Faith – Lesson 39
This transcript was generated automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- David Hume’s witness argument and the alternative of “implantation”
- The misleading charm of statistics and science, and the legal example
- Munchausen syndrome by proxy and the English “one in sixty million” case
- Everyday reliance on immediate impression and the example of an appeals court
- Hume as begging the question, and the dispute over symmetry between assumptions
- Methodological order: first arguments for the existence of God, then discussion of revelation
- The rarity of a “founding myth” of mass revelation and the lack of parallel examples
- Stories of the Baal Shem Tov, other myths, and the differences from the Sinai story
- Characteristics of the tradition: a broad front, continuity of transmission, and names across the generations
- The content of the revelation: monotheism, atypicality for the period, and no clear interest
- Criticism of speculation in historical research and biblical criticism
- The sin of the calf and the distinction between the psychological plane and the philosophical plane
- The meaning of the Sinai event, pyrotechnics, and what can be known from the tradition
- The “single book” argument versus an accompanying oral tradition
- External sources, archaeology, and a warning against arguments from absence
- Holocaust denial as a comparison to external revisionist positions
- Embellishments in myth, mistakes in tradition, and what the central claim is
- Criteria for comparing “parallel revelations” and refuting common examples
- Conclusion and continuation: apparent gaps in the tradition and future discussion
Summary
General Overview
The text presents a critique of David Hume’s witness argument, according to which it is probabilistically preferable to assume that a tradition about miracles and revelation is a myth implanted into history rather than an event that contradicts the laws of nature. The speaker argues that statistical calculations and scientific tools can be misleading because of hidden assumptions and an aura of authority, and he demonstrates this through legal and statistical examples. He argues that Hume begs the question by assuming in advance that there is no God, whereas the speaker first built philosophical arguments for the existence of God, so accepting testimony about revelation is not “begging the question” but a methodological continuation. He then adds considerations that weaken the plausibility of the “historical implantation” alternative with regard to the Sinai tradition, addresses questions about the sin of the calf, about the claim that the tradition rests on a single book, and about external evidence and archaeology, and concludes by announcing that next time he will discuss apparent gaps in the tradition, such as Josiah and Ezra.
David Hume’s witness argument and the alternative of “implantation”
The argument is presented as two alternatives regarding traditions of miracles and revelation at Mount Sinai: either the tradition was implanted as a myth during history, or the event really happened. The claim is that a real event of revelation contradicts the laws of nature and is therefore less likely, whereas the implantation of a myth does not contradict the laws of nature and is therefore probabilistically preferable. Hume is presented as concluding from this that the required interpretation is to assume implantation, whether deliberate or accidental, through the development of a myth over time.
The misleading charm of statistics and science, and the legal example
The speaker argues that there is a tendency to attribute overwhelming force to probabilistic calculations, but many times the persuasive power of mathematics and statistics hides assumptions that undermine the conclusions. He describes an article he wrote about free choice in court and gives an account of the way judges and juries tend to accept “scientific” positions such as brain scans because of the expert’s authority, while their critical sense declines. He says this is dangerous because people do not examine the assumptions and the validity of the application, and when powerful tools are used incorrectly, their very power becomes more misleading.
Munchausen syndrome by proxy and the English “one in sixty million” case
The speaker brings up a case in England in which a woman went to prison after two of her children died of crib death, following a doctor who claimed statistically that this “could not happen,” because the chance of two crib deaths was about one in sixty million under an assumption of independence. He notes that the assumption of independence is absurd, and that a statistician explained that one must compare between two alternatives and not infer that one is false just because it is rare. He says the probability that a woman would murder two children is not necessarily higher than the number that was presented, and presents this as an example of Kahneman-style reasoning failures, the representativeness fallacy, and the dangerous power of quantitative arguments.
Everyday reliance on immediate impression and the example of an appeals court
The speaker argues that in everyday life we do not really rely on abstract probabilistic calculations in the way Hume suggests, and he brings an example from law in which an appeals court usually does not go back over the testimony but examines flaws in the procedure and in judicial discretion. He explains that an immediate impression of a person giving testimony carries great weight despite “lots of maybes,” and therefore there is room for direct evaluation of testimony. He adds the example of criticisms of the binding of Isaac as a hallucination, and argues that what all these criticisms share is that they sound reasonable but rest on unguaranteed assumptions, and are therefore dangerous.
Hume as begging the question, and the dispute over symmetry between assumptions
The speaker argues that Hume is being conservative and begging the question, because if one assumes there is no God, then revelation becomes implausible from the outset and every alternative will seem preferable. He adds that if one assumes there is a God, then revelation becomes possible and even plausible, and the rarity of an event does not rule out its occurrence, just as an eclipse is rare but happens. He addresses the claim that both sides are begging the question, and replies that there is no symmetry because he devoted “more than a year” to philosophical arguments for the existence of God, so the assumption that God exists is presented as the result of arguments and not as an arbitrary assumption.
Methodological order: first arguments for the existence of God, then discussion of revelation
The speaker presents the methodological order as the correct one: beginning with philosophical evidence for the existence of God and only afterward moving to the question of revelation and commandments. He argues that if he had begun with the tradition, he would have fallen into begging the question just like Hume, whereas now he is “building” on a conclusion he has already “confirmed” or “proved.” He repeats the claim that the whole has a weight beyond the sum of the parts, because it creates coherence and a complete picture that is more convincing than any single argument.
The rarity of a “founding myth” of mass revelation and the lack of parallel examples
The speaker argues that the alternative of historical implantation is also not simple, and that if one goes with induction, one should ask how many times we have seen a founding myth of mass revelation that was implanted into the culture of a people and survived for thousands of years with commandments and an entire system around it. He says it seems there is not even one additional example, and therefore if Hume rejects revelation because “we’ve never seen such a thing,” one can equally reject implantation of this sort because “we’ve never seen that either.” He notes the contradiction in Hume’s undermining induction while using it here as a device for discovering truth.
Stories of the Baal Shem Tov, other myths, and the differences from the Sinai story
The speaker brings stories about the Baal Shem Tov as an example of the ability to generate stories and convince “masses of fools,” and argues that precisely these stories weaken rational faith and are, in his view, an “educational crime.” He mentions stories of revelations such as “the myth of the Avesta,” “Our Lady of Fatima,” and other historical stories, and argues that even a not very deep examination reveals significant differences from the story under discussion. He emphasizes that the element of mass revelation makes the implantation of a myth harder, because a story in which “all of us” or “our forefathers” were witnesses immediately raises the question why the public had never heard this before from its parents.
Characteristics of the tradition: a broad front, continuity of transmission, and names across the generations
The speaker presents the tradition as passing through “a very, very broad front,” with careful preservation of details and a prohibition against adding or subtracting, and argues that there is no “significant break” in the process of transmission. He quotes the chain of transmission, “Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets transmitted it to the Men of the Great Assembly,” and adds Tannaim, Amoraim, and Hasmoneans, arguing that there are many concrete names and rich documentation of “who begot whom.” He argues that this structure is not typical of myths like “Our Lady of Fatima,” and that it is difficult to assume that everything started from one person who convinced a broad public of a mass event they had never heard of.
