The Mass Revelation Argument

I didn't find it in the fifth notebook. Did you mean you'd respond shortly?

It's there in the second part.

What is the fifth notebook? How do you get to it?

Look at the Writings tab above, which when you click on, includes five notebooks.

In contrast, in the answer to the question “Help in preparing a lesson on the Mount Sinai status”, Rabbi Avraham goes on to explain what the Mount Sinai status is and the stories of the Indians.

With greetings, S.C. Levinger

And perhaps the Indians are from the Ten Tribes, and their historical memory preserved the revelation from the fire and the cloud is the divine “pipe”, only the tablets and their contents were forgotten 🙂 Everyone takes from the sublime status what is important to them.

It is easy to get confused. There is indeed a fundamental difference between a story that is told, which is not particularly different from any modern Hollywood movie, and one that underlies the identity of a nation. What is written is not the true evidence for the status of Mount Sinai. In any case, the foundations for evidence and recognition of the status of Mount Sinai do not apply to the other examples, since this is not a matter of the national identity of the masses, but rather a story about the masses.

I didn't understand the argument.

Rabbi, the verse you quoted, if I understood it and you correctly, says exactly the opposite of what you claimed.
The verse as it stands is exactly – ‘Hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, when you heard and lived?!’
(The punctuation ?! is mine of course)

I didn't understand the question. The verse says the claim of the Khuzaris, and in my opinion it is a weak argument.
Anyway, for details on this matter see here:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%A2%D7%96%D7%A8%D7%94-%D7%91%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%A8-%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%9E%D7%A2%D7%9E%D7%93-%D7%94%D7%A8-%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%99/

You wrote:
I deal with this in the fifth notebook. Indeed, this is not a particularly strong claim. By the way, it already appears in the Torah itself: “For a Gentile saw God speaking to him out of the fire…”.

I did not find the verse as you quoted it (the quotation as you quoted it actually seems to be weak according to the Kuzari claim), and I thought you were talking about the verse I quoted, which is indeed evidence according to the Kuzari claim.

I will read the details, thank you

It is not clear to me why the rabbi did not mention the most essential difference, which is the difficult and extensive religious commitment resulting from the revelation.
Among the Sioux tribe, there is no trace of a religious commitment resulting from the revelation. What is given there is simply a pipe, I am also willing to believe that my cigarette was given by God, but I will not do anything practical because of that.
Assimilating a myth of revelation that claims religious commitment as a result of revelation is many times more difficult than just revelation.
And as for Muslims and Christians, their mass revelation (the crossing of the moon, Mary in Zeytun, Fatima, etc. and we will ignore the views that the crossing of the moon is a prophecy) is not the source of religious commitment, but just a story in the palm of my hand.
I am not aware of any change in the lifestyle of Christians after the apparition of Mary or of the Sioux tribe after receiving the pipe of peace (except for a decline in health due to smoking a pipe).
It's like a story in the Gemara that tells of a mass revelation in the Mishnah generation. It wouldn't be too difficult for such a myth to be implied because it has no nefkm and, on the contrary, it reinforces something that we already practice for another reason.
Therefore, there was no problem for the myth of Muhammad crossing the moon to enter the tradition, since it is not the source of faith, but only reinforces the faith that came from another source (belief in the unique revelation of Jesus and Muhammad).
In conclusion, there are two additional advantages to Jewish revelation: A. Extensive and demanding religious obligation (in terms of mass, intellect, etc.) compared to cultures that have few, if any, commandments. B. The obligation stems directly from the revelation.
Note that without section B, section A has no value.
These two sections are supposed to raise the level of criticality of the generation in which the myth is embedded.
Why didn't Rabbi Mikhi even mention the calculation? This one.

Dear:
You went on to point out the essential difference between the arguments of revelation and the argument of commitment.
And the Israelites believed in Moses and kept the commandments that were given to them even before the presence of Mount Sinai!
By slaughtering the Passover lamb with devotion, they followed Moses into the desert, and according to legend, they even anticipated the giving of the Torah.
That is, they took upon themselves a full life commitment even without revelation.

