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| Maybe I'll answer you with a "laser" instead of with a voice. Wouldja like that? |
The story of mass Divine revelation started out as a small scale, untrue, but plausible story. After is [sic] was accepted, it evolved and grew imperceptibly into the full blown version we have today.CLARIFICATION: Kornreich is not referring specifically to my argument, as he was not aware of it at the time he wrote the above-quoted part. My point is that the view articulated by Kornreich is supposed to represent the kind of argument that I make, an argument dependent on the "evolutionary myth hypothesis." I apologize to Dovid Kornreich and my readers for being so unclear in my language as to mislead.
Unfortunately, the summary misses the mark widely from my position. I do not, for example, have much of anything to say about how the Sinai story "started." Indeed, I wonder if "started" even captures the nuance and complexity of what might have actually happened.
Stories in transmission are like hills. Just as we are hard-pressed to identify precisely how many grains of sand may be taken away before we no longer have a hill, so too are we hard-pressed to identify the moment in time when a particular story, as we know it, truly starts. With the Sinai story, we have the compound problem of trying to identify not only when the story began but also when it became interpreted in such a way to distinguish Judaic religion and community. The story could have been around a long time before someone said, "Don't you realize what this means? God spoke to our ancestors and so to us. God and all of us are bound together in a compact!"
In addition to voicing an origins claim I don't actually make, Kornreich's summary presents the "evolving myth hypothesis" as a progression. The problem with this presentation is the same as in other "ladder of progress" models:
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| Rudolph Zallinger's "March of Progress" |
Scientists such as Stephen J. Gould have rightly criticized images such as Zallinger's "March of Progress" (1965) for implying that human biological evolution happened in a linear, sequential fashion. Human evolution is not a movement toward a predetermined “ideal form." The march of progress idea, then, can be misleading to the non-specialist.
Similarly, Kornreich's summary of the "evolving myth hypothesis" erroneously implies that the development and acceptance of "the story of mass Divine revelation" progressed in a linear, sequential way. I do not hold that Sinai was once a simple story that slowly changed and became ever more fantastic until it acquired all of the characteristics we find in Exodus. What's more, my own words do not imply such linearity and sequentiality:
Someone did not make up the Sinai story complete and unalterable at one time, for this is a modern sense of how stories are made and circulated. It was more like many people communally developing and interpreting back-stories for already existing rituals and practices.... The Sinai story was not a conspiracy but the ongoing evolution of culture. And it was not just the evolution of culture but the evolution of cultural texts.The key difference between what I actually say above and what Kornreich thinks I am saying boils down to the idea of "growth." I am not talking about growth; I am talking about re-interpretation. I suspect, and it's only a suspicion, that Sinai changed not so much in context but in the approach people took to it and in the meaning people attached to it. I've never been talking about a true story becoming false or a false story becoming more fantastic: I've been talking about a story--who knows how true--gaining new significance.
This type of re-interpretation happens often enough. The battlefield at Gettysburg gets dedicated by Abraham Lincoln and becomes a symbol of both the Civil War's bloodiest battle and the very principles at the root of the conflict. William Shakespeare gives Henry V a speech that consecrates the Battle of Agincourt as a signature of one phase in the Hundred Years' War. Woodstock becomes romanticized as three days of peace, love, and music--the legacy of peaceful, dope-smoking kids who wanted the world to be a better place. Watergate becomes a lasting symbol of the US government's covert activities and its friction with America's stated principles. We know all too well that later interpreters and nationalist interests co-opt events; co-optation and re-interpretation hardly make up the implausible scenario that Kornreich suggests.
And we know that at least some of the Torah derives from a narrative matrix common to societies and civilizations of the Ancient Near East, such as Egypt and Mesopotamia. I'll list only a few points of similarity:
- The Ipuwer Ammonitions, an Egyptian text going back to 2345-2181 BCE has analogies to the ten plagues.
- The Egyptian god Atum/Atom has conceptual similarities with the god of Moses.
