Why am I obligated to what was developed from the Torah by people?
And if you say because of "and you shall do according to what they instruct you," perhaps that verse itself was not given by the Holy One, blessed be He.

My claim is that what developed through people is a development of the Torah, and it is reasonable that the Giver of the Torah understood that this is what would happen, and gave it on that basis. Otherwise He would have had to spell everything out in the Torah itself. Every legal system is interpreted by authorized authorities (such as judges in the judicial system), and on that basis it is binding and valid. It is not because they are right, but because they are the authorized ones. But if I remember correctly, I explained all this in the notebook itself.

1. There is a difference between development and invention. Maybe the Holy One, blessed be He, gave only one commandment (belief, for example), and everything else is invention? (The Rabbi also admits that many inventions slipped into the Torah; we can see this happening before our eyes, so it is not far-fetched.)
2. How do I know who the "authorized" ones are? And what criteria do they need to meet? (Until now I knew that the Torah gave authority to the Sanhedrin and to the majority, but perhaps that too was not given at Sinai.)

You won’t be able to know, and that is precisely why it has no importance. The Holy One, blessed be He, was supposed to anticipate that the Torah would pass through people who would develop it, and therefore He presumably gave it on that basis. So as far as I’m concerned, what we received is what is binding unless proven otherwise. The same applies to question 2.
But it seems to me that we’ve already talked about this more than once (in other threads), and we’re repeating ourselves.

I don’t really understand the answer, "The Holy One, blessed be He, was supposed to anticipate that the Torah would pass through people." How does that mean their words are binding? Maybe He expected that each person (or school) would interpret the Torah for himself, without one binding interpretation?

And maybe He does not exist at all? You can’t get anywhere with "maybe." If the assumption is that a Torah was given, then the Torah says "according to what they instruct you," and that does not mean instructions from each person to himself. If no Torah was given, then this whole argument is unnecessary—we need to start from a completely different place (if no Torah was given, then what exactly would each person interpret for himself?).

The interpretation of the Sages is based for the most part on the assumption that the Torah was given from Heaven. If that is not so (for example, let us say that the Book of Deuteronomy did not come from Sinai), then it loses a considerable part of its foundation. That is why, in my view, biblical criticism has perhaps the most explosive potential of all questions of faith (only potential, because the arguments I have seen are not really convincing).

P.S. — it’s not really clear to me why you say that we learn almost nothing from the biblical text itself. After all, no one knows better than you that there are many creative interpretive readings.

Of course there are. But as far as I’m concerned, the fact that the Sages interpreted is what is binding, not the biblical text. At least not until we ourselves develop the ability to interpret the verses. Leibowitz already said that the Oral Torah determined what belongs to the Written Torah and what does not (he meant the Scroll of Esther and Ecclesiastes, which they wanted to hide away). Therefore I do not see much importance in the question of what exactly was given at Sinai.

Now I’m confused.
The Rabbi wrote, "If the assumption is that a Torah was given, then the Torah says ‘according to what they instruct you,’" but according to the Rabbi’s words that I quoted in the main question ("I don’t know exactly what was given at Sinai… I do believe that something was given there"), there is no assumption that we received a Torah; there is an assumption that we received something, and we have no idea what it was. It could be the Five Books of the Torah plus the foundations of the Oral Torah, and it could be only the first verse of the opening section of Genesis, and it could be something else entirely that we do not know. That is how I understood the Rabbi’s words.

The question is: is there anything specific that the Rabbi can say was likely received from God in revelation (likely enough to be binding)?

I wrote that we received a Torah, and I cannot say exactly which parts of it were received. The system was received, and the details are open to discussion. Therefore the tradition stands unless proven otherwise. I think we’ve exhausted it.

The Rabbi keeps repeating "we’ve exhausted it" and "we’re repeating ourselves," and indeed the Rabbi is repeating himself. But I still have not found in the Rabbi’s words a single reason to believe that the Torah in our hands today is what Moses received at Sinai.
The fact that we know something was received does not help at all. Maybe it was a private instruction to Moses; maybe each of us was supposed to develop it on his own; maybe they were simple instructions that did not require development. This is not just a random "maybe"—the Rabbi has not presented a single reason to think otherwise.

