First of all, I am not “Dovid.” Nor am I a Rabbi. Nor am I haredi.
I can’t imagine how they can assume that those on the journey were 10,000 people when many archeologists (though not most) claim that the journey didn’t take place at all (and the Aztecs don’t tell us how many people were there).
The Kuzari proof is all about national BELIEFS. We have no way of knowing what the Aztecs really believed. All their writings - aside from the fact that there was a journey - contradict each other. If they were around, we could ask them what they believed. Sadly, they are no longer around. Kuzari still lives.
A city cannot be a commemoration. Everyone has cities. How does a city REMIND you of the event?
It doesn’t make a difference what YOU THINK would qualify. We are evaluating evidence. And when all you can come up with is is something which is - AT BEST - is 1/200 of the number of people, then you have no right to ASSUME that my evidence is fallible. We have to use empirical evidence, not what “you think.”
My response to Wintertimes point by saying that it was a hallucination was only one of many defenses to his point; I don’t feel that I need to focus on them. And, no, I don’t think that everyone hallucinated, although that does seem to have happened at Fatima, where a large mass of people hallucinated - and this has repeated itself numerous times when people look at the sun.
Did everyone in Constantine’s Army hallucinate? I never suggested that. A certain percentage did, however. Since a small percentage believed that they saw a fiery cross - let’s say 10% - the story “became” that a large percentage did.
So, you may respond, could’t it have been that a small percentage of Jews - let’s say, 10% - ate manna and walked though a split sea and saw Korach fall through the pit, and saw Moses shining face, and saw the rock that gave forth water, and saw the clouds of glory, and saw the pillar of fire, and saw the tens of other miracles - and only later did they think that everyone saw the miracles? Yes, it is possible. But that is still a miracle. A split sea is a split sea, eating manna for forty years is still a miracle whether only 10% of the people experienced it.
(My last paragraph may have been a bit terse, so please read it carefully).
Bpelta, this is an off-board issue. Please don’t bring it into this thread. (Since abele derer says he’s not this person I’m guessing that’s the end of it anyway.)
This is not a meaningful objection. The city could commemorate the event based on its location or many other elements. The story could just be an origin myth for the city, of course. But then again the exodus story is a myth explaining the Jews’ presence in Israel and that doesn’t seem to be a problem for abele derer.
You have no empirical evidence. You’re claiming here that only your opinion matters, which is rich.
There’s no evidence ANY of this happened to ANY Jews. You need to deal with that before you start making guesses about the numbers. There’s no evidence they were in Egypt and none that they crossed the desert.
I never claimed that I know, or have evidence, that anything happened to the Jews in Egypt or in the desert - other than the Jews national-history beliefs. All I was saying is that even you implied that you agree that some people at the war believed that they saw the the cross. You admitted that it wasn’t a total lie, a de novo lie. Some people must have thought they saw a cross, or hallucinated that they saw a cross. If so, how have you refuted Kuzari? You claim that no Jews walked through a split sea. You claim that no Jews ate manna, which “fell doubly on friday, but not on the Sabbath.” If your claim is that only some Jews walked through the split sea, or only some Jews ate manna, or only some Jews heard a booming voice on mount sinai (which was predicted by Moses three days earlier), then you may have a point.
Yes, a city could commemorate an ancient event. That would be if the existence of the city would tend to remind people of the ancient event. The Aztecs may have written the entire myth on the walls of the city, for example, or they may have worn a type of phylacteries (that the Jews wear), which contained the Aztec story. That, I admit, would be a commemoration, since it would remind the population of the ancient event. If we can show that the Aztecs employed such commemorations, and believed that the commemorations were initiated by those who saw the miracles, then you will have killed Kuzari. But we don’t. We can’t be sure that the Aztecs had commemorations.
“The same can be said of the Exodus.” You misunderstood my point, when I mentioned archeology. You claimed that the Aztecs must have believed that there were many people on the journey. I asked you: How can you possible be sure that the Aztecs believed that there must have been many people? You responded that we have other sources - archeological sources - that claim that there were at least 10,000 people on the trip. My response to your invoking of exterior sources regarding the number of people who were on the trip is that in fact the exterior sources are silent on the matter. As proof, some archeologists believe that the trip never took place in the first place, let alone that there were 10,000 on the trip.
Yes, Bpelta. It is all about empirically evaluating the evidence. National beliefs, about what happened to millions of their ancestors is certain amount of evidence that a certain event took place. How reliable is that sort of evidence? I don’t know. But neither do. I can’t claim that it is infallible. You can’t that it is fallible. The evidence I am presenting has never been false, and there is nothing even close to, or similar to, my evidence - unless you consider 1/200 of my evidence as being similar to my evidence.
Since we have no way of knowing whether the evidence I am presenting is fallible or not, we can’t take a position on the matter. What has led you to your conclusion.
Shot from the Guns: I happen to have many reasons for not taking the “Fiery Cross” vision seriously. However, since I don’t want to get bogged down, I am only focusing on one of the reasons: the fact that it could have been produced through a hallucination.
Am I sure that the ancient Jews wouldn’t lie to their children? No. I never claimed that. Anything is possible, but I have no reason to assume that they were lying, since no one else has ever invented a false, national history which was nationally commemorated.
That being said, as the Ibn Ezra points out (on Psalms 78:2), where King David talks about the miracles that “Our Fathers” told us, Jews should believe the Sinai events because we have reason to believe that the ancient Jews “Our Fathers”, to use Ibn Ezra’s term - of all people - were actually more honest, and more moral, and more compassionate than other people.
Again, this is not part of the Kuzari proof. One can’t measure with a yardstick who is and who is not moral, or more likely to lie. Still, it is worth noting that the only civilization that produced a national, heavily commemorated FALSE (according to you brights) history which is quite burdensome, are the Ancient Jews. They were a highly litterate, geneologically astute, remarkably moral society (compared to their neighbors).