- Sargon of Akkad's myth of origin has many parallels to that of Moses.
- The story of Sinuhe matches the Midianite adventures of Moses in several spots.
There's a world of difference, then, between the position Kornreich ascribes to Kuzari critics like me and the one I actually hold. Indeed, I'm not even sure we can responsibly grant his assumption that "millions of Jews have come to believe the truth of Traditional Judaism." Which Judaism is the "Traditional" one, hmm? Is it the Judaism of the Chabadniks? The Judaism of the Charedim? The Judaism of the American reformers? The Judaism of the Karaites? The Judaism of the Modern Orthodox? The Judaism of the Reconstructionists? What about the Judaism of Jacob Frank?
Contra Kornreich, I see no monolithic truth and no monolithic Judaism. What's more, Sinai (Exodus 19:17-20:18) remains a story with an uncertain interpretation:
With Moses and then Aaron seemingly as the sole exceptions, all Israel keeps its distance from Sinai and remains “far off.” The people see smoke and feel shaking, as if they are before a volcano. What did Israel hear? Certainly, they heard the shofar. What of God did they hear? Only sound. Moses later reminds Israel that when they encountered God at Sinai, “You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice” (Deuteronomy 4:12).Torah interpretation, too, has a history. In my ongoing blog series on James Kugel's How to Read the Bible, I have mentioned the centuries-long transition in the approach to reading the Bible:
While Jewish tradition has maintained that God spoke the first two commandments directly to Israel (but see Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, II.33), this seems to be an interpretation that is not explicit in the text itself. In abject fear and standing from afar, Israel pleads to Moses, "You speak with us, and we will hear, but let God not speak with us lest we die." We might suppose that the Israelites actually hear nothing directly from God, if we accept the speaking Moses as being literal:
The Lord spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, while I stood between the Lord and you at that time to declare to you the word of the Lord; for you were afraid because of the fire, and you did not go up into the mountain. He said, "I am the Lord your God . . ." (Deuteronomy 5:4-6; emphasis added)In this regard, the biblical claim of God's direct interaction with Israel is like later miracle accounts, such as the risen Jesus appearing to a few followers. The singularity of Sinai, in other words, may be highly exaggerated.
This traditional way of reading the Bible and understanding what it really is, says Kugel, derives from the efforts of the Bible's earliest interpreters:With Sinai as with all, plurality abounds. The persistent claim of Kuzari proponents is that Sinai is a different kind of story, a story that because of its content could not have arisen and developed the way that other stories do. This argument is bunk. I have shown that it is at least plausible that the Sinai story arose and developed just as other stories do, despite its grandest content. What seems obvious to me is that resistance to the idea that Sinai is just a story derives from a combined bias for theism and against any idea perceived to threaten orthodox religious belief.
[T]his whole way of approaching the Bible is the product of its ancient interpreters. There is little in the biblical texts themselves to suggest that they were intended to be read in this fashion. Nevertheless, that is how they came to be read, and it was this way of reading that made the Bible what it was for so many centuries, a divine guidebook full of instruction and wisdom, yea, the word of God....Disquieting as it may be, one is left with the conclusion that most of what makes the Bible biblical is not inherent in its texts, but emerges only when one reads them in a certain way, a way that came to full flower in the closing centuries BCE.
Perhaps what's needed at this point is a better understanding about how stories and legends begin. Stay tuned....
http://daatemet.org.il/questions/index.cfm?MESSAGEID=4000
ReplyDeleteKSIL,
ReplyDeleteWell, that IS a revelation. Thanks for the link.
"Even in our post-modern, information-laden society, which educates its young to think critically, people are all too eager to embrace baseless stories if they fit some previous expectation of theirs – hence the spread of a large number of urban legends (see http://www.snopes.com). In ancient times, with few sources of information accessible even to those who were literate (a small minority in any ancient society) and no cultivation of critical thinking in education, hardly anyone would bother to check something which he was told by religious authorities, especially if that something did not imply a radical change in his ways of life and thought."
