Kuzari: A Reply to Dovid Kornreich on Evidence and Hypotheses

I have yet to fulfill my promise to Dovid Kornreich: I agreed to explain how I think the Sinai story originated and developed.

Today I want to take yet another step toward directly formulating this explanation, but let me first review earlier steps:

• In "Kuzari: Belief and Evidence (and Bias, Oh My!)," I bracketed the task--i.e., my speculative explanation on the Sinai story--to give what I hope is proper perspective on its value. The best I can hope for is a fair approach to and accounting for the observed evidence. This means we cannot simply grant that the story might be true as it appears in the Torah because that smuggles in the assumption (among others) that the God of Moses existed. Anyone who wants to claim that the story is true as reported in today's Torah must show both evidence and argument for the existence of that God and his involvement in the event in question. Incidentally, that anyone might also want to show both evidence and argument for Moses, as the existence of Moses is considered unlikely.
• In "Kuzari: Deuteronomy Doesn't Validate the Sinai Revelation" I examined Deuteronomy 4:9-40 and concluded that it presented a later account of the Sinai event and interpretation of it. The passages did not, I said, provide us with a report of Sinai as it was happening. My reading was based in part on understanding the context established in Deuteronomy 1. I concluded that we could not use the Deuteronomy 4 passages to validate the Sinai event itself, but that we could use them to discuss the understanding of the Sinai story.
• I presented the Sinai stories from the J, E and P sources in "Kuzari: Three Sinai Stories." They are quite different and remarkable accounts. J is about the coming of God to Sinai and the establishment of Moses and Aaron as the official go-betweens of God and Israel. The account is more personal in E. There remains a distance between God and the people, but Moses functions as more a translator in E, whereas I see him as a representative in J. God is a black box in P, and Moses alone enters. All knowledge and authority rest with Moses.
• Most recently, I posted "Kuzari: Why Aren't There More Sinai-Like Stories?" to address the question in the title. My answer is that we have three Sinai-like stories: J, E, and P. We also have stories with one or more elements such as we find in the Sinai story. What we do not have is another story from another tradition or culture that is exactly like Sinai. But we don't need carbon copies of Sinai, and a demand for them is unreasonable.

Before I can get to a direct formulation, I have to address one more topic, which comes from comments made by Dovid Kornreich:

Please specify (in future posts, perhaps) 1) the observed evidence and 2) tested hypotheses which reconstruct the textual history of Deuteronomy--which do not commit logical fallacies. Namely: of assuming the conclusion at the outset. Meaning they do not initially view the evidence through the prism of the conclusion.

I have yet to come across such fallacy-free evidence and hypothesis testing in Biblical scholarship.

This is a great comment deserving serious consideration, and the topic it raises concerns the nature of evidence. What is the evidence? What does it mean for something to be taken as evidence? What is the relationship between evidence and hypothesis?

These are huge questions that I think can be usefully approached by first establishing the big picture. For us, the big-big picture is essentially a model of the world and how it works. There are several ways to specify the model, but let's try this:

1. The natural world operates according to physical laws.
2. Events in the natural world have physical components.
3. Events can cause other, subsequent events.
4. Some events can literally be more effective than other events.
5. Some events are more likely to have regular causes than other events.

I assume we all can agree with the general outline of this model, although some may question or object to specific elements. It is hopefully beyond question that the natural world, per specifications 1 and 2, has enough regularity and predictability to allow us to develop a stable picture of it. Now I'm aware that our human ability to apprehend and describe the world breaks down at some extremes, and this is fine. Ultimately, however, with physical laws we know we are talking about the measurable behavior of matter and the transfer of information.

If someone wants to modify the model by saying--for example--"The natural world operates according to physical and spiritual laws," then I need to know what we are talking about when we use the term spiritual laws. I need to know what spirit is, what it does, and how we build knowledge of it.

But I want to return to the model I sketched out before because we do not need to commit ourselves to it. We can test the model and ask questions about it:

• (a) Given the model I described, how do we assess the likelihood of specific observations?
• (b) Given a set of observations and the model above, how do we choose the cause-effect chain that best explains the observations?
• (c) Given a set of observations and different models or different variations within the model above, how do we find the best model or model variation that best explains the observations?

Using all the above, let's consider a statement such as we find in Deuteronomy 16b:

there were thunder claps and lightning flashes, and a thick cloud was upon the mountain, and a very powerful blast of a shofar

In our model, how likely are thunder claps, lightening, and clouds by mountains? Likely within normal ranges. In other words, weather events fit right into our model. So far as I know, there is nothing related to climate or geography that would make a weather event practically impossible at Sinai.

Now, what happens if we use our model and the second bullet (b) above? Well, we can establish different configurations of natural causes and events that would lead up to thunder, lightening and clouds on Sinai at a particular time. Our proposed configuration may or may not be close to the truth, but they will be complete. We have no need to invoke anything beyond the model to develop a minimally viable hypothesis.

How about using our model and the third bullet (c) above? This could be the time to ask whether a model that included "and spiritual" might perform better than the original model for the given observation. It won't, unless we have a way to identify what specifically is spiritual in the observed event. In other words, unless and until we can agree on what information does and does not fall within the category "spiritual," then the concept is superfluous for our purposes.

