses we hear not a whisper of it. So, we know, the Rambam tells us that the reason is that God wanted to teach us to perform His commandments “for their own sake.” But, according to your conspiracy-theory approach, that their history was invented, why did the lying authors not try to inspire believers with an afterlife?

  35. Oy vey, you’re dreying a kop with this nonsense that it’s impossible to get people to accept an incorrect history.

    Have you read the Patriot Act? Do you understand it and its implications? Can future historians use the Kuzari Method to infer that all people decided to implement the Patriot Act as a response to 9/11 since most people were/are quiet about it.

    The US Population is 300 million. The Patriot Act is freely available:
    http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/patriot/index.html

    Most of the US population is literate:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate

    Literacy and free availability of the text are in contention in the case of the Israelites. Your entire argument falls apart if no one read the book. No one can complain about the contents of a book they never read.

    No one read it. Let me say it again. NO ONE READ IT.

  36. I don’t care if no one read it. That is not part of my argument. It can very well be that many people during Alexander’s reign weren’t literate either; as it can be that many people during the First and Second Temple weren’t literate; yet, no one would dare claim that the Temples didn’t exist (except a few archeologists who are beholden to “absence of evidence is evidence of absence,” regarding the First Temple).

    The point is that people accept it as their history. I have read it. Jews have read it. They consider it to accurately present their national history. That belief about national, commemorated, and burdensome history HAS NEVER BEEN WRONG. It is evidence which has, many times, proven to be right. If that is not enough, if infallible evidence is not enough, than nothing can be enough. The sinai miracles were accepted as the Jewish national history, and that proves that is must have been true.

    Regarding your (irrelevant) point, however, the Jews have always been the most literate nation at all point in their history. Listen to a secular Bible critic, cited in wikipedia:
    “The Song of Songs was written circa 900 BC, in the northern dialect of ancient Hebrew, by an author of unsurpassed literary ability, adept at the techniques of alliteration and polyprosopon, able to create the most sensual and erotic poetry of his day, and all the while incorporating into his work a subtext critical of the Judahite monarchy in general and Solomon in particular.”

    The Jews were literate, and were very fond of history and genealogy (e.g., in the Book of Ezra we find that certain families of Cohanim were excluded from the priesthood, because they could not locate their genealogical scrolls detailing how they descend from Aaron). They, and only they, were capable of accepting a false history. That is your argument.

    One additional point I must mention is that all the prophets who constantly badger the Jewish people for every conceivable sin, ranging from idolatry to taking advantage of the laws of shemitta (as in Amos, where people would store produce till the shmeitta year and then sell it during that year when prices were high), THE PROPHETS NEVER BERATE THE POPULATION FOR NOT BELIEVING IN THE TORAH. Their miraculous history was accepted by everyone (while we do find the Kuzari argument in Psalms 44 and 78, that does not mean that people didn’t believe; it just means that David was reaffirming the obvious: That we heard about these miracles from OUR FATHERS.)

  37. In the year 2510 a historian presents a paper called “Belief in the Year 2010” In it he concludes that Jews of the year 2010 believed that Manna sustained the Jews in the desert for 40 years.

    He bases this on the fact that
    1) population records state there were 12-15 million Jews in 2010
    2) 99% were literate
    3) The Torah was freely available in all languages
    4) The Torah states that Manna sustained the Israelites in the desert for 40 years
    5) Such a statement is highly contentious and would either be accepted or vociferously objected to.
    6) There is no evidence of objection to this statement.

    Thus 12-15 million Jews read the torah and the statement in (4) and didn’t object to it. Thus 12-15 million people couldn’t read a contentious statement without objecting to it vocally. There is no record of any vocal or significant objection. Hence 12-15 million Jews in 2010 believed that Manna sustained the Israelites in the desert.

    Is the method of the future historian for deducing the attitudes of Jews in 2010 correct?
    Are the deductions made using this technique correct/false/inconclusive?

    Recall I’m not trying to prove or disprove the existence of God. I’m trying to show that the Kuzari method is not a proof of anything. If you change “Kuzari Proof” to “Kuzari Evidence” the debate ends here with us in agreement.

  38. For the last time, because I am getting tired of repeating myself: Show me a false-national-commemorated-longterm-burdensome history and I will allow you to suspect that it could be false, here. You just invent scenarios without evaluating whether, in reality, according to the facts on the ground, history of this magnitude can be invented.

    Your scenarios would be could material for novels, but they are not in touch with reality. I have debated many holocaust-deniers in my youth (not that I mean to compare Sinai-denial to Holocaust-denial). Their methodology exactly mirrors yours. They come up with a semi-plausible scenario of how and why the Jews would begin lying about the Holocaust. You, too, come up with various scenarios. I responsd the same way: THE BURDEN OF PROOF IS ON YOU TO SHOW ME THAT THE EVIDENCE I AM PRESENTING CAN BE FALSIFIED. I want facts on the ground, not your guestimation of how you THINK rational nations can act. You haven’t. You haven’t shown me that my evidence is wrong. Instead, you have faith that my evidence can be wrong.

    If evidence which has never been wrong is not enough, then no evidence is enough for you.

    (I am going on a work-related trip for a couple of days, so I will not be able to respond for the next couple of days. It’s interesting that I am going to South Korea, a Christian nation which wholeheartedly believes that millions of JEWS stood at Sinai. Here, we have a Jew that isn’t willing to believe HIS OWN HISTORY.)

  39. >Show me a false-national-commemorated-longterm-burdensome history and I will
    >allow you to suspect that it could be false, here.
    “Show me a false-nationally-commemorated-longterm-burdensome history”
    This presupposes there are many to choose from failed or otherwise.
    Meanwhile, you suggest that only the Jews have this type of evidence available to them.
    Then you go on to say that this form of evidence (in plural) has never been wrong again suggesting it has happened many times.

    Your statement is a logical contradiction. If a nationally-commemorated-longterm-burdensome history has occurred many times in history and has never been wrong then the differing cultures and antithetical beliefs they support have all been right. That is a contradiction.

    If it has only occurred once in history, in the case of the Jews, then you can’t use the line of argument that this evidence is strong evidence because it has worked everywhere else. It’s only possibly worked in the case of the Jews.

    >It’s interesting that I am going to South Korea, a Christian nation which >wholeheartedly believes that millions of JEWS stood at Sinai.
    Right, and they also believe, because many witnessed Jesus’ miracles, revelation and promise to return that when Jesus comes back he’ll straighten you (Jewish person) out and we’ll all believe in Christ and live happily ever after.

  40. Nationally-commemorated-longterm-burdensome history does not have to happen many times for the Kuzari proof to work. Indeed, the burden in on you to contradict my evidence, and until you do, you have no reason to suspect that it can be wrong.

    Nevertheless, since I am in a good mood, I will provide you with one: The existence of the Second Temple. The Second Temple was is believed by us to have been seen by all the people living in Israel, or a large percentage of them (they were required to visit the Temple three times a year); it is commemorated with burdensome commemorations, such as Tisha B’av, the three weeks, Shiva Asar B’Tamuz, the Holiday of Chanuka etc. etc.

    Here is one case of a national-burdensome-commemorated history.

    (I assume you believe that there was a Temple in Jerusalem, don’t you?)

  41. Yes I believe there was a temple… I don’t believe in JHVW
    I assume you believe there was a Colliseum in Rome… do you now believe in Zeus?

    How about Zoroaster?

    “The disciples of Zoroaster, in their profusion of legends of the master,
    relate that one day, as he prayed _on a high mountain_, in the midst of
    thunders and lightnings (“fire from heaven”), the Lord himself appeared
    before him, and delivered unto him the “Book of the Law.” While the King
    of Persia and the people were assembled together, Zoroaster came down
    from the mountain unharmed, bringing with him the “Book of the Law,”
    which had been revealed to him by Ormuzd. They call this book the
    _Zend-Avesta_, which signifies the _Living Word_.[59:5]”
    Source:
    http://books.google.ca/books?id=NjPXAAAAMAAJ&ots=KR3dUybnRz&dq=t%20h%20doane%20origins&pg=PA59#v=onepage&q&f=false

  42. 1. Martin, I am impressed by your ingenuity, how you made it sound as if I proving that the Judaism must be true since we have a Temple. If so, you wonder, we should be forced to conclude that Greek mythology is true as well, since they have a Coliseum. Martin, (as I said before) you are a smart guy, very smart, as it turns out. If so, why do you assume that your grandparents were that dumb, to accept a false history?

    2. Regarding the Zoroaster myth: 1) How do we know that anyone believed the myth; 2) “The King of Persia and the People” does not neccesarily mean the entire Persian nation; if so, we have no way of knowing the number of people who were there; 3) It is not at all clear that “the King of Persia and the people” saw the lightning storm; 4) Why is a lightning storm a miracle? 5) This story does not share the commemorations, the startling commemorations, that we got.

    Martin, I sympathize with Baruch Spinoza. He lived under persecution and pogroms. For him, being Jewish was hard, so he demanded “absolute proof” before accepting Judaism.

    Nowadays, being Jewish is a joke. Our restaurants are just as good as anyone else’s. We have kosher cruises. We have hardly any anti-Judaism. If so, I simply have trouble understanding your zeal to uproot and disprove Judaism.

  43. I was perusing the book that you linked, and what I saw did not surprise me. If this is biblical “scholarship,” then we have to redefine the word, because each and every one of his points are utter guess-work.

    For example, as you mentioned, he claims that the Bible’s Mount Sinai story was borrowed from some faraway Zoroastrian myth. He fails to account for: 1) The fact that they are similar does not even imply that one was borrowed from the other (since there are an infinite number of myths, one is bound to eventually find a myth that shares certain similarities with the Torah); 2) The fact that the dissimilarities are so much more apparent than the similarities; 3) The fact that it is more likely that the Zoroastrians borrowed the myth from the Jews. How so? The Mount Sinai story is a central part of the Torah (it appears in both Exodus and Deuteronomy) while the Zoroastrian myth is not central to their religion. If so, would it not seem more likely that they borrowed it from us? 4) The author does not even attempt to date the formation of his Zoroastrian myth, which is essential if one wishes to demonstrate that one was borrowed from the other (e.g., according to my research, Zoroastrian lived about 300 years AFTER Moses).

  44. You have stated several times: “That belief about national, commemorated, and burdensome history HAS NEVER BEEN WRONG”

    Yet, you claim Zoroaster’s legends were copied from us. How can that be? How could it be that an entire nation was caused to accept a false history, in this case, our history?

    The Zoroaster myth is the foundation of their religion by the way.

  45. 1. I fail to see how the Zoroastrians believing that a few people saw their prophet go up on a mountain is a a) national, b) commemorated event.

    2. I never claimed that they neccesarily borrowed it from us. All I claimed was that if it was borrowed, it is more likely that it was from us to them (I said this based on the assumption that their story was not central to their religion; now that you informed me [and I will have to accept your word on that] that it is a central part of their religion, then, yes, it does seem equally likely, or unlikely, that they myths were borrowed from one another).

  46. Its interesting that I searched for the Zoroaster myth on the net, and they all appear in the context of showing how the Sinai story was borrowed from Zoroaster. Then, I searched though a History of Zoroaster from a Zoroasterian persepective (or at least a neutral one), and it appears that there were no witnesses at all for Zoroaster on a mountain, and all of the similarites between that and sinai are missing as well. See Zoroaster: the prophet of ancient iran pg, 195 (“He went to the mountain Sabalan, separated from men. He bought a book, the name of which is Basta.”)