……

And as for the (lack of) criticality of the people of that generation:
We are talking about descendants of slaves for 210 years, deprived of the freedom and leisure for education. At a time when even the wisest believed in nonsense and superstitions.
In a group that stands as one man with one heart, and declares a commitment in unison without leaving room for personal doubt. Which could lead to severe and immediate punishment, according to the ’.
After seven weeks and three days of preparation and preparation, the big moment arrives. And how will they judge it with basic criticality?

We do not have any original documentation of the event, except for a protocol that Moses gave forty years later on the day of his death, and will they be erased and shouted at then?

The Torah was given to the Levites who placed it beside the Ark of the Covenant of the ’, and who knows what exactly is written in it?

……

The Israelites kept the Torah and the commandments for one simple reason: they believed in Moses.

No Jew woke up to look for a reason and proof for 2,500 years until the time of the Rishonim.

At the request of ‘Yosef’ –

I think that the Indian revelation stories are not very exciting (although I used to think so too). The Indian revelation stories are one of the few cases I know of, where sites with an atheist agenda simply lie –
1. According to the Wikipedia page (English) of ‘The Song of the Yote’ – the book from which the stories are copied, the researchers' estimates are that the above stories are a mixture of Indian stories with associations with Norse and with the addition of the author's good imagination.
2. If you read the stories alone and do not trust their interpretation… It turns out that most of the above stories are not at all a mass revelation to an entire people, in the story of the buffalo it is about the village elders who predict a miracle, in the story of the discovery of fire it is about the isolated people who were at the beginning of humanity (and then it is no different from any Babylonian or Egyptian mythology) and in the story of their ‘stand at Mount Sinai’ it is about only the warriors of all the villages and not about an entire people. In short, there is no revelation here to an entire people. You can check me out and read the full stories online.
3. Even if we assume that it was a mass revelation – it is not clear whether these were *historical* traditions agreed upon by the entire people that were passed down widely as a historically accepted event or whether they were *folk tales* (because they heard them from a guide) or traditions passed down by *individuals* (the village leaders), then this is the testimony of individuals, and not of a people who heard from their parents who heard from their parents who were there, etc.
In the past, I happened to come across the book “Indian Mythology” at a book store, Zomet Books, and I spent half an hour quickly scanning the book that claimed to represent the mythologies of the Indian peoples of Central America (you can find it at Zomet Books) – Of course, I discovered that there is no trace of any of the above events (some of which are supposed to be known by all Indians, right?) or of any mass revelation. Great.

4. As for the other peoples, they are not entire peoples as far as I understand. Of course not with Jesus, we did not hear anyone passing on a tradition that he heard from his parents who were there. With the Muslims – My lecturer on Islam (don't ask why I was in such a thing. It was not voluntary) told me that it was a very specific, and very late, interpretation of a certain surah in the Quran, and not an agreed-upon Muslim tradition. Beyond that, it is a tradition that is not passed down by the ‘entire Muslim people’ (He heard from his ancestors who were there. This is not a national tradition, but a story about the residents of Mecca only. And here too – Most of the residents of Mecca refused to accept Muhammad's teachings and were murdered because of it, so it is difficult to say that there is a consensus among all the residents of Mecca on the reliability of the story. Regarding Zaytun, etc. ’ – the event apparently occurred, the question of whether it was a revelation, in my opinion no. After all, the locals interpreted it according to their current religion (in this case Christianity), whereas in our case the locals interpreted it in a monotheistic way (not the religion common in the ancient world) and the miracle occurred over a period of time (40 years) and in different aspects (from, plagues, Mount Sinai, etc.) so the possibility of an untrue interpretation is lower.

So far regarding the dry nonsense, regardless of this, even if we ignore everything written above, the reliability of the story of the Mount Sinai status is based on a combination of parameters. That is, even if we assume that a national history can be invented (apparently possible) and some have indeed done so, it will be enough that ”most national histories are true” or that ”if there is a national history there is a good probability that it is true”. Then when we have:
– a story, which in itself has a good probability that it is true or belongs to the category of credible stories
– it is more difficult to convince of it because it requires a people to change some of their ways of life
– Even if I suspect that it may be a myth – I see that it contains a lot of anti-mythical elements (a god without a body, etc.)
– Even if I still suspect that it may be a myth – I see that it is an unflattering story that people do not usually invent for themselves (Slavery)
– Even if I still suspect that it may be a myth – produces a people with an unprecedented history (talent, return from exile, influence, etc.)
– …. – indicates something that there is some evidence that exists (God), and we would expect (a priori) that there is logic that it is likely to occur (the giving of laws)
– etc.