The content of the revelation: monotheism, atypicality for the period, and no clear interest
The speaker argues that the content is not typical of the period, especially in its monotheistic component and in the description of an abstract God, “who has no body and no bodily form,” revealing Himself in voices and thunder. He argues that if this were a product of the period, one would expect it to fit the spirit of the age, but here there are anomalies. He adds that the commandments do not seem to serve any clear interest of a benefiting group, and even gives the example that a priest would have “implanted a different myth” if his goal had been profit, so it is difficult to attribute this to a deliberate scheme.
Criticism of speculation in historical research and biblical criticism
The speaker argues that in fields such as historical study, biblical criticism, and the history of the ancient Near East there is “so much speculation” that sometimes “the myths there are worse than the religious myths.” He describes professors who present claims without any foothold and which are replaced by “a new newspaper headline,” and presents this as a difficulty in treating that alternative as a solid “scientific thesis” against a tradition preserved for thousands of years.
The sin of the calf and the distinction between the psychological plane and the philosophical plane
A question is raised about the tradition that a considerable part of the Jewish people sinned with the calf forty days after the Sinai event, with the suggestion that this indicates the event “made no impression.” The speaker disagrees and argues that the event does not indicate lack of belief but rather impulse or error, and that one cannot “split the testimony of the Torah,” accepting the calf as authentic while rejecting the revelation. He presents a distinction between the psychological plane, in which people can deny facts or be swept away by impulses, and the philosophical plane, in which one must examine “coldly” the meaning of the event in itself.
The meaning of the Sinai event, pyrotechnics, and what can be known from the tradition
A claim is raised that the event sounds like “pyrotechnics” and perhaps contributes nothing to faith, and the speaker replies that the philosophical meaning of the event is separate from the psychological question of how people behaved afterward. He says he does not know exactly what they saw and heard, but argues that the tradition says they saw something that convinced them, and that one cannot fully convey an experience like “the voice of God speaking from within the fire.” He rejects an attempt to prove from the Bible that the event did not happen, and argues that the biblical whole presents a central course of ongoing revelation with deviations that get corrected.
The “single book” argument versus an accompanying oral tradition
The claim is raised that the whole story rests on the Torah scroll and therefore this is “one witness” and not “six hundred thousand witnesses,” and the speaker replies that the oral tradition accompanies the book and is not born from it. He uses halakhic analogies of most Torah scrolls being copied from the same source and of “a rabbi and his students” in a religious court to explain the claim about source dependence, and then argues that here the book is a record transmitted to the public together with testimony of transmission. He adds that if one wanted to document an event for future generations, the reasonable way would be to write an explicit book, instruct people not to change it, and transmit it on a broad front, and that even a recording copied in thousands of copies would still be “one single source.”
External sources, archaeology, and a warning against arguments from absence
A question is raised as to why there is no external evidence for events like the Exodus from Egypt, and the speaker argues that there are indications, including archaeological ones, but the discussion is “full of ideology” and “agendas.” He says that in archaeology, “what you found, you found; what you didn’t find is not evidence,” unless it was “very likely to find it” and it was not found, in which case it is an indication worth thinking about. He brings up the Mount Ebal altar and Adam Zertal, describes denial claims in the style of Finkelstein as rash hypotheses, and gives as an example the “camel domestication” claim, which had supposedly proved the text was late and was ultimately “thrown in the trash” when opposite evidence was found.
Holocaust denial as a comparison to external revisionist positions
The speaker argues that even regarding the Holocaust, despite documentation close in time, there are historians who deny or minimize it, and there are theories that present a Zionist-Jewish interest in inventing the myth in order to get a state. He uses this to show that history can easily be challenged even when it is recent, and that external challenges to religious tradition resemble external challenges to the Holocaust. He concludes that there is no certainty, but he is looking for a reasonable picture, and argues that sometimes the alternative theories are “stranger” than the simple explanation that the tradition describes an event that happened.
Embellishments in myth, mistakes in tradition, and what the central claim is
The speaker argues that myths undergo “embellishment, beautification” and “telephone-game distortion,” so even if certain details are not original, that does not prove there was no real basis. He declares that he is not claiming every detail of the event and of the content of the message is correct, and even says he has no doubt that a large part of Jewish law as it exists today is “mistaken from aleph to tav,” and that the connection between the details we possess and what was given at Sinai is “quite tenuous.” He says the central claim is that “there was something there,” and that afterward one should discuss what is true and what is not, using traditional presumptions until shown otherwise.
Criteria for comparing “parallel revelations” and refuting common examples
The speaker says there are articles that examined reports of parallel revelations, and argues that the claim that “every group tells stories” is not true in the way it is presented on atheist websites. He lays out criteria for examination: level of detail, number of witnesses and whether the event is mass, identity and names of the participants, continuity of reporting, strictness in preservation, breadth of the front, content of the revelation and whether it is a binding command, fit with the culture of the period, possible interest, duration of the tradition’s survival, and whether the transmitters themselves claim historicity or mythology. He gives examples of inaccurate claims such as “Hiawatha,” which he says is Longfellow’s poem and a literary creation, and adds that the Trojan War is not transmitted as a historical story in the overall tradition but as myth, whereas the tradition under discussion is transmitted as a historical story according to the claim of those who transmit it.
Conclusion and continuation: apparent gaps in the tradition and future discussion
The speaker notes that there are questions about the continuity of the tradition and that he intends to discuss them next time through “three examples” from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) that are presented as gaps, including “finding the Torah scroll in the days of Josiah,” a mention of Ezra and the fact that “suddenly they discovered Sukkot,” and additional examples. He concludes with questions to the audience and wishes them “Shabbat shalom” before parting.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, I’m starting. In the last few sessions we dealt with the witness argument, first explicitly formulated by David Hume. The argument says, let’s say you set it up as two alternatives, then basically it says: we have two ways to relate to a tradition about miracles, or about revelation at Mount Sinai, or something like that. Either this is some implantation of this fictional tradition over the course of history, or it really happened. If it really happened, that goes against the laws of nature. If it was implanted throughout history, it’s not clear how plausible that is, but at least it doesn’t contradict the laws of nature. Meaning, it’s at least less implausible than the assumption that it really happened. That’s Hume’s claim, and therefore the obvious interpretation is to assume that it was implanted. Again, not necessarily deliberately; either deliberately or unintentionally, but some myth developed over the course of history. I criticized that move, that argument. I said that many times we have a tendency to think—and I’m summarizing this now in slightly different words—that if we have a probabilistic, statistical calculation or something like that, then it has overwhelming validity. But the truth is that many times science and mathematics, or statistics, are דווקא what mislead us, because many times a calculation, precisely because of its persuasive power, hides from us all kinds of assumptions embedded within it that actually cast doubt on its conclusions. I once wrote an article about free choice in court—that is, about the legal implications of the debate between determinism and libertarianism—and there I brought several people who dealt with the topic and talked about the spell that science casts over judges and juries and people generally. As soon as you bring brain scans into court, and some professor from a university or a hospital or wherever comes and explains what the scan means and what its significance is and so on, everybody stands at attention and bows to the ground, because after all, he’s an expert, he’s a man of science, he knows everything. And somehow the critical attitude toward these things disappears a bit, and that’s very dangerous. Meaning, scientists come to court and receive a certain treatment by virtue of being such people, and nobody examines what they themselves are saying. A wonderful example of this—and I think we discussed it sometime in the past—is Munchausen syndrome by proxy. The woman in England who went to prison