    Again, the first element, in any myth, is to show that people actually believe the myth. With Zoroaster myths, that is still possible, since some of them still exist. From my short research, it is not at all clear that people have ever believed this story. It does not even appear at all in the book that I had researched (albeit quickly), except the fact that Zoroaster went to a mountain and came back with a book.

  47. Very good. You’re asking the right questions. So twice now I’ve shown evidence of a Moses archetype in parallel myths (Zoroaster, Mayan) and twice you’ve responded with: “There is no evidence that people actually believed in the myth”.

    It’s the right question, but it doesn’t even go far enough. Even if people today believe in the myth, it’s necessary to show that at its introduction, the myth was believed to be factual. Otherwise the myth could have been literalized at a later stage.

    What I don’t think you’re getting just yet is, that when you ask these questions of my other Moses archetypes, the questions are equally applicable to the Torah version of the Moses archetype.

    How do we know the Israelites believed this myth as historical reality? We have massive counterevidence from the Torah itself, the Korach revolt, the golden calf where Aaron himself, the high priest participated, the prophets complaining to no end about our non-belief and non-compliance, our fractuous religion leading to two exiles. By the year 0AD we have massive political unrest leading most Jews to eventually abandon their faith in lieu of Christianity and later Islam.

    You claim 3 million people saw something which was so moving they all believed in it? Where are these people in history? I see no evidence of them either in the Torah or outside of it.

  48. 1. I do not have to prove that people, a few thousand years ago, believed in the Torah. I wish I could, but I don’t need to, just as I wish I would have video evidence of the sinai events, but I do not need to bring video evidence in order to prove my case.
    Let’s take the Second Temple, as an example of a true national, commemorated, historical reality. A skeptic will claim that we have no way of knowing that the Jews who lived 1,500 years ago believed in a Temple. We could respond by showing the skeptic that archeological evidence, or ancient manuscripts, refer to the Temple. But what if we did not have those pieces of evidence? Would we have to cave in and agree that there is no evidence for the Second Temple? I don’t think so. We could tell the skeptic, “Yes, we don’t know if people living 1,500 years ago believed in a Temple, but we do KNOW that people living today do believe in a Temple, and that is our EVIDENCE that there must have been a Temple.” Similarly, we can’t prove that people living in King David’s time believed in the Torah. But we don’t need to. Our evidence is that fact that Jews believe in the Torah. Today. (Although, to be sure, one could make a very strong case that the Jews in King David’s time believed in the Torah, since Psalms, assuming it was written by David, whose name is at the start of 72 of the Psalms, refers to the Torah numerous times and mentions all of the public miracles mentioned in the Torah, such as the splitting of the sea, the manna, Korach’s death, the pillar of fire, etc. David is believed to have been born 366 years after Moses’ death. See last Ibn Ezra on Ruth).

    2. The fact that the prophets blame us for many sins is not evidence against the Torah, unless the sins that they complain about is the population’s unbelief in the Torah. In fact, they never blame us for unbelief, so that may be evidence in the reverse, that the Jews always, all of them, believed in the Torah. So why did they bow to idols? They were impressed by the beliefs of the foreign nations. It is hard to resist, and, as the Rambam says, “A person is influenced in his surroundings.”

    It is for this very reason that Divine Intervention saw to it that the non-Jews should believe in the Sinai history BEFORE BEING EXILED. It is for this very reason that MOST non-Jews believe in the Sinai history, that is, Christians and Muslims. This ensured that the Jews would not doubt their own history, since everyone around them believed in their history. This is a long topic, so I don’t want to get off track.

  49. The intermarriage rate is over 50%. Your (Orthodox) misuse of ‘logic’ is the cause.

    You say modern belief in a certain history is sufficient evidence of a historical fact. Great, 2 billion people believe that Jesus existed and performed miracles. There is also a crew of millions of children that believe in Santa Claus. Hence he exists too.

    To complain about non compliance with the Torah is synonomous with not believing in the Torah. When you say someone “doesn’t believe in the Constitution (US)” you don’t mean the person doesn’t believe in the actual document, you intend that such a person doesn’t believe in the tenets it proscribes.

    Your standard of proof is completely faulty. History does not record the record of the dissenting voice. Proof of this is found in the Torah itself, spoken by God himself!
    Exodus 32:33 “And the LORD said unto Moses: ‘Whosoever hath sinned against Me, him will I blot out of My book.” God just told you that he’s erasing the record of the dissenting voice.

    What did the dissenters say? We don’t know… God erased them. Sorry my God would never do that. He would include them in the record and answer their complaints. He wouldn’t kill them and he wouldn’t then erase them.

    Given the choice between believing in a crappy God or no God… I pick none.

  50. 1. Millions of children believe in Santa Clause. Yes, but do millions of children believe that they saw Santa Clause? No. He visits when everyone is sleeping, of course. (Also, I was surprised that the best thing you could come up with is a children’s belief system. Are you calling the Sinia history a children story? If so, you do not have logic on your side, altough you do have Einstien. He said, “The Sinia story is a children story.” Oh really?! Is there archeological evidence that suggests that the ancent Israelites did not live into ther teens? If so, why do you assume that the sinai history is comparable to a children’s story?

    2. King Solomon is recorded, according to a literal reading of the Bible as performing certain sins. He also wrote that “He who turns away from theTorah, his prayers are also despised,” and “A mitzvah is a candle and the Torah is light,” and “He who loves Torah quarrels with evildoers,” and “The words of the wise are like well-drive pegs, which all disseminate from one Shepard (Moses)”. How could Solomon, who loved Torah, sin? Does that not prove that he did not believe in the Torah? Not neccesarily. I believe in the Torah, and yet I also sin. Many Sefardinc Jews drive on Shabbos, but they believe in the Torah. So one has nothing to do with the other.

    3. You say there were dissenting voices, who were left unrecorded. An uber-skeptic may claim that the early Jews did not believe that there was a temple in Jerusalem, and did not celebrate Hannuka and Tisha Bav. You may be right, but the burden is on you. Prove to me, please, that many people simply believed that the Sinia miracles were rubbish. The fact that they sinned is not proof, as mentioned above, since I also sin.

  51. I noticed your interesting comment about the intermarriage rate, and it leads to my fifth proof for the Torah.

    Proof Number 5. The Divine Providence for the non-survival of false forms of Judaism

    The survival of the Jewish people has always been one of the most outstanding facts in world history (See the index to Rebecca Goldstein’s “36 Arguments for the Existence of God,” which attempts to refute the most famous arguments for the existence of God; included in that list is the survival of the Jewish people.)
    Here, I would like to focus on the reverse miracle: the non-survival of the false forms of Judaism, those that ignore the oral tradition. Tzaddukim, Essenes, Baitusim, Karaites, Sabbatai Tzvi-followers, Frankists, Ananites, are all extinct, extinct, extinct and, yet again, extinct, or (in the case of the Karaites) inches away from becoming extinct.
    Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionism are all THANKFULLY! intermarrying and already, sociologists predict that they will eventually cease to exist. THE ONLY FORM OF JUDAISM WHICH HAS HAD A SPECIAL DIVINE PROVIDENCE HAS BEEN THE ONE THAT ACCEPTED THE ORAL LAW.
    Look at the Samaritans. According to the Midrash, there were 180,000 (if memory serves) of them during the Second Temple era. Today – despite the fact that they were never exiled and despite the fact that they never suffered persecution – are a tiny, tiny group of people, numbering in the hundreds. Their Cohanim have all died out, forcing them to use a Levite as a high-preist (which contradicts open verses which demand that a descendent of Aaron be used “forever.”) At the same time, the battered, bruised, persecuted ORTHODOX Jews are thriving.

    To me, this seems like some sort of divine providence at hand.

  52. According to Wikipedia, there were actually a million Samaritans in Roman times. Today, 712 (they mostly all converted to Islam).

  53. I may have been a bit extreme in my condemnation of the Reform/Conservative. It just that I have a possibly-irrational hatred for those movements. I once had a Prof., ages ago, who was a brilliant fellow, who was an expert in his field. Once, we began to discuss issues of theology, and he told me that he does believe that the sinai miracles are real, historical events.

    However, he said, he agrees with the conservative approach, that the Rabbinic laws, and some ritual laws, were for their time and place. They no longer must be followed. They no longer are relevant (although he was saying this not based on his own research, but rather by what he was fed by reading the writings, and attending services in, Conservative shuls).

    I did not contradict his sermon, fearing that I may offend his sensibilities. To this day, I regret my temerity. Here, we have a man who is sensible enough to trust our national history, but he is compelled not to believe in our version of Judaism because of the writings of a bunch of fools. Why was I so shy? Why did I not show him that Orthodox Judaism is the only real Judaism?

    Thanks to the conservative and reform movements, this brilliant man lived a mostly-purposeless life. And to know fault of his own. I hold their Rabbis to be MUCH, MUCH WORSE than atheists. Not even ballpark.

  54. To say someone is law-abiding does not necessarily entail 100% law abiding. There is a public prohibition against spitting on the street. Someone who spits on the street isn’t considered in flagrant disregard of the law.

    You therefore claim that the sins of Israel do not entail a disbelief in the miracles of Sinai. Hold on… before the Israelites couldn’t stand the sound of God’s voice, God read them the first of his Ten Commandments… which was????
    “Do not have any other gods before me.”

    The very next second… the Israelites do what??? Construct an idol in flagrant disregard of the very ‘miracle’ they just saw.

    You present an argument that suggests there was a consensus among 3 million people that they saw god at mount sinai. There is no evidence of such a consensus in the Torah itself and certainly no evidence elsewhere.

  55. 1. Only three thousand people worshiped the idol; that’s a tiny percentage.

    2. They were in fear; they were in a desert and Moses did not show up, so they thought that they will die if they have no one to lead them. As I’m sure you know, they didn’t make the idol “the very next second.” Martin, go to the desert for forty days with your family, and let me see you not make an idol. That they waited forty days is a testament to their startling holiness.

    3. They did not think it was a pure idol, since they said to it “you are the god of Israel who took us out of Egypt.” They thought that the golden calf was a manifestation of god.

    4. According to Talmudic literature, God gave them an extreme desire to bow to an idol, in order to teach Israel that even if you fall, you can still repent. As the Talmud says,

  56. Proof Number Six: The Exreme Originaily of Morality Found in the Torah (this is a weak proof, since many people have been original, such as Aristotle. Nevertheless, the originality regarding the centrality of morality should inspire pause)

    No other ancient book cares about the stranger, the widow, or orphans (Exodus 22:20-21). No other book requires that a tenth of the produce should be given to the poor (Deuteronomy 26:12). No other book requires a section of each privately-owned farm should be used solely by the landless poor (Leviticus 19:10). No other books demands that a husband provide financial support to his wife (Exodus 21:11) No other book requires care for animals (Deuteronomy 12:21). No other book forbids castrating animals and birds (Leviticus 22:24). No other book requires that animals have a day of rest (Deuteronomy 5:14). No other book forbids haughtiness (17:17). No other book demands that people have a guardrail around their roofs to prevent injury (Deuteronomy 22:8). No other book forbids cooking a calf in its mother’s milk, a sensitivity to animals’ emotions (Exodus 23:19). No other book prohibits muzzling an animal while working (Deuteronomy 22:4). No other book demands that animals be fed (Exodus 22:30). No other book requires that people return lost objects (Deuteronomy 22:1; Exodus 23:4). No other book demands that wages be paid on time (Leviticus 19:13). No other book demands that children be educated (Deuteronomy 4:19). Not other book prohibits the taking of bribes (Exodus 23:8). No other book requires unburdening a donkey strained by its burden, even the donkey of ones “enemy” (Deuteronomy 5:88; Exodus 23:5). No other book demands us to respect (Leviticus 19:3) and assist (Exodus 20:21) parents. No other book prohibits swearing falsely (Exodus 20:7) or otherwise lying (Leviticus 19:11). No other book prohibits taking revenge (Leviticus 19:18). No other book forbids embarrassing others in public, even for the sake of reprimanding a wrongdoer. (Leviticus 19:17) No other book demands us to respect the elderly (Leviticus 19:32). No other book demands that we respect scholars (Leviticus 19:32). No other book requires us to love even the stranger (19:34). No other book prohibits gossiping (Leviticus 19:16). No other book prohibits snatching eggs or chicks in the presence of its mother (Deuteronomy 22:6). No other book demands us to be good Samaritans, to help those who are in trouble (Leviticus 19:16). No other book prohibits waging wars against specific nations (Deuteronomy 2:5, 9, 19). No other book prohibits hating or despising foreign nations (Deuteronomy 22:8). No other book demands us to emulate God. No other book has such a deep, and yet realistic, understanding of human nature. This is an abbreviated version, of course.