Pretty much what I have argued, but put better.
According to Dovid Kornreich, the following summarizes my explanation of "how millions of Jews have come to believe the truth of Traditional Judaism":
ReplyDeleteI think a serious correction is in order.
You provide a link to a post of mine claiming that I summarized your explanation there.
This is false.
I had barely heard of you when I wrote that post and certainly didn't have your formulation in mind at the time.
Claiming that I was addressing your vague scenario of re-interpretation and mischaracterizing it as a linear evolving story is itself a straw-man creation.
Please correct the post accordingly.
(looking forward to seeing how you envision the development of the Sinai belief, though.)
In ancient times, with few sources of information accessible even to those who were literate (a small minority in any ancient society) and no cultivation of critical thinking in education, hardly anyone would bother to check something which he was told by religious authorities,
ReplyDeleteAll these assumptions about illiteracy and uncritical thinking are unsubstantiated and there is counter-evidence in the Bible.
The Bible is adamant about widespread education and literacy (for the males at least) and it expects the masses to be critical of a prophet who claims to speak in the name of God.
The Bible warns that false prophets will arise and instructs how we are to ascertain whether a prophet is genuine or not. The implication is that we are not to accept religious claims uncritically.
especially if that something did not imply a radical change in his ways of life and thought."
But the Torah is not just a revelation story--it is full of radical beliefs, values, commandments and prohibitions that went against many norms of the entire ancient civilized world.
Of course it implied a radical change in his way of life and thought!
I now see the correction.
ReplyDeleteThat was quick. I'm impressed.
Now if you would only take down that clever photo of the straw-man...
Dovid,
ReplyDeleteI posted a clarification that I hope is satisfactory. Let me know if not. Sincere apologies.
How I envision the development of Sinai belief? Haven't I addressed that in this post and in other of my Kuzari posts?
Forgetting about belief in Sinai for a moment, I think we are safest following Hume in calling for extremely clear, unambiguous, and powerful independent evidence in favor of it having occurred; otherwise, the more likely scenario is that the people claiming a Sinai revelation are either mistaken or duplicitous.
If "belief in Sinai" is not strong evidence--if it is not extremely clear, unambiguous, and powerful independent evidence in favor of it having occurred--then it's not rational for us to accept Sinai. I think I've demonstrated clearly that "belief in Sinai" is hard to define and nail down, and does not meet our standard.
At the very least, "belief in Sinai" is no less plausible under a mistake or duplicity--even at a putatively national scale--than it is under the actual event having really occurred as reported in a single source as having happened between 3000 and 4000 years ago.
"The Bible warns that false prophets will arise and instructs how we are to ascertain whether a prophet is genuine or not. The implication is that we are not to accept religious claims uncritically."
ReplyDeleteYour earlier point about literacy and illiteracy is hardly material. Modern America has a very high literacy rate relative to earlier societies, yet our brightest people accept the religion of their ancestors, by and large.
Now, you say "we" are not to accept religious claims uncritically. I submit that this is exactly what I am doing. I do not accept uncritically that the Torah is divinely inspired or morally superior to other works.
To date, I've received no convincing evidence of either claim.
tl;dr: It's sloppy and poor form but minimally acceptable to refer to those who believe in the existence of a traditional Judaism as people who "have come to believe the truth of Traditional Judaism", and "traditional Judaism" as what they believe, as against those who know that there is no such thing (and also those who think there is such a thing but don't believe in it).
ReplyDelete"There's a world of difference, then, between the position Kornreich ascribes to Kuzari critics like me and the one I actually hold. Indeed, I'm not even sure we can responsibly grant his assumption that "millions of Jews have come to believe the truth of Traditional Judaism." Which Judaism is the "Traditional" one, hmm?"
Your statement that there is no traditional Judaism is literally true, but simply labeling it false would be greatly misleading. It has specific enough content to be useful in discourse, as much as most other language is also literally false.