because two of her children died of crib death, and a British doctor came and claimed that statistically this couldn’t happen, because the probability of crib death is one in eight thousand. If two children died of crib death, then the probability is about one in sixty million, assuming independence—which is itself an absurd assumption—and then the probability is one in sixty million, and therefore it’s pretty clear that she murdered them, because that’s a negligible probability; there’s no chance they died on their own. And indeed she went to prison, that poor woman, until some statistician came along and put those idiots in their place, and explained to the judge that yes, you can present it in several ways, but the probability that a woman would murder both her children—it’s not clear how much greater that is than sixty million. When you compare two alternatives, you have to compare which is better. The fact that one alternative seems very implausible doesn’t mean it’s false. It could be that the other alternative is no less implausible—or actually more implausible. Therefore that conclusion is an absurd one. You can present it in different ways, it doesn’t matter—this is Kahneman, representativeness bias, and all kinds of things of that sort. But that case is a wonderful example of the spell that science and statistics and quantitative arguments cast over us, and you really have to be very careful about it. I definitely think scientific tools are important, and I certainly don’t disparage them, and certainly not statistical and mathematical tools, but the spell they have is very dangerous. Precisely because they’re good and powerful tools, you have to be very, very careful. Because you need to check whether they were used correctly. If not, then their power is being directed in the wrong direction, and that can be very misleading. Now here too, ostensibly there’s some kind of statistical or scientific calculation, because after all this is against the laws of nature and that is consistent with the laws of nature—do the probability calculation and see that this is preferable to that, and therefore choose the preferable alternative. So I brought the examples of my friend Amnon with that conference he held in the United States, and all kinds of other examples like that, where I showed that we don’t really rely on arguments of this sort in our everyday lives. Meaning, in everyday life if we’re impressed—I even brought the example from court—if you appeal to the Supreme Court about the results of some trial, then the accepted practice is—there are exceptions here and there, but that’s what I understand—the accepted practice is that the appellate court doesn’t go back into the testimony. Meaning, the testimony accepted in the lower court remains as it is, and the appellate court examines the legal process—whether there were flaws in the legal procedure or in legal judgment—but not in the testimony. Why not? Because there’s something about your immediate impression of a person standing before you, such that everyone around can tell you, yes but maybe he’s lying, and maybe you didn’t notice, and maybe this and maybe that. All true, there are lots of maybes. But if I saw him with my own eyes and was impressed that the man is telling the truth, that carries great weight. And therefore I also brought the example of the blind man and the sighted man, and the binding of Isaac, where people criticize Abraham our forefather—maybe it was a hallucination, what are you doing going to kill your son because you imagined that God commanded you to kill your son? Or all kinds of criticisms of that type. What they all have in common is that on the one hand they’re very logical, and on the other hand they’re not correct. Meaning, something very logical is dangerous because the logic in it may blur the fact that it rests on all kinds of assumptions that may not be correct. And therefore one has to be very careful with statistical calculations, scientific considerations, and all kinds of things. They interview on the radio every morning, noon, and night all kinds of experts on all kinds of topics who say so much nonsense it makes your ears ring—and they’re real experts. Not because they’re not experts, some of them, but because they have certain assumptions in the background, and as experts they don’t bother to mention that there are assumptions here that the listener ought to weigh. Meaning, beyond the question of expertise. And I think the same thing happens in this context too. I showed that David Hume, in a certain sense, is being conservative and begging the question. Those were my two main criticisms of his argument. Yes, if you assume there is no God, and therefore it’s completely implausible that He would reveal Himself—that can’t happen—then obviously that argument isn’t logical and any alternative is better than it. But if I assume there is a God, and therefore it’s also plausible that He would reveal Himself, then now when testimony reaches me that He revealed Himself, in my eyes that is not something impossible. And the fact that it doesn’t happen often, that it’s a rare event—that’s true. An eclipse is also a rare event. The fact that something is rare says nothing about whether it happened or didn’t happen. Fine, it’s a rare event, but the question is whether the testimony about it is reasonable testimony or not. One more point: one might argue here that in fact both sides in this debate are begging the question. Yes, David Hume assumes that it’s not plausible that there is a God, and therefore it’s also not plausible that He would reveal Himself, and so he prefers the other alternative. But I also beg the question—I assume there is a God, and therefore it’s plausible that He would reveal Himself, and so I also accept the testimony that He revealed Himself. So seemingly both sides are begging the question. But here it seems to me you have to notice carefully that this symmetry isn’t accurate. Because we’ve been going through, I think, well over a year in this series, and the whole first year was devoted to philosophical arguments in favor of the existence of God. Meaning, I’m not just assuming there is a God and then saying, okay, if testimony comes, I accept it. Rather, I have good arguments that bring me to the conclusion that there is a God. That’s not an assumption; that’s the result of arguments. Now, once I reach the conclusion that there is a God, obviously if testimony reaches me that He revealed Himself, that testimony isn’t absurd. Maybe it’s even plausible. But it certainly isn’t absurd. So here this is not begging the question. It’s not for nothing that I built this whole line of thought as one that begins with philosophical evidence for the existence of God, and now in the last few meetings we’re talking about the question, okay, and what about His revelation and His commandments and things like that, because I really think this order of discussion is the correct one. This order of discussion is very important methodologically. If I had started from the tradition, then indeed I would have been begging the question just like Hume. I assume there is a God, therefore I believe the tradition. He assumes there is no God, therefore he doesn’t believe the tradition. Fine—then the existence of the tradition is not significant. And therefore the point I keep repeating, that there is some weight to the whole that goes beyond the sum of the weights of each of the parts that create it. The whole conveys some message of coherence, or of a complete and more convincing picture, and that is much more than each argument separately, which one really could dispute. And in our case, once we passed the stage where I showed through philosophical arguments that God exists, then the next step is no longer begging the question, but building on a claim that I already proved. Proved—or yes, corroborated—and therefore this is not begging the question but only drawing conclusions from previous conclusions I already drew. Now I want maybe to add a few more considerations regarding the witness argument—considerations whose weight may go this way or that way, so I’m adding them in parentheses or on the margins. But I think they have significance, because basically the claim is Hume’s claim. Now I’m criticizing the alternative Hume proposed as the more reasonable alternative. That means the alternative is that this myth was implanted throughout history into our culture, into the ethos that accompanies us, and that’s something that can happen—again, plausible, implausible, one can argue—but it can happen. Meaning, it’s not something that contradicts the laws of nature. Now here you have to pay attention, because this claim too is not such a simple one. If, for example, we take Hume’s own line of thought, where he says: look, after all we’ve never seen God reveal Himself, and therefore this contradicts the laws of nature, it’s implausible, and every other alternative is better than that. Now I ask: how many times have we seen throughout history a founding myth like this of a mass revelation that was implanted into the culture of a certain group, of a certain people, like what we know among ourselves, and survived for thousands of years, with commandments and all the whole fuss created around this tradition? It seems to me there isn’t even one additional example like that. And therefore Hume’s very argument—which I already said begs the question, because he basically contradicts himself as someone who challenged the principle of induction. He says that the fact that we generalize on the basis of cases we have seen or not seen is a statement about us, not about the world. Who says the generalizations themselves are true? He was an empiricist, I remind you—and here suddenly he says, well, if we haven’t seen it then it can’t be that it happened, and every other explanation is better. Here suddenly induction becomes a tool for discovering truth. But let’s go with it—that scientific induction really is the best tool for discovering truth. Let’s see how many myths of this sort we actually know, myths implanted in various groups in a way similar to the myth we’re talking