So, even if there were Native American or other traditions (and as we have seen there probably were none, or at least there is no evidence that there were any), still, there is good reason to assume that ours are the kind of truth-preserving ones.

See also a response from a different perspective here –
http://thedos.co.il/Article.aspx?Article=480
http://thedos.co.il/Article.aspx?Article=484

In passing, I would add that the uniqueness of the argument for the mass revelation of Deuteronomy Chapter 4 is that it was made in the sight of the entire people, and within the actual history of a nation as a nation. And there is no parallel to this. There may be myths of revelation at the dawn of prehistory, in the prehistory of a people, but these periods belong in every culture to the realms of myth and legend (even in the Torah, reality up to Abraham is legendary in its style, a speaking serpent, the sons of God, a flood, and extraordinary ages). There is no way to unravel these legends. Likewise, there are -perhaps- myths about revelation during the historical existence of the people (of public miracles, as distinct from revelation, certainly there are, as with Jesus and the thousands who saw the miracles of the loaves and fishes), but these were not made in the sight of the entire people, nor even the majority or the greatest part of them. No way. Gornisht, there was no such thing as a miracle, neither bears nor a forest, and not even a parable like Job's: therefore, the one who hears about them can believe in their existence (of the revelation/miracles) without being surprised how he did not hear about it. “Well, well”, he will say to himself, “It was far from me (in Tiberias, Capernaum, Nazareth) and it happened before my eyes with people I do not know”. Hence I can believe even though I have not seen or heard anything except today. However, Jewish revelation grasps the hearer and does not let go, “as if he had been imprisoned”, and makes before the hearer a claim from which there is no escape: the revelation - so it says - occurred within the historical existence of the people after they were already established as a nation, and it occurred before the eyes of all the people without exception. So either it happened and you heard about it, or you did not hear about it and it did not happen.

Therefore, if the event at Sinai had not occurred, it is impossible for those who hear about it not to wonder - "How could we not have heard of this great event? All my ancestors, mine, and all my neighbors and acquaintances should have heard about it." The religious assumption offered by the Book of Deuteronomy is that those who hear and read it (and the event of revelation it presents) will not be similarly surprised because they did indeed hear about the story. Prov.

This idea, which was proposed at length by Rabbi Sharki (in the appendix to his commentary on the Khozari, and in his books and lectures) and which was praised by the scholar Meir Bozaglo, who even expanded on the subject of this revelation in his book on traditionalism, seems to have been drawn by Rabbi Sharki from Mircea Eliade himself (The Myth of the Eternal Return, p. 93, emphasis in the original, and more):

“There is no doubt that the concept of revelation is found…in all religions….However, these revelations occurred in mythical time, in the transcendental moment of the beginning…But things are completely different in the monotheistic revelation. This occurred in the midst of time, within the historical process: Moses received the ”laws” in the place” A certain and a certain time The moment of God's revelation to Moses remains, however, a limited and well-established moment in time. And since it represents at the same time a theophany (the revelation of God), it thus acquires a new dimension: it becomes valuable insofar as it is irreversibly, insofar as it is historically significant. Etc

Given that God revealed himself to an entire people, we would expect that this revelation would have some kind of message, and that it would have a real impact on the world.
As far as I can tell, the story of the Sioux tribe did not have a real impact on the world – not even on the Native Americans in America.
The central revelation story of the Torah – the Exodus, the status of Mount Sinai, and the Ten Commandments – had a critical impact on the world. It is one of the foundations that established the dominant Western culture of our time, and especially influenced the United States. The Ten Commandments were accepted in monotheistic religions, including the Sabbath in various variations. Nietzsche lamented the fact that Jewish morality, “slave morality”, had conquered the world. And one could go on and on about this.

This great impact on the world of a claim of revelation by a small people in the ancient East is an event of low probability in itself; But it is a very likely event given that there was indeed such a revelation.
Therefore, according to Bayes' formula, it greatly strengthens (although of course does not prove) the likelihood of the hypothesis that there was indeed such a revelation to the people of Israel.
According to the same formula, the lack of impact on the world of the revelation to the Sioux tribe weakens the likelihood that there was a revelation to the Sioux tribe.