    While it is true that the ancient Israelites were commanded to wage certain wars against evildoers who refused to make peace or emigrate, the texts themselves are very clear that it is with a sense of regret that those actions need to be taken. There was no reveling in the slaughter. For example, King David according to the scripture did commit certain sins (II Samuel 11:27), for which he readily repented (Psalms 51:6). Despite all these sins, God nevertheless would have asked him to build the Temple, but for one “flaw” that David possessed. According to scripture, God forbade him from building the temple because “you spilled a lot of blood for me.” To repeat, because it should inspire pause: God forbade David from building the temple solely because of fulfilling the commandment of waging God’s wars.

  57. 1) ‘Only 3 thousand people worshipped the idol’: Bollocks. 3 thousand didn’t answer Moses’ call to come to his side. The Levites killed them. Then God kills everyone else who was involved. As for this being a minority and/or a minor event: Aaron, the high priest himself was involved. Moses makes all of Israel drink of the smashed idol diffused into water. No minority.
    2) ‘They were in fear’: no comment.
    3) ‘The didn’t think it was a pure idol’: rubbish
    4) ‘According to talmudic literature’: you need to prove the Torah is the word of God before you introduce the talmud.
    5: Proof 6: Torah origin of morality: I’ll address your first example: Respect for widow, orphan and poor:
    Mesopotamian Hammurapi (18th Century BCE, well before Israelites)
    dannum ensam
    ana la babalim
    ekutam almattam
    sutesurim

    So that the strong might not oppress
    the weak (and so as)
    To give justice to the orphaned
    (homeless) girl and to the widow.
    The theme is present all over the mid east basin:
    http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/Ted_Hildebrandt/OTeSources/20-Proverbs/Text/Articles/Patterson_Widow_BSac.pdf

    Again, you claim a consensus about Sinai which didn’t and has never existed. You claim the Torah is the origin of morality… not so. You claim the Torah is the origin of the stories therein presented. Not so.

  58. 1. They were all held responsible for the sins of the few, because they did not stop the few from sinning.
    2. I do not need to prove that the Talmud is the word of God before using it to defend against your attack against the Torah. Your attack is that even if there is evidence that there were sinai miracles, there is counter-evidence: the fact that some people made the golden calf (although I don’t think that it can even be considered evidence in the first place). By introducing the Talmud, I am reconciling the contradictory evidences. Why, logically, can I not do that? It’s first-grade logic.
    3. Of course people are moral; so are apes, and even cats. My proof was not that the Jews invented morality. My proof is from the CENTRALITY and, more importantly, THE SPECIFICITY or the morality of the Torah. It’s very easy to vaguely preach that “we must help the poor.” It’s another to specify that “a tenth of the produce must be given to them.” It’s one thing to say that “we must give justice to the homeless girl,” but show me an ancient text which says, repeatedly, that oppressing widows and orphans will invite the wrath of the “Father of Orphans,” Who will kill the oppressor. This centrality is remarkable. This centrality, and this specificity, should raise a flag.

  59. Indeed, if you could be so kind, read Hammurabi’s code and show me one law which imposes a moral REQUIREMENT. Do any say, “do this good thing” or “you must feed the poor”? None do. Rather, all of the laws, like american law, are meant to promote societal stability through PUNISHING wrongdoers (e.g., if you do this wrong thing you will be punished; if you kill a pregnant woman, your daughter will be killed, etc.). That’s not morality, per se (I am not familiar with other ancient codes; I am basing this comment on Hammurabi’s code).

  60. 1) If a small minority sinned, why did Moses shatter the first set of commandments? Temper tantrum? No, it was no minority, nor was it a minor transgression. The first witnesses of God at Sinai broke the very first law they witnessed being delivered. The effectively flipped the bird at God. Now 3000 years later you presnt this as evidence as to why I and others should follow such a religion?

    2) You can’t introduce the Talmud as evidence of God and his opinions if you haven’t established that the Torah was the word of God. You could if the Torah explicitly mentioned “I give the Torah and the Talmud here today in front of you all…”

    3) Protection of the widow, the orphan and the poor are central themes to early religions and specific measures are in place to implement these themes.
    There are too many counter examples to list. For a full list please see the papers mentioned in this blog post:
    http://www.martincwiner.com/the-widow-orphan-and-the-poor-in-the-old-testament-and-the-extra-biblical-literature/
    For a taste:
    From the Instructions of Amenemope (ca 1000 BCE) “A maxim declares that the oppressed must not be robbed and that no harshness be inflicted on the disabled” (F.C. Fensham: Widow, Orphan and the Poor)

    To review
    – 3 million people witnessed God at Sinai and all agreed upon what they saw: no and no
    – Torah is the first teller of most of its myths: no
    – Torah is the first presenter of moral ideas: no

  61. 1. Your claim is that their sins are proof that they did not see God on sinai. Yet, the prophets never scream at the population for not believeing. THE ONLY PERSON THE TORAH EVER ACCUSES OF NOT BELIEVEING IS MOSES AND AARON. If you were right, then the prophets should have accused them for not believing.

    2. The sins of the few are a terrible thing. The sin of the 3,000 is a terrible thing. Therefore, Moses broke the tablets.

    3. I very much can introduce the Talmud. You claim, without a shred of evidence, that bowing to the golden calf is evidence that they did not see miracles (even though the text is clear that they perceived the calf a a manisfestation of G-d, as shown by the fact that Aaron said, “a celebration for HASHEM [YHVH], tomorrow.”) Let’s say you are right. Let’s say that 3,000 bowed to a golden calf who “took them out of Egypt” is evidence that they did not see miracles. At the same time, the evidence I presented, the national, commemorated event is also evidence. Indeed, the only source for the golden calf story is the same Torah which states that they subsequently saw 14,600 days of miracles. When we have contradicting evidence – and we don’t, as even a child can see – then we have a right and a requirement, based on the rules of logic, to try to harmonize the conflicting evidence. The Talmud provides that harmonization, by stating that G-d gave them a supernatural attraction to idolatry. Now, you prefer not to harmonize the conflicting evidence, and I’m not sure why. (Again, I don’t see any conflict in the evidence AT ALL. But even if there was, it surprises me how you follow one side of the evidence without seeking some sort of harmonization.)

    4. As I said before, morality is not a new thing. However, show me, please, CENTRALITY AND SPECIFICTY AND PROACTIVE DUTIES imposed by other legal systems. Until then, you haven’t showed me much.

  62. I was thinking about your position a bit more, and the more I do, the more I scratch my head. The Torah claims, Jewish national history claims, that millions of people survived on manna for 14,600 days. You claim, however, that this MUST be false, because some Jews, at the start of the forty years, bowed down to the golden calf.

    But if you don’t believe the Torah, then you have no way of knowing that there was a golden calf in the first place. Make up your mind: Do you believe the sinai history, that the Jews, millions of them, ate manna for forty years, or do you not. If you don’t, then how can you invoke a golden calf story? If you do believe that millions of Jews ate manna for forty years, then of WHAT RELEVANCE IS IT THAT SOME JEWS BOWED TO A GOLDEN CALF?

  63. Furthermore, you position is based on utter guesswork. You guess, and expect us to accept, that if people bowed to a golden calf they surely could not have seen miracles, despite the fact that they were in a desert, where they could have died suddenly, since Moses had apparently died. Based on your approach, you expect us to ignore even infallible evidence for miracles.

    How, however, did you arrive at your approach? Did you ever meet people who were in a desert? Did you ever meet people who saw a miracle? No, you are taking a wild guess that people who saw miracles would not bow to a golden calf, and that all evidence to the contrary should be ignored. I’m sorry, but you have to substantiate your guesswork.

  64. Ironically, it’s a lack of secular knowledge that’s at fault here: specifically logic. Here we have an example of an internal inconsistency.

    If you say that the moon is made of blue cheese and then later go on to say that moon rocks smell like flowers, I needn’t believe that the moon is made of blue cheese to point out that your statements are internally inconsistent.

    (If the moon is made of blue cheese, then moon rocks should smell strongly of blue cheese and not of flowers.)

    If you say that God appeared on Mount Sinai and that 3 million people witnessed it and all accepted it… and then the Torah goes on to say that there where numerous revolts and that Israel was a “stiffnecked people” who wouldn’t accept the yoke of observance of God’s kingdon — this suggests that there wasn’t a consensus about what was seen and demonstrates that the Mount Sinai event was unconvincing in the first generation to conjure faith and adherents.

    You suggest that we, some 3000 years after this proported event, should accept it as an impetus to believe and follow in God, yet the very first generation which witnessed it firsthand had numerous revolts and doubts. Your statements are internally inconsistent.

    In logic, if your assumptions lead to false conclusions, the assumptions are proven false. So assuming that the Mount Sinai event did infact occur, we arrive at an erroneous state whereby all the Israelites are supposed to have believed and accepted God on Mount Sinai and yet, they revolted over and over again against that same God. (This is a logical contradiction: 1) all Israelites believed in God and 2) all Israelites did NOT believe in God.) Hence, the assumption that God convincingly and conclusively made himself evident on Mount Sinai to a consensus of 3 million Israelites is false.

  65. 1. Just to refer to your earlier point that the ethics of the Torah is not remarkable, here is a quote from an atheist bible-critic, Bart Ehrman: “In some ways, Judaism was distinctive. All other religions in the empire were polyteistic–acknowledging and worshiping many gods of al sorts and functions . . . Judaism, on the other hand, was monotheisic; Jews insisted on worshiping only the one God of their ancestors . . . [Furthermore], and for modern people intimatly familiar with any other major contemporary Western religions it may be hard to imagine, but books played virtualy no role in th polytheistic religions of the ancient Western world. . .There were no doctrines to be learned, as explaned in books, AND ALMOST NO ETHICAL PRINCIPLES TO BE FOLLOWED AS LAID OUT IN THOSE BOOKS. This is not to say that adherents of hte various polytheistic religions had no beliefs about ther gods or that they had no ethics, but beliefs and ETHICS – STRANGE AS THS SOUNDS TO MODERN EARS – PLAYED ALMOST NO ROLE IN RELIGION…Judaism was unique in hat it stressed its ancestral traditions, customs, and laws, and maintained tat these had ben recorded in sacred books…”

    2. All I a saying is that if we have an internal inconsistency, and we have strong evidence for both positions (we don’t, but I am saying even if we would have evidence that they did not believe), we are logicaly compelled to search for a method of answering the contradition. You are against answering the contradiction of evidence, and you haven’t explained why.