about here, assuming it is an implanted myth. There are examples of this; there are even stories of the Baal Shem Tov, yes, or all kinds of things of that sort. By the way, stories of the Baal Shem Tov are among the things that weaken faith the most, as far as I’m concerned. People always bring them as strengthening faith; in my eyes these things really are an educational crime. Because once you see those stories—and it’s obvious that not one bit of them ever happened—then you understand how easy it is to produce stories and convince a mass of fools to believe they really happened. And that casts a very serious shadow over our own tradition, over the stories we received in our tradition. Therefore I think Hasidic stories are among the things that most weaken faith, at least if you hold a rational faith. If you want, I don’t know, to live in fantasies, then excellent—Hasidism is a fertile and expansive field for living in fantasies. In any case, when you look at all kinds of such revelations—the myth of the Avesta, and I don’t know what else, Our Lady of Fatima, and all kinds of revelations, all kinds of historical stories about revelations and miracles and things of that sort—it seems to me that on even a not very deep examination, we discover significant differences between those cases and the story we’re talking about here, and I don’t think that’s apologetics. So first of all, the revelation here—and I already started with this when we spoke about the verses in Deuteronomy—“Has any people heard God speaking from the midst of the fire and lived,” and so on. Meaning, a mass revelation to many people, as described here—I don’t know if there is anything like that. I’m not sure there really is anything parallel to this. There are various stories about two or three people, or one person, to whom something was revealed or some miracle happened, and he tries to convince the community that it happened, and either they’re convinced or they’re not convinced. But for the story itself to contain this element, that it happened before many people—that really makes it harder to implant such a myth in the public. Because the moment someone comes with a mass story like that, people immediately ask him: tell me, how is it that only you know this? If all of us went through this, or our forefathers went through this, then how can it be that only you are telling us this story? And therefore it’s quite hard to convince people. You can convince people with stories about the Baal Shem Tov that he jumped with his carriage to the moon, went down to the heavens, entered the sun, I don’t know what, and did all kinds of wonders and came back alive. But nobody saw it. So either we believe the Baal Shem Tov or we don’t believe the Baal Shem Tov, but it’s a story that happened to him; you can decide yes or no. But if the Baal Shem Tov had said, listen everybody, me and all your parents together were in a chariot in the heavens, then you immediately ask yourself, wait a second, why didn’t my father tell me that story? Why is he the only one telling it? The moment the story contains something mass, or all our forefathers, or many of our forefathers, went through it on a broad front, it becomes harder to implant such a story in a community when you’re telling them stories about their parents that they never once heard from anybody. So that greatly complicates the implantation of such a myth. And I have empirical evidence for this, just to appease David Hume, who was an empiricist. The empirical evidence is that there are no such examples. If it were all that simple—and there are many people who have motivations to establish myths and convince people and create religions; we’ve found lots of religion-manufacturers of various sorts—not one of them begins with a mass event. And certainly when that event begins the whole story—meaning, what myth researchers sometimes call a founding myth—as distinct from a myth about some story that happened here or there, some victory in war, this and that. Here there is a founding myth out of which we were basically born, formed, grew up. So this is something that I think is quite rare and implausible. Of course nothing is impossible. It could be. I’m only saying that when I examine the alternatives and ask myself how plausible each one is, it seems to me this is a very implausible alternative. Much less plausible than what David Hume is talking about. And if he rules out divine revelation because we’ve never seen such a thing and therefore it’s implausible that it happened, then I also have never seen implantation of a mass myth of this sort that lasts for thousands of years and everybody believes it and there is very, very careful preservation of the details of the tradition, and you’re forbidden to add and forbidden to subtract. And we have the names of everyone who was there in every generation: “Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets transmitted it to the Men of the Great Assembly,” Tannaim, Amoraim, Hasmoneans, all kinds of—meaning, throughout all the generations we really have the names of quite a few people who took part in this process. And all along the way, not only the traditions are transmitted but also the names, and we’re talking about names from very ancient periods. It starts from Moses our teacher himself, then Joshua, and after that Othniel son of Kenaz, and names and stories, and the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is full of concrete names and who begot whom and who did not beget whom, and we have one indication and another, and it’s mentioned elsewhere. There’s something here that perhaps, with modern scientific eyes, we’re used to belittling. I wouldn’t belittle it. There is some myth here that definitely is not typical. It has various indications that it is more serious than all kinds of inventions of Our Lady of Fatima or something like that. Especially, as I said earlier—not, at least it’s not clear, and we’ll get to this later—but it seems there was no significant break in the process of transmission. Meaning, there is all the time a very significant continuity in the process of transmission, accompanied by strictness about details. Everyone learns the details. Nobody is allowed to add, subtract, change. Every child learns it. Meaning, there is something here that passes through a very, very broad front. To say that this whole broad front began with one person who fooled everyone and told them it happened to masses, although only he says it, while all the history from then on really is broad transmission—that seems to me implausible. Beyond that, there is also the nature, the content of the revelation. There are two problematic points in it—problematic for the assumption that we have here the implantation of a myth. One point is that it is not characteristic of the period. Meaning, there is something there that was not what was common in that period. Obviously monotheism—that is perhaps the most prominent component of the exceptional nature of this tradition. It’s not gods, it’s not tales of heroism and such. We are dealing with some monotheistic God who reveals Himself and gives commandments and all kinds of things of that sort. That is not typical of the period. Abstract, of course—having no body and no bodily form—and such a being revealing Himself in voices and thunder. So that is not typical of the period, and something that is a product of the period, I would expect to fit, in one version or another, the spirit of the period. Beyond that, the content of the revelation is a collection of various commandments, some of which don’t seem logical to us. But you would say, fine, it’s not logical to us—that’s exactly the point, there’s some conspiracy here by someone who benefited from it. Whoever implanted this myth maybe gained from it, and that’s why he implanted it. That’s the thesis of deliberate implantation. There are also innocent implantations. Maybe someone benefited from it. I don’t see who benefits from all these commandments. Here and there there are commandments like tithes and priestly gifts, but even those are commandments built on the fact that priests and Levites can’t work and make a living and hold land in the Land, so they’re given gifts and tithes as compensation. If I were a priest, I would implant a different myth—that everyone has to give me money, and besides that I can also go work and become a millionaire. Meaning, to say that this thing was intended to fill the interests of a certain group—maybe, but I don’t see which group, and I don’t see how it serves its interests. There is something here that doesn’t look aimed at serving anyone’s interest. And that somewhat undermines, at least, the possibility of deliberate implantation, implantation as an intentional scheme. If it’s something innocent, that’s a different matter. Taking the lulav, or the prohibition of eating pork, or I don’t know what—it could be that the person was a fruit merchant and wanted to forbid eating pork so that everyone would buy fruit. Fine, I don’t know, it doesn’t sound especially convincing to me. Although in these fields—historical research, biblical criticism, the history of the ancient Near East, and so on—there is so much speculation that sometimes the feeling is that the myths there are worse than the religious myths. Meaning, there are all kinds of strange arguments there that professors present, with not a shred of grounding in reality, and every day there’s a new newspaper headline. I’m not saying they’re all like that. I’m saying there are quite a few like that. It’s simply unbelievable what goes on there. So to compare this thing as a scientific thesis against the history which, all in all, maybe you can say that at the beginning there was some fiction or something like that, but all in all we already have thousands of years of fairly careful preservation of this collection of facts, as opposed to the collection of speculations various critics are trying to sell us—some are speculations, others have good arguments—but I’m saying there’s so much speculation there that treating that as a scientific alternative over against the myths sounds to me very detached.