Indeed, the Bible points out the Jews faults again and again and again. If we would have wanted to lie or to whitewash history - like the Egyptians - we should have erased those parts.
Diogenes: O right; I forgot. Moses didn’t right the Torah (I guess it was David, then who wrote the Torah). David didn’t write the Psalms (did Moses?). Isaiah didn’t write Isaiah. Solomon didn’t write Song of Songs (scholars used to be “convinced” that it was written in the Second Temple era; now many admit it was written in King Solomon’s era, but it “of course” wasn’t Solomon). Daniel didn’t write Daniel. Did anyone write anything?
Biblical criticism - and I don’t want to change the topic away from Kuzari - is the biggest joke in town.
No one in this thread has identified him or herself as a bright; my experience is that with almost zero exceptions, Straight Dope posters regard that term as silly and affected. You should stop trying to use it as a cudgel against your opponents in this debate. Furthermore, no one has claimed that only the Jews had myths about their origins: you have been asked you why you accept the exodus story as true while rejecting similar stories from other cultures. The implication is that the stories from other cultures are not true either. So they are saying the opposite of what you suggest here. Further, since you are the only one in this thread who thinks your terms about national history and beliefs mean anything, it is not possible that anyone else is asserting the Jews invented theirs while everybody else told a legitimate one.
I understand that this is significant to you and that you’re arguing against a fairly large group of people. You have done a fairly pretty well at remaining civil up to this point, and if this discussion is going to continue, you need to stick to that standard.
You have not demonstrated that you have any knowledge at all of Biblical criticism and have repeatedly made erroneous claims aboout the consensus of Biblical scholarship.
To answer your question, with the possible exception of the first part of Isaiah, none of those authorship traditions have any genuine evidentiary merit.
The Torah is a syncretistic compilation from more than once prior source, none of whom was Moses, who is a completely fictional character.
The Psalms had multiple authors, none from the time of David. The attribution of Davidic scholarship to David is a later tradition.
Same with Song of Solomon, which is a cycle of sondgs from more than one period, with variations in linguistic dialect and some parts having to be post-exilic.
Daniel was written in the 2nd Century BCE and set during the Babylonian exile.
Isaiah has at least three authors, the first one of whom might have actually been named Isaiah. Some of the other eponymous prophetic books might be authentic as to their authors’ names as well.
Firstly, sorry again for thinking you were Dovid. He used to follow me around and recently started commenting on my posts again (after bandying about a libel accusation). Your style reminded me of his and I couldn’t imagine anybody else who would’ve gone out of their way to join this board and restart a 2-month old thread out of nowhere. So sorry for that. How did you find this thread btw?
OK, I think my positions regarding the Aztec bit are clear. I wanted to clarify that I didn’t imply that I “agree that some people at the war believed that they saw the cross.” I said, could be something happened and there was an exaggeration. I also said, could be not.
You needing millions of people to fit your criteria shows that your criteria are set up by the Torah miracles themselves and not an objective standard of empirical evidence. The problem with Kuzari is that it relies on arbitrary standards of evidence. Evolution has a lot of evidence. So does a universe which is a bit older than 6000 years. Gottlieb dismisses these in favor of a philosophical idea which is largely based on speculation. The difference between Gottlieb and I is that I disagree with this statement of his: “Only someone who [perversely] decides to ignore the statement of the Creator and rely only on what he can investigate will be lead to a false conclusion.”
I have provided an alternative image of what may have happened. It is at least possible that you are wrong and the people who research the development of Hebrew are right: Hebrew development has been traced and Deuteronomy is quite different than the first four books because they weren’t written by the same guy. Rather, as Nehemia 8 describes, the Jewish people were “reminded” of the “original” unifying laws which had since become fractured among the tribes of northern and southern Israel. Archaeological searches by Christians and religious Jews, which comprised a lot more than “one shaft,” have yielded no mass exodus from Egypt. Adam and Eve never existed, but man evolved from a common ancestor with chimps. The flood never happened.
According to Gottlieb, in our day, God asks us to dismiss everything we know about the universe in favor of an obscure philosophical idea which he detailed in a lulu.com book on the subject. I’m sorry, I can’t accept that.
Are you sure this was supposed to be addressed to me? I didn’t talk about the Fiery Cross dealio at all.
My point was driving a truck through your logical inconsistency dealing with whether or not something is true just because your culture passed it on to you as “history.”
Bpelta: I don’t find the age of the universe/ evolution topic to be too interesting. I would, rather, like to focus on Kuzari. Yes, you have made yourself quite clear regarding Aztec: you have nothing to stand on. For at least three different reasons - 1. The fact that we have no way of knowing the numbers who were believed to have been on the journey. 2 We have no way of knowing that the Aztecs believed the myth in the first place, since all the written records of the myth all contradict each other in the essential facts. 3. The fact that the Aztecs didn’t commemorate the event AT ALL.
The Aztec myth is an example of how people jump to conclusions without thinking.
I have more to say, but I have to go.
I haven’t read the whole thread but, FWIW, as an Orthodox Jew, I find the Kuzari Principle somewhat lacking since it basically asks you to accept the very premise you are arguing… that the Torah account of the Sinai event is accurate.
Please note that that does not mean that I don’t believe that the Revelation at Sinai didn’t happen. I believe it did – but for me, it’s a belief, nothing more. I have yet to find a conclusive “proof” to the event and doubt that one can ever be found. The bottom line, I suppose, is that I believe it because I believe it – but I would never pass it off as irrefutably true to someone else based on that belief.
Zev Steinhardt (who clearly has to get back to these boards more often…)