    3. You said: “The Torah goes on to say that there where numerous revolts and that Israel was a “stiffnecked people” who wouldn’t accept the yoke of observance of God’s kingdon — this suggests that there wasn’t a consensus about what was seen and demonstrates that the Mount Sinai event was unconvincing in the first generation to conjure faith and adherents.”
    Why does this suggest that there wasn’t a consensus? Have you studied other people who have seen miracles from which you can make inferences about how people who saw miracles would react? In fact, you seem so sure that even when we have infallible evidence for miracles, you still retain your conviction that you are privy to the way people who saw miraces would react. Yet, you haven’t met a single person who has seen miracles. Sound kinda like guesswork.

    4. You haven’t responded to my textual proofs that they did not mean the golden calf to disobey God. In fact, the verses imply that they wanted to WORSHIP God through the golden calf.

    5. The fact that the prophets are not shy about criticizing the Jews and yet, NEVER ONCE IN THE ENTIRE BIBLE, are they accused of not believing shows that your assumption, that sinning implies disbelief, is not rooted in reality.

  66. 1. Where I find one person who knows nothing of history, I can also expect to find a second, even one who has written a book. Let’s address this biggest misconception… the Jews invented monotheism. No. Akhenaten of Egypt abandoned polytheism and instituted monotheim in the 14th century BCE. There are other precursors to monotheism besides the Jews.

    2. I assume here you mean… why won’t I accept the talmud. The answer is because it’s not mentioned in the Torah.

    3. I’ve studied the ‘cargo cults’ where the indigineous people of Papua New Guinea worshipped the arrival of cargo and developed an entire religion and set of practices around it. So cargo planes inspires a whole new religion, yet God reveals himself on Mount Sinai and … bupkes, except for revolts.

    4. I don’t accept your line of argument. Before Moses intercedes, God was ready to destroy the entire nation outright and start over. I therefore reject your haphazard idea that it was a minor event and/or a minor transgression.

    5. Take the most popular prophet Isaiah. Read the very introduction:
    Isaiah 1:3 “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib; but Israel doth not know, My people doth not consider.”

  67. 1. I will some up my points regarding your golden calf theory (it’s basically a repeat of my earlier comments. I think your theory is based on four errors, three of them being errors in logic and one being an error in scholarship. First, your error in scholarship: The verses never claim that they were revolting against god (the fact that God wanted to destroy the entire nation is not a proof, since god may have a strickter standard. For example, in Joshua we find that one man’s sin – Achan – many thousands died). Second, your error in logic. You claim that it is improbable that people who saw miracles would revolt against god. Your error is that your assuming that people who saw miracles would not revolt. Your assumption is not based on real facts, or real people who saw miracles. Third, another error in logic. You claim that it is IMPROBABLE that people who saw miracles would bow to a calf. I agree. But if we have strong evidence that an improbable event happened – here, national commemorated history – we accept the evidence despite it’s improbability. Four, alternatively, your argue that it is isn’t merely improbable that people who saw miracles would bow to a calf but it is actually IMPOSSIBLE that people who saw miracles would bow to a calf. The problem with your “impossibility” claim is that you must show that it is impossible that God gave them an irrational desire for idolatry. Since you are claiming that something is impossible, you really must rule out every single possibility.

    2. The fact that the prophets reprimand that Jews is one of the strongest proofs for, not against, judaism. We weren’t patting ourselves on our backs. Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon, Joshua and all the greatest heroes of Judaism are constantly reprimanded.

    3. The cargo people didn’t invent a false history. Instead, they interpreted natural events in a mythological fashion. Are you claiming that the events recorded in the Torah, the splitting of the sea, the feeding of millions through manna, the pillar of fire, miraim’s well, korach’s death, Moses’ shining fact etc. etc. were all natural events?

  68. I never suggested that the Jews invented monotheism (although I did quote a scholar who did seems to imply that…). I read up a bit about Akhenaten, and I was fascinated by his campaign for monotheism. Sadly, the Egyptians employed “extreme efforts to excise his existence fom all records…these efforts to conceal him from history were so successful that it required a triumph of archaeology to rediscover his existence.” It is possible that the Jews influenced him in his monotheism, although that it just a guess on my part. It is further possible that he wasn’t a strict monotheist since “absolute monotheism was slightly compromised, however, because in keeping with the traditioal Egyptian veiw that Pharaoh was a god…Akhenated styled himself as…[one] who was to be prayed to as the suorce of blessing or people after death.” Finally, to be sure, his religion was “a happy religion without an ethical code.” This substantiates my earlier point, that the Jews ethical beliefs are remarkable.

  69. OK. I guess we have reached a point in the debate to close on. We have looked at the various proofs for Judaism (I have a couple of more proofs, but I have presented what I have found to be the strongest proofs for Judaism).

    1. The Kuzari proof: A) a national (100% of millions of people), B) heavily commemorated (with commandments such as Passover, phylacteries, mezuzah, Shmeeta, Yovel, Joshua’s Stones on which he supposedly wrote the Torah), the Torah written by Moses, tzitis and many other commemorations, C) burdensome, D) Long Term (14,600 days) history E) believed by a cultured, literate, genealogical, and moral society. We have suggested that since this form of evidence has never shown itself to be fallible, we must surrender to the weight of the evidence and accept the sinai events as being a true history.

    2. The Purim Proof: A national, commemorated history of the Purim miracles allows us to conclude that the Purim miracle took place. While it is not surely a miracle, in the context of the remarkable Jewish survival which was predicted by over a hundred verses of the Bible, allows us to suspect that a Divine Actor was behind that Purim salvation.

    3. The Exile Proof: The Torah, in numerous verses (and the books of the prophets, namely, Joshua, Jeremiah, and Isaiah) predict that the nation of Israel will be exiled to foreign lands. (And your defense that the Torah was written after the first exile is hard to swallow, since the Samaritans share the same Torah text that we do). This exile proof, once again, should at least inspire an atheist to become an agnostic regarding the Divine Origin of the Torah.

    4. The fact that the Torah, which on numerous occasions refers to an afterlife, never promises an afterlife as a reward for observance. If the Torah was a lie, or based on a lie, we would have had more of a focus on the afterlife.

    5. The fact that fake forms of Judaism have all gone, or are about to go, exinct is remarkable.

    6. The remarkable focus on morality is an original concept and should allow one to suspect that a Divine Author wrote the Torah (as I said before, this proof is quite weak).

    Martin, you are smarter than me. Indeed, you have put up an agressive response to my proofs. If I have failed to convince you – and it appears that I have failed – do not blame the proof, blame it on the fact that I am neither a Talmid Chacham, nor have I ever been trained in Kiruv. I am sorry that I haven’t put enough effort, enough effort capable of convincing you of what I find to be most obvious.

    Thank you for this wonderful debate. The first question, when we come upstairs (according to some chassidic interpretations) is “Have you discussed faith?” To this question, you will be able to answer, “Yes, I have discussed faith.” May your search for the truth lead you to the truth, and may we see “Our brothers the whole house of Israel, who are in distress and captivity​, who wander over sea and over land — may God have mercy on them, and bring them from distress to comfort, from darkness to light, from slavery to redemptio​n, now, swiftly, and soon.”

  70. Ok, if you’d like to regroup, collect your thoughts etc… that’s fine.

    I still hadn’t really gotten into what I actually thought happened vis-a-vis the exodus. I was still observing the ‘way’ you argue so that I could come up with examples that would reach you.

    This article:
    http://dwij.org/forum/amarna/10_moses_akhenaten.htm
    tells the story nicely.

    You’ll be frustrated in that it doesn’t quote sources etc etc.

    If you want sources, try:
    http://www.masseiana.org/aebk0.htm
    specifically:
    http://www.masseiana.org/aebk10.htm

    It’s not an easy read, sorry.

    An easier read, yet less in depth is T. W. Doane
    http://books.google.com/books?id=NjPXAAAAMAAJ&dq=inauthor%3A%22Thomas%20William%20Doane%22&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q&f=false

    Best of luck to you in your search for the truth…MCW

  71. The truth is that I think you deserve someone who is a better debater than me, and someone who is really knowledgable enough to respond to your claims. I have been doing the best I can – and, yes, I have voraciously AND CRITICALLY read many books on biblical archeology and biblical criticism (and I have found many books both fields to be so, so heavily based on guesswork that it boggles the mind that they even get published). Still, I think someone who is an expert in the above-mentioned fields would do a better job than me. I am just a curious businessman. In the mean time, all the best, my friend.

  72. The whole Kuzari principal is based on the assumption that an individual could not have came later in history, and “reminded” people about the whole Sinai and 10 plagues story. Certainly people would have asked why their parents have no knowledge of this! This however, is only an assumption, which I will prove to be wrong. The Mormons believe the third book of Nephi to be true, I will quote some here, but feel free to check it yourself. 3 Nephi chap. 9

    1And it came to pass that there was a avoice heard among all the inhabitants of the earth, upon all the face of this land, crying:

    2Wo, wo, wo unto this people; wo unto the inhabitants of the whole earth except they shall arepent; for the devil blaugheth, and his angels rejoice, because of the slain of the fair sons and daughters of my people; and it is because of their iniquity and abominations that they are fallen!

    3Behold, that great city Zarahemla have I aburned with fire, and the inhabitants thereof.

    4And behold, that great city Moroni have I caused to be asunk in the depths of the sea, and the inhabitants thereof to be drowned.

    5And behold, that great city aMoronihah have I covered with earth, and the inhabitants thereof, to hide their iniquities and their abominations from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints shall not come any more unto me against them.

    3 Nephi chap 10

    1And now behold, it came to pass that all the people of the land did ahear these sayings, and did witness of it. And after these sayings there was silence in the land for the space of many hours;

    2For so great was the astonishment of the people that they did cease lamenting and howling for the loss of their kindred which had been slain; therefore there was silence in all the land for the space of many hours.

    3And it came to pass that there came a voice again unto the people, and all the people did hear, and did witness of it, saying:

    4O ye people of these agreat cities which have fallen, who are descendants of Jacob, yea, who are of the house of Israel, how oft have I bgathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and have cnourished you.

    3 Nephi chap. 11

    8And it came to pass, as they understood they cast their eyes up again towards heaven; and behold, they asaw a Man bdescending out of heaven; and he was clothed in a white robe; and he came down and stood in the midst of them; and the eyes of the whole multitude were turned upon him, and they durst not open their mouths, even one to another, and wist not what it meant, for they thought it was an angel that had appeared unto them.

    9And it came to pass that he stretched forth his hand and spake unto the people, saying:

    10Behold, I am Jesus Christ, whom the prophets testified shall come into the world.

    11And behold, I am the alight and the life of the world; and I have drunk out of that bitter bcup which the Father hath given me, and have glorified the Father in ctaking upon me the sins of the world, in the which I have suffered the dwill of the Father in all things from the beginning.

    12And it came to pass that when Jesus had spoken these words the whole multitude afell to the earth; for they remembered that it had been bprophesied among them that Christ should cshow himself unto them after his ascension into heaven.

    The Kuzari principal would tell me, that these stories must be true, because the people would not accept an individual’s story about their ancestor’s, if their parents did not know of it! But not only could they only ask their ancestors, they could have asked anyone in the world. Now I certainly don’t believe the Mormons books, but when you base a theory, on the extent of people’s tendency to believe to an absurd extent, you are producing a very weak theory indeed. There is one other problem with the Kuzari Argument: for it to be valid, there must be an unbroken chain of tradition starting from the population witnessing the miracles described in the Torah. However, some text in the Old Testament suggests otherwise. According to the book of Judges, And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died, being an hundred and ten years old. And they buried him in the border of his inheritance in Timnathheres, in the mount of Ephraim, on the north side of the hill Gaash. And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers:and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim: And they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger. (Judges 2:8-12)

    Furthermore, in 2 Kings “the book of the law” is discovered, serving as a reminder of previously forgotten traditions.

