# Kuzari: Round Two **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 6, 2011, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643 "2011-01-06T19:14:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/41 "2011-01-07T17:20:28Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > First of all, thanks for teaching me a new word. Kuzari. It’s Arabic. It comes from the 11th century Kitab al-Kuzari (book of the Khazars), which was Judah Halevi’s collection of arguments for Judaism, as put in the mouth of the Rabbi who converted the Khazars. You can read the entire thing here: > **[Kitab al Khazari Index | Sacred Texts Archive](https://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/khz/index.htm)** > > Jewish texts including Torah, Talmud, Kabbalah, Midrash, and rabbinical commentaries. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/42 "2011-01-07T17:26:50Z")
Here’s the actual argument, if you’re curious: > [@](#): > > 1. Al Khazari: It is strange that you should possess authentic chronology of the creation of the world. > > The Rabbi: Surely we reckon according to it, and there is no difference between the Jews of Khazar and Ethiopia in this respect. > > Al Khazari: What date do you consider it at present? > > The Rabbi: Four thousand and nine hundred years. The details can be demonstrated from the lives of Adam, Seth and Enōsh to Noah; then Shem and Eber to Abraham; then Isaac and Jacob to Moses. All of them represented the essence and purity of Adam on account of their intimacy with God. Each of them had children only to be compared to them outwardly, but not really like them, and, therefore, without direct union with the divine influence. The chronology was established through the medium of those sainted persons who were only single individuals, and not a crowd, until Jacob begat the Twelve Tribes, who were all under this divine influence. Thus the divine element reached a multitude of persons who carried the records further. The chronology of those who lived before these has been handed down to us by Moses. > > Al Khazari: An arrangement of this kind removes any suspicion of untruth or common plot. Not ten people could discuss such a thing without disagreeing, and disclosing their secret understanding; nor could they refute any one who tried to establish the truth of a matter like this. How is it possible where such a mass of people is concerned? Finally, the period involved is not large enough to admit untruth and fiction. . . . > > The Rabbi: The Sabbatical law is derived from this circumstance, as well as from the creation of the world in six days, also from another matter to be discussed later on. Although the people believed in the message of Moses, they retained, even after the performance of the miracles, some doubt as to whether God really spake to mortals, and whether the Law was not of human origin, and only later on supported by divine inspiration. They could not associate speech with a divine being, since it is something tangible. God, however, desired to remove this doubt, and commanded them to prepare themselves morally, as well as physically, enjoining them to keep aloof from their wives, and to be ready to hear the words of God. The people prepared and became fitted to receive the divine afflatus, and even to hear publicly the words of God. This came to pass three days later, being introduced by overwhelming phenomena, lightning, thunder, earthquake and fire, which surrounded Mount Sinai. The fire remained visible on the mount forty days. They also saw Moses enter it and emerge from it; they distinctly heard the Ten Commandments, which represent the very essence of the Law. One of them is the ordination of Sabbath, a law which had previously been connected with the gift of the Manna. The people did not receive these ten commandments from single individuals, nor from a prophet, but from God, only they did not possess the strength of Moses to bear the grandeur of the scene. Henceforth the people believed that Moses held direct communication with God, that his words were not creations of his own mind, that prophecy did not (as philosophers assume) burst forth in a pure soul, become united with the Active Intellect (also termed Holy Spirit or Gabriel), and be then inspired. They did not believe Moses had seen a vision in sleep, or that some one had spoken with him between sleeping and waking, so that he only heard the words in fancy, but not with his ears, that he saw a phantom, and afterwards pretended that God had spoken with him. Before such an impressive scene all ideas of jugglery vanished. The divine allocution was followed by the divine writing. For he wrote these Ten Words on two tablets of precious stone, and handed them to Moses. The people saw the divine writing, as they had heard the divine words. Moses made an ark by God’s command, and built the Tent over it. It remained among the Israelites as long as prophecy lasted, i.e. about nine hundred years, until the people became disobedient. Then the ark was hidden, and Nebuchadnezzar conquered and drove the Israelites into exile. > > Al Khazari: Should any one hear you relate that God spoke with your assembled multitude, and wrote tables for you, etc., he would be blamed for accusing you of holding the theory of personification You, on the other hand, are free from blame, because this grand and lofty spectacle, seen by thousands, cannot be denied. You are justified in rejecting [the charge of] mere reasoning and speculation. ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/43 "2011-01-07T17:26:53Z")
> [@abele\_derer](#): > > I will provide a few general responses, because - and I apologize beforehand - I simply don’t have the time to respond to each and every one of your points. > > Issue 1. If Kuzari is so devastatingly compelling, as I claim, then why doesn’t everyone agree with me? Response: Groupthink is a cycle. Everyone believes that God didn’t reveal Himself at sinai. Then, they find the fact that everyone agrees with them as proof that they are right. In short, don’t take comfort from the fact that everyone here agrees with you. There are tens of thousands of people who are in awe of kuzari. I’m just curious, what’s your position on the [miracle of the sun](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun)? Legitimate miracle or not? ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/44 "2011-01-07T17:28:13Z")