We can now return to Dovid Kornreich's question to me and talk about the observed evidence. I'll cite biblical scholar Richard Elliott Friedman (from The Bible with Sources Revealed) and list the evidence of the multiple source hypothesis as follows:

1. Linguistic evidence (p. 7): The different sources reflect the Hebrew language of several distinct periods. The change in language is attested through Hebrew texts outside the Torah.
2. Terminology (p. 8): Certain words and phrases appear disproportionately and even entirely in some sources but not in others.
3. Consistent content (p. 10): This is the "different sources use different names for God" line of evidence. More correctly, the sources differ on when the name of God was first revealed to humans. A second line of evidence in this same category concerns sacred objects such as the Tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, Urim and Tummim, and so on. Some sources dwell excessively on one or more of these objects while other sources make no mention at all.  A third line of evidence involves the priestly leadership. In the P source, the line of Aaron has exclusive access to the divine. The arguments for this line are more substantial than I can relate here and now, so do read Friedman and others on this. Finally, P is unique among the sources in its concern over ages, dates, measurements, numbers, order, and precise instructions.
4. Continuity of texts (p. 13): When the sources are separated from one another, each makes a flowing, sensible text. In discussing this line of evidence Friedman addresses an objection I already know is coming, as it is expressed in Kornreich's question. The objection is that the multiple source hypothesis came first, and then the Torah was divided to produce this result. Friedman anticipates this type of objection:

   So much of the text flows smoothly flows smoothly...that it is not possible that any scholar could have constructed it to do so while keeping all the evidence consistently within sources. The scholar would still have to keep all the sources' similar versions of common stories (known as "doublets") separated. The scholar would still have to keep all of the characteristic terminology of each source within the passages attributed to that particular source. The scholar would still have to keep all of the linguistic  evidence for the stages of Hebrew intact, all the occurrences of the divine name consistent within sources, and all the other lines of evidence intact--all of this while producing stories that flow smoothly.

5. Connections with other parts of the Bible (p. 14): I'll let Friedman's words make the case here.

   When distinguished from one another, the individual sources each have specific affinities with particular portions of the Bible. D has well-known parallels of wording with the book of Jeremiah. P has such parallels with with the book of Ezekiel. J and E are particularly connected with the book Hosea. This is not simply a matter of a coincidence of subject matter in these parallel texts. It is a proper connection of language and views between particular sources and particular prophetic works.

6. Relationships among the sources to each other and to history (p. 18): We see that each source has connections to specific circumstances in history and to other sources. J appears connected to the kingdom of Judah in the south of Israel. E has connections with northern Israel. Our time frame here is between 922 and 722 BCE. P is connection to the time of Hezekiah, king of Judah from 715-687 BCE. D is associated, as we have previously discussed, with the reign of Josiah, king of Judah from 640-609 BCE. Finally, the P source has a consistent relationship with the prior sources J and E. Its content and order of episodes show it to be an alternative composition to JE.
7. Convergence (p. 27): I'll once again let Friedman state the case:

   Above all, the strongest evidence establishing the Documentary Hypothesis is that several different lines of evidence converge....The most compelling argument for the hypothesis is that this hypothesis best accounts for the fact that all this evidence of so many kinds comes together so consistently.

We now have the set of seven observations listed above and a hypothesis purporting to describe the causal chain accounting for the observations. This puts us in range of the second bullet item (b) above. With a set of observations and a viable hypothesis, we can propose a model of how the Torah was constructed and then test it through bullet points (a) to (c). The model must recognize all of the seven observations as possible outcomes. The model must also be generally compatible with our big-picture model from before.

I will apologetically avoid sketching out a personal, provisional model of how the Torah was constructed. One reason for this is that Kornreich's question to me can be fully addressed now without such a model. The second reason is that I may need to provide it in the next post, which I expect will be my promised explanation of how the Sinai story originated and developed.

To answer Kornreich's question, then:

• The observed evidence is such that is enumerated above. We observe, for example, words in the Bible from different periods in the history of the Hebrew language. One explanation for this observation is that preserved content from earlier times was later combined with other content and the whole thing became one composite text.
• The tested hypotheses are not only the species of the Documentary Hypothesis but species of what I'll call the Divine Inspiration Hypothesis. The latter set ranges from taking the Torah as the word of God transmitted through Moses to taking it as assembled (a la the DH) by divinely inspired redactors. The tests include incorporating new observations and data points and reconciling lines of evidence with each other. In other words, we are not looking simply for an explanation to the language history observation, we are looking also for an explanation that is compatible and consistent with other lines of evidence.
• Do modern biblical scholars such as Friedman presume the truth of the Documentary Hypothesis at the outset? Friedman's statements in the "Continuity of texts" line of evidence (#4) argue against circularity. These statements also suggest how circularity could be exposed and the DH challenged. Now, we do need to bring some assumptions to the table beforehand. For example, if we assume that there are no contradictions at all in the Bible, we can come up with all sorts of ingenious ways to explain apparent contradictions to make them "go away." The real question is how do we choose between the assumption that Torah contains no contradictions and the assumption that it may contains contradictory accounts and statements? I don't think that we can answer this question without thinking long and hard about our big-picture model.

To conclude, we arrive at the heart of the disagreement in my perspective and Kornreich's. If I understand his position correctly, he will argue that at least some of the seven observations do not constitute "problems" at all; that is, these are not things that need to be explained.

But this is where I really should invite Dovid himself to respond. And so...my questions to Dovid:

1. Are the seven observations valid? Which ones are not, and why not?
2. Of the observations that are valid, how do you explain what we see in the text? 
3. How do your explanations better account for the observations than explanations under the Documentary Hypothesis?
4. How would you modify or alter the big-picture model I developed earlier in this post?
5. Assuming you subscribe to a version of the Divine Inspiration Hypothesis, how do you personally avoid assuming its truth when you are reasoning about what you observe in the Bible and in the sacred works of other religions?