    And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the LORD … And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes. And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Achbor the son of Michaiah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Asahiah a servant of the king’s, saying, Go ye, enquire of the LORD for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that is found: for great is the wrath of the LORD that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book, to do according unto all that which is written concerning us. (2 Kings 22:8-13)

    These excerpts seem to raise doubt upon any claim that the oral tradition of the miracles in the Torah were maintained continuously by more than a minority of the population. Therefore, it would seem that the population inevitably accepted a history presented to them (whether true or false) by a small group of people. If taken at face value, this on it’s own is enough to invalidate the whole argument.

  73. Many thanks for your comments. Having experienced numerous discussions along these lines, be prepared for this question:
    “The book of Nephi says ‘All the people’ but does not say how many people.”
    Around the time you start gritting your teeth, your ‘opponent’ will quote the twice repeated census numbers of 600,000 military aged men in the Old Testament.
    So you have two choices at this moment… demonstrate that the Book of Nephi refers to a significantly large group of witnesses, or show that 600,000 military age males in the Biblical ages is historically implausible.

  74. “All the people OF THE LAND” would probably mean more than three or four, I don’t think anyone would dispute that. I was very happy to see this post for this point I think is an easy-argued baloon-puncher against the kiruvniks.

    Thanks a lot for your page! I myself, although being gifted and raised in a healthy invironment, was hijacked by ultra-orthodox missionaries during my early twenties when I was young and impressionable, looking for things, and at that in a foreign land. It took me many years to get out, and my life managed to become significantly messier.. 😉 These people prey on young, inexperienced “searchers”, and utilize a manipulative, power-based (being confronted with 100% convinced people can be convincing itself) discourse to achieve their goals and it’s important to have simple, quickly-argued points to make to be able to counter this soul-hunting. Again, irrational faith is fine, as long as you know it’s irrational faith and draw appropriate conclusions from that. Brain-washing, however, is not fine, and having experienced it I do my best, when opportunity rises, to help others not fall into that pit…

  75. As you argue more and more with them, it’s amazing how thinly kiruv experts are willing to slice the semantic cucumber. “All of the people of the land” — “well that’s not for sure that many people…”

    The Torah claims that there were 600,000 adult males at Kadesh Barnea. This number in turn is hugely problematic and moreover, unlikely…

    http://www.martincwiner.com/reconciling-biblical-numbers-three-million-at-sinai-is-making-a-mountain-out-of-a-molehill/

  76. Zevy: One flaw with your Nephi argument, as Martin pointed out, is that it refuses to mention numbers. But there is a more basic problem. Mormons don’t believe that they descend from the Nephi. The Nephi were a group that went extinct. The Kuzari argument is based on national history; Nephi is based on an event that the early devotees to Mormonism had no way of confirming or denying. There is nothing inherently irrational about a Mormon TRUSTING Joseph Smith regarding his account of what happened to an extinct nation. There IS something irrational about believing a false national history.
    Another point you mentioned was the fact that the tradition was broken. First, you mention the verses in Judges. It does not state that the tradition was broken; it merely implies that there weren’t any more first-hand witnesses who “knew” of the events. Indeed, a few chapters later, the verses quote townspeople who refer to the miraculous Exodus “that our parent related to us.” Furthermore, the verses don’t mean to imply that all the first-hand witnesses died, since Pinchas is mentioned at the end of the book.
    Regarding the finding of the Torah scroll, how does it imply that they forgot about the miraculous history? At most, it implies that the ruling class had forgotton about the WRITTEN TORAH.

  77. #28: The book of Nephi seems to say there was a revelation to all of earth, so surely the mormons should have been aware of this, having been told about this from their parents who were also citizens of earth, or by their friends parents…. 😉

  78. Would you happen to have chapter and verse for this “revelation to all of the earth”?

  79. Well, the guy above (zevy) said Nephi 3, chapter 9, and there it is, first verse… Here’s a link:

    http://lds.org/scriptures/bofm/3-ne/9?lang=eng

    Now, it says: “And it came to pass that there was a avoice heard among all the inhabitants of the earth, upon all the face of this land…”, and the mind trained in Talmud would immediately claim that the part of the sentence that says “upon all the face of this land” cancels the previous “all the inhabitants of the earth”, defining it’s meaning, perhaps clarifying that “earth” means the “earth” in “this land”. At least it could be claimed that the mormons understood it this way, and thus they were not surprised by not having heard of this. However, even though the Nephites (according to the Mormons) went extinct, their destroyers, the Lamanites, are believed to be the “indigenous people of America and Polynesia” (wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamanites).

    So, couldn’t they have asked the native Americans? 😉 To this, however, the Torah jew would reply, that no, a people might build a tradition that negates something that happened and/or with time simply forget things, but would never positively affirm something that they didn’t know to be true.

    To this I would say that the whole premise is flawed. Just the existence of a curiosity (a people with a belief such as the jews) doesn’t imply anything more than the fact that curiosities exist (tail phenomena in statistics, possible to simulate in Excel). The attempt to claim that strange phenomena don’t happen is wrong, the world is full of them, almost to the point when weird, illogical behavior of individuals and groups (the Chinese all waving Mao’s little red book f.ex., the Nazis etc.) become… normal. So the mormons are an example of another strange phenomenon, just quite similar to the phenomenon of the jews. So they’re not exactly the same, but similar the are in the sense that if you say that the mormons accepted a claim of a revelation even though their was no clear tradition thereof, so did the jews (at a certain point, in the beginning of the religion).

    But let’s not forget that in the end of the day, the burden of proof is on the believers, and the only thing they can point to is a curious phenomenon, saying that the “natural explanation” seems weird. Ok, so it seems weird, but the world is full of weird things, some more similar to this, others less.

  80. I’ve never seen people talk about this point, so it may be worth pointing out. I’ve always known that in story details, numbers, and names, there are many contradictions between the various books of Tanach that make religious people look so cute when they try to come up with clever answers for what are obviously contradictions. But I recently found a contradiction that blew my mind with regards to the Kuzari argument. In general, it shows that the refutation to Kuzari lies not in focusing on the number 600,000 that were leaving Egypt in particular, but that ALL the numbers in the Bible that sound unreasonable and unreliable should be treated with the skepticism that they deserve. Well, without further ado, here is the contradiction. Comparing the same story in Chronicles and Kings regarding David sending Joab to take a census of Israel (where Yahweh gets angry and smites 70,000), we come across what is the largest discrepancy in the Hebrew Bible that I am aware of. The census of the Israelites in I Chronicles 21:5 is 1.1 Million. In II Samuel 24:9 there were 800,000. Now of course you don’t have to hold your breath long before the floodgates of apologetics come swinging open from the mouths of the practitioners of Rabbinic Talmudism. But the obvious truth is plain as day for all to see in the text: a discrepancy valued at 300,000, which, assuming my math is correct, is a full 50% of the Kuzari proof of 600,000. When you couple this fact with other impossibilities, like 120,000 soldiers of King Ahaz of Judah slain in one day by King Pekah of Israel you begin to see how absurd Bible numbers are in general, not just the Kuzari proof figure of 600,000. 120,000 soldiers slain in one day with swords and shields and chariots! Amazing isn’t it? That’s something that even Hiroshima and Nagasaki couldn’t accomplish (60-80K in one day)! Bravo to those statistics! When you really begin to meditate and internalize the magnitude of the discrepancy I just cited, the whole Kuzari argument falls to dust. Anyone can argue anything of course – 1000 rationalizations can be thought up, just like there are many arguments on the homepage of the Flat Earth Society. But argue all you like, AIN MIKRA YOTZEI MIDAY PSHUTO!

  81. Thanks for your contribution. I think one of the biggest contributors to biblical numbers being in error is the similarity between eleph and alluph. Hebrew (Phoenician) was written without vowels and these two words (thousand and chief) are identical without vowels.

    Ed note:
    The Rabbis teach that Torah verses cannot teach outside the confines of the plain textual meaning, “Ain mikra yotzei miday pshuto” (Tal. Sabb. 63a).

  82. Martin, your logic and critical thinking is flawed.

    1. That Egyptians didn’t record something (the didn’t record everything) in their history (which may not have been widely read by their people) is of no consequence.
    2. An entire generation of Jews would have not only had to perpetrate a lie not their children, but kill dissidents, and keep the reason for it hidden, all while practicing lifelong life-altering inconvenient and limiting lifestyles that they made up for no reason (since they could have done all the same without all those “unnecessary” laws). Either way, in no way comparable to Egyptian omission.
    3. Archeological evidence in Egypt would not prove the absence of people, it could only fall short of proving their presence, and this is not proof of absence. Basic logical fallacy there,
    4. None of the people who actually came in contact with the supposed Nazareth fellow had any connection to the later established church. Therefore everything the church says from Paul on (even if he [one man] says he got it from the original witnesses) is worth any more than the weakest link in the chain of transmission, I.e. one man, especially since supposedly the followers of the Nazareth were ALL local Jews, while the followers of the church were almost entirely foreign gentiles.

    The point Patrick, is not that you please restate your argument or what have you, but rather that you not only don’t have one, but are incapable of objectively and honestly stating one.
    In effect I am saying your intellectual integrity, as I have shown herein, is too compromised for you to attempt such arguments, never mind arguments that will never succeed.

    That you think you were going to reveal a flaw in the Kuzari approach that went unnoticed all this time is a sign of unrelated issues of yours. Only “the choir” and ‘the fools’ could have seen anything in is worthless attempt.

    -Get well

    P.S. I will not be returning to comment further or address any possible replies as it is not worth my time to bother with this drivel.

  83. You also don’t account for how there must always have been Jews of every age, and the tradition of Torah and Hashem involves much working in every individuals life, with common knowledge of two languages and alphabets, at the time of supposed foisting on a massive population, with cultures and peoples the world, of any stripe, drawing traditions and practices from the tradition of Torah and Jews, dating back thousands of years. Then there are scientific models that account for a singular host of nature, and a preexisting predestined table of possible beings and their representation, at-least each as their DNA combination in a table of all possible successful combinations of all beings, onward, a definite hypothetical harmony and/or congruity that all operations and occurrences are relative to in whatever degrees of disharmony that may seem to pervade all, even the laws of physics themselves demonstrate everything relating against an interconnected and/or central uniformity and/or “mover”.

    Evidence can only prove a positive, and disbelief is worth nothing, and disregard for evidence: human, testimonial, textual etc as insufficient for basic deduction brings as much inquiry into the evidence as the one doing so.

    Face the facts, existence has been awesomely unbelievable before you considere d these existential questions.

    -Good Day

  84. That Egyptians didn’t record something (the didn’t record everything) in their history (which may not have been widely read by their people) is of no consequence.

    Why?

  85. P.S. I will not be returning to comment further or address any possible replies as it is not worth my time to bother with this drivel.

    You returned. 🙂 See “cognitive dissonance” you suffer from it.