No matter how badly each generation in its own time has botched applying the core religious beliefs, acts, and thoughts or its forebearers, one particular belief is very important (if ever present in the tradition), crucially so, and its absence marks the end of that tradition and the beginnings of post-(insert tradition name here).
That belief is the belief that one is satisfactorily acting religiously according to the crucial credos of the past. This is important even when false.
If one thinks Maimonides would approve of driving to synagogue on Shabbat, if only he knew a certain amount of context (how modern communities are laid out, what science has shown about nature [which is evidence biblical allegories aren't to be read literally and applied strictly], what JTS scholars [poetry professors?] have said, etc.), this is something (entirely non-metaphysical) about which one can be right or wrong.
Those for whom the hypothetical endorsement of a certain quantity and quality from past authorities is important, when our best evidence is that such endorsement would not have been forthcoming, are of a certain kind. They believe they are traditional Jews in a certain sense of traditional - a sense in which they are wrong, which is as you claim.
Those who don't care to try and carry the mantle of past beliefs, values, and practices are not only non-traditional, they know it - and also know that the first group is not traditional, which all else equal does make them more knowledgeable.
"Traditional Judaism" means the stuff that those of the first group believe (subject to certain caveats), in contrast to what those of the second group believes because the latter know it they are merely inspired by the religion of the past, and is not continuing it in an important way. For political reasons, it may want to keep the established label, but it is still post-Judaism by another name.
(Continued...)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI posted a clarification that I hope is satisfactory. Let me know if not. Sincere apologies.
ReplyDeleteQuite satisfactory. I greatly appreciate it.
How I envision the development of Sinai belief? Haven't I addressed that in this post and in other of my Kuzari posts?
You've labeled what you've called it--evolution of cultural texts and re-interpretation, but you haven't described it in any detail whatsoever in order to be able to analyze it critially.
When did the text first appear? in what form? in which location? which people had it and evolved it? If you want to provide a truly plausible alternative, you need to provide a complete alternative. just a hand waving of--"just as other stories do" will not do.
I was just paraphrasing your own parting words to this post:
Perhaps what's needed at this point is a better understanding about how stories and legends begin. Stay tuned....
I think you are avoiding the hard work of fleshing out in detail not only how this story began, but how it evolved and got re-interpreted.
You'll see that when you try to hammer out historical details it gets less and less plausible.
Forgetting about belief in Sinai for a moment, I think we are safest following Hume in calling for extremely clear, unambiguous, and powerful independent evidence in favor of it having occurred; otherwise, the more likely scenario is that the people claiming a Sinai revelation are either mistaken or duplicitous.
I don't see any argument here, only bias.
In fact, you seem to be clinging to your statement:
Once I realized and accepted that it was unreasonable to take the Bible seriously as an authority on the nature of the universe and my personal obligations in the world...well, it became impossible to look at Judaism or religious figures the same way as before.
This really isn't the place to have the debate we ought to be having in e-mail. You are simply presenting your entrenched conclusions here. That's fine,
I'm not complaining.
It's your blog. I do the same on mine...
Now, you say "we" are not to accept religious claims uncritically. I submit that this is exactly what I am doing. I do not accept uncritically that the Torah is divinely inspired or morally superior to other works.
ReplyDeleteI never said you should. I hope you didn't take offense by using the word "we". I'll try to be more conscious of it in the future.
No offense taken by "we." Just trying to show that I take your language seriously--as you, thankfully, do also with me. It's a good thing.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to misrepresent you or have us talk past each other. Ultimately, we want the same things, yes? We want intellectual honesty and a genuine understanding of why people reach the conclusions they do.
Must disappear now...project deadlines loom.
(...continued)
ReplyDeleteThere are a few sorts of ostensibly religious types, not just those who wrongly believe themselves traditional (by their own criteria of what it means to be traditional) and those who rightly (or wrongly) believe they are (not) post-traditional. The extra dimension we can add to this is similar to what you, in your post, found overlooked by others - recognition that some things are clearly hills, despite our inability to crisply distinguish hills from non-hills.