Dovid, I'll look forward to your answers. I'm willing to give them a full post here or to link to your blog if you like. Next up for me: My explanation of how the Sinai story originated and developed.

Reading Comprehension Fail

Denyse O'Leary: A little milk in your mustache, dear.

Here is what I wrote:

However, I am surprised that that Carroll's post has not generated more discussion at UD [Uncommon Descent] than it has: only about 23 responses in 24 hours.

Here's what a granny thinks I meant:

Huh? Fellow claims no one cared about “Don’t need God” physicist Sean Carroll’s recent post …

I neither said nor meant that people didn't care. Rather, I stated only that I had expected more discussion (please note that discussion is a different concept than caring) in the first 24 hours of the post's life than what I saw.

[Sigh.]

The granny finishes:

File under: Yuh. Another “science” guy holds forth.

I'm actually a humanities guy. Please go back to sleep, Denyse.

Wednesday Comedy: On Wednesday Comedy

Some people are so smart and talented (see XKCD) that it degrades them a bit to mention how smart and talented they are.

On the Mountain Trails

My wife, our three kids, and I went to New Hampshire this past weekend for my extended family's annual get-together. I love the White Mountains area and would live there the rest of my life if circumstances ever permitted. There's no break, however, from my son's autism, and I came out of the weekend with one new observation on the way others see my son.

People who aren't familiar with autistic children don't seem to grasp why such kids act up like they sometimes will. They think the kids just need the right instructions given in the proper way. To them, the kids seem quirky, or stubborn, or selfish, or immature, or undisciplined. In short, to them the "problem" is nurture, not nature.

I don't mean to harsh on these people. I think that maybe they sense that our son is different, and it makes them uncomfortable. From his appearance alone, my son looks as though he should behave as any other child. The location of his discrepancy simply isn't apparent. They must think that there's got to be some way to snap my son out of his autism.

I suppose I, too, hope for a magic technique that will help my son calm his body when life forces him out of his comfort zone. I wish I had the correct words and demeanor to keep my son's behavior in balance all the time. I get frustrated when I can't get him to listen to me. But there is no magic, and my wife and I (and our daughters) do the best we can.

Luckily, our families and our friends support us and are as understanding as possible. We also have many great resources that help us to learn about autism and about better and poorer strategies for dealing with an autistic child.

Unfortunately, my wife and I are on a bit of an island with our son. The nuances and pressures of our daily lives are largely invisible to outsiders, even to our families. What is more, our son is on an island of his own, detached from us. This is really the hardest thought, because we don't want him to be alone. We want to reach him and have him able to reach us.

I refuse to be saddened or discouraged by anything about my son's autism, however. As much energy as it takes to care for him, he is also sweet, loving, and independent. We're encouraged that he makes progress at pre-school. And he loves the mountain trails, just like me.

Wednesday Comedy: Belated Father's Day

My Father's Day began with an 80-minute run and then a trip to the doctor for my son, who contracted pink eye. So it goes as a parent.

OK, I'll give some obligatory sentimentality by presenting a favorite poem, Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays":

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

I Have Found God

I learned, in another forum,* that someone was praying for me to find God. Too late. I must report that I have indeed found God. In fact, I am an atheist precisely because I have found Him.

To paraphrase Walt Kelly, "I have met God and He is Us."



* I suppose standard usage is "on another forum," but that doesn't feel right to me.

Kuzari: Why Aren't There More Sinai-Like Stories?

Best miracle ever!

Let me paraphrase a Kuzari-related argument I hear often enough:

If the Mount Sinai story is a myth (taken to mean "untrue") developed through human cultural processes, then we should see more examples of Sinai-like stories. But we don't see more examples. There's only one Mount Sinai story and only one religion claiming to have had a national event like Mount Sinai. Therefore, it's more reasonable to think that Mount Sinai is not a myth and instead really happened.

To consider the argument, let's get clear on what the Mount Sinai story is. Tzvi Freeman characterizes the story as the national witness of Moses' authenticity:

[O]n the sixth day of the third month of the year 2448 from Creation, an entire nation full of dissidents and skeptics gathered at the foot of a mountain in the Sinai Desert and witnessed how G-d spoke with Moses. Rather overwhelmed by the experience, they asked Moses to kindly fetch all the details of what exactly G-d would like from them and report on it. [emphasis added]

Freeman's interpretation is that the nation witnessed not God itself and not God speaking but how God spoke to Moses. This distinction is important because it's Moses the people confirm, not God. The Sinai story is, in this sense, another "proving the prophet" story. But what's supposed to be distinctive about the Sinai story is that the entire nation witnessed Moses as being in conversation with God. Where Kuzari comes in is that allegedly the entire nation believed that what it had witnessed was a bona-fide miracle. Of course, we have no idea what the entire nation actually believed--assuming there was any sort of event at all. But these are the two pillars of Kuzari, national witness and national belief. And neither of these characteristics can be pulled from the history of Israel.

Back, then, to the assertion at the top that we should expect "more examples of Sinai-like stories." Contrary to the assertion, there's no logical requirement for myths exactly like Sinai. The bald fact of many Sinai-like myths or of none is in itself irrelevant. A perceived lack of more examples has no bearing on either the evidence of a Sinai event or the evidence of the Sinai story.

In considering "the Sinai story," we have a complication in that we have at least three Sinai stories. What's more, not all of them correspond well to Freeman's account, given above. Here, for example, is the Sinai story from the J source:

Ch. 19:10. And the Lord said to Moses, "Go to the people and prepare them today and tomorrow, and they shall wash their garments.

11. And they shall be prepared for the third day, for on the third day, the Lord will descend before the eyes of all the people upon Mount Sinai.

