Question

Hello Rabbi, I study in an advanced yeshiva.
And I have a question about faith, you could say.
The question is: who says that God really gave the Torah, and that the Torah is truly a divine command?
I asked several rabbis from my yeshiva and also from Hidabroot, and they gave me answers that weren’t good enough. I’d be glad if you could help me and answer my question, or add to one of the following answers I’m bringing.
Their proofs that God gave
the Torah, briefly:
1. Our religion is the only religion that has a revelation to a group of people, unlike the other religions.
And from the fact that the other religions did not bring such a proof that they had a mass revelation,
that means it’s impossible to bring such a proof unless it really happened.
Which means that in Judaism there really was a divine revelation.
2.
In natural science, something natural is something that happens more than once.
The same in history: something natural is what happens more than once, as they say, history repeats itself.
And since the claim that God revealed Himself to a group of people exists only in Judaism,
that means this is not a natural claim and exists only in Judaism because only in Judaism did God really reveal Himself to a group of people.
3.
Everything in history happens at least twice,
in repeating patterns.
Why doesn’t revelation to a group appear twice, supposedly, in history?
It must be because it’s something God did and not something natural, and therefore it didn’t happen twice.
Therefore Judaism must be true.
4.
Among our people there is a culture of divine revelation.
And you can clearly see that this people has always had a culture of divine revelation.
And therefore you know that God revealed Himself to this people.
In this people you can see that there is a culture of divine revelation
because:
A.
The Jewish people are the only people that went into exile and returned to their land.
B.
There was no other people such that only when it was in its land was the land fertile, and when it was not there the land was desolate.
C.
There is no other people that, despite living elsewhere in the world and looking different from one another, still regard themselves as one people.
D.
There is no other people that all the nations hate for no reason, and that all nations hear about and care about.
E.
There was no other people that influenced the world so much despite its small size.
F.
There was no other people that was an empire, fell, and became an empire again.
G.
There was no other case where people told of an entire nation that had a great and formative event.
H.
There was no other case where people told of an entire nation that had a great and formative event, and claimed that its details were changed in it.
I. In addition, all these things we mentioned were foretold in prophecy, even though these are unusual things that would happen, things that did not happen at all to any other nation.
Even so, this is what was prophesied about the Jews, and this is what happened to them.
You see that this is a people of prophets,
a people with a culture of divine revelation, expressed in the fact that there is prophecy.
For a thousand years there was prophecy and then it stopped, but sparks still remain.
And from the fact that the Jewish people are a people of divine revelation, that means that God revealed Himself to the people.
The problem with these answers is that they are not correct. Some are factually incorrect, some are illogical, and some don’t make sense in terms of cause and effect. I’ll explain how I think the story of the Torah developed, and afterward I’ll explain why I think their answers are incorrect.
I say:
It may be that Judaism is indeed the most well-founded, logical, and wise religion.
But that still doesn’t mean it is true, since it hasn’t been established that there is a God at all, and even if there is a God it hasn’t been established that religion is necessary. Maybe one should follow a person’s natural morality.
And the story of the Torah developed like this (of course everything is theoretical, and it’s impossible really to know what happened, but this is one of the possibilities):
A group of slaves left Egypt in great success; after hundreds of years in which they had been slaves in Egypt, they managed to escape from the Egyptians through their leader Moses, who told them about their forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and about the stories that happened to them. And in the wilderness he went up Mount Sinai and brought this group the Ten Commandments, which they were to keep.

As time went on after Moses, when Joshua and the prophets after him came along, stories about the patriarchs, the Exodus from Egypt, and the commandments that Moses gave began to be added. At the same time, they also began writing sections of commandments and stories that the prophets had told orally.
After some years of feeding people stories, commandments, and prophecies, they began assembling from the above sections larger sections, until the complete Torah was composed, which afterward could no longer be changed. Later the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) was also closed, and afterward they also began deriving from the Torah every letter in it, and midrashim and traditions, etc.
Now let’s answer the rabbis’ responses to me:
1.
The fact that the other religions did not bring proof for their religion from a mass revelation does not mean that such proof cannot be brought unless it really happened.
It could be that the other religions did not make that claim not because it is impossible, but because
on the one hand it is hard to create the illusion that an entire people experienced a revelation.
It takes hundreds of years to build such a story.
On the other hand, it is not all that effective, because one can still claim that it didn’t happen.
And in addition, you need some sort of story or certain background on which to build such a story.
Besides, there are religions that base themselves on inner feeling and not on proofs.
2-3
There are patterns in history that repeat themselves, but not everything has to repeat itself in exactly the same way.
There are still similar patterns in other religions of revelation, even if they were not revelations to a group.
A claim of revelation exists; revelation to a group does not, because usually only the patterns repeat themselves, not the details.
4
A. Not true; there is, for example, the return of the Greeks to Greece after the fall of the Ottomans.
B. Even when most Jews were not in the land, the land was not desolate, and there were periods when it was fertile.
C. There are such peoples, like Armenians, Indians, Chinese, and others.
D. Not all nations hate us, for example Indians and Chinese.
A number of reasons can be given for antisemitism over the years, from the influence of Christianity to picking on the weak and the different.
In addition, there are other peoples who experienced hatred from other peoples no matter where they were or which peoples ruled over them, such as the Armenians.
Although the people of Israel are unique and people hear about them all over the world, many reasons can be given for that, such as antisemitism. Also, of course, the conflict with the Palestinians concerns all the Muslims in the world. In addition, there are other conflicts that the whole world takes an interest in, and the level of interest depends on the people and the places.
E. It is true that there was no other people that influenced the world so much despite its small size, but again, the fact that the Jewish people are a special people does not mean, to that extent, that they are supernatural. There were other peoples that influenced the world despite their small size—not like Israel, but there are some in certain areas.
F. There are peoples that experienced similar things, like Egypt, China, Persia, Poland, Bangladesh, and the Baltic states.
G, H. The Trojan War.
I. A self-fulfilling prophecy.

All this is meant to show that although the Jewish people are special, that does not mean they are a people of divine revelation.