[Speaker B] Rabbi, Rabbi, Rabbi, Rabbi, without yet addressing the substantive contribution—maybe—to belief made by this revelation, which I assume the Rabbi will discuss, but regarding the tradition: after all, we also have a remarkable tradition that forty days after the Sinai event, a large part of the Jewish people, the majority or not the majority but a considerable part of the Jewish people, sinned with the calf in a major way, a deep expression of lack of faith. You can give sermons in one direction or another, that this expresses that the event of Mount Sinai didn’t make the impression and didn’t do the job. So maybe we shouldn’t ignore that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I disagree with you, and I’ll show examples of this later, but since you opened with the Sinai event, then we can open with that—honoring the host, so to speak. The event does not indicate lack of faith. The event indicates action driven by impulse, by some error or another. But after all, when Moses our teacher returned, both before and after, the whole context was a context of revelation—unless you want to split the Torah’s testimony. Unless you say that the revelation part is fraud, and the part about the sin of the calf is apparently authentic. But I’m saying, if one is trying to implant some—personally I
[Speaker B] think that that event contributes nothing to faith, even if it was exactly as it was.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There were voices and thunder. That’s a question of psychology and impulses. I’m talking about philosophy. And on the philosophical level, as far as I’m concerned, if there was such an event of revelation, then that is a very significant thing. The fact that people have impulses and psychologies and then take it afterward to all kinds of other places—that’s psychology. It’s not relevant to the issue.
[Speaker B] There was some extraordinary pyrotechnic event. Today, in our era, it almost sounds ridiculous. You could almost say the World Cup had events that were maybe more dramatic than that. So to turn that—even if it was, assuming it wasn’t, and I’m assuming, I believe, that it was exactly as it was—even so, it doesn’t contribute to faith. Something happened, there were sounds, flashes, thunder, lightning, and a voice was heard and so on. How does that contribute to faith?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll repeat the question, and I’ll repeat the answer. It doesn’t contribute to faith. You can interpret this on two levels: the psychological level and the philosophical level. On the psychological level, people can deny even facts. We are complex creatures. And the fact that people have impulses, and that after the Revelation at Sinai they could sin with the sin of the Golden Calf—fine, that can happen. But the question of whether the event itself has philosophical significance has to be detached from questions of impulse and psychology. Meaning, you have to think about it coolly: does this thing say something, or not? And therefore the fact that the children of Israel sinned with the Golden Calf—and especially that immediately afterward, when Moses comes down from the mountain, they all understand they were wrong, they repent, and go back to speaking with the Holy One, blessed be He—so clearly there was some momentary deviation here, and afterward they returned to the track. They say, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” They understand there was a God who brought them up out of the land of Egypt. They themselves say that while they’re sinning. And do they really think that this calf they made out of the fire did it? They claim that maybe this calf symbolizes Him, I don’t know exactly what. But on the contrary, the whole context of the story is one of very great faith. And the fact that within that great faith people can arrive at—well, you know—even in all the miracle stories, right, deliverance in wars or from a plague, people make amazing vows. If the Holy One, blessed be He, saves me in this battle, or from a house collapse, or whatever it may be, I’ll repent, I’ll become righteous, all kinds of things like that. The moment he’s saved, he forgets it. So now, does the fact that he forgets mean that he didn’t seriously intend to make the vow? Or that he didn’t think God saved him? No. It only means that a human being is a complex creature, and very often, okay, as I move on, my psychology or my impulses take me to all kinds of other places. By the way, the same claim can of course be reversed. The fact that he vows vows to the Holy One, blessed be He, while he’s under a collapsed building—that too can be a psychological bias. Because maybe he doesn’t really think God can save him, but in the absence of any other option and out of utter despair, he turns to Him too. Meaning, human beings are complex creatures. There are psychological biases in all kinds of directions. But if we take the biblical description, then specifically the biblical description—and we don’t split the statement apart the way people often like to do. Right, they show us a biblical description: look, you see, here’s proof that it isn’t true. But the verse before and the verse after say the opposite. I split it apart, take the verse that says it’s not true, erase the verses that say it is true, and now I have proof. That’s not how it works. Look at the Bible. If you’re taking the Bible as a source, then let’s look at the whole biblical picture. The whole biblical picture says something very clear. You can say it’s all hallucination, all invention. Fine. But if you take the biblical picture as a whole and ask what it says, it says this. Clearly. And the deviations, and idol worship, and the calf, and all kinds of things like that, are clearly deviations from the biblical course. Deviations that are then corrected. The prophet comes and rebukes you, you return, and go back to following the regular track. The whole Bible—that’s its great message. The whole great message of the Bible is that we continue to conduct ourselves before the Holy One, blessed be He, with all the deviations and sins and impulses and psychologies and mistakes and everything else done along the way. But this whole story is a deviation from the main path. The main path is a path of divine revelation that continues to later generations. That’s what is written in the Bible. You can say the Bible is wrong, that the Bible is a human invention, all fine. But don’t bring me proofs from the Bible that there is no God or that He did not reveal Himself. That sounds absurd. I’ll get to that.
[Speaker C] Yes, but even in that revelation, what actually happened there? What did they see? Was it really solid proof? What, they heard sounds? How did Moses really hear?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There was an event there, there was an event there—a World Cup event four thousand years before there were any means to do pyrotechnics like that. And then they hear two commandments, say, according to the Sages. Again, I don’t know exactly what happened there. They hear the voice of the Holy One, blessed be He, and then Moses comes down with the Torah. Now what are you supposed to conclude from that?
[Speaker C] I don’t know exactly what they heard. What, was it some kind of sterile zone there?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What, was there some kind of… and the tradition passes on to us the information that they heard. And that’s it. Now I don’t know—me too—you don’t know, and I don’t know either. Right. But that’s what the tradition says. So do you want to prove to me from the Bible that it isn’t true? That’s ridiculous. I don’t know what—I don’t know whether it’s true or not—
[Speaker C] I don’t know what.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can’t tell me that the Bible proves it isn’t true.
[Speaker C] No, no, but I also don’t know what they actually saw there, what convinced them.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have no idea, but they say they saw.
[Speaker C] How did they even see Moses from a distance of two kilometers?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I understand, but I’m answering that. I also don’t know what they saw. What I do know is that they saw something there that convinced them. That I know. That’s it. I don’t know what they saw because I wasn’t there, I didn’t experience it myself. I don’t know what it means for the voice of God to speak from within the fire, because I’ve never heard such a thing. So what do you expect—that they should somehow transfer the experience to me so I’ll understand what it is? You can’t do that.