(In the notebook the Rabbi explained why our tradition is preferable to Christianity and Islam, but the fact that it is less implausible does not make it true.)

Daniel, maybe you think we haven’t exhausted it, and of course that is your right, but I think we have. What can I do?! Apparently we have a dispute about that.

So I won’t trouble the Rabbi to write it again. Only, if I may ask, could the Rabbi just quote for me—copy and paste—from our exchange a reason to assume that the Torah in our hands is what Moses received at Sinai? Because I simply did not find one.

What I do find is that the Rabbi wrote again and again that the assumption is that what we received is what was given to Moses. But why? What is the reason to assume that?
In addition, the Rabbi wrote that the Holy One, blessed be He, was supposed to anticipate that people would develop the Torah. Even if we say I have no problem with that statement, there is still not the slightest reason in it to assume that the Torah in our hands is the one received by Moses.

Thank you very much.

Daniel, it is a bit difficult to copy and paste the fifth notebook here. There I spelled out what I have to say on the subject. If you weren’t convinced—then you weren’t.

With respect, perhaps the Rabbi did not understand me.
I went through the fifth notebook again to make sure I had not missed anything. In the notebook the Rabbi only explains the likelihood that there really was a revelation. Let’s say I accept that there was a revelation—this still does not mean that the Five Books of the Torah were received in that revelation. The notebook does not deal with that at all.
In other words, even if I accept all the arguments in the notebook, I still do not have arguments indicating that the Five Books of the Torah were received from God.

I will say it again in a different formulation.
If the reader is convinced by the arguments in the notebook, he will arrive at the conclusion that there was a revelation at Mount Sinai, and in it the Jewish people most likely heard the first two commandments: "I am the Lord your God" and "You shall have no other gods."
As for the rest of the Five Books of the Torah, there are two possibilities:
1. They were received in revelation to Moses.
2. They are an invention of Moses or of others.
The Rabbi does not address these possibilities in the notebook. Rather, the Rabbi assumes that if I accept the revelation, I also accept the entire Five Books of the Torah. And that assumption is really not clear to me. For some reason it seems that the Rabbi does not understand why that assumption is not self-evident to me.

In our exchange here the Rabbi ostensibly answered me by saying that the Holy One, blessed be He, was supposed to anticipate that the Torah would develop. And to that I wrote (and the Rabbi did not address it at all) that there is a difference between development and invention. Let me explain: if the Holy One, blessed be He, says, "Keep the Sabbath day," and the Sages explain that keeping the Sabbath means refraining from the thirty-nine categories of labor, that is development. But if the Holy One, blessed be He, says, "I am the Lord your God," and the Sages say, "You shall not eat a kid in its mother’s milk," that is invention.

There is a reasonable kind of development that I can accept, especially if principles of interpretation and hermeneutic rules by which the Torah is interpreted were also given at Sinai; then I would be prepared to go even further with interpretation. But even development requires principles that were received from God by Moses and were not created by man.

If I am mistaken and the Rabbi does talk about this in the notebook, I would be glad if the Rabbi could point me to the specific chapter.

I definitely do address it. I did not say that the Five Books were received there, but that they are binding by default (I distinguished between historical authenticity and obligation).
That’s it. We have completely exhausted it, and I no longer see any point in replying further in this thread.

Can the Rabbi point me to the chapter or chapters that deal with this? So that I can read them more carefully. Because apparently I missed it, even though I read the notebook twice.

In the notebook itself I wrote that I deal with this in a book I am writing (see the end of chapter 5). When I wrote here that I had dealt with it, I meant in this thread. Right at the beginning I wrote that authenticity is not important to obligation. In the notebook I spoke about how the indirect evidence for the tradition also supports its reliability, and thereby the details as well (as a binding default). If a tradition was given with the intention that we do something without spelling it out, then the Giver of the Torah had to assume that it would be developed by us. But for a fuller account you will have to wait for the book.

Thank you very much. I’ll wait for the book.
I hope that in the book the Rabbi will explain at greater length this matter that authenticity is not important to obligation.
And again, many thanks for each and every response.

And well done, Daniel, for the fortitude and courage not to give in and to insist. And to Rabbi Michi, who kept answering.

A bashful person does not learn…