  86. Hey just wanted to give you a quick heads up. The text in your article seem to be running
    off the screen in Safari. I’m not sure if this is a formatting issue or
    something to do with web browser compatibility but I figured I’d post to let you know.
    The layout look great though! Hope you get the issue resolved soon. Kudos

  87. I know I am a few years too. late. The Kuzari principle needs empirical support. Assume we have an actual sample of cases that have been examined by historians and they find indeed the cases are true or likely true. Should we accept the Sinai story, Aztec story, Pygmy Story, Christian Story, WBCW story etc: NO. Because all the cases that we find likely true did not involve miracles/supernatural. You can not extrapolate beyond the space supporting the principle.

  88. It’s never too late for the Kuzari principle. As long as there are people who are suffering spiritually and in need, ‘arguments’ like these which sound ‘close enough to valid’ will be accepted by those in emotional need.

    You’d be interested to know, speaking of seeking evidence, that in the 50’s the Israeli Goverment commissioned a group of archaeologists to go all over Israel and find proof of the Torah stories. They (quietly) found nothing. Modern Archaeologists from Israel itself deny the veracity of the Torah as a historical document.
    Here is one such Archaeologist:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_Unearthed

  89. If I may argue to a point about the golden calf

    u have to imagine the jews in that period
    they were in after being enslaved for 210 years
    labored to the extreme killed tortured for so many years !
    Now they got their hero their hero was moses
    moses came as gods man but HE WAS THEIR MAN
    NOW even they saw God they only had one leader one new chirsmatic leader
    “moses”
    the one who Gave Them ALL Miricles (from god)
    Now they saw God on sini
    they saw miricles
    but everything was THROUGH MOSES!
    God took moses at his side on sini
    God didn’t spoke to the Jews directly but only through moses coordination
    NOW
    after 40 days they thought he is gone!
    what should a just liberated created nation do ?
    they are now in a desert all alone and the hertics like you who can deny simple facts and proof start screaming and yelling and deamnding
    yet lets not forget with a golden calf president maybe we can change the constitution a bit?
    maybe we can change some rules

    we just got out of eygypt slavaery and moses put 613 laws some of which we dont like at all and now he is up there learning the verbel laws explinations and customs (Talmud)
    well we are not so happy in the first place with all these laws, yes we were excited at the beginning of this campaign but now reality kicks in, it’s much easier to be a reform jew no? we started to smell the air of freedom now we will get all these ridiculous restrictions COME ON MOSES

    let me ask u MARTIN wouldn’t you support making that gold calf so we can rid ourselves from all these reatrictions and rules?
    we finnaly got out of the yoke of eygpt we finally got our independence and now we need to adhere to the STRICT rules of moses ?
    wouldn’t this be your thoughts 10 days after moses is not around and u shiver from the thought of him coming down with more restrictions whom you may love and how you may go on with your just liberated life?
    wouldn’t u deep down hope for a easier leader to liberalize a bit the newly in process formated constitution?
    I know I would and I belive
    wouldn’t u be the first to ubunderstand KORECH frustration with the monopoly moses led?
    what exactly is ur argument ?
    cause they saw god? so ????
    dont u understand that being on a higher level the game is still the same ??

    so let me some it up for u

    yes they saw god

    yet they had one true leader moses

    then those who didnt like the thousands of restrictions put on us by moses (or our talmud) felt a crack to take advantage of

    moses isnt back when some said and thought he should be back by now
    maybe we are lucky? maybe we will get rid of these harsh laws u thought to urself
    maybe he isn’t coming back
    maybe god will send a more liberal leader
    maybe god will decide to liberate us of this burden and let us go our way as free men

    moses student isnt among us, yeshia moses sucsesser isn’t here

    lets rebble
    lets change course
    maybe we can force god to let go of moses (talmud) strict laws
    he went up there to bring us the TALMUD (the laws which are not the simple text in the bible) we dont want it, let him stay up there , what will we do ? huh ? we need a leader? ok, we will make a golden calf and it will interped Gods law a bit more liberal, let’s hope, let’s say reform?
    as emotions were growing by the reform and excitement grew they got thier gold got a fire and Aaron out of fear of them killing him and ruining thier chances of repent and knowing he had no chance of putting in some sense in you guys (just like I have no hope for you) threw in the gold in fire hoping nothing will come out of it
    Satan succeeded miricles can happen there too
    hey look screams Martin to his hassidic freind
    look a calf came out of this while we just threw in peices of gold! isn’t this proof eanogh to debunk the kisree? maybe we can change the laws a bit, maybe God without moses the witch we can manifest him in a golden calf
    come on Martin ur orthodox freind says God just told us not to do this are u crazy ?
    well God didn’t precisely tell us u exclaim,
    he spoke to moses
    now that noses is gone things can change
    its just 40 days
    well alot can happen in 40 days, you want us all killed here in the desert without a leader come on, this will be so liberating, we just got out of eygpt let’s have some freedom , who needs all these old restrictions we can have a moral life without moses!
    well you know the results
    and your question why God said let me kill them all is a rightfull claim from god
    what’s wrong with these people
    I just made then a nation
    I just gave thier captors the 10 plaques
    I just split the sea for them and gave them all these richest
    and they rebell at the first moment they can?
    let me erase them (he didn’t say all, he said OISUM those involved and those who can make arguments like this) and make u (and the likes of you) a nation
    let me rid the Jews from those who are hertic and today they make a calf and in 3000 years they will blame thier calf as proof to Mt sini revelation
    well moses said no!
    they will sin yes
    they will rebell yes
    they will counter and change and let go, but by the end they will come back Martin will come back if not today tomorrow if not tomorrow then he will come back in another life time and use his brains the correct way
    and meanwhile we us will just get stronger and survive and supress them

    in short
    they were in a desert
    they were a new nation finding thier place in the newly free world
    their were some who rather wanted a way out (like reform wanted out) of these strict laws and werent ready to follow the stringnet laws blaming it was coming from (cause of) moses
    not to forget that their were other nations mixed in? maybe felt second class?

    so the act of a golden calf is no wonder at all
    just lile its no wonder how you a jewish kid with a jewish mom would not accept your own simple history
    they might need proof but why do we need it
    its our stroy our plain history
    when exactly did my for Father’s start putting on tfilen when exactly did they start observing shabbat, it’s my story my history my an sectors generation after generation most of us can mention by name!

    to conclud there were some jews who wanted to put a split between moses and god (verbal and written law)
    so others in the desert without thier hero
    didnt stop them from making a golden calf
    and some maybe excused their action by claiming that this calf will lead them through god so it’s not so bad
    that’s all

    Chazal tell us eine Keits lidivire reach
    repend Martin and you will be in no need of proof

  90. >If I may argue to a point about the golden calf
    No, you may not because…

    >u have to imagine the jews in that period
    >they were in after being enslaved for 210 years

    You can’t argue a point about the Golden Calf because you’ll be referring to facts derived from the Torah which is a book whose veracity has been called into question.

    If the gospels contained a passage: “These gospels are the word of God” I couldn’t use this quote to prove to you that the gospels were correct.

    There was no slavery in Egypt. There likely wasn’t a golden calf at all. Moreover, all the 3 monotheistic religions derive their works from the far older sumerian texts which contain the account of Sargon which has startling similarities to the entire Moses epic.

  91. oh I see
    you debunk the story of Mt sini where your grandparents with a thought up CONTRADICTION to the golden calf story
    you maintain that both CAN’T LOGICALLY be true therfore one of them or both are fiction
    I answered you a simple scenario REAGRDLESS of source
    but based on the assumption that the Mt sini is true
    and you come back with this ?
    that’s all u got ?

    Btw do u have any sumeriansuggestions around ?

    it’s not a big deal to deny history some don’t belive what happend 70 years ago and some don’t even belive what happened yesterday

    you have doubts? you are confused with your desires conflicting with ur heritage? well research your roots some more, you might think u know it all while u haven’t even got the concept yet

  92. again Martin I was referring to your CONTRIDICTION argument
    I wasn’t referencing to the authenticity of our bible, not at all I didn’t find your arguments logical or worthy to answer,
    what I did want is to answer your CONTRIDICTION ARGUMENT
    you can’t ask a contradiction from A to B if the argument is that A isn’t true !
    my answer was that if A (Mt sini) is true B (the golden calf) doesn’t contridict it at all!
    now if the only argument back is that A isn’t true I guess we settled it
    didn’t we ?

  93. I wasn’t answering the contridiction with kabilistic ideas or added side theroy
    I didn’t use chazal that they were not RUI LIOISOI MASA ALU LIHOIROIS TCHEEVA (something we all can use) nor was i using something we dont grasp or understand today like the great urge of idol worship
    although that’s 100% true it’s for me and you to know but hard to explain to outsiders

    what I used was same book which gives us the story of Mt sini “A” and derived a simple scenario how it doesn’t contridict at all with “B”

    Ironicly the erev rav used the golden calf back then, to debunk God, EVEN THEY JUST SAW HIM 40 DAYS AGO to further thier desires even it made no rational sense
    while you 3000 years later use the same gold calf to furthur your desires and when answered to the point ur answer is Samaritan readings someone’s fiction stories maybe based on facts known back then? dono, but what does that prove or disprove ? nothing!

  94. Martin coming to think of it
    Maybe we got the whole kizari wrong
    the kizari isn’t here to prove to somone that wants to deny facts
    for somone wanting to be a hertic take the golden calf for example
    those jews saw God 40 days earlier and they made an idol
    so no , the kizari isn’t here for people who can make a golden calf not then and not today

    the kizari is here for those who know how to separate truth from fiction
    for those who seek the truth and want an explination of how and why thier believes are better then other belifes
    what is the bassis of thier heritage
    THE MAIN POINT how does the real God need to present his laws with a foundation that is not shakable
    that’s what God did
    he gave his laws in front of millions and gave that nation hundreds of mitzvos regulations and customs to record this record for all generations to come
    BUT FOR THAT TYPE WHO CAN MAKE A GOLDEN CALF 40 DAYS LATER
    THERE IS NOTHING HE CAN OR SHOULD DO
    THOSE LIKE YOU DIDN’T CARE THEN AND ACT AS IF THEY DON’T BELIVE TODAY 3000 YEARS LATER

    My personal opionon is that with side ingredients the argument of the kizari becomes easier to understand if you already have some correct facts beforehand
    like
    for those who know there must be a creator
    for those who know the world had a beginning
    the argument of the kusrey is now how to choose a religion
    for those who are oblivious to reason
    for those who would not even belive what they themselves did yesterday only if an arcgilogist finds something to prove to u u existed
    for those who believe that we might all very the pigment of our imaginations
    The kizari isn’t here for them
    it’s for the rational one
    your argument of the golden calf just proves a SERIOUS point
    THOSE WHO DON’T WANT TO BELIVE THOSE WHO WOULD DENY FACTS AND REASON TO FURTHUR THEIR AGENDA THOSE CAN DENY THE SUN AT NOON
    Tzadeekim yalchee bum Irshuyim ……

  95. Actually, It is the Orthodox who continue to wield this horrible illogical argument who do the most damage to Orthodox Judaism. You accuse me of cognitive dissonance when in fact, it is yourself who is unwilling to admit that this argument is flawed. I have repeatedly said: “The Kuzari Argument is false, but that doesn’t mean Judaism is false, it just means we need other proofs and evidence to back it up, if it is true”.

    To be clear, my argument is not against Orthodox Judaism nor Judaism in general, it is against using the Kuzari argument as ‘proof’ of Judaism.