> [@abele\_derer](#): > > I do see it; but my proof isn’t from the fact that the belief exists. The proof is from the fact that the belief started. Kuzari enthusiasts wonder this: How the hell did this belief get off the ground? > > Regarding the general issue of groupthink, please show me one place where groupthink enabled people to gobble up a false history? How about the idea that Kim Sun il can control the weather? ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/45 "2011-01-07T17:30:56Z")
> [@abele\_derer](#): > > I am proving it from the fact that the belief exists today. Today the belief exists. How did this belief get started. There are one of two general ways: 1) The sinai events happened; 2) The sinai events didn’t happen, and the Jewish people (in whichever fashion) gobbled up a false history. Option two hasn’t EVER happened anywhere else; and nothing even remotely close to it has ever happened. Um…Didn’t the german people gobble up a bucket load of false history with regard to the Jews being subhuman and also their ‘Aryan superiority’? Shoot, wasn’t the Soviet Union known for fabricating history? What about the Mormons? Joseph Smith made some fantastic claims and his followers gobbled it up. ---
**Author:** ![abele\_derer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6bbea6/32.png) [@abele\_derer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abele_derer)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/46 "2011-01-07T17:42:04Z")
> [@Meatros](#): > > I’m just curious, what’s your position on the [miracle of the sun](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun)? > > Legitimate miracle or not? Hallucination. People hallucinate when looking at the sun. Happens all the time. What makes Kuzari compelling to many people is the duration of the event. Manna fed 2.5 million people for 14,600 days. Now, the response is that national history evolved. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/47 "2011-01-07T17:43:02Z")
> [@abele\_derer](#): > > … > > Issue 7: And this is for the moderator. I dealt with the “found scroll” in a previous thread (that you yourself closed), I suggest your read it before closing this thread. (1) Can you retype that here or point to the specific post? It was a multi-page disaster. Does it specifically deal with the parts of scripture that go against the “proof”? (2) Would you say that a majority of Jews agree with the “proof”? If not, does that undercut your argument? How much of a minority of Jews would it take for the “proof” to no longer be valid? (3) Following up on (2), is it your position that historical facts change depending on how many people believe it? The more people believe in the truth of something, the truer it becomes? If I can start a movement where people believe that, say, George Washington was 37 feet tall and a majority of Americans come to believe that, does it make it so? Thank you for your consideration in addressing these specific points one by one. If you’re too busy today, rather than respond with “I’m too busy to answer the questions here, but I have time to spew out some other irrelevant points”, I’d prefer you wait until you have the time to address these and other questions in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![abele\_derer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6bbea6/32.png) [@abele\_derer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abele_derer)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/48 "2011-01-07T17:43:28Z")
> [@Meatros](#): > > Um…Didn’t the german people gobble up a bucket load of false history with regard to the Jews being subhuman and also their ‘Aryan superiority’? > > Shoot, wasn’t the Soviet Union known for fabricating history? > > What about the Mormons? Joseph Smith made some fantastic claims and his followers gobbled it up. Answer your questions yourself. I am not going to deal with you elementary questions. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/49 "2011-01-07T17:48:14Z")
> [@abele\_derer](#): > > Answer your questions yourself. I am not going to deal with you elementary questions. You asked for examples of nations believing in false history; there they are. Now of course you don’t want to address the issue. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/50 "2011-01-07T17:50:31Z")
> [@abele\_derer](#): > > Issue 6: And this is for the moderator: Show me a false nationally experienced event. I’m not an expert in world mythology, but it seems to me that to satisfy your request, we need to find an ancient legend that’s accepted by a culture of people and transmitted orally, at a time when writing came along, or more modern people came who could document them. That’s the key for the Exodus story - it was a campfire story told about the glory of past days, when papyrus or paper was invented and things like that started to get written down instead of just passed along orally. Surely we can find tribes in the more primitive parts of the world where the people had beliefs of great things that happened to their ancestors. I would think that just about every primitive tribe would have something like that. All you world mythology experts, help? ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/51 "2011-01-07T17:51:47Z")
> [@abele\_derer](#): > > Answer your questions yourself. I am not going to deal with you elementary questions. Hmmm, I thought a debate was a two-way affair. The questions in that post are legitimate counter-examples of your “proof”. If you don’t plan on addressing these questions, why should we address your theory? ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/52 "2011-01-07T18:01:16Z")
> [@abele\_derer](#): > > Answer your questions yourself. I am not going to deal with you elementary questions. Um, okay then. Sinai was the result of a similar thing. Fair enough. /thread over ? ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/53 "2011-01-07T18:02:33Z")