[Speaker C] Right, but that’s why to bring this as proof is a bit—le-havdil a thousand thousand distinctions—there were idol worshippers there in that period who believed in a thousand things no less absurd. So what? I don’t know, just one more thing among them.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s why I prefaced what I said and said that that’s not true. There weren’t a thousand others. There wasn’t even one other.
[Speaker C] What do you mean? So there weren’t idol worshippers then?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There were stories, and there was revelation, and all kinds of things like that, but the characteristics of this story are unique, and they don’t exist in the other stories. That’s exactly the point. And therefore when you say there were a thousand others, that’s evidence against you, because if you’re saying that since there were a thousand others then obviously this too didn’t happen—well, here’s the proof: there weren’t a thousand others.
[Speaker C] Not a thousand others in this exact concept. Not a thousand beliefs, not an identical concept.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not this exact concept—something similar, something parallel. No, there weren’t. That’s exactly the point. All these claims that it’s so natural and so obvious and they were primitive—if that were really so true, I’d expect there to be twenty more like it.
[Speaker C] So what about all the idol worship of that whole world back then?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All idol worship is not the result of a mass revelation, and nothing of the sort. There are impulses and there are superstitions and there are lots of things, down to our own day. What is all the Hasidic idol worship down to our own day? So what? You can hear fairy tales about miracles and wonders happening today.
[Speaker C] Yes, but that’s what I’m saying.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] People are complicated. What can you do?
[Speaker C] No, to say that people believed what they saw as being such-and-such—so I’m saying they believed in a thousand things. That’s not proof.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying again, after all I said that the total picture is the essence. Every argument by itself—you can discuss it. You can discuss the whole picture too, but the whole picture has much greater force than any one component. So if I say I have proofs that there is a God, and then a tradition comes to me, and that tradition is very, very unique, and it arrives on a broad front, and it’s not absurd because I’ve reached the conclusion that there is a God, this whole story—and people tell me, listen, we were there, it seemed convincing—then you can now generate a conspiracy theory: this whole story is basically fiction, and they implanted it, and actually it wasn’t mass at all and nothing like that—it didn’t happen at all. Not only was it not mass, it didn’t happen at all. Anything is possible. There are always conspiracy theories. Maybe Yigal Amir didn’t murder Rabin either—and that was recent. There are many people who believe that theory about something that happened just twenty years ago. Okay, there are always conspiracy theories. I ask myself—and again, there are also conspiracy theories that may be true. The fact that something is a conspiracy theory doesn’t mean it’s wrong. I’m only saying you have to examine the alternatives and see what is more plausible. That’s all. The fact that there is a conspiracy theory proves nothing.
[Speaker C] You’re saying “conspiracy” as though what I asked was, if someone has an interest, who profits from it? I don’t think it’s necessarily in that direction. I didn’t mean conspiracy in the sense of an interest. Some of the commandments are for health reasons—that’s how they believed medicine worked then. Some are for moral reasons.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Notice what a complicated explanation you’re constructing. That’s what I call a conspiracy theory. Some commandments they believed were about health, some commandments were about an interest that nobody knows whose interest or what the interest is, and some other commandments are neither this nor that—and all this you think is a better explanation than the explanation that simply this is what happened, and therefore they tell me that this is what happened. That’s all. That’s what I call a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theory here is not in the literal sense that necessarily someone maliciously intended, as a scheme, to achieve some result. For me, a conspiracy theory is also to claim that what people think happened didn’t happen, even if the alternative is innocent. I call that too a conspiracy theory. Rabin committed suicide, fine? Nobody murdered him. That too is a conspiracy theory in my eyes. Not because I’m accusing someone, but because it’s not what is generally accepted, and you’re finding some alternative way to describe reality differently. Now there is no reality in the world that you won’t be able to describe in some alternative way, so the existence of conspiratorial possibilities proves nothing.
[Speaker C] On that level I’m with you, in terms of the ability to… yes, okay, plausibility, fine, but that’s what I’m talking about.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said: I’m not looking for certainty. There’s no chance of certainty about anything, and certainly not in a topic like this. So that’s fine. But I’m trying to present a plausible, reasonable picture, because the atheistic claim many times—around the witness argument but in general too—is that we’re dealing here with something absurd, a celestial teapot, some strange thing. And it’s really not strange; on the contrary, usually the alternative theories are stranger. Again, they may be true, but they’re stranger. If I had to choose, I would choose this and not the alternatives. Now, I’m not saying, of course, that the information passed down to us—including all the embellishments and flowers and details—is all true. Obviously myths like these, and there are many examples of this, get decorated and beautified in transmission. Right, we talked about the broken telephone. So probably some of what arrived at the end was also there at the beginning, but it’s wrapped in many additions. And that happened here too, obviously. Therefore to say that they bring this or that detail that couldn’t possibly have been in the original—suppose I’m convinced it couldn’t have been—that proves nothing. Obviously a myth like this, transmitted for thousands of years on a broad front among many, many people, some smarter and some less smart, will undergo versions and changes and additions and details and embellishments of one kind or another that somehow make their way into it. And I have no doubt that within this story there are all kinds of things—some of them never happened at all, some are just part of the myth that has an educational purpose but doesn’t really describe the facts, and another part are simply mistakes. There are many mistakes even in the halakhic tradition. I have no doubt that a large part of Jewish law as we know it today is mistaken from beginning to end. I have no doubt about that. I mean, it’s obvious—not only do I suspect it, I have no doubt. Because it cannot be otherwise. Such a complex system, with so many details, that has undergone interpretation and processing for thousands of years—there’s no doubt that the connection between what is in our hands and what the Holy One, blessed be He, gave Moses at Sinai, assuming He gave something there, that connection is fairly weak. And therefore my argument does not say that everything that reached us, and every detail, both in the event and in the content of the message delivered there, is true. I’m not claiming that. What I am claiming is that something happened there. From here on, now we have to discuss: some things are true, some aren’t… If I know that something is not true, then I’ll throw it out. If I don’t know, then the presumption is that if it emerged from traditional interpretation, I go with it until it becomes clear that it’s not true. But that’s really a matter of presumptions, if you want to call it that. It doesn’t matter. Right now I’m not discussing the correctness of the details. Right now I’m discussing the existence of the process. Meaning: was there such a process? And in my view it’s very plausible that there was such a process, regardless of these details or those details. Meaning, in general, when we examine this—there are articles about it, by the way, and in my book I refer to them—people who examined more systematically all the reports, or many reports, or all the reports of parallel revelations. There are many. On every atheist website you can find: what do you mean, every group tells us stories about one revelation or another. Nothing doing. It’s simply not true. Here and there there are such stories, and when you examine them you see that there are several characteristics—you have to check for the presence of several characteristics to see whether it really challenges the issue. If I say it briefly, the characteristics I think need to be examined are: first, how detailed the description is. Is there precision in the description of the details? Second, how many people were present at the original event—was it mass? Third, who were they? Are there names, are they identified, or is it just “many people,” some anonymous story? No—there was Moses, and the twelve princes, and Dathan and Abiram and Joshua—there are really dozens and hundreds of names. In other words, this business is very