  96. 1) I guess we settled the gold calf argument, (why it’s so hard for you to acknowledge that is quite telling on your honesty to this subject)

    2) [Actually, It is the Orthodox who continue to wield this horrible illogical argument ]

    This argument can’t be debunked it’s not horrible and not illogical, but maybe you don’t wish or don’t get it , u are a bit studied in this subject (although I don’t know if u learned or understood the choivis halvuvois or Moira nivoichim etc etc) so I would maybe need to assume that you are biased for some reason, as your article nor your arguments in the comments debunked anything that The kusree proves
    The kusree s proof might not be stronger then those who actually saw it themselves lived with it. And STILL we both know there were those who made idols right there and then as well

    [who do the most damage to Orthodox Judaism.]
    But what Damage are you talking about ?
    whom are we damaging ? the orthodox jewery which is growing all over the world in numbers like never before?

    [You accuse me of cognitive dissonance when in fact, it is yourself who is unwilling to admit that this argument is flawed.]

    let me tell u this Bubala, we might think now today that we are more advanced then those in the old days but do we think we are bigger philosopher’s then they were? you might have a smart phone but you are not as smart as them
    and again you never debunked nor yet completely understood thier arguments fully, you just relied to read some hertics quotes and swallow any nonsense like archeological findings which is a science still in infantsy and theroy to say the least , which btw debunks nothing, nothing at all!
    for example
    you questioned the gold calf argument while you were ready to accept Mt sini as a volcano story, while if they fell for it your argument of the gold calf is still in play, but you don’t really care , if it can be a volcano you are OK with the golden calf, it just goes to show that it isn’t the truth you are seeking it’s the ORTHODOX jewry you can’t stand

    [I have repeatedly said: “The Kuzari Argument is false,]
    Yes you said ! But you didn’t challenge it at all,
    Abele answered you honestly in most cases while u ignored the obvious when he proved it again and again (just like u are ignoring the fact that I correctly answered you on your proposed calf contridiction) (although I would word things differently then him as he is probably modern orthodox while I wastill raised ultra, he did a real terrific Job Correcting you although i think he gave you to much credit) I as you can see am not a writer nor can I spell or use Grammer correctly as English isn’t a language I frequent with till I was in my 20s (31 now) and still only use it as a second language so I appreciated abele ability to answer ALL of your arguments correctly

    [but that doesn’t mean Judaism is false,]

    No someone’s lack of comprehension or lack of intrest in the obvious doesn’t prove anything

    [ it just means we need other proofs and evidence to back it up,]

    No WE don’t ! “you” might need , but again you are no different then your ancestors they had all they needed in front of them and they idol worship and questioned God again and again
    if you don’t want to use our history you don’t need to look to far to see how easy facts are denied DAILY!

    [if it is true”.]

    Its true Martin we, me and you are not the jury not the judge we are the perpetrators of these stories we don’t need proof
    this book is for others for the jury to learn for the judge to take notes , but for us? for us we have our SIMPLE PLAIN HISTORY when EXACTLY DID YOUR GRANDPARENTS START KEEPING SHABBAT? etc etc etc

    [To be clear, my argument is not against Orthodox Judaism nor Judaism in general, it is against using the Kuzari argument as ‘proof’ of Judaism.]

    I think it’s proof eanough and you haven’t debunked it at all u just used HALF arguments against HALF arguments but once it’s in its full context or picture it’s proof eanough

    BUT AGAIN

    I do think that the Kuzri argument is more to “what” religion is correct not “if” there is religion or a god

    they were smart eanough then

    they would never even consider an explosion 13 billion years ago when there was no place nor a time for this explosion to accur as a rational argument at all while we are ALL happy with this

    so i think the pretext is as follows in this order

    1) There is a creator
    thus
    2) There is a purpose of creation
    thus
    3) We humans are center of this creation
    thus
    4) Their must be a way to know what the creator wants
    thus
    5) religion and a revelation is the answer

    and then

    6) the kusri argument
    why Judiasim is the only rational religion possible

    that’s the proof

    giligimesh nor golash will debunk that
    nor a stone with a writing one might find somwhere

    there might be lots of other findings in the future

    hopefully moshiach won’t wait and will come already

  97. Ok, now we’re going really tangential. What specific point would you like me to respond to. Please make the point in 2-3 sentences. Thx.

  98. Regrettably not. The problem occurs right at the level of the Mount Sinai event itself. You say the Israelites saw God there right? What if it was a volcano, UFO, or a deception by a superior race? Just for illustration, suppose a UFO decided to create the Jews. It created all the ‘miracles’ at Mt Sinai and handed the Jews a book which recorded the event. The Jews saw what they believed to be God but was in fact, a UFO. Prove me wrong. To prove me wrong, you’ll have to prove that it could not possibly have been a UFO.

  99. I’ve answered you elsewhere but my motivation is to debunk a damaging argument to Judaism. To build a house on a faulty foundation is inherently wrongheaded and destructive.

  100. ufo argument is an argument just like we might all just be created cloned yesterday and ufo programed our minds and set up our universe as a Hollywood movie

    point is our obligation to seek the truth is how we rationally behave here
    we might all be dreaming there is no way to debunk this but we act as if we are up therfore we are responsible and judged accordingly

    we don’t need ur help to build our foundation
    we survived 3000 years and we are flourishing quite well today

    if u would of been religious u can argue u have us in mind but ur not so how can u say that u are looking to help I don’t get that part

  101. and Martin u really don’t understand how we work
    we build ourselves on the previous we don’t debunk them and build new
    we are not scientist we don’t build new and expect our later generations to destroy it again
    that’s what reform and conservative did and they are perishing
    us on the other hand are flourishing for thousands of years
    do u see any generations of the Maskeelim enlightenment around ?
    some today follow them but they are not decendents (most of them) of them as they are all gone !
    we don’t need ur help Martin
    the kusri the choivis halvuvois and the Rambam kept us for the last thousand of years they didn’t fail us

  102. >we don’t need ur help Martin
    With logic, Kuzari adherents regrettably require help. I don’t mean to be demeaning but the argument is fundamentally flawed.

  103. no, it’s not that kind of argument. It says that I don’t know what they saw at Mt Sinai. Many modern day things would appear miraculous 3000 years ago.

  104. we are not any nation 3000 years ago according to us ACHUD HOIYU AVRUHUM! we allways had sheivet leivi besides this all, this theory shouldn’t even be considered if u learn the peseekim how it all went about this argument makes no sense and doesn’t deserve to be answered

    and those who rely on proof but without proof they will leave their respectful heritage those even it isn’t proven it was never debunked (like other buba masis)
    90% of real fruma yudin don’t need proof
    modern orthodox I can understand thier challenge, bubala it’s proof eanogh
    u didn’t debunk it at all
    not at all
    and I won’t go searching around ur other posts
    but if u have any specific points to make I would love to listen
    u can email me if u want

  105. >90% of real fruma yudin don’t need proof
    I’m certain your colleagues would object to this statement.

  106. no they won’t I don’t know if u know but they burned the Rambam in Ashkenaz
    most there were adherent without philosophy
    yet in sfard philosophy was rule

    u are missing a big point the Kuzari isn’t for us
    it for others after they come to the simple conclusion of a god and are searching for his rule book where they should go what they should choose

    for jews for us it’s the simple history we have
    you agree we are putting on tfilen more then 2000 years you agree that our holidays go back as far as you can trace it back then we have our WHOLE thora thousands of years old and we adhere to it for so many generations and we know and we know our parents knew and so thier parents the basic biblical stories
    which btw one of the commandments is to remember the Mt sini event
    we don’t need more then our history
    we are not a nation of geirim
    we have our perfect clear heritage
    the Kuzari are for outsiders and it’s simple and brilliant

  107. So you’re making the we’ve been around a long while believing and practicing the same thing, therefore, we must be right. Are you also a Buddhist? They’ve also been around a very long time, held the same beliefs and practiced the same thing, therefore, they must be right? right?

  108. you will find a bhudist with one comparison
    you will find another Christian with something too
    you will look up a Mayan and you will bring a thing from there as well
    then you will look for a golem and compare one thing too

    by the end you won’t be able to establish the concept in its entirety anywhere!

    you will just bring HALF comparisons of only ONE or Two comparisons while the Kuzari is based on the entire puzzle to be unbreakable I will copy paste what I wrote on ur other blog
    as u don’t debate to the point not here and not there
    so maybe if I put it in numbers aND u can bring me another nation with a story to compare to these nations maybe will get somewhere with you

    1) The basis the foundation of the Jewish bible is same today same then nothing changed EVER the detailed rules were allways the same

    2) The nation having the bible attest to its accuracy and history and keep its commandments midiculously perfectly to the extreme

    3) the nation keeping this book are known to say the least not to be so stupid

    4) the nation then and the nation today have documented thier roots and generation after generation

    5) each generation had extensively documented history

    6) each generation had their scholars and books discussing the thora in extreme philosophical way

    7) the nation regardless of separation through the continents had all discussed and leared thier ruled and thora the same

    8) this nation has besides daily rules rituals and commandments, it has numerous holidays which commemorate the stories of their bible in detail

    9) those holidays are not just festivals but each holiday comes with numerous laws regulation and extreme restrictions

    10) in those books as a basis of it all, and implemented in each and every ritual! in each and every Holliday! in each and every law! is the aspect of our establishment as a nation a main vocal point repeated over and over as a basis

    11) one of the commandments is never to forget this story and establishment

    12) It was established with the bassis that our God clearley precisely pland and we readied ourselves for 49 days since we left eygpt to accept these laws

    13) This nation as written in thier book and so documented in every single ritual requested the revelation of God himself

    14) and yes GOD HIMSELF IN FRONT OF THIS ENTIRE NATION WHICH COUNTED IN THE MILLIONS GAVE THEM THE THORA

    15) there were generations in the desert living on pure miricles day daily

    16) all those miricles are sown in into our customs and holidays generation after generation up untill today, and carry significant details

    17) and the thora is kept by the frum nation the same exact way it was kept right then in the desert!

    18 19 20 …. to follow if need be

    Please Martin you can act oblivious if you ignore this picture

    the major religions took this as thier basis for the simple reason
    they couldn’t copy it
    so they took it as the basis and made up thier Buba masses
    if they could of they would make it up just like this
    they couldn’t
    this should be proof eanough

  109. Troubled, I went to sleep last night thinking to myself is there anything that ‘sruly’ and I can agree on whatsoever? A few hours after sleeping a song entered my mind which I hadn’t thought of in a long time:

    “Oy ribono shel olam helf shoyn alle Yidden,
    Oy ribono shel olam mir tzivijn ze?
    Mir tzivijn ze?
    Zol shoyn komen di geule,
    Zol shoyn komen di geule,
    Zol shoyn komen di geule,
    Moshiach jum shoyn bald.”

    My yiddish memory is poor but a loose translation is:
    Oh Master of the World, help the Jewish People
    Oh Master of the Universe, who would have imagined this? (referring to the suffering of the Jewish people.)
    The diaspora should end…
    The Messiah should come…

    That’s a rough estimate.

    Can we agree on those Yiddish words?

  110. well Martin we can’t agree if you write on shabbat
    (although maybe it’s not a doiriesa electronically) I assume u were somewhere deep deep west before sunset still

    us keeping shabbat thousands of years with its 39 basic don’t do’s is part of the proof

    Martin I was thinking shabbat is there a way out of this Kuzari? can we throw something at it to stick to rid ourselves of the yoke of all these ridiculous commandments ?
    can I be frie like Martin

    Then I started to think about all our history our laws our studies thorough our generations and it’s documentation of it all
    its so ammense it’s so huge it’s so complicated it’s so humongous and then yet if you know it well it’s so so so beutifull so perfect so amazing

    So yet some of us might need the Kuzari
    and the Kuzari is meant for the ones outside
    for the reform for the conservative for the “almost” modern orthodox

    but for the one inside HE HAS IT WITHOUT ANY PRACTICED PROOF HE HAS IT HE KNOWS IT, AND IF YOU DON’T IS CAUSE U R NOT THETE
    Martin I have my short comings
    u have no idea
    I’m not one that can preach
    but I know
    and there is no way out
    Truth is although the thora is cumbersome
    hard
    difficult in a sense at the start at its outer beginning
    it has its beauty to counter it
    after u just choose to adhere to it
    but later (which I’m not there yet but felt it at times and saw it by others) it’s not cumbersome it’s not hard it’s not a yoke and not ridiculous

    now let’s see the song I couldn’t make out these words

    Oy ribono shel olam mir tzivijn ze?
    Mir tzivijn ze?

    what’s TZIVIJEN?