One could ask each individual who they acknowledge as Jewish, and then graph acknowledgement, using each individual as a point (really we ought to make it seemingly infinitely complex by having a different point for each moment of each individual, but we'll ignore that for now). Arrows would extend from each point to each other point representing a person who is Jewish as judged by the person the first point represents. One could extend this graph into the past for not just every person who ever lived, but people wrongly believed to be real as well...the result would not be a web of reciprocal arrows from each of some set of points to each other point in that set, i.e. a tight, self contained cluster of humans who believe each other and only each other Jewish.
We can compare individual's placement in the web with arbitrary but meaningful thresholds of interconnectedness (including to the past).
To give an example: such a chart would show Jews for Jesus considered Jews mostly by those who don't consider themselves Jews and Jews for Jesus. This makes them importantly different from other groups because those other groups do acknowledge Jewishness of many outgroup members. It remains an empirical question the extent to which Reform Jews' position more resembles that of centrist Orthodox (say, right-wing YUnicks, out-of-town Agudah Rabbis, and centrist Yekkes from Washington Heights) than Jews for Jesus as a graphical cluster among people.
Another chart could be constructed for who each person thinks would acknowledge the validity of their practices as being "traditionally Jewish"...and yet others could be made for "legitimately Jewish".
The bottom line is that liberal Jewish movements are approximately as deluded as Orthodox ones regarding their authenticity in relation to Jewish history. The Orthodox get many little things about history wrong, (like having 165 years missing from their chronology between the first and second temples - whoops! So much for the unbroken chain of tradition,) but liberals get one big thing wrong - the idea that they aren't gauchely abandoning continuity according to colloquial and reasonable understandings of history (and the English language meanings of those terms).
Dovid,
ReplyDeleteI want to quickly respond to your longer comment. You ask me to provide greater description of "evolution of cultural texts and re-interpretation." It's a fair request that will take some time for me to answer, so I'll have to draft up something and make it a full-blown post.
But I should say that I am certainly not a biblical scholar and hopefully do not pass myself off as having any first-hand experience with the tangible materials and philosophical outlooks involved with a comprehensive understanding of the Torah and the history of Early Israel.
So, I do rely on information and opinions provided by others to help me formulate my own views. In this sense, I (like all of us) am embroiled in a Kuzari-related situation: under what conditions will someone not accept a certain message as true without more evidence.
I certainly would like to be able to provide details about how the Sinai story actually began, how it evolved, and how it got re-interpreted. We have a little information on all of this, but not much. But I don't think that you have many details either about how the story began. You and I have the very same problem. What's more, just because I develop a good-sounding explanation accounts for very little. Same with you. Your story about how Sinai came to be may be powerful and inspiring, but is it true? That's always the tough part.
I'm not sure where in Hume you see bias. The argument is that given a claim for some utterly and radically unique event, we are safer to assume that the claimant is either mistaken or lying than we are to accept the claim as true--if the claimant fails to provide clear evidence that the thing happened. You can see the connections between Hume's argument and the argument indicated by Kuzari.
More to the point, we don't have clear evidence of Sinai's occurrence. You even admit this, right? If we choose to take belief in Sinai as evidence, it's still not powerful evidence, and it's still not clearly connected to the event actually happening as reported in the single source that describes it. Therefore, the more reasonable course--although not the only course or the only reasonable course--is to conclude that the Sinai story and belief in it is the result of some set or combination of mistaken information or deliberate falsehoods (including people just telling tales, as people are wont to do).
Hence, I don't think I'm the one "clinging" to anything. Indeed, I don't have any personal or emotional investment either way. If Sinai were actually true as reported, that would be ducky. I lived most of my life assuming it was true.
So, as I said, I'll see on drafting a full response to your request above.
Consider a regular six-sided die with four green faces and two red faces. The die will be rolled 20 times and the sequences of greens (G) and reds (R) will be recorded. You are asked to select one sequence, from a set of three, and you will win $25 if the sequence you chose appears on successive rolls of the die. Please check the sequence of greens and reds on which you prefer to bet.
