I didn’t find it in the fifth notebook. Did you mean you were going to address it shortly?

It’s there in the second part.

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

Look under the “Writings” tab above; when you click it, among other things there are also five notebooks there.

By contrast, in the answer “Help Preparing a Lesson on the Revelation at Mount Sinai,” Rabbi M. Abraham goes on at length explaining the difference between the revelation at Mount Sinai and the Indian stories.

Best regards, S. Z. Levinger

And perhaps the Indians are from the Ten Tribes, and their historical memory preserved the revelation from within the fire and cloud as the divine “pipe”; only the tablets and their content they forgot 🙂 Everyone takes from that exalted event what matters to him.

It’s easy to get confused. There is indeed a very fundamental difference between a story people tell, which is not especially different from any modern Hollywood movie, and something that stands at the basis of a nation’s identity. What was written here is not the actual proof for the revelation at Mount Sinai. In any case, the foundations for proof and recognition of the revelation at Mount Sinai do not apply to the other examples, because we are not talking about the national identity of masses, but about a story concerning masses.

I didn’t understand the claim.

Rabbi, the verse you quoted, if I understood it and you correctly, says exactly the opposite of what you claimed.
The verse exactly as it is says: “Has a people ever heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and lived?!”
(The ?! punctuation is mine, of course.)

I didn’t understand the question. The verse states the Kuzari argument, and in my opinion it is a weak argument.
In any case, for more detail 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 argument. By the way, it already appears in the Torah itself: “Has any people ever heard God speaking out of the fire…”

I didn’t find the verse as you quoted it (the quote as you gave it actually seemed to weaken the Kuzari argument), and I thought you were referring to the verse I quoted, which really is evidence דווקא for the Kuzari argument.

I’ll read the fuller discussion, thanks.

It’s not clear to me why the Rabbi did not mention the most essential difference, namely the difficult and extensive religious obligation that results from the revelation.
In the case of the Sioux tribe there is no sign of any religious obligation that stems from the revelation. All that was given there is basically a pipe. I too am willing to believe that my cigarette was given by God, but I won’t observe anything practical because of that.
Embedding a revelation myth that claims religious obligation as a result of revelation is many times harder than embedding just a plain revelation.
And regarding the Muslims and Christians, their mass revelation (the splitting of the moon, Mary at Zeitoun, Fatima, etc.—and let’s ignore the views that the splitting of the moon is a prophecy) is not the source of the religious obligation, but merely a story.
I’m not aware of any change in the Christians’ way of life after the revelation of Mary, or in the Sioux tribe after receiving the peace pipe (except for a decline in health in light of smoking the pipe).
It’s like some story in the Talmud that would tell of a mass revelation in the era of the Mishnah—it wouldn’t be too difficult for such a myth to be assimilated, because it has no practical consequence, and on the contrary, it strengthens something we already practice for another reason.
Therefore there was no problem for the myth about Muhammad splitting the moon to enter tradition, since it is not the source of the faith, but merely strengthens a faith that came from another source (trust in the individual revelation of Jesus and Muhammad).
In summary, the Jewish revelation has two additional advantages: a. broad and demanding religious obligation (financially, intellectually, etc.) as opposed to cultures whose commandments are not many, if they exist at all. b. the obligation derives directly from the revelation.
Note that without clause b, clause a has no value.
These two clauses should raise sky-high the level of critical scrutiny in the generation in which the myth is being embedded.
And it requires further consideration why Rabbi Michi did not even mention this calculation.

To dear A.:
You added the essential difference between the revelation arguments, the argument from obligation.
But this requires further consideration: the Children of Israel believed in Moses and kept God’s commands that were transmitted to them even before the revelation at Mount Sinai!
The Children of Israel slaughtered the Passover offering with self-sacrifice, followed Moses out into the wilderness, and according to the aggadah even declared “We will do and we will hear” before the giving of the Torah.
That is, they accepted upon themselves a full life-obligation even without the revelation.