12. And you shall set boundaries for the people around, saying, Beware of ascending the mountain or touching its edge; whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death.'

13. No hand shall touch it, for he shall be stoned or cast down; whether man or beast, he shall not live. When the ram's horn sounds a long, drawn out blast, they may ascend the mountain."

14. So Moses descended from the mountain to the people, and he prepared the people, and they washed their garments.

15. He said to the people, "Be ready for three days; do not go near a woman."

16a. It came to pass on the third day when it was morning,

* * *

18. And the entire Mount Sinai smoked because the Lord had descended upon it in fire, and its smoke ascended like the smoke of the kiln, and the entire mountain quaked violently.

* * *

20. The Lord descended upon Mount Sinai, to the peak of the mountain, and the Lord summoned Moses to the peak of the mountain, and Moses ascended.

21. The Lord said to Moses, "Go down, warn the people lest they break [their formation to go nearer] to the Lord, and many of them will fall.

22. And also, the priests who go near to the Lord shall prepare themselves, lest the Lord wreak destruction upon them."

23. And Moses said to the Lord, "The people cannot ascend to Mount Sinai, for You warned us saying, Set boundaries for the mountain and sanctify it.' "

24. But the Lord said to him, "Go, descend, and [then] you shall ascend, and Aaron with you, but the priests and the populace shall not break [their formation] to ascend to the Lord, lest He wreak destruction upon them."

25. So Moses went down to the people and said [this] to them.

Now, here is Sinai in the E source. This is the one that is closest to Freeman:

Ch. 19:2b. and Israel encamped there opposite the mountain.

3. Moses ascended to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, "So shall you say to the house of Jacob and tell the sons of Israel,

4. You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and [how] I bore you on eagles' wings, and I brought you to Me.

5. And now, if you obey Me and keep My covenant, you shall be to Me a treasure out of all peoples, for Mine is the entire earth.

6. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of princes and a holy nation.' These are the words that you shall speak to the children of Israel."

7. Moses came and summoned the elders of Israel and placed before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him.

8. And all the people replied in unison and said, "All that the Lord has spoken we shall do!" and Moses took the words of the people back to the Lord.

9. And the Lord said to Moses, "Behold, I am coming to you in the thickness of the cloud, in order that the people hear when I speak to you, and they will also believe in you forever." And Moses relayed the words of the people to the Lord.

* * *

16b. there were thunder claps and lightning flashes, and a thick cloud was upon the mountain, and a very powerful blast of a shofar, and the entire nation that was in the camp shuddered.

17. Moses brought the people out toward God from the camp, and they stood at the bottom of the mountain.

* * *

19. The sound of the shofar grew increasingly stronger; Moses would speak and God would answer him with a voice.

* * *

Ch. 20:18. The people remained far off, but Moses drew near to the opaque darkness, where God was.

19. The Lord said to Moses, "So shall you say to the children of Israel, You have seen that from the heavens I have spoken with you.

20. You shall not make [images of anything that is] with Me. Gods of silver or gods of gold you shall not make for yourselves.

21. An altar of earth you shall make for Me, and you shall slaughter beside it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your cattle. Wherever I allow My name to be mentioned, I will come to you and bless you.

Finally, here is Sinai from the P source:

19:1. In the third month of the children of Israel's departure from Egypt, on this day they arrived in the desert of Sinai.

* * *

Ch. 24:15b. and the cloud covered the mountain.

16. And the glory of the Lord rested on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days, and He called to Moses on the seventh day from within the cloud.

17. And the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire atop the mountain, before the eyes of the children of Israel.

18a. And Moses came within the cloud.

Thus, the Sinai story is multiple. This multiplicity, in turn, reveals that Kuzari-style interpretations of Sinai are post-hoc and at least partly revisionist. Kuzari is therefore unable to prove anything--a critical point that ought to be acknowledged but seldom is.

One final note: myth formation is not incompatible or inconsistent with some "real" historical event serving as an originating point for the story--there could have been something like a real Sinai moment between 1313 BCE and 2200 BCE, but there also needn't have been. Even at best, Kuzari does not give us a solid reason to think whether there might have been any real Sinai event or not.

If one is so biased, one can use the Kuzari Principle to rationalize acceptance of Judaism. Indeed, given the fantastical nature of so many tales in the Torah and in the traditional Jewish library (which makes the tales fun and interesting, by the way), one needs whatever arguments are available to justify giving oneself over to traditional authorities. Without such bias, however, Kuzari appears as what it is: an interesting yet problematic stretch. When we leave idle philosophizing and start to collect and consider material artifacts, Kuzari's wish-world offers too little and too faintly.

Wednesday Comedy: Riot

I'm a bit late with the weekly comedy segment. Adding the proverbial insult to injury, I'm going to provide a video that ain't funny. It's the rioting in Vancouver after the loss of the Canucks hockey team to the Boston Bruins in the deciding game of the Stanley Cup finals.

Apparently, this is not the first time Vancouver has erupted in riots following a defeat in the Stanley Cup finals.

These events dampen my spirit, since I'm pleased that my home team Bruins have emerged victorious. They competed very well and deserved to win the series and the Cup.

On the Road and on the iPod

Rain and lightning can't stop me!

I braved downpours, flashes of light, and deep rumbles from the sky for today's 5:30-in-the-morning run--but I have more than just will power on my side. Over the past few weeks, I've ramped up on the runs because I'm training for the July 4 Harvard Pilgrim 10K road race. I like this race especially because it finishes on the field at Gillette Stadium, where my beloved New England Patriots football team play.