ReplyDelete1. RGRRR
2. GRGRRR
3. GRRRRR
The above question is, in my opinion, very relevant for understanding how probability and surface plausibility work.
On the honor system not to google its source, would Larry and Dovid please answer this question independently, and later show their answers?
(Sorry about the double post above - it didn't show earlier, and just materialized in a seemingly miraculous way)
Brian,
ReplyDeleteAt the risk of fully revealing my idiocy and ignorance, I'll quickly pick sequence #1 if these are the only three choices. Is sequence #1 supposed to have one less roll than the others?
BTW, your earlier message went to my spam filter. I don't know why.
"At the very least, "belief in Sinai" is no less plausible under a mistake or duplicity--even at a putatively national scale--than it is under the actual event having really occurred as reported in a single source as having happened between 3000 and 4000 years ago."
ReplyDelete"When did the text first appear? in what form? in which location? which people had it and evolved it? If you want to provide a truly plausible alternative, you need to provide a complete alternative. just a hand waving of--"just as other stories do" will not do."
Gentlemen, gentlemen. Time for some seeming pedantry. A word on a word: not "a word", but "plausible". It's good hygiene not to use the word "plausible" when what one really means is "probable". Plausibility is more about how likely situations seem to an imperfect observer, while probability is more about how likely things should seem to a more ideal observer, given the facts as we have them.
As both concepts are useful, lets keep good track of what we mean. It sounds plausible to me that I will win the lottery, but alas, it isn't probable. Likewise, hypotheses about the origin of things may have discrepant surface probability and probability after careful reflection.
Brian,
ReplyDeleteI mean "plausible" in this case, not "probable."
To be honest, I noticed it being used in a way I found objectionable by Dovid and then used CRTL+F to see if there was an instance of you using it, so my criticism wouldn't be interpreted as an attack on Dovid alone.
ReplyDeleteI didn't do the minimal due diligence of *actually re-reading* your comment in the context of questioning whether or not your use was perfect or less than that.
In retrospect, the obvious explanation for why this issue first came to my attention when reading the Dovid's post even though you had introduced the term into the discussion was that you used it precisely and well.
I am very sorry for my negligence and will bear this in mind the next time I feel the impulse to try and balance a criticism by seeking a violation by the side I didn't first see the problem in.
Brian,
ReplyDeleteNo need to apologize!
When will you clue Dovid and me in on the "answer" to your dice question?
Dovid,
ReplyDeleteI've agreed to draft in greater detail my hypothesis about how the Sinai story originated and developed historically.
Now, I want to be sure that I represent your position correctly. Is it that the Sinai event is true exactly as reported in Torah? Is it that God is the "author" of the story, as opposed to Moses? In what way was the story brought to writing in scrolls and such? That is, did God give the first scroll? Did Moses?
This is only so that you and I can be certain that I am contrasting our positions correctly.
I've agreed to draft in greater detail my hypothesis about how the Sinai story originated and developed historically.
ReplyDeleteI commend you on your bravery and honesty. I'm glad you acknowledge that there is a need to provide a (probable!) alternative explanation to the mass revelation belief in order to justify ignoring it.
Please be aware that this is a two-way street. I myself admit that I too have the burden to justify ignoring all the thousands of religions' claims to the truth in favor of the one I was born into.
Now, I want to be sure that I represent your position correctly. Is it that the Sinai event is true exactly as reported in Torah? Is it that God is the "author" of the story, as opposed to Moses? In what way was the story brought to writing in scrolls and such? That is, did God give the first scroll? Did Moses?
This is only so that you and I can be certain that I am contrasting our positions correctly.
I hear what you are asking. Here's a rough summary which is blurring a lot of details.
1) Starting with the Sinai event.
Not that there are two descriptions of the event in the Torah. Exodus and Deuteronomy.
