Q&A: The Witness Argument (More or Less)
The Witness Argument (More or Less)
Question
I would expect that any religion that wants to impress people and ground the faith of its believers would have a story of revelation before an entire nation, but there is no other story like that.
Why wouldn’t the revelation story by itself (regardless of what was given to us in that revelation) prove to us a religious God? Especially since, as far as I understand, there is no other story like it.
In addition, there is the story of the manna, which an entire nation supposedly saw every day for 40 years. How can you lie about something that lasted that long to the children of those same people?
I’m asking objectively: is the story itself enough to prove even the existence of God?
Answer
The story of a mass revelation carries some weight, but it is not decisive. It is possible to invent such stories and plant them in the public consciousness, just like other implausible stories that are embedded in various myths. The improbability of a mass revelation that we never heard about is no greater than the improbability of various miracle stories.
Why didn’t others invent this? I don’t know, but that also is not a decisive consideration. One possibility, for example, is that others are not lying and we are. So we invented it and they didn’t. Beyond that, there are here and there stories of this or that kind of revelation, though in my estimation they are less credible, both regarding the event itself and regarding the tradition that reports it. But this is not black and white.
The people who supposedly saw manna every day for 40 years did not lie to their children. The claim is that this whole story was invented hundreds of years later.
Discussion on Answer
That is a very weak difficulty. The question of what survives and what does not is quite accidental. Besides, not the whole world saw it. The Jewish people were in the Sinai desert, and they saw it.
The argument about the lack of archaeological findings is not accurate. There are many archaeological and historical findings that prove the existence of a Semitic slave people in Egypt, and that it left. The Egyptian historians themselves, as well as the Greeks and Romans, all agree on this; their claim is simply that the Jews were expelled with the Egyptians’ consent (because of the wrath of the gods and the like) and not against their will.
The lack of archaeological findings is specifically about the desert, but it has already been shown from other sources that one should not expect archaeological findings from a nation of nomads in the first place (for example, see here https://www.haaretz.co.il/hblocked?returnTo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.haaretz.co.il%2Fmagazine%2F2019-10-10%2Fty-article-magazine%2F0000017f-f243-da6f-a77f-fa4fab570000)
That aside, in general reliance on archaeology is rather questionable in my view. It is like determining the picture of a puzzle based on a tiny percentage of its pieces. It can provide certain indications, but no more than that.
The link above is wrong; here is the link:
https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/2019-10-10/ty-article-magazine/0000017f-f243-da6f-a77f-fa4fab570000
We were talking about the revelation, not the Exodus from Egypt. That is what my remarks were directed to.
“Has any people ever heard the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and lived?”
https://he.wikisource.org/wiki/%D7%A7%D7%98%D7%92%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%94:%D7%93%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D_%D7%93_%D7%9C%D7%92
The Jewish people did not believe in Moses our teacher because of the signs he performed, for one who believes on the basis of signs has a defect in his heart, since a sign might be produced by magic or sorcery… So on what basis did they believe in him? At the revelation at Mount Sinai, which our own eyes saw and not those of a stranger, and our own ears heard and not another’s—the fire, the voices, and the torches—and he approached the thick cloud and the voice spoke to him, and we heard: “Moses, Moses, go tell them such-and-such.” As it says, “Face to face the Lord spoke with you”… And from where do we know that the revelation at Mount Sinai alone is the proof that his prophecy is true, with no defect in it? As it says, “Behold, I come to you in a thick cloud, so that the people may hear when I speak with you, and they will also believe in you forever.” It follows that before this, they did not believe in him with a faith that endures forever, but with a faith after which there could still be doubt and second thoughts.
https://he.wikisource.org/wiki/%D7%A8%D7%9E%D7%91%22%D7%9D_%D7%94%D7%9C%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%99%D7%A1%D7%95%D7%93%D7%99_%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%94_%D7%97_%D7%90
The witness argument
https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%98%D7%99%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%9F_%D7%94%D7%A2%D7%93_(%D7%99%D7%94%D7%93%D7%95%D7%AA)
There is a big difference between historians from the Hellenistic period, like Apion and Manetho, who heard a story and wrote about it after the fact, and documentation from the actual time.
In addition, this is not about a group of slaves but about 3 million people who went through the desert in a miraculous way, with a sea split in two, the ten plagues, and more.
This is similar to the issue of the Flood, where people latch onto any source about the flooding of some particular area, like the Black Sea, but in fact distort the verses, which claim that the Flood was worldwide.
There is a claim in the Bible, so evidence needs to be found.
To assume what you are trying to prove and then attach every flimsy finding to support it is not serious.
Beyond that, you can also ask the opposite: why is there no outside testimony from other nations to this revelation? If it was really so public and massive, other nations should have heard about such a great revelation, and even if not, they would at least have found archaeological remains indicating that a large number of people had at some point stayed in that area thousands of years ago (I heard that there is evidence for various things, that they even found human droppings from many years ago!). There is also no documentation in Egyptian writings dated to that period, and so on and so on… A story in and of itself does not testify to anything especially remarkable, no matter how remarkable it is and no matter how ancient it is…
Of course, that doesn’t mean there is no God or that there was no revelation in one form or another, but on the face of it the picture דווקא points in the opposite direction, and certainly does not strengthen it.