Q&A: The Law of Moses by the Sword
The Law of Moses by the Sword
Question
With Heaven’s help,
Hello Rabbi,
why is it unreasonable to say that just as Islam was imposed by force (“the law of Muhammad by the sword”),
so too the Torah of Moses was at some point in the past imposed by force?
I’d be happy to hear as many lines of reasoning as possible, from the Rabbi and from the readers. Thanks :)!
(The only thing I can think of is that we have no national consciousness of such a thing, unlike Islam, where even if the verse “the law of Muhammad by the sword” does not appear in the Quran, every Muslim still knows it… but we still see that the Torah was indeed imposed, such as in the days of Josiah.)
Answer
You can say that. But I don’t know of any sources for it. You can also say that they hypnotized everyone, or that an angel came down from heaven and instructed everyone to do it, or that everyone was flooded with infinite happiness and was high on pills and therefore decided to do it. I don’t see any logic or need to deal with baseless arguments.
Discussion on Answer
I think that if I were convinced for some reason that the whole thing wasn’t true, then this might perhaps be a possible way out (though a far-fetched one). But to base the lack of conviction on this argument itself seems odd to me. There is no indication that anything like this happened, so why invent it? You could also think that quantum theory is incorrect and that they merely threatened all the physicists and caused them to adopt it. And the same goes for anything else in the world. That doesn’t seem serious to me.
By the way, even in Islam I think it didn’t begin that way (though I’m not sufficiently expert). First of all, Muhammad had to accumulate power and persuade people, and only then could he use his power to threaten others. The question is how it began. So in my opinion we haven’t found this in other religions either.
A quote from your words:
“I think that if I were convinced for some reason that the whole thing wasn’t true, then this might perhaps be a possible way out (though a far-fetched one).”
Could you explain why it is far-fetched?
Especially since that is how religions are formed.
By the way, in Islam Muhammad persuaded a few people (his relatives) at the beginning.
Most of those who joined Islam did so by choice and not by coercion. This is especially true of Africa and the Far East, but also of the Middle East.
Islam destroyed houses of idol worship, but did not necessarily Islamize by force.
Never mind, Islam isn’t a good example then… although one can still say that they joined by choice after Islam had matured as a result of coercion…
So maybe one of the readers here can help me find lines of reasoning for why this is not plausible?
Maybe this theory is baseless,
but through it one can understand how they could have persuaded an entire people.
And we do find this method in other religions, so it would be appropriate to draw an analogy from one to the other.
No?