And there's more: I have also started strength training three times a week. I plan to look good and run well on July 4 and beyond. At the very least, I want to do the entire 6.2-mile course without having to walk any part of it. Last year, I was not ready for the full distance and had to walk a good chunk of the race.

I'm moving and grooving now, though. Here's what my weeks tend to look like these days, exercise-wise:

Day	Exercise	Duration
Sunday	Long run	60-90 mins
Monday	Strength training	15-30 mins
Tuesday	Run	30-40 mins
Wednesday	Strength training	15-30 mins
Thursday	Run	20-30 mins
Friday	Strength training	15-30 mins
Saturday	Open	Open

Although I have plenty of desire to get faster and stronger, one motivation for me is the running playlist on my (wife's) iPod. Here's what I listen to, in no particular order and without the usual quotation marks around song titles:

• The Bad Plus
• Lost of Love
• Prehensile Dream
• Flim

• Esbjorn Svensson Trio
• Dolores in a Shoestand
• Did They Ever Tell Cousteau?

• Led Zeppelin
• The Song Remains the Same (Live)
• Deep Purple
• Highway Star (Live)
• Living Colour
• Behind the Sun
• Cake
• The Distance
• Eminem
• Lose Yourself
• Foo Fighters
• Everlong
• Metallica
• Fade to Black
• Twisted Sister
• I Wanna Rock
• U2
• Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
• Miles Davis
• What I Say
• Motorhead
• Ace of Spades
• Andrew Bird
• Sweetmatter
• Armchair

I have other artists and songs on the playlist, but these make up the highlights. I'm really into The Bad Plus recently.

Carroll on Doing Science

Sean Carroll

Very interesting. Physicist Sean Carroll visits Uncommon Descent to explain the scientific method and why it leads to the conclusion that the universe does not need gods. I particularly appreciate this prefatory bit, where Carroll smartly distinguishes the practice of science from other types of intellectual, philosophical, and emotional pursuit:

I will be taking one thing for granted: that what we’re interested in doing here is science. There are many kinds of consideration that may lead people to theism or atheism that have nothing whatsoever to do with science; likewise, one may believe that there are ways of understanding the natural world that go beyond the methods of science. I have nothing to say about that right now; that’s a higher-level discussion. I’m just going to presume that we all agree that we’re trying to be the best scientists we can possibly be, and ask what that means.

On the laws of science, Carroll says:

Vincent asks “How can rules exist in the absence of a mind?” That is simply not a question that science is concerned with. Science wants to know how we can boil the behavior of nature down to the simplest possible rules. You might want more than that; but then you’re not doing science. He also asks why we should believe that the rules should continue to hold tomorrow, simply because they have held in the past. Again, that’s what science does. Imagining that the same basic laws will continue to hold provides a simpler fit to the data we have than imagining (for no good reason) that they will change. If you are personally unsatisfied with that attitude, that’s fine; but your dissatisfaction is not a scientific matter.

Then look at this point on openness:

This is probably the most important point I have to make, and follows directly on the issue of “laws” just addressed. There is a way of trying to understand the world that might roughly be called “scholastic,” which sits down and tries to reason about how the world should be. The great success of science over the last five hundred years has been made possible by throwing out that kind of thinking in favor of a different model. Namely: we think of every possible way the world could be, and then we go out and look at the world to see which is the simplest description that fits the data. Science insists that we be open to all possibilities, and let the data decide which is true.

Suppose that you are convinced that laws of nature could not exist without a guiding intelligence that formulated them and sustains them. That’s fine for you, but it’s a deeply unscientific attitude. The scientific attitude is: “We observe that there are regularities in nature. We might imagine that they are formulated and sustained by a guiding intelligence, or that they simply exist on their own. Let’s go collect data to determine which idea is a more parsimonious fit to reality.”

And let me offer one final quote from Carroll, this time on clarity:

The problem is simple: God isn’t expressed in the form of equations. There is no clear and unambiguous map from God to a particular set of laws of physics, or a particular configuration of the universe. If there were, we would be using that map to make predictions. What does God have to say about supersymmetry, or the mass of the Higgs boson, or the amplitude of gravitational-wave perturbations of the cosmic microwave background? If we claim that God “explains” the known laws of physics, the same method of explanation should work for the unknown laws. It’s not going to happen.

All in all, Carroll does a nice job of modeling clear thinking, clear writing, and intellectual honesty.

However, I am surprised that that Carroll's post has not generated more discussion at UD than it has: only about 23 responses in 24 hours. Over at Sean's site, commenter Tyro assesses the general quality of those responses:

Most of the responses totally ignore everything Sean wrote and just try to pipe up with logical arguments, weird semantic arguments, or conspiracy theories. Very few seemed to think that anything in Sean’s piece actually applied to them. One of the weirdest responses was from DonaldM who says that, when talking about simplicity, Sean was really talking about the simplest naturalistic explanation even though DM actually quotes Sean when he explicitly considers God.

Wednesday Comedy: Chuck Norris versus Bear

It's that kind of day today.

I Send Email

Today, I made a bit of a break with my local rabbi:

Hi Rabbi Z.,

[My wife] tells me that you left a message on our voice mail recently. I have a moment now to drop a note, so I want to thank you for your call. Unfortunately, I must pass along my regrets, as I'll be unable to attend the Shavuos party this week. Certainly, my schedule is hectic, as usual. And certainly my family and I have our hands full with [my son's] autism.

But there's something else, and that is that I'm less inclined these days to participate in religious activities because I've abandoned the idea of gods altogether. I won't bore you with the full story of this transformation in my thinking. Basically, the research I did for [Rabbi S.] three years ago opened my eyes to arguments and information (some new, some old) that led me to put away the pretenses of gods, favored peoples, angels and demons, afterlife, and so on. I say all this not to offend, shock, or disappoint. Neither am I interested in debating the topic or discussing it further. My purpose in sharing this information with you is so that you can understand why I am focusing my energies in other directions.