If US history was passed on by oral tradition for a few hundred years, I imagine it would look something like this. On the 4th Thursday in November in 1942, captain Columbus and the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth colony in the Mayflower. They were greeted by Geronimo and the Indians who presented them with a feast of Turkey, Pumpkin Pie, and sweet potato casserole with mini-marshmallows. This was when George Washington the leader of the Pilgrims fell in love with Geronimo’s daughter. Their marraige sealed the peace between the white man and the Indians. Then on the third Monday in January of 1865, the blacks arrived from Africa in thee ships the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, escaping slavery. They were led by their King, Martin Luther, and their general, another black man named Abraham Lincoln. We know this to be true because our fathers and their fathers tell us this story all the way back to when they arrived with Columbus on the Mayflower or the his highness Martin Luther, and we still commemorate these events on Thanksgiving and King Martin Luther day. ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/54 "2011-01-07T18:03:00Z")
> [@CurtC](#): > > Surely we can find tribes in the more primitive parts of the world where the people had beliefs of great things that happened to their ancestors. I would think that just about every primitive tribe would have something like that. All you world mythology experts, help? Isn’t there a tribe in Africa that believes that their ancestors came from the Dogone star? This is a fuzzy memory and may have come from a UFO related cite…I don’t even know if the ‘Dogone’ star is accurate. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/55 "2011-01-07T18:03:51Z")
> [@CurtC](#): > > Surely we can find tribes in the more primitive parts of the world where the people had beliefs of great things that happened to their ancestors. I would think that just about every primitive tribe would have something like that. All you world mythology experts, help? [Mokèlé-mbèmbé](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokele-Mbembe), maybe? The tribes of the Congo River basin swear up and down that something resembling a 30-foot rhino or sauropod lives in Lake Télé, but literally dozens of expeditions have turned up nothing. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/56 "2011-01-07T18:15:00Z")
> [@Meatros](#): > > Isn’t there a tribe in Africa that believes that their ancestors came from the Dogone star? > This is a fuzzy memory and may have come from a UFO related cite…I don’t even know if the ‘Dogone’ star is accurate. Just give it a few hundred years and it will be TRUTH! ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/57 "2011-01-07T18:19:55Z")
I don’t know if [this has been](http://www.infidels.org/kiosk/article677.html) brought up, but I think it’s an interesting point: > [@](#): > > Now we look at statement 2, specifically at the part which says: “starting with the witnessing generation, we have an unbroken chain of transmission.” The “starting with the witnessing generation” part is key. It says that it is impossible to get a generation (a large group of people) to accept anything as an accurate account of history which was not known to be an accurate account of history. **Yet when you poke a Kuzari adherent for proof of the Israelites’ slavery in Egypt you quickly get this response: “The Egyptians did not record their defeats.”[8] Well hang on a second here, does not that suggest that the Egyptians published a history and the greater than three million Egyptians that read it accepted it as true even though they knew it was untrue?[9] So can you cause multitudes to accept a false history or not?** Which is it? The answer cannot be, if we are to have a sensible conversation, “yes” in the case of the Egyptians and “no” in the case of the Israelites. It also cannot be the answer that the Egyptians were embarrassed by defeat and thus motivated to accept the faked history because we cannot know if the Israelites also were not embarrassed by some historical event and thus were motivated to accept a revised history of unique divine revelation. Recall, we cannot assume the Torah as an accurate account of history to prove that the Torah is an accurate account of history. Keeping our eye on the ball, it is not the issue here whether or not there were slaves in Egypt, nor is it the issue as to what the actual history of the region was. The issue is that you cannot, at once, claim that you both can and cannot cause a large number of people to accept a false history. The Kuzari proof and discussions of the Kuzari proof are fraught with these sorts of asymmetric applications of explanatory logic. You cannot suck and blow from the same explanatory pipe at the same time. ---
**Author:** ![buckgully](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb9ed0/32.png) [@buckgully](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buckgully)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/58 "2011-01-07T18:21:17Z")
> [@CurtC](#): > > Surely we can find tribes in the more primitive parts of the world where the people had beliefs of great things that happened to their ancestors. I would think that just about every primitive tribe would have something like that. All you world mythology experts, help? There have been dozens offered, but he’s dismissed each on technicalities, usually claiming the number of people involved was too low. It seems like a reasonable request, but it’s really just a distraction. When really pressed, he’ll trot out something like this: [in post 606 in the Pascal’s wager thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13316608&postcount=606). Honestly, he’s done a great deal of damage to his own argument. If there are no, or very few, other events that fit the requirements that Kuzari sets out, then it’s completely and utterly useless to determine anything. If there are many, then not only is the bible literally true, but so are a lot of other myths, many of which directly contradict the concept of a single, true god, much less any kind of objective reality. It’s rationalizations piled on top of rationalizations. ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/59 "2011-01-07T18:21:18Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > Just give it a few hundred years and it will be TRUTH! Heh, in fairness I don’t even know if what I presented was accurate - it’s a foggy memory of mine… ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643/60 "2011-01-07T18:25:21Z")
> [@Meatros](#): > > "…You cannot suck and blow from the same explanatory pipe at the same time. " However, a proof can both suck and blow. Case in point: The Kuzari Proof! (The quote above isn’t **Meatros** ’ quote, but I’m not sure how to properly reference his post. Anyway…) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kuzari-round-two/566643.md?page=4)