The Exodus account is more rich in detail but it doesn't always get to the point. I prefer to focus on the Deuteronomy description because it was stated with the conscious intention of establishing the the event as a foundation of the religion and as having an exclusive claim to truth:
I give you Deuteronomy chapter 4-
http://www.tachash.org/texis/vtx/chverse/search.html
relevant verses therein:
Verse 9: Look out for yourself and guard your life exceedingly, lest you forget the words your eyes witnessed, and lest they are removed from your mind, all the days of your life; you will make them known to your children and to your grandchildren.
Verse 10: The day you stood before Ad-noy, your G-d, at Choreiv, when Ad-noy said to me, "Assemble for Me the people, and I will let them hear My statements, so that they will learn to fear Me all the years that they are living on the land, and will teach their sons."
Verse 11: You approached and stood beneath the mountain, while the mountain was burning with fire up to the heart of the heavens--- darkness, cloud, and thick cloud.
Verse 12: Ad-noy addressed you from within the fire; you heard the sound of speech, seeing no image, solely sound.
Verse 13: He told you His covenant, which He commanded you to fulfill--- the ten statements--- and He wrote them on two tablets of stone.
Verse 14: Ad-noy commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and laws, for you to fulfill them in the land that you are crossing over there to inherit.
Verse 15: Be extremely cautious for your lives, for you did not see any image on the day Ad-noy addressed you at Choreiv from within the fire.
Verse 16: Lest you destructively make for yourselves a statue in the image of any form, the representation of a male or a female;
continued from previous post:
ReplyDeleteVerse 20: But you, Ad-noy took [for Himself] when He took you out of the iron crucible, from Egypt, to be for Him a people-territory like this day.
Verse 30: When you are in distress and all these things happen to you, at the end of time, you will return unto Ad-noy, your G-d, and will obey Him.
Verse 31: For a merciful Almighty is Ad-noy, your G-d; He will not forsake you nor destroy you; nor will He forget the covenant of your fathers that He swore to them.
Verse 32: Inquire now about the early years that preceded you, from the day that G-d created Adam on earth and from one end of the heavens to the other end of the heavens: Did anything ever happen comparable to this great event, or did anyone ever hear of such a thing?
Verse 33: Did any people [ever] hear G-d's voice speaking from within the fire as you heard and survive?
Verse 34: Or did any god ever miraculously come and take for himself a nation from within a nation through tests, with signs and with wonders, and through warfare, and with a strong hand and with an extended arm, and with great displays; entirely as Ad-noy, your G-d, did for you in Egypt as you watched?
Verse 35: You have been shown that you might know that Ad-noy, He is the G-d; there is no [power] other than He.
Verse 36: From the sky He made audible to you His voice to teach you, and on the earth He showed you His great fire, and you heard His words form within the fire.
Verse 37: Because He loved your forefathers, He chose his descendants after him; and He took you out before Him with His great strength from Egypt.
Verse 38: To expel nations greater and stronger than you from before you; to bring you in [and] to give you their land as terrritory, like this day.
Verse 39: You will know today, and will restore to your perception that Ad-noy is the G-d in heaven above and on earth below; there is no other.
Verse 40: You will guard His statutes and His commandments, which I am commanding you today, so that you have it good and your children after you, and in order that you live long on the land that Ad-noy, your G-d, is giving you for all time.
End of selection.
It is these verses which explicitly refer to G-d communicating to the entire nation.
To be continued...
To the next request:
ReplyDeleteIs it that God is the "author" of the story, as opposed to Moses? In what way was the story brought to writing in scrolls and such? That is, did God give the first scroll? Did Moses?
This is a great question.
As a blanket single answer, all the words of the Torah were dictated by G-d directly to a prophet to be included in the Torah's text at some point.
There is a midrash which states the Jews in Egypt had scrolls of prophesy which recorded the Divine creation, flood, and the histories of the Patriarchs.
These scrolls may have been re-dictated to Moses at Sinai--word-for-word which then comprised the first book of Genesis.