Nevertheless, I still have the same high level of personal affection for you and your family. [My wife] and the kids enjoy seeing everyone. We'll be by in the future as we can. In other respects, however, I am gone and not coming back.

Best,

Larry

Bud Powell, "Un Poco Loco"

Earl Rudolph "Bud" Powell, 1924-1966.

"Un Poco Loco," recorded in 1951, is one of the first pieces by Bud Powell I ever heard. Powell on piano and Roach on drums are stunning.

A nice musical portrait of Powell appears in this 1995 New York Times piece:

Powell's was a Romantic's imagination delivered with a classicist's precision and an awesome, sometimes frightening, intensity. A lifelong Bach devotee, he saw in the contrapuntal bent of the pre-Romantic composers a fitting vehicle for the percussive jazz sensibility -- not for nothing did he name one of his tunes "Tempis Fugue-It." In a rhythm section, he positioned himself at the center of a constantly evolving group counterpoint, inserting surgical-strike chords at strategic places while staying out of the way of soloists who were thinking, as he was, in longer phrases.

As a soloist, Powell owned a superhuman technique that allowed him percussively to pop syncopated accents out of long lines of eighth notes, often at blindingly fast tempos. By doing so, he was able to deliver jazz's characteristic accenting, its rhythmic DNA, into a more complex musical universe; rhythmic patterns that might have appeared 10 years earlier as big-band riffs showed up in Powell's work as the accented notes in long, serpentine melodic lines.

The heart, soul and most of the body of Powell's achievement is contained in the nine compact disks that make up the Blue Note and Verve sets. Powell was an erratic performer, plagued by mental illness for many of what should have been his ripest working years. Both sets document a decline in his work after 1953, as his hot, sharp conception and attack became dulled and blunted by God knows what demons. Although Powell at his weakest could be more thought-provoking than many pianists at their best, some of the music on both sets is painful to listen to.

Happily, the sets also document Powell at the absolute peak of his powers. Eight 1947 trio sides recorded for the small Roost label and included on the Blue Note set are definitive of Powell's style; on up-tempo tracks like "Bud's Bubble" and George Gershwin's "Nice Work if You Can Get It," a brilliant, feverish technique works at full tilt in the service of an amazingly fecund imagination. Also included are some classic tunes recorded at a 1949 session with the trumpeter Fats Navarro and a young Sonny Rollins on tenor saxophone and several takes of Powell's 1951 masterpiece "Un Poco Loco." Both the Blue Note and the Verve sets italicize Powell's talents as a composer as well as a virtuoso performer.

The Verve set, which contains a booklet full of interviews and rare photographs, consists almost entirely of trio performances from the mid-1950's, which vary wildly in quality but are never less than absorbing. The first of the five disks, however, features wall-to-wall classics, including eight stunning 1951 solo tracks on which Powell is an acrobat on an electrified high wire; on tracks like "Hallucinations," "The Fruit" and the exultantly swinging "Parisian Thoroughfare," he shows why he was the idol of every young pianist for the next decade and beyond. Without Bud Powell, the work of Tommy Flanagan, Wynton Kelly, Sonny Clark, Oscar Peterson and Chick Corea, as well as contemporaries like Benny Green, Stephen Scott, Eric Reed and Michael Weiss, would sound very different indeed.

Some nice quotes from other musicians about Bud:

He was the foundation out of which stemmed the whole edifice of modern jazz piano; every jazz pianist since Bud either came through him or is deliberately attempting to get away from playing like him.

     Herbie Hancock


If I had to choose a single musician according to his artistic merit and the originality of his creation, but also for the greatness of his work, it would be Bud Powell. Nobody could measure up to him.

     Bill Evans


No one could play like Bud; too difficult, too quick, incredible!

     Thelonious Monk


Bud was the most brilliant that a spirit might be, a unique genius in our culture.

     Max Roach


He laid down the basis of modern jazz piano.

     Dizzy Gillespie

Kuzari: Three Sinai Stories

Pregnant triplets. There's a connection with what we're talking about here. I just can't remember what it is.

I tend to be most productive when I have many tasks on my to-do list.

This post will be short on commentary, but nevertheless interesting and provocative (I hope). My Kuzari posts have all centered on the Sinai revelation; that is, on that story. I want to present the story now. Except...it's actually three stories, at least according to biblical criticism.

In what follows, I will present the theophany at Sinai from the J source, the E source, and the P source. In what we know today as the Book of Exodus, these three sources are woven together. When we take them apart, as it were, the narratives yield distinct impressions--not impressions of the event itself so much but of its significance.

With thanks to Richard Elliott Friedman's The Bible with Sources Revealed, here is the J source:

Ch. 19:10. And the Lord said to Moses, "Go to the people and prepare them today and tomorrow, and they shall wash their garments.

11. And they shall be prepared for the third day, for on the third day, the Lord will descend before the eyes of all the people upon Mount Sinai.

12. And you shall set boundaries for the people around, saying, Beware of ascending the mountain or touching its edge; whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death.'

13. No hand shall touch it, for he shall be stoned or cast down; whether man or beast, he shall not live. When the ram's horn sounds a long, drawn out blast, they may ascend the mountain."