detailed. After that: how continuous was the report over the generations? From when do they claim it started, and how continuous was it from then onward? How careful were they in preserving the reliability of the report? How many people hold by it today and over the generations? How broad was the front through which this was transmitted from place to place, from generation to generation? What was the content of the revelation in question or of the miracle? Is it just a miracle story about Muhammad riding a flying horse, or is there also something here that commands us, that has—does it fit the accepted culture of that period, does it not fit, does anyone have an interest in inserting it, or is there no one you can point to as having an interest in inserting it? How long did it survive? Did people buy it only temporarily? Did the people who believed it throughout history think it was a true tradition or an aggadic myth? There are mythologies that get passed down, and the people passing them on themselves say it is mythology. Meaning, so the fact that it’s transmitted on a broad front proves nothing, because they themselves are not claiming that this is a story that happened; they’re claiming it’s mythology. Fine, many nations have mythologies, but those peoples themselves don’t claim it was a historical story. Therefore comparing this to myths of that type is simply an absurd comparison. Also: when was this story? Is it rooted in some documented era? Or are we talking about before the creation of the world, so-and-so met so-and-so and did this and that and—boom—the world was born. Those are prehistoric periods where nobody can know exactly what happened there; it smells like legend. Therefore, for example, the Book of Genesis, the seven days of creation, smells like legend. Without any biblical criticism and the Big Bang and all these things, I’m saying that when you read it, it smells like myth. It doesn’t smell like a story of something that happened. Because it’s rooted somewhere in how the world was created and all kinds of events like that that nobody was really there for. Adam and Eve are some names of—you have no idea whether they really existed or whether they invented two people and created some sort of myth. It’s not something done before hundreds of thousands or millions of people, with details about what happened there, and with a factual flavor, rather than some story that if I made a film of it, everybody would understand it was a film. Nobody would be under the illusion that this was some factual account. And of course you have to check how much, when they tell you about such a myth, how much of what they tell you is actually true. Because often when you go onto atheist websites that tell you about myths of this type, and then you go to the sources that describe the myth, you discover many, many incorrect details. Hiawatha, for example—ultimately everyone brings it as an example—but it’s Longfellow’s poem. It never existed, nobody thinks it happened; it’s the invention of a poet. So that too is one of the classic examples everybody brings of some revelation implanted in the broad public. There is no public in whom it was implanted, and it’s the invention of a poet, simply a literary work. Or the Trojan War. Is the Trojan War a rival myth to the Revelation at Sinai? No, because people don’t think it really happened. It isn’t transmitted as a historical story, at least not as a whole. Maybe there was something there, I don’t know, some core, but it doesn’t come down as a historical story. It comes down as myth. So that’s a very big difference, because this thing may be a myth, but it’s transmitted as a historical story. Meaning, that is the claim of the people who transmit it. In that sense, I think it’s different. So there are many characteristics here—I mentioned some of them—but many characteristics that have to be checked when examining parallel revelations. Another argument I’ve heard is that this is basically a story built entirely on one book. The Book of the Torah is what conveys these details to us, and we all basically describe in the same words what happened there. We all feed off what is written in the Torah. So in fact it’s not really a story transmitted on a broad front where lots of people tell the same thing. Lots of people tell the same thing because they all take it from the same book. It’s like—even in Jewish law, by the way—when there are, say, variant readings between Torah scrolls. Then the rule is that you follow the majority. If in the majority of Torah scrolls the verse or the word is written this way, then that’s how you write it. Okay? But what if all the Torah scrolls in the majority were copied from the same source? I simply know that there are three Torah scrolls written the same way only because all three were copied from the same scroll. Then in effect I have only one scroll against this one, not three. And in fact here you don’t follow the majority. Same thing as a rabbi and his students in a religious court. A rabbi and his students in a religious court are not counted as separate voices because the students learned from the rabbi. So it’s the same opinion; it’s not additional opinions. Therefore here too, in our context, if we are all basically based on the Torah, then it’s not true that there are six hundred thousand witnesses here; there is one witness—the book, the text. So I say that’s not true. Why? Because the people’s claim is a claim that accompanies the book. Meaning, the book is what documents what happened there, and all the people hold this book and tell us that this is how it was. So the fact that they all rely on the book is true, but the oral tradition accompanies the book; it was not born from the book. Everyone says: we received this book together with the stories, and this is how it started from the beginning. Therefore the fact that we all tell it in the language of the book does not mean it is one witness. Rather, our tradition says that this book is true. So now what we tell—that’s what is written in the book. Think about it—maybe I’ll look at it the other way around. Suppose there was a Revelation at Sinai and I wanted to document it for later generations. Now I’m in planning mode. How would I do it in a way that would prevent doubts about what happened here? It seems to me that what I can do—
[Speaker B] Film it in 4K, 8K, high quality, and transmit it. That’s just one more little miracle, not some hysterical miracle. One second.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I write it down. I write it in an orderly book, okay? And I tell people, “Friends, this and this is what happened. This is the book. Hold on to it, and do not change it—do not add and do not subtract. Pass it on to the next generations.” I don’t have anything better to do. If I wrote it in ten thousand books it wouldn’t change anything, because they would all be copies and all would have come from me. More than that: even with us, this book that was written and passed on—it too is a copy. We have Torah scrolls in every synagogue, in every home. So it’s a copy. But from my standpoint it’s not really many books, because it’s clear they were all copied from the same source. Therefore there is no option of copying it or filming it in thousands of copies—it changes nothing. If you filmed it in thousands of copies, it’s still the same single source you’re relying on. Therefore in the end—wait—in the end—
[Speaker D] In the end there’s the question why we don’t find testimony from external sources about things like the Exodus from Egypt and things like that. If all these things happened, people ask why we don’t find testimony to them.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, it depends what kind of testimony you mean. There is testimony—for example, the Hebrew Bible does refer to the Exodus from Egypt. As opposed to—
[Speaker D] No, I’m not talking about the Bible. I’m talking about external sources, outside sources. External sources from that same period?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, there’s a lot of archaeology here. What do you expect—to find a Ugaritic inscription talking about the Revelation at Sinai?
[Speaker D] No, maybe not the Revelation at Sinai, but about events that happened, like the great departure, the Exodus from Egypt.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And regarding those events there are indications. There are all kinds of debates about them. These discussions are loaded with agendas—full of agendas. But there is evidence for it, including archaeological evidence, contrary to what people are constantly selling us. There are various pieces of evidence that can definitely be connected. You understand, archaeology is always a problematic field, because what you found, you found; what you didn’t find is not evidence. People always say, “Wait, what about the whole journey through the Sinai desert? Why don’t we find any archaeological indication of it?” I don’t know what they expect—that we should find a rusty rifle from the Revelation at Sinai? There’s a huge desert there that people walked through. I have no idea what was there. The whole thing got buried in sand. What you find, you find; what you don’t find, you don’t find. But the fact that you didn’t find something is not evidence of anything, unless it’s something that it would have been very reasonable to find and you didn’t. Then that’s already an indication worth thinking about. Otherwise I don’t know what I’m expected to find. I mean, in later things—for example, Islam and Christianity do carry this tradition forward, and in principle they believe in it, up to the stage where it changes.
