Questioner:
Regarding 1. I understand from you that combining the Kuzari argument with the conclusion of God’s existence, and also with the history of the Jewish people and its influence, yields a sort of fuller picture from which one can understand that the Torah is very likely from Heaven. In your opinion, are there additional central arguments needed to complete this picture? What did you mean by the uniqueness of our people’s history that strengthens the argument for a divine Torah? If we imagine going back to the days of Josiah and having the same conversation, it would seem that before us stands a shaky tradition that was forgotten, with no influence of the people on the world, and the historical uniqueness has not yet occurred. So that same set of arguments in Josiah’s day seems weaker; nevertheless, in your opinion, even under the conditions of Josiah’s time, could faith have been established rationally?

And another, less related question:
I noticed that there are external written sources from the biblical period such as Ugaritic poetry—“He judges the widow, renders judgment for the orphan”—the laws of Hammurabi (whose similarity to the Bible is well known), the laws of Eshnunna, and other sources that contain elements similar to biblical law. I know one explanation for this phenomenon, namely that all these laws ultimately derive from the seven Noahide commandments. In your opinion, is that the most plausible explanation, or are there perhaps different explanations for the phenomenon?
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Rabbi:
Regarding 1: indeed. I would add the tradition we received as well (in addition to all the phenomena we observe). The uniqueness of our people’s history is the return to its land after many years, when there was an advance promise that this would happen. Survival through the exiles and persecutions. The contribution to universal culture and morality, and to the sciences. In Josiah’s time there was clear knowledge that there had been such a Torah, since it was very close in time. It is like asking us about the Holocaust or World War I. Clearly here you would not need proofs that combine into a complex picture. You simply know that there was such a thing, and if someone comes and tells you (or on the basis of a document you suddenly find) that it happened in one way or another, you will accept it. By the way, in their time there certainly was already a contribution (morality as opposed to the cruelty of idolaters, an orderly legal system, and so on).

As for the additional question, as Leibniz wrote in his parable of the clocks (two clocks showing the same time—a correlation that he uses there as an analogy for the relation between body and soul), on the conceptual level such correlations can have three kinds of explanation: 1. A influenced B. 2. B influenced A. 3. There is some third thing that influences them both (Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age). Of course it could also be chance (correlation without explanation), but usually that is less plausible (when the correlation is too statistically significant).
In our context, I have no problem with all three types of explanation: a. The Holy One, blessed be He, wrote the Torah in terms that were familiar to the people of that period. b. They too were influenced by the Torah or by earlier versions of it, such as the study hall of Shem and Ever, the seven commandments, the revelations to Adam, Abraham, and Noah, and so on. c. Everything comes from the Holy One, blessed be He, and therefore appears in similar forms.
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Questioner:
It seems to me that some believers have a kind of inner wish that the Torah turn out to be true, because that would mean the believer has a way to act in accordance with God’s path in the world, and that gives life meaning; without it, a person may feel lost. Likewise, if the opposite turns out to be true, it would mean a complete change in the believer’s way of life. My question is whether this inner wish affects you to some extent in making decisions between opposing lines of reasoning connected to faith (such as those mentioned in the email above).
Best regards,
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Rabbi:
That is exactly the “opium of the masses” claim, and there is definitely something to it. It is certainly possible. We are all afflicted by various biases. One should try to neutralize them, but apparently nobody succeeds completely. By the way, the secular person and the communist and all other ideologies suffer from this too (except for the sacred vacuum). But in my opinion the conclusion is that one should do one’s best, not that all our decisions and insights are invalid. The alternative is to decide nothing and trust yourself in nothing at all. Another important conclusion is that one must be aware that our decisions are not certain and that there is a possibility that they are tainted and biased.
In other words, one who concludes that faith is the opium of the masses turns the question mark into an exclamation point—that is, he concludes that our conclusions have no certainty whatsoever (for secularity too has those same biases. It too is opium of the masses, like any outlook, except for complete absence). This is the conclusion the postmodernists reach: because of their awareness of vested interests and influences on our decisions, they give up entirely on our ability to reach any truth. But as I explained, there is a logical leap here: I can accept that there is an influence, but because of that I will try to neutralize it and understand also that my conclusions do not have absolute validity. From there to total relativism or total skepticism is still a great distance. This is the leap from a claim showing there is a 10% chance of error to the conclusion that everything is 50-50.
I discussed this at length in my book Two Carts and a Hot Air Balloon.

Regarding the continuity of the tradition:
In both II Kings and in the story of Josiah, it is not at all explained that the people knew of a mass revelation or the Exodus from Egypt. All they knew was that there was a book of the Torah that the Lord had commanded their ancestors, and probably also some of the commandments. Seemingly, this is exactly the point where the leaders could have inserted into the tradition the whole story of the mass revelation at the giving of the Torah and the Exodus from Egypt, in order to ground it on a theological-historical basis.

Sorry, I meant: both in Kings and in *Nehemiah*