14. So Moses descended from the mountain to the people, and he prepared the people, and they washed their garments.

15. He said to the people, "Be ready for three days; do not go near a woman."

16a. It came to pass on the third day when it was morning,

* * *

18. And the entire Mount Sinai smoked because the Lord had descended upon it in fire, and its smoke ascended like the smoke of the kiln, and the entire mountain quaked violently.

* * *

20. The Lord descended upon Mount Sinai, to the peak of the mountain, and the Lord summoned Moses to the peak of the mountain, and Moses ascended.

21. The Lord said to Moses, "Go down, warn the people lest they break [their formation to go nearer] to the Lord, and many of them will fall.

22. And also, the priests who go near to the Lord shall prepare themselves, lest the Lord wreak destruction upon them."

23. And Moses said to the Lord, "The people cannot ascend to Mount Sinai, for You warned us saying, Set boundaries for the mountain and sanctify it.' "

24. But the Lord said to him, "Go, descend, and [then] you shall ascend, and Aaron with you, but the priests and the populace shall not break [their formation] to ascend to the Lord, lest He wreak destruction upon them."

25. So Moses went down to the people and said [this] to them.

Now, here is E:

Ch. 19:2b. and Israel encamped there opposite the mountain.

3. Moses ascended to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, "So shall you say to the house of Jacob and tell the sons of Israel,

4. You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and [how] I bore you on eagles' wings, and I brought you to Me.

5. And now, if you obey Me and keep My covenant, you shall be to Me a treasure out of all peoples, for Mine is the entire earth.

6. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of princes and a holy nation.' These are the words that you shall speak to the children of Israel."

7. Moses came and summoned the elders of Israel and placed before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him.

8. And all the people replied in unison and said, "All that the Lord has spoken we shall do!" and Moses took the words of the people back to the Lord.

9. And the Lord said to Moses, "Behold, I am coming to you in the thickness of the cloud, in order that the people hear when I speak to you, and they will also believe in you forever." And Moses relayed the words of the people to the Lord.

* * *

16b. there were thunder claps and lightning flashes, and a thick cloud was upon the mountain, and a very powerful blast of a shofar, and the entire nation that was in the camp shuddered.

17. Moses brought the people out toward God from the camp, and they stood at the bottom of the mountain.

* * *

19. The sound of the shofar grew increasingly stronger; Moses would speak and God would answer him with a voice.

* * *

Ch. 20:18. The people remained far off, but Moses drew near to the opaque darkness, where God was.

19. The Lord said to Moses, "So shall you say to the children of Israel, You have seen that from the heavens I have spoken with you.

20. You shall not make [images of anything that is] with Me. Gods of silver or gods of gold you shall not make for yourselves.

21. An altar of earth you shall make for Me, and you shall slaughter beside it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your cattle. Wherever I allow My name to be mentioned, I will come to you and bless you.

And finally, here is P:

19:1. In the third month of the children of Israel's departure from Egypt, on this day they arrived in the desert of Sinai.

* * *

Ch. 24:15b. and the cloud covered the mountain.

16. And the glory of the Lord rested on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days, and He called to Moses on the seventh day from within the cloud.

17. And the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire atop the mountain, before the eyes of the children of Israel.

18a. And Moses came within the cloud.

There is so much more to say about what we have here: the reasoning, the context, the cautions. Please forgive me for not providing all that apparatus now. Nevertheless, I think it's fair to say that the three narratives are striking next to one another.

Kuzari: Deuteronomy Doesn't Validate the Sinai Revelation

Illustration by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld of Josiah hearing Deuteronomy read.

I am waaaay busy these days with work, dissertation, and teaching obligations, but I want to release some of the material I had already developed to answer the request of good Dovid Kornreich. Per this request, I agreed to provide greater detail about how the Sinai story began and developed.

This post will build on the last one and start to clarify the picture of Sinai. As a reminder: Sinai is not the whole of what the so-called Kuzari Principle is about. Rather, Sinai often serves as a representative example for Kuzari proponents, who apply Kuzari to argue that Jewish belief is trustworthy. Thus, they argue that Sinai must be true because such an event--a single divine revelation (theophany) before a nation of millions--could not be faked or invented. Whereas other religions claim private or semi-public revelations, thereby being open to fraud or error, Judaism claims that the entire nation of former Hebrew slaves witnessed God directly. At any time in the history of Jewish belief and tradition, the Kuzari proponent says, people could have discovered whether the story was false. A Jew could have asked her mother about the revelation. If the story were not true, the mother would have said "My mother and father never told me such a thing!"

The logical challenges to the Kuzari claim are many, as I have previously discussed at length. We have no good case at all for either divinities in general or divine-based explanations of actual phenomena. Kuzari-proponents offer no examples of either miracles or historically-verified events that are, like Sinai, too massive to have been false or mistakes. However, my biggest peeves with Kuzari and Sinai--and arguments involving them--involve imprecise terminology. I can be as guilty as anyone in using vague words; it's a common sin. But that's why we ask questions, and when we ask what Sinai is or what the Sinai story actually is, we get some interesting answers.

In this post, I am going to clarify what makes up the Sinai story and what doesn't. At the outset, I want to make sure we are distinguishing between the Sinai story, the report of a divine mass revelation, and the Sinai event, the historical phenomenon allegedly experienced by the nation of Israel immediately after their miraculous liberation from Egypt. My main concern is with the story, but the event is never far behind. Incidentally, we are not certain when the Sinai event could actually have occurred. Often, the date depends on the person telling you: I have seen dates (some with arguments) of 1313 BCE, 1250 BCE, 1446 BCE, and 2200 BCE. This range will have some importance a bit later.