[Speaker E] But of course those are late things. A few points. First, the Exodus from Egypt is maybe something I would expect there to be evidence for. Second, there’s all of biblical criticism. And third, the story with Josiah, where they found the Torah scroll, and there it’s not exactly…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll get to that, I’ll get to that. I’ll get to Josiah. Just regarding the Exodus from Egypt, I’ll say again—not my field, but I tried to clarify it with several people who know the area very well. It’s not at all simple. There are in fact indications, including archaeological ones, for some of the details even that are described in the Torah about the Exodus from Egypt. There are. But as I described earlier, when you hear an archaeologist dealing with this or a historian dealing with this, the whole business is loaded with ideology, loaded with agendas. You know, just recently I was on a tour at the altar on Mount Ebal. Now the man who took us there—a secular guy, some archaeologist from the University of Haifa—took us there, and he himself is skeptical. Meaning, he’s one of the students of that—what’s his name? I’m blanking on his name. The one who discovered that altar. Professor Finkelstein?
[Speaker F] No, no, not Finkelstein. That’s the denier. Finkelstein is the denier.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t remember the name of the one who discovered it, a fellow from Kibbutz Ein Shemer, I forgot his name. Ze’ev something. He got attacked afterward because he discovered this thing. And again I say: it’s not clear that this really was Joshua’s altar. But it’s also not clear that it wasn’t. And all kinds of Finkelsteins and the like—Finkelstein stars in these things, not only with the altar but in general. One of the greatest speculators, raising all sorts of crazy hypotheses. I mean, he tells us there about hypotheses that were suggested—the man wasn’t even there in the field. He says to me, “This is an Ottoman-period fence.” He says this while you can see shards there dated to thousands of years ago. So he says no, this fencing is from… People with agendas who simply, in the name of— as professionals, right?—without hesitating, say things that have no real… I’m not claiming this altar is Joshua’s altar. I don’t know. That’s one possibility, another possibility exists. By the way, it’s an amazing find, because it’s from the period of the entry into the land, meaning yes, about forty years after the Revelation at Sinai. That’s amazing. And they discover there bones of kosher animals, and only there, nowhere else. And all the other altars had impure animals, and it was clear they belonged to idol worshippers, or to food, or something like that. But there, it’s the right place, with an altar that really looks like the one described in Tractate Middot, and the animals there—or the fauna there—a good many of them are pure animals. Including fallow deer, by the way, which raises the question how they were offered, but never mind—there are questions, the whole matter isn’t closed. But there is a very, very significant find there. Now if you ask most archaeologists today, nobody will even mention it. For them it’s like, come on, nonsense. Everything is nonsense. Why? Because they decided that none of this ever happened, period. It’s like David Hume. Every fact you bring them leaves two alternatives: either it happened—which is impossible—and therefore obviously it’s some kind of, I don’t know what… something happened here, some sort of manipulation of one kind or another, and therefore clearly it’s manipulation. But with a person like that you’ll never be able to prove he’s wrong, because every proof you bring he says is manipulation. Like David Hume. Meaning, you assume it cannot be, and therefore any testimony that comes cannot be, and therefore obviously it’s a myth that was implanted. And again, I’m not an expert in archaeology, I haven’t checked this in depth, but I’m very impressed by the people I hear; I’m very impressed that the whole thing is conducted in a very, let’s say, reckless way. That’s a major understatement, yes? Conducted in a very reckless way. And therefore there definitely are finds, and there are people who know this field well—if anyone is interested, I can point you to people who checked these things and collected them. By the way, apparently abroad there is much more trust in the Hebrew Bible than in Israel. Meaning, among archaeologists around the world, certainly Christians—but that’s not much of a novelty. But even non-Christian archaeologists—there are serious disputes, whereas in Israel sometimes you can almost not hear them, because it’s obvious that there is a consensus.
[Speaker D] It was Adam Zertal.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Adam Zertal, yes exactly. Not Ze’ev—Zertal, sorry. Adam Zertal. So this case of the Mount Ebal altar, and a few other cases that I do know… the famous story with the camels, camel domestication—that’s one of the well-known examples. It was clear that the Torah was late because it mentions domesticated camels. And in the period described in the Torah, according to the tradition, there still were no domesticated camels in the land. And then it turns out there were. And that whole argument gets thrown in the trash. And that was an argument used quite a bit. It gets thrown in the trash because it turns out there were. So what—people decided there were no domesticated camels, and that was that; therefore clearly this text is late, end of story. Again, I’m not accusing anyone. If you have no indication that there were domesticated camels, that’s a good question. You should write it down as a warning note next to the text. But on the other hand, to draw conclusions from what you haven’t found is very dangerous in archaeology and history. Because archaeology and history aren’t directed processes. What you find, you find; what you don’t find, you don’t find. You have no control over what you do and don’t find. And sometimes discoveries are made that suddenly shed a completely different light, showing that until now it was simply that we hadn’t found it—not that we had found the opposite. That’s not a contradiction. Until now we hadn’t found it, and from today we have. It’s like a hundred or two hundred years ago people didn’t know quantum theory and relativity—so does that mean they’re not true? They are true; they were discovered in the twentieth century. Fine. So I’m saying, I do not claim there is a solid historical and archaeological basis for the Hebrew Bible. That would be a very exaggerated statement. I do think there is no solid basis for the objections. In my opinion that’s not true. Meaning, the objections are not solidly grounded the way they are usually presented.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, for our purposes, since we’re already getting close to the end, what I just want to say here—about Josiah I’ll have to get to, but that I already… I won’t make it today. The argument, in short—I started with the opposite argument. If I wanted to build documentation for a certain event that happened and try to convince future generations that it happened, it seems to me there is no better way to do it than to write it explicitly in a book, say these things to the broad public so they use the book and pass it on broadly. There is nothing better you can do. So to say there is one book and people’s stories—what else is supposed to exist? Television footage? I mean, even about the Holocaust, which was only seventy years ago, already today—and not only today, for a long time now—there are historians, some of them not exactly insignificant figures, who deny the matter, or at least deny large parts of it. These are stories and myths, and history is the sort of thing you can play with fairly easily. Therefore I think one has to be careful not to take these things too conclusively. Same the other way around, again: the traditional description also doesn’t mean that if such a description exists then it’s true. It is not free of the problems of historical research; maybe it has more problems. I’m only saying that historical research too, or the claims of historians and archaeologists, are not something that should be accepted as self-evident. Right—about the Holocaust they say it’s a Zionist conspiracy, a Jewish conspiracy, so that they would give us the land. Today there are many descriptions explaining the interest in inventing this myth of the Holocaust. No problem. Everything you see with respect to the Bible and religious tradition, you can also see with respect to the Holocaust. The difference is that the Holocaust doesn’t obligate us in any religious way. It helps us as Jews and Israelis, so within the Jewish people the debate hardly exists—but in the world, yes. Therefore I think that in the religious context, for example, objections that come from outside are like objections to the Holocaust coming from outside the Jewish people. It’s easy for you to object when you’re not inside that tradition, but I think it’s not nearly as powerful as it is usually presented. All right, I’m not going to start now on the gaps in the tradition. Next time I want to begin with three examples that are perhaps the clearest examples people bring from descriptions in the Bible itself of gaps in the tradition—yes, the finding of the Torah scroll in the days of Josiah and more, Ezra suddenly discovering the festival of Sukkot, and all kinds of things of that sort—and I’ll try to discuss that a bit, because I spoke about the continuity of the tradition, and here questions arise with respect to that continuity. So we’ll deal with that next time. Okay, any comments or questions? Fine, then have a peaceful Sabbath and goodbye.
[Speaker B] Peaceful Sabbath, thank you.