……

And regarding the (lack of) critical thinking of that generation:
We are speaking of descendants of slaves for 210 years, lacking the leisure and freedom for education. In a period when even the wisest believed in nonsense and superstitions.
A group camped as one person with one heart, declaring commitment with one mouth without leaving room for individual doubt. Which could lead to severe and immediate punishment, by God.
And after preparation and buildup of seven weeks and then three days, the great moment arrives. How were they supposed to judge it with even basic critical thinking?

We have no original documentation of the event, except for the protocol Moses delivered forty years later on the day of his death. Would they then protest and cry out?

The Torah was handed over to the Levites, who placed it at the side of the Ark of the Covenant of God, and who knows exactly what is written in it?

……

The Children of Israel 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 period of the medieval authorities (Rishonim).

At “Yosef’s” request –

I think the Indian revelation stories are a genre that is not very exciting (although I once thought so too). The Indian revelation stories are one of several cases I know in which websites with an atheist agenda simply lie –
1. According to the English Wikipedia page for “The Song of Hiawatha”—the book from which the stories are copied—the scholars’ assessment is that these stories are a mix of Indian stories with Nordic folk legends, plus the fertile imagination of the author.
2. If you read the stories themselves and don’t rely on the interpretation given to them… you discover that most of these stories are not at all a mass revelation to an entire people. In the buffalo story it is the village elders who witness the miracle; in the story of the discovery of fire it is the few individuals who existed at the dawn of humanity (so that is no different from any Babylonian or Egyptian mythology); and in the story of “their Mount Sinai revelation,” it was only the warriors of all the villages and not an entire people. In short, there is no revelation here to an entire people. You can check me and read the full stories online.
3. Even if we assume there was a mass revelation, it is not clear whether these were agreed-upon historical traditions of the whole people transmitted broadly as a historically accepted event, or whether they were folktales (after all, they heard them from a tour guide), or traditions transmitted by individuals (the village chiefs), in which case it is 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” in a Tzomet Sfarim bookstore, and I invested half an hour in quickly scanning the book, which purported to represent the mythologies of the Indian peoples of Central America (it can be found in Tzomet Sfarim). Of course I discovered that there was no trace there of any of the events above (some of which are supposedly known by all the Indians, no?) or of any mass revelation whatsoever. Great.

4. The same goes for the other peoples: as I understand it, we are not talking about entire peoples. With Jesus, certainly not; we never heard of anyone transmitting a tradition that he heard from his parents who were there. Among the Muslims—my Islam lecturer (don’t ask why I was in such a thing; it wasn’t voluntary) told me that this is a very specific and very late interpretation of a certain surah in the Quran, and not an agreed Muslim tradition. Beyond that, this is not a tradition transmitted by “the whole Muslim people” (who heard from their ancestors who were there). It is not a national tradition, but a story only about the residents of Mecca. And here too, most of the residents of Mecca refused to accept Muhammad’s teaching and were murdered because of it, so it is hard to say there was a consensus of all the residents of Mecca regarding the reliability of the story. As for Zeitoun, etc.—the event probably did happen; the question is whether it was a revelation. In my opinion, it was not. After all, the locals interpreted it according to their current religion (in this case Christianity), whereas with us the locals interpreted it in a monotheistic way (not the common religion of the ancient world). And in addition, the miracle occurred over a long time (40 years) and in various aspects (manna, plagues, Mount Sinai, and more), so the likelihood of an untrue interpretation is lower.

So much for the dry nonsense. Even apart from all that, even if we ignore everything written above, the reliability of the Mount Sinai story is based on a combination of parameters. That is, even if we assume one can invent national history (which probably is possible) and that there were indeed those who did so, it would still be enough if “most national histories are true” or if “when a national history exists, there is a fairly good chance it is true.” Then when we have:
– a story that in itself has a fairly good chance of being true, or belongs to a genre of reliable stories
– one that is harder to persuade people to accept because it requires a people to change part of its way of life
– even if I suspect it may be a myth, I see that it contains many anti-mythic elements (a God without a body, etc.)
– even if I still suspect it may be a myth, I see that it is an unflattering story that peoples generally do not invent for themselves (slavery)
– even if I still suspect it may be a myth, it produces a people with an unprecedented history (talent, return from exile, influence, etc.)
– …. – it testifies to something for which there is some evidence that it exists (God), and we would expect a priori that it makes sense that such a thing might happen (giving laws)
– etc. etc.