Another caution, this time concerning the Sinai story itself. We need to be careful about identifying that which actually is the Sinai story and that which comments on and interprets the story. For this reason, I want to look at verses in Deuteronomy 4:9-40, where reference is made to the Sinai revelation. Here, we have a case where we are not--not, I say--given the Sinai story itself but are rather given commentary and interpretation on the story.

9. But beware and watch yourself very well, lest you forget the things that your eyes saw, and lest these things depart from your heart, all the days of your life, and you shall make them known to your children and to your children's children,

10. the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when the Lord said to me, "Assemble the people for Me, and I will let them hear My words, that they may learn to fear Me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.”

11. And you approached and stood at the foot of the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire up to the midst of the heavens, with darkness, a cloud, and opaque darkness.

12. The Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire; you heard the sound of the words, but saw no image, just a voice.

13. And He told you His covenant, which He commanded you to do, the Ten Commandments, and He inscribed them on two stone tablets.

* * *

32. For ask now regarding the early days that were before you, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and from one end of the heavens to the other end of the heavens, whether there was anything like this great thing, or was the likes of it heard?

33. Did ever a people hear God's voice speaking out of the midst of the fire as you have heard, and live?

34. Or has any god performed miracles to come and take him a nation from the midst of a[nother] nation, with trials, with signs, and with wonders, and with war and with a strong hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great awesome deeds, as all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?

35. You have been shown, in order to know that the Lord He is God; there is none else besides Him.

36. From the heavens, He let you hear His voice to instruct you, and upon the earth He showed you His great fire, and you heard His words out of the midst of the fire,

37. and because He loved your forefathers and chose their seed after them, and He brought you out of Egypt before Him with His great strength,

38. to drive out from before you nations greater and stronger than you, to bring you and give you their land for an inheritance, as this day.

Because this section does not tell the Sinai story but rather comments on it, what we are reading is a later interpretation. What is more, in this interpretation the Sinai story plainly serves as the ground for behavioral prescriptions and prohibitions such as those that fill the Torah from Exodus through Deuteronomy. Do this and don’t do that because of what you saw at Horeb/Sinai (note: Horeb is the name used exclusively in D, while Sinai is used exclusively in the J and E sources. Traditional religious commentators remark that the names signify different spiritual aspects of the place.).

Indeed, modern biblical scholarship locates the text in the section we’ve just seen with the D source. This source appears connected to the reign of Josiah, king of Judah (640-609 BCE), a religious reformer who reads the scrolls of instruction publicly (2 Kings 23:2), demolishes idols (2 Kings 23:15, 23:6,12), and makes Jerusalem the exclusive center of sacrifice. On the possible relation between D and Josiah’s reforms, biblical scholar Richard Elliott Friedman explains:

Josiah’s reforms are connected to instructions that are found in D; the narrative of Josiah’s making those reforms is told in terms and phrases that are typically found in D; and Josiah’s reforms are traced to the promulgation of a particular scroll, which is identified by the same words as the scroll that Moses writes in D. This interlocking chain of connections led to the extremely widely held view in scholarship that that the scroll that was read in Josiah’s day was D. There have been a variety of conceptions: It may have been just the law code that appears in Deuteronomy (chapters 12-26). It may have been the law code and some of the material that precedes and follows it. It may have been written earlier and then made public and authoritative in Josiah’s time. But there is little room for doubt that D is linked in some integral way to the reign of Josiah. (The Bible with Sources Revealed, p. 26)

Whatever the link between D and Josiah, the gap is anywhere from 670 to 1460 years between when Sinai is thought to have possibly occurred and when Josiah’s reign began.

Just think about the magnitude of that time gap, between 670 and 1460 years (about 24.5K days to 53.32K days). How confident are you in the accuracy of any modern report on something that allegedly happened between 670 and 1460 years ago (or, between 551 and 1341 CE)? How confident are you in the accuracy of a report that is itself dated from between the years 551 and 1341 CE?

Another thought experiment: If Josiah were your king and basically shared your religion, how comfortable would you feel telling him that your fathers never said anything to you about having stood at Sinai? How do you think he might respond to your clearing up his misconception? Josiah didn’t need the story to be factually true. He didn’t even need it to be believed. He needed it to be accepted; that is, he needed his favored reading to be accepted. I'm not saying he didn't believe it, but I am saying that he seems to have understood how to use some stories for political authority and power.

Let’s leave Josiah, then, by acknowledging that the D reference to Sinai is a later interpretation of the story: what is more, the reference does not validate the story. We thus have one data point in the development of the Sinai story. We know it was useful as a way to provide historical and religious context to Josiah and his ambitions. We still don't know how the story started or what, if anything, is true in it.

At this point, then, we are in much the same position with respect to Sinai as Kornreich is when he justifies his skepticism concerning other religious claims:

Religious Claim	Kornriech's Response
Claim 1: Jesus Christ was the only begotten son of the Jewish God. Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.	I need to trust the account of 12 individuals who have not demonstrated any particular credibility. I don't KNOW its not true, but there is insufficient evidence due to scant number of witnesses with questionable credibility.
Claim 2: Muhammad was the messenger of God, and the Qu'ran is the eternal and uncreated speech of God.	Again, I don't KNOW its not true, but the claims give no method for verification. How do we know he is a prophet? Did he make true predictions? cause miracles? How do we know it is a divine text? Did only one person receive it? Does it make true predictions?
Claim 3: Mahaguru Parthasarathy, and Indian man, proves the existence and divinity of Vishnu by being an avatar of the god.	Same as #2--the claims give no method for verification. I need to trust the claim of an individual of unknown trustworthiness.

Wednesday Comedy: Tornadoes!

Tornadoes in my area. Happy birthday, Mom.

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Another perspective: