So first of all, you agree that there is excellent evidence for Christianity too, because Jesus’ miracles were also performed before thousands of people.

As for the quality of the tradition, I wouldn’t rely on that as something that strengthens the argument.
It is well known that Santa Claus is a fictional character. But his tradition has already been going very strong (probably much more than the Passover holiday) for over a hundred years.

But he is indeed not a real figure.

So let’s go with something else —
There is a very strong tradition in Christianity (many hundreds of years) about Mary’s virginity.

A tradition that only grew stronger over the years, was accepted by all the streams of Christianity, and is transmitted in parallel among Christians all over the world.

The revelation at Mount Sinai, for example, is admittedly not questionable, but there are many disputes among the Orthodox—and the rabbis don’t really know how to answer it, even according to the texts.
Some think it was in the 15th century BCE and some in the 13th century BCE. And some say it was in other periods altogether.
There is also no clear position on where physically the event even took place (the Sinai Desert? Saudi Arabia?)

Of course, if we dig we will find that the Jewish tradition of the Sinai revelation has clear advantages over the tradition of Mary’s virginity.

But I don’t think it is possible to determine which tradition is more “good.”
Both are preserved fairly well.

No, I do not agree. But I cannot do more than write my opinion. If you choose to put words in my mouth—enjoy.
The question is not how many people hold a tradition, but how reliable it is. There are also masses of people who hold traditions about miracle stories and wonders attributed to various rebbes, and I am not inclined to believe that. The same applies to the Greeks’ mythological “tradition” or others.
The fact that a tradition grew stronger over the years is exactly what shows that it is not reliable. A reliable tradition grows weaker over the years (as one gets further from the event).
If you think there is another reliable tradition, that is perfectly fine. Then believe what you believe. I understood that you were asking what I believe, and that is what I answered.

Excuse me. You wrote:

"But even something done before thousands of people is excellent evidence (what difference does it make whether it was a few thousand or a few hundred thousand?)"

"In short, part of trusting a tradition is that it was transmitted on a broad front and over many generations."

The miracle of Jesus, according to the report, was before thousands of people. That is one testimony (like the single testimony about the revelation at Mount Sinai).
It is harder to believe that it was staged than that the revelation at Mount Sinai was staged with some impressive pyrotechnic show by Moses (who hid a few people with shofars and smoke grenades behind the scenes).

Likewise, the story of Mary’s virginity is transmitted on a very broad front and over many generations.
And I believe that in the Christians’ “study halls” they also debate and discuss this miracle in depth, and continue transmitting it from father to son for many hundreds of years.

Where exactly did I put words in your mouth?

It is perhaps unnecessary to mention that I am a religious and believing Jew.

I already explained twice. I have nothing to add.

For someone who believes that the number of those who left Egypt was significantly lower than what is described in the Torah, how should one relate, from a halakhic standpoint, to the verses counting the tribes and the like? For example, should one recite the blessing over Torah study before reading them?

No one would dare independently edit texts he believes came directly from Heaven, and no nation would allow such a thing to happen to this precious and unique treasure.
One might perhaps believe that explanatory marginal notes accidentally slipped into the body of the text. But aggressive human editing of content and numbers and totals? Someone who believes that and still thinks there is a core of divine text in the Torah is just an idiot.
So someone who thinks the tribal numbers in the Torah were written later by a human being without prophecy should think that the entire Torah is not from Heaven.

Oren, what does that have to do with the blessing over Torah study? If the numbers are inaccurate, that does not mean they are not part of the Torah.
Echo, there is a flaw in what you are saying. I can believe that the Torah is divine and think that others who did not believe this edited it. Are you setting one person against another?

If the numbers are inaccurate, that means they are a later addition or some sort of editing, and therefore they ought to have a different status from a verse whose source is divine. Just as there is a difference between the Torah and the Prophets and Writings, or between Torah-level law and rabbinic law. In addition, if the numbers are incorrect/exaggerated, that means there is falsehood here too, and perhaps that should remove the verse’s holiness.

As I wrote, this is far from clear. In any case, in my view the main study, one way or another, is not the Bible but Jewish law.

What do you mean by the word “this” in the words: “this is far from clear”?

That it is an addition or a falsehood.

Okay, but suppose there is someone who looked into the matter deeply and whose assessment is that these are exaggerated numbers (like Maor Ovadia, for example). According to his approach, do these verses have a different legal status? Would a Torah scroll that lacks these verses still have the legal status of a Torah scroll?

What I meant was that even if you have reached the conclusion that the numbers are exaggerated, that does not necessarily mean this is an addition or a falsehood. There may be another explanation for it: typological numbers, or some other meaning to the numbers. Maor himself has various suggestions on this matter.
You could ask about a scroll that contains those verses instead (which is more common; all our scrolls are like that): is it invalidated because of an addition? The halakhic rule is determined according to presumptive status. At least so long as it is not clear that there is a problem with the scroll before us, it is kosher. For example, there is an explicit Jewish law that in the case of scrolls with different versions, one follows the majority. Even though in such a case one of them is certainly mistaken, I am not aware of any claim that one of them must therefore be invalidated.

Assuming that the number of those who left really was no more than a few thousand, I still do not understand, after all the words here, what advantage Judaism has over Christianity:

Testimony about a divine miracle before thousands — present in both.

Influence on masses of believers over hundreds of years — present in both.

Transmission of tradition in a tight way, with many discussions about versions of the tradition — present in both.

Can someone point out the Jewish advantage?

By the way, I should note that it is simply amazing to see how close Michi’s approach is to that of Yaron Yadan (“Da’at Emet”).

Only recently Yadan published a video titled “The Torah Scroll Is Meaningless.”
That is roughly what Michi is writing here:
"In my view the main study, one way or another, is not the Bible but Jewish law"

Even the introduction of “The Religion Rose Up Against Its Creators” (by Yaron Yadan), about how the Torah scroll is something that is more or less closed up in the holy ark and only taken out occasionally for reading—
it really looks as if Michi wrote the introduction for him.

Rabbi, perhaps you could address the last two comments (Jeremy)?

Thank you very much in advance

I did not see any point in responding. There is a big difference between Judaism and Christianity, if only from the simple fact that Judaism came first and Christianity copied from it. But beyond that too, the beginning was before a broad public, and that is not true of Christianity. I do not think there is well-founded testimony there about miracles before thousands, but I have not checked it deeply. Beyond that, there are the prophets, and the principle of the eternity of the Torah, and much more.
But someone who thinks Christianity is more correct should be a Christian. I do not see any special problem with that.
As for Yaron Yadan, I am not familiar with the details of his doctrine. But I assume there is indeed some similarity. It seems to me I have already written that in my opinion, if he had been aware that there could be a “thin” Jewish theology (and had not been stuck within the Haredi conceptions in which he operated), I do not see why he would have had to leave his religious commitment. Quite a few of his difficulties are valid (and others are not), but they are difficulties for Haredi Judaism, not for Judaism.

Since my view is being discussed here, I feel compelled to say that I do not understand how people got from what I said to the conclusion that we are talking about hundreds. In my opinion, given the information before us (and one can argue about how complete and well-founded it is, and I am not sure that it is), it is reasonable that we are talking about tens of thousands. Certainly not hundreds, and certainly this has nothing to do with forgery or falsehood, but with an ancient mode of expression.

Certainly not hundreds*

Maor: how do you explain the detailed number in a typological way that is consistent and convincing?

And a note on what was said here about Christianity: while I am not a New Testament researcher, from quite a bit of research I have read on the subject, there is more or less a consensus that Christianity does not have a broad tradition about Jesus’ fish miracles and the like.
These are stories transmitted by a few individuals. And there is no small dispute even about their number (3–4 or 10–20 people). The Exodus from Egypt is considered in scholarship a “collective memory” (the significance of this fact would require elaboration, and this is not the place). The stories of the New Testament are not, and never were, such.

Aleph — see an online conversation of mine on the subject.

(One more note on what I wrote about Christianity—I should emphasize that I am not entering here into questions of the credibility/non-credibility of miracles in any religion, or into theological discussions. My remarks are aimed at the strange historical claims voiced here about Christianity, and the failure to distinguish between a story and a cultural memory. Those are completely mistaken from a historical perspective.)

Maor Ovadia,

At the opening of your discussion with Alex you present the most common possibility, that 600 units (men) — elef = a unit.
After that, you do not really succeed in casting doubt on it; you only note that it does not fit with the high numbers that appear later in the censuses. And you did not present any other quantity that does fit with what is shown in the census numbers (which, of course, according to your approach too, are only symbolic, even if they represent something).

Besides, as you noted,
the high numbers in the censuses certainly do not fit the known reality of that period, nor with what the Hebrew Bible itself says:
The entire world then had about 20 million people, in the whole world, not only in Mesopotamia and Egypt. The Hebrew Bible admits that the people of Israel chosen then was the smallest people in that period (which certainly does not fit with 2 million souls).

Jeremy — I am surprised that you do not understand what I said. 600 units means units, not men. In any case, the objection is based on the claim that this proposal has no foundation. As for what you wrote about the number of people, it seems to me that you are not well versed in population studies (in Egypt alone there are estimates of 3 to 6 million, depending on methodology). Still, 2 million is indeed difficult. But to speak in terms of certainty is a pretension with no basis.

As I said there and explained my view clearly—there may be patterns in the numbers, and therefore they may be symbolic. The question then arises: if so, what was the actual number? And I answered that in my estimation, tens of thousands. This estimate stems from historical considerations, and I cannot go into the analysis here.

I do not agree with a single word you wrote here, and I can only send you back to listen again.

Maor,

1What does “units” mean?
Can 600 men who are heads of households (father, mother, and child, or bachelors) be considered a unit?
You also do not really take a position in the video; you only present speculations.

I do not really understand what you wrote about Egypt having between 3 and 6 million.

In the video, Alex raised an argument that there are those who maintain there were only a million, maybe a million two hundred thousand.
And then you reply to him that according to most views there were 2.5 in Egypt, and there are extreme views of 5 million.
Watch again literally the first two minutes of the video.

So now suddenly here in this exchange you mention between 3 and 6.
And the million (maybe 1.2) that Alex raised, for some reason you do not bother mentioning here.

Even so, the Hebrew Bible itself writes that the people of Israel was the smallest.
It is very hard for me to believe that the smallest people in that period numbered tens of thousands. It is not at all plausible.
Today there are peoples smaller than tens of thousands; all the more so in the past.

You do not agree with the approach of those who interpret the 600 as plain hundreds, on the grounds that it does not fit what is written in the Hebrew Bible. But note that the tens of thousands you maintain also do not fit at all with everything written in the Hebrew Bible.

As for world population—you are right, the estimated population in the world at that period was indeed about 40 million.
But I do not really think that changes what I wrote.

Unit — a unit could be a household, or even a group of 10–100 people. It is not really possible to know. But in any case, nobody (except Ben-Gurion, who suggested this) is talking about 600 actual people.

As for Egypt — there is no view (as far as I know, at least) in scholarship that there were only a million. And even if there were, the tax lists from Lahun would not allow that in any way. We have records of temple workers; in no world can one imagine that Egypt had only a million people. But I do not see any point in correcting people over such fine points in an interview. When you are interviewed, you are welcome to choose what to comment on and what not to comment on to the interviewer. In addition, there are indeed inflated estimates up to 6, but most hold to around 2.5 (depending on methodology). In any case, that does not change what I wrote.

As for the claim that “the Hebrew Bible says” — the Hebrew Bible also says they are as the stars of heaven in multitude. You cannot take only the rhetorical flourishes that are convenient for you. I know the material well, and I do not see any difficulty in assuming there were tens of thousands (that quantity is based on the reasonable estimate of the residents of the settlement sites, including the residents of the sites east of the Jordan, if those are counted). If in one single military campaign one of the Egyptian kings took one hundred thousand captives from one of the groups in Canaan (and the figure there is accepted as historical), then there is no difficulty at all in the Israelite group also numbering several tens of thousands. Don’t agree? Then don’t.

As for the approach I suggested — if it is correct, and I do not know that this is the case, then it is not that it “doesn’t fit the Hebrew Bible.” It fits it very well; one simply has to know how to read the text. It does not contradict the inscription, but is only a way of interpreting it. Just as fortified cities in the heavens do not in any way contradict low cities. One must read the text in its own context, not in yours.

As for your saying that these are speculations — if we are discussing proposals, then of course that is speculation. But if you listen to what I said, I truly do not accept those proposals. The proposals are only a tool for demonstrating anomalies in the numbers, and the anomalies are the clue that perhaps we do indeed have symbolic numbers here. Even that is not certain, but in my view it is defined as clues that carry weight that such a phenomenon is present here.

As for the number of people in the world — no problem. You simply wrote an implausible quantity, so I commented on it.

All the best.