So even if there were Indian or other traditions (and as we saw, most likely there were not, or at least there is no proof that there were), there is still good reason to assume that ours are of the sort that preserve truth.

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

As a side note, I would add that the uniqueness of the mass-revelation argument in Deuteronomy chapter 4 is that it happened before the eyes of the entire people, and within the actual history of a nation as a nation. And for that no parallel can be found. There may be myths of revelation at the dawn of prehistory, in the prehistory of some people, but these periods belong in every culture to the realms of myth and legend (in the Torah too, reality up to Abraham is legendary in style: a talking snake, sons of God, a flood, and extraordinary lifespans). There is no way to refute these legends. Likewise, there are—perhaps—myths about revelation within the historical existence of a people (as for public miracles, as opposed to revelation, there certainly are such stories, as with Jesus and the thousands who saw the miracle of the loaves and fishes), but these were not done before the eyes of the entire people, nor even most of it or a large part of it. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It never happened; there were no bears and no forest, and not even a parable like Job. Therefore, one who hears about them can believe in their existence (the revelations/miracles) without being surprised that he never heard of them. “Well then,” he will say to himself, “it was far from me (in Tiberias, Capernaum, Nazareth) and happened before people I do not know.” So I can believe even though I neither saw it nor heard of it until today. But the Jewish revelation grabs hold of the hearer and does not let go, “like someone seized by the collar,” and presents the hearer with a claim from which there is nowhere to escape: the revelation—so it says—occurred within the historical existence of the people after it had already been founded as a nation, and it occurred before the eyes of the entire people without exception. So either it happened and you heard about it, or you did not hear about it and it did not happen.

From this it follows that had the event at Sinai not occurred, it would be impossible for those hearing about it not to wonder: “How did we not hear about this mighty event? After all, all my ancestors, mine and all my neighbors’ and acquaintances’, should have heard about it.” The faith-based assumption proposed by Deuteronomy is that those who hear and read it (and the revelation event it proposes) will not wonder any such thing, because they really had heard the story. QED.

This idea, which Rabbi Cherki developed at length (in the appendix to his commentary on the Kuzari, and in his books and lectures), and which the scholar Meir Buzaglo praised, also discussing this revelation at length in his book on traditionalism, seems to have been drawn by Rabbi Cherki from Mircea Eliade himself (The Myth of the Eternal Return, p. 93, emphasis in the original, and elsewhere):

“There is no doubt that the concept of revelation is found… in all religions…. However, these revelations occurred in mythical time, in the supra-temporal moment of the beginning… But the situation is entirely different in monotheistic revelation. This occurred within time, within the course of history: Moses received the ‘laws’ in a certain ‘place’ and at a certain ‘time’… The moment of God’s revelation before Moses nevertheless remained a limited and well-fixed moment in time. And since at the same time it represents a theophany (revelation of God), it thereby acquires a new dimension: it becomes valuable insofar as it is already no longer reversible, insofar as it is a historical event.” Etc. etc. End quote—see there, and examine carefully, and this suffices for the understanding, and there is much more to elaborate but this is not the place.

Given that God revealed Himself to an entire people, we would expect that this revelation would contain some sort of message, and that it would have a real impact on the world.
As I recall, the story of the Sioux tribe did not have any real impact on the world—not even on the Indians in America.
The Torah’s central revelation story—the Exodus from Egypt, the revelation at 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 day, and it especially influenced the United States. The Ten Commandments were accepted in the monotheistic religions, including the Sabbath in various forms. Nietzsche lamented the fact that Jewish morality, “slave morality,” had conquered the world. One could say much more about this.

This great impact of a revelation claim by a small people in the ancient Near East upon the world is, by itself, an event of low probability; but it is a very probable event given that such a revelation actually occurred.
Therefore, according to Bayes’ formula, it greatly strengthens (though of course does not prove) the probability of the hypothesis that such a revelation to the Jewish people really did occur.
According to the same formula, the lack of impact on the world of the revelation to the Sioux tribe weakens the probability that there was a revelation to the Sioux tribe.