The events in Egypt and the 40 years of wandering in the desert which make up the remaining four books may have been dictated soon after they happened along the way, or may have been dictated all at once at the conclusion of Moses' life. It is a talmudic dispute
Now you should keep in mind that G-d may have assumed various "voices" throughout the Torah (denoted by the different names of G-d) depending on the nature of the information being transmitted.
This was already pointed out by the Sages of the Talmud and Midrash long before the appeance of the DH.
One voice for issuing commandments, statutes and laws, another for narrating a certain type of event or series of events, another for recording dialogue between people and between G-d and people.
There is no single consistent mode of narration in the Torah-- and this understandably lead to the DH.
And in Deuteronomy you have the strange situation where Moses gave a long valedictory address on his own, and G-d told Moses afterwards to write all those words down and include it in the Torah.
But the bottom line is that the view you are contrasting with is that G-d dictated each and every word of the Torah to Moses at some point in his life. But keep in mind that these words may have been around before this dictation and G-d simply re-issued those words through prophecy to Moses in the final form of the Torah.
"When will you clue Dovid and me in on the "answer" to your dice question?"
ReplyDeleteI was waiting to see if Dovid cared to respond to it, but since he didn't, I'll go ahead.
125 students at the University of British Columbia and Stanford played this game for real money (and 135 for no money). In both groups, 2% chose 3, 65% chose 2 (62% when the question was just hypothetical and not for money), and only 33% (36%) chose 1.
The correct answer is 1. It is more likely than 2 or 3 when the odds of each sequence are calculated, the ultimate reason for this is that it has one less variable. However, it is not merely more probable in the way that GGGGGG is more probable than RRRRRR. RGRRR not only has a better chance of winning than GRGRRR, but every time GRGRRR wins RGRRR also wins because it is a portion of GRGRRR.
Because G is more likely each roll than red, adding a G to the front of the sequence makes it seem more plausible to people even though adding that variable makes it less probable.
In explanations and predictions, details are burdensome. However much probability you assign to the likelihood that "God brought the Jews out of Egypt", it is more likely that "God brought the Jews out of Egypt" than that "God brought the Jews out of Egypt and executed justice upon the Egyptians."
(Please note: this does not imply that it is more likely that "God brought the Jews out of Egypt and did not execute justice upon the Egyptians" than "God brought the Jews out of Egypt and executed justice upon the Egyptians".
This is a reference to the Passover song Dayeinu and its profligate detail.
Dovid says "You've labeled what you've called it--evolution of cultural texts and re-interpretation, but you haven't described it in any detail whatsoever in order to be able to analyze it critially.
When did the text first appear? in what form? in which location? which people had it and evolved it? If you want to provide a truly plausible alternative, you need to provide a complete alternative. just a hand waving of--"just as other stories do" will not do."
Larry responds by saying "You ask me to provide greater description of "evolution of cultural texts and re-interpretation." It's a fair request...I certainly would like to be able to provide details about how the Sinai story actually began, how it evolved, and how it got re-interpreted. We have a little information on all of this, but not much. But I don't think that you have many details either about how the story began. You and I have the very same problem."
Dovid responds, "I'm glad you acknowledge that there is a need to provide a (probable!) alternative explanation to the mass revelation belief in order to justify ignoring it."
Statements in bold in quotes above are problematic.
An alternative sufficient to displace the God hypothesis (GH) does not have to be very complete.
Lack of detail is not a problem because we can adjust our probabilistic models to encompass any of several details.
That last statement by Dovid is only objectionable if we read in an implication that the alternative explanation has to be as specific as the GH. A general hypothesis without as much detail as the blow-by-blow narrative(s) in the Torah may serve quite well as an alternative explanation that justifies ignoring the GH.
It's also actually possible for a god (or THE LORD in particular) to be the most likely author of a book (the Torah) without it being at all likely that the origin of the book is supernatural. If THE LORD is more likely the author than either Ezra, or Nehemia, or Aharon, etc., the hypothesis "THE LORD wrote the Torah" may still be much worse than the (blessedly unburdened by detail) hypothesis "a human or humans wrote the Torah".