    Moshiach jum shoyn bald.”

    I guess u typo “KUM” not jump?

    now before I let you go
    about that curiosing thing u didn’t get as a kid
    u give a DEEP right look so u cover a far range
    then a DEEP left look to do the same
    then A SHORT right look since the DEEP left look took away part of the first deep look, and a short look can restore that, while a short look won’t ruin ur deep left look

    Am i right ?
    had to write something we will agree since the song I didn’t get one word

  111. So you agree, evidently, that we need a way out of using the Kuzari. Good we agree. That’s why I wrote the articles in the first place. I’ve gotten away from ‘changing’ people of faith. My new approach is, if it works for you and doesn’t hurt anyone, you’re free to believe whatever you want. However, I didn’t want people drawn into Orthodox Judaism because a ‘proof’ existed. If people can find faith and derive happiness from Orthodox Judaism, more power to them.

  112. wow
    how did you see that in my words?
    are you trying to win a debate?
    or u are trying to know or understand the truth?
    I’m not debating you
    nor is it permitted to debate a jewish hertic
    I was clarifying explaining
    the Kuzari is 100% bullet proof
    to question it isn’t a challenge it’s for it it’s a shortcoming which one might soonot overcome
    (or a choosing of convenience)

    my point was that for an outsider that is missing the reality they need documents of proof
    for the insider this religion is ammense unending and nothing to even compare I tiny bit to
    how u were able to arrive at your latest comments as if I said anything else is amazing and points to why we shouldn’t debate a jewish hertic

    sorry for being rude
    but u keep doing this and I am blunt cause that’s how I am and because I have a shortcoming to English vocabulary to be patient to be proper

    now that you sang that song remind yourself of another
    or I have a few for you I composed on the words of tehilim quite nice

  113. I misunderstood your comment “Martin I was thinking shabbat is there a way out of this Kuzari? ” to mean you had realized the argument was flawed.

    I am not a heretic. You are somewhat heretical (with a lower case ‘h’, minor infraction). You were instructed at Sinai: “These laws I give you today, take nothing away nor add anything.” The Kuzari proof is not located in those documents presented that day. God provided you with everything that very day that you would ever need. Thus you should be able to construct a convincing argument using that material. The Kuzari Argument doesn’t qualify.

    I forgot to ask. Do you do ‘kiruv’ (bringing Jews closer to observance) work? You sound like one who does and who is annoyed that I challenge the Kuzari proof, perhaps one of your favourite proofs?

    Judaism existed long before the Kuzari proof and will continue to exist if people market the logical and valuable parts of Judaism (not the Kuzari proof). Let me destroy the Kuzari proof, why do you need it? Surely God, Mitzvot and the Torah supercede it.

    Let me start you off on a replacement. The Torah says we’re the chosen people of God. Our history is a much better piece of evidence that we are a chosen people, given that we still exist despite such utter hatred and violence. Try something on those lines. That at least is a good piece of evidence that someone would have a lot harder time knocking down.

  114. yes u misunderstood, my question was i was looking for a way OUT of it not for a way without it

    anyway no i never did kuriv in my life
    I Never ever read a debunuking argument of the Kuzari in my life
    noright have I ever debated anyone in this subject only one freind who directed me to your post and I read it

    I wouldn’t of responded as I don’t find your arguments even valid of a response just misleading

    but the gold calf question (not argument)
    was interesting and I wanted to answer it

    yes jews don’t need the Kuzari argument to exist just as you say
    and in actuality most frum yiden are not too familiar with it
    if they are it’s how the Rambam puts it down that’s all
    and as I explained first the observant jew they don’t need to debate it as they have much more proof then the Kuzari as they live it

    you should take the Kuzari the opposite way
    how would a god 3000 years ago give the thora for a nation he chose and implement it to them in a way that it should be 100% solid to them and for their generations to come for the truth seeker to be sure with

    the KUZARI WAY IS PERFECTLY IT
    AND ONLY OUR RELIGION HAS THIS WAY
    AND IT PROVED TO HOLD THROUGH ALL THE DIFFICULTIES WE WENT THROUGH EVEN WE WERE SCATTERED AWAY OUR NATION IS SAME AS THE DAY HE GAVE US THE THORA

    thats the Kuzari
    How a true God gives his commandments and implements it forever in a way that it will Never fade

    YOU KEPT POINTING TO THERE AND / OR THAT
    DID YOU EVER HEAR ANYONE ASK HOW COME THIS OR THAT EXISTS ?

    TO DENY SIMPLE FACT WITH BUBA MASIS IS JUST LIKE MAKING A GOLD CALF RIGHT THERE AND THEN
    ATLEAST THEY WAITED 40 DAYS YOU WOULD OF DONE IT THE SAME DAY

  115. Ok, you seem particularly fixated on the Golden Calf. You seem, if I may, to infer that it is an ultimate symbol of the loss of faith. As you suggest, I would lose faith in one day whereas the ancient Israelites lost faith in 40 days.

    So, please be concise here, what specifically did I say about the Golden Calf that has you troubled? Please just a short description so that I can figure out what’s going on.

  116. just read my first post here on this topic

    in short how can an origin of an incident be proof 3000 years later if it was debunked 40 days later with the golden calf made

    I explained the situation to you
    and that same today same then
    if you have an agenda your blinded by it
    I would love this to be debunked so I can rid myself of these cumbersome commandments
    while you are blinded not to see the truth because of the obligations it will force u with

    and I threw in thathe although it was a higher level then it’s still the same game
    just like today

  117. So I said: “The golden calf is evidence that the ancient Israelites were not convinced by what they had witnessed at Mount Sinai and thus the Kuzari proof fails a mere 40 days after the Mount Sinai Event because there was already dissention in the ranks.”

    Your response is, if I may paraphrase: “Leave the ancient Israelites alone, they were confused, scared and 40 days without their leader. Hence the Golden Calf does not contradict the Kuzari Argument.”

    Can we agree on this summation? Please edit my summation accordingly if necessary. Let’s just define the problem clearly.

  118. the answer is
    that someone with an agenda and in a situation can deny and ignore fact and be unrational, doesn’t deny it’s accuracy and proof for the rational

    simple eanough ?

  119. And in typical form, unable to argue logically you resort to an ad hominem attack (accusing me of an agenda) to dismiss your logical defeat.

  120. I have a solution to our quandary.

    Write up your explanation of the Kuzari principle. Do it in Yiddish. Ask someone to translate it and post the translation (someone reading it) on youtube.

    You say the problem is with me and my agenda. Surely not all people suffer from my agenda whatever that may be (‘the truth’ btw). So ask them to thumbs up your video if they agree with it and thumbs down if they don’t. This will reveal if there is a problem with myself and the Kuzari argument, rather than a problem with the argument itself.

    I would post a poll on my website but that would be inherently biased.

    I await your youtube video.

  121. u can keep waiting
    on you tube somone can say 13.7 years ago when there was no time nor space an explosion accord
    well for me this is idocity and people give thubs up and so ot is in every single science and history book we all read
    is mankind proof of sanity ? NO!
    DOES THAT MEAN THE WORLD IS CRAZY?
    WHY NOT?
    if not two long ago people belived in a peice of carved wood they created created them ehy do u think today we are smarter?
    we are more advanced
    WE ARE NOT SMARTER !

  122. lol
    well ypu wouldnt be able to define being smart without the existance of stupidity
    and no light without darkenss
    no sweet without bitter
    no good without evil (except gods being)

    and so with matter and anti matter

    everything is a creation
    there is nothing that is on its own merit
    if there would be such a thing it wouldnt be a creation it would of allways been! (god)

    my take on things is that they exist as something cause they arw not the other thing

    each on its own scale
    up until it is because of it not being non existant

    am i right ?

  123. im holding in middle watcchim the FMRI test and ur theory
    well
    how did it look before the murder ?
    if the action causes this ?
    what about free will the concious to shape this?
    yes there are tendencies but free will choice is above it all
    now if u say that the FMRI proves that he isnt at fault
    this liberal system has an opposite result!
    cause if u cant put them to death after they kill only in a psychological unit
    then you should put them all in a psychiatric before hand
    thats racism !
    while im writing this im listening to ur kippa story!
    anyway if you take away free will and take away coutiousness and choice you are making race a real matter
    we should scan evryone and rate them and pit some here and some there

  124. did u ever learn the rambam on
    VAYICHAZEIK HASHEM ESS LEIV PAROI?
    a tumor taking away someomes choice is proof of something ?
    not that god uses him!
    no i dont know which rabbies u talk too
    u dont know what he choce before he got this tumer and million other things
    u need to learn more!
    thats how u became an athiest?
    u make me laugh!
    learn a bit more

  125. Martin reb chaim vetol says
    that one arriving to 1 and one arriving till 10
    you cant knowqho is a bigger tzadik
    cause mayne the neshuma of 1 was realy limited to 0 and he pushed himself to 1 and the 10 was supposed to arrive according to his neshuma and skills to 100

    so u see inly god can judge
    and its not only on the physical its also on the neshuma that it has its tendencies limits and preprograms

    Martin there so much u can learn if u use ir head in yiddishkeit
    there is the physical there is the mental tjere is the RUTZIN THE URGE THE NESHUMA THE SOUL SO ON SO FORTH
    but your theory that free will os takin away completley is not true it can be limited
    what about a drunk guy shooting were they councious like a normal guy?
    what about yoir day going extremley wring os that a free ticket to kill etc
    of you would of taken an FRMI of lets say a clinton surrporter while loosong the electiom are they allowed to kill? ot surley lookes differentin thereat different times

    FREE WILL CHOICE IS NEVER TAKEN AWAY COMPLETLEY UNLESS IN EXTREME SITUATIONS
    AND HASHEM THAT CONTROLLS THE WORLD AND THAT TO COME IS THE ONLY JUDGE
    BUT WR NEED TO JUDGE ACCORDING TO OUR ABILITY TO JUDGE
    AND THIS IS BASED ON THE UNDERSTANDING THAT ALTHOUGH SITUATIONS ARE DIFFERENT FOR EVERYONE
    THE BASICS STAND UP!

    when i put ur liberal veiw of making everyone mechanical and therofor free of responsibility
    YOUNARE ALSO MAKING RACE
    BETTER RACE AND WORSE RACES !

  126. So you want to have a discussion about suffering vs free will? The typical example raised here is a worm whose only purpose in life is to invade a human eye, grow there, and thus blind the person.
    https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/baylisascaris/

    While you think about that, you didn’t find the parts of my site that you will actually enjoy reading:
    http://www.martincwiner.com/jewish-roots-of-tin-pan-alley-jordan-klapman-3rd-lecture-of-6/
    http://www.martincwiner.com/jewish-contributions-to-tin-pan-alley/
    http://www.martincwiner.com/the-great-american-jewish-songbook-jordan-klapman-presentation/
    Try those on for size, see if you like them.

    Gut voch…

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