Kuzari: Round Two

Great Debates
81

Romulus was the king of a nation. The point was not the specific story of Romulus being raised by a wolf, but the tradition that the nation was composed of the people who were the survivors of Troy who had journeyed West to the location of Rome where Romulus and Remus were born and where they agreed to found a city. That story appears in numerous Roman histories and was every bit as much a part of Roman collective memory as the story of Exodus was a part of Hebrew collective memory; it was what the Roman people believed.

As I predicted, you will twist and nitpick the actual narrative. When the book is brought to Josiah it is described as a book, nothing more. (Hilkiah identifies it outside the hearing of Josiah.) When it is read to Josiah, the information in it is surprising to him. When he commands that the Passover be celebrated, it is as though it is a new event because the people had not celebrated it for many years. Even if one or two scribes happened to know that the Torah existed, there is no large, commemorated event in the memory of the people. Heck, even you admit that the memory chain was broken because you say that Josiah was brought up in an idolatrous home. Remember your claim in the OP:

Josiah never heard it from his father. That chain was clearly broken, (not that you could ever admit it).

And, of course, there was your second claim in the OP:

This is a bold claim that you have never supported with any evidence of it occurring anywhere except in your imagined reality. Where are such true stories in the examples of the French or the Egyptians or the Chinese or anyone else? When I point out that the Irish, the Dakota, and the Romans all had similar “evidence” that was clearly in error, you start inventing new rules about how many millions of people have to have been a part of this chain of narrative for it to be “proven.”

Sorry, you are just making it up as you go along and your claims have no basis in reality. I have no way to pierce self-delusion, so I doubt that you are going to learn anything from this exchange.

82

So tell us, Abele, do you also believe all the other impossible parts of the Exodus myth? Do you also believe that:

Every Hebrew woman, for four generations, had at least fifty children, since there were seventy two who came to Egypt and three million when they supposedly left?

That all three million gathered at Rameses from all over Egypt in a single day, and then formed a line about twentyfive miles long (assuming that the Egyptians had built a six lane superhighway where fifty could march abreast) and then ran in one day, without food or water, pregnant women, five year old kids, cripples, old people, and several million sheep and an unknown number of cows, goats, and donkeys, at the speed of a good midpack ultramarathoner, the thirty or so miles across the desert to Succoth? (Fiftyfive miles for the people at the back of the line).

That, since they left without tents and by Numbers (“How beautiful are thy tents, Oh Israel”)
had them, that they met Omar the tentmaker in the middle of the desert, and Omar happened to have about three thousand tons of canvas in stock? Not to mention tent poles for sixty thousand tents.

That more than twentyone million people (“Seven nations greater and mightier than you”) lived in a desert area the size of Maryland and left absolutely no archaeological evidence?

And there’s plenty more nonsense.

83

No, of course not. As zoid wrote, abele is witnessing.

Not to speak for abele, but yes, probably, he does believe that. He certainly believes the part about millions living in the desert for 14 thousand days and leaving no trace – in fact, it’s part of his core beliefs. Why not believe the rest?

Perseverating is the repeating of an act after it’s clearly shown that the result is the same and not affected by repeated attempts to change it (or something like that). I don’t know how this poster gets this message board to do his bidding like this, but it seems pretty fruitless to me.

84

Why is it that the father to son history of the descendants of the witnesses of the Sinai Miracles is proof, and the father son history of the descendants of Emperor Jimmu are not?

Jimmu has living descendants, who have elaborate records of their family history continuing to the present day.

There are many who doubt his divinity, and his historic existence is not provable by physical evidence. Sound familiar?

Faith by proof, and logic is limited to intellect. But faith is not an intellectual phenomenon.

Tris

85

Post 82 above, that’s six hundred thousand tents, not sixty thousand, unless they slept fifty to a tent. Sorry, it was late and I usually get up at six a m.

86

  1. How many people were part of the nation led by Romulus? Second, was that kingdom commemorated from the time of the existence of the Kingdom and forward? Third, how do you know that there really wasn’t a Kingdom led by Romulus? A kingdom led by a person by the name of Romulus, who fled a the war of troy, is quite plausible, much more plausible than him being fed by a wolf.
    You should not ignore that commemorations of the Torah. Think about the Sabbath, and sabbatical years. It would have taken a heruclian effort to convince the Jewish people that God, 500 years earlier had commanded the entire nation to observe the commemorations when, in fact, God had never commanded those commemorations. Show me something even remotely similar to the history contained in the Torah. I am not even asking for 2.5 million people. But show me something even remotely close.

  2. First, even if Joshia never heard about the existence of the “scroll” from his father, how do you know he did not hear about the sinai miracles from his father.
    Second, even if Joshia never heard about the sinai miracles from his father, Joshia (OF COURSE!) isn’t the only chain in the tradition! It’s like claiming that since some secular jewish kids never hear about the sinai miracles, that somehow implies that my tradition is false!
    Third, if you trust the book of kings and chronicles, that means that you trust the King David, and King Solomon, and King Joshafat, and King Hezekiah all believed in the Torah of Moses (since the verses say explicitly that they believed in the Torah). And you also have to believed that the Samaritans all believed in the Torah. If so, you have to show me that the chain of witnesses was broken before those kings and those samaritans lived. King Joshia lived after all of them.
    Fourth, you should not forget that (according to the oral tradition) it was King Menashe who forsook Judaism (he was Joshia’s grandfather, who lived about 60 years before Joshiah’s scroll was found). If so, even if Joshia didn’t hear about the Torah from his father, once the Torah was found, he could have easily verified its accuracy from the elderly people who still remained from the pre-King Menashe era. So even if we assume that King Menashe succesfully eradicated belief in the Torah from the whole nation, the period of time between him and King Joshia was short enough for the chain of tradition not to be broken.
    Each one of the above-mentioned points is enough to reduce your claim to rubble and rubbish.

87

For someone who wants to persuade others to share his odd beliefs, you certainly spend more time hand-waving away the problems in your account than setting forth actual evidence.

According to a clear reading of 2 Kings 22-23, Josiah was surprised to learn about the information in the scroll and nothing indicates that the people were aware of it, either. You claim that there is a clear line of communication and all you can provide as evidence, (against the testimony of scripture), is that I can’t “prove” that the continuous line is broken.
Fail.

And the people living in the region that became Rome in 752 B.C.E. would have witnessed the exposure of Romulus and Remus and their rescue by a wolf in the same way that the Hebrew people would have witnessed the parting of the Red Sea or the theophany at Horeb. If you can deny the one, your evidence is no better for the other.
Where is your evidence regarding the origins of the Dakota and how does that differ from your claims for the Hebrews?
Where is your evidence that the Tuatha de Danaan never fought the Fomorians–or how does their story differ from yours?
Fail.

Since you have no more actual evidence for your claims and your logic all relies on special pleading, I will leave you to your witnessing. Any further effort would be a waste of time, since you want to persuade me of your position but refuse to provide a reason to accept it.

ETA:

So, something that was written hundreds of years after the fact and inserrted into the story as an “oral tradition” carries weight with you–because it helps you with your beliefs–in direct contradiction to scripture? Sorry. Not persuasive.

88

  1. Yes, you can’t prove that the tradition was broken. And the burden is on you to show that it was broken.
    Let’s say, for example, that someone claims that Muhamed never existed, because the tradition going back to Muhamed was broken, since we can’t prove that the chain wasn’t broken.
    No. The burden is on you to show me that the chain was broken. And, based on the four points that I mentioned in the previous post, you haven’t even come close.

  2. Please cite where it says that Romulus and Remus being saved by a wolf were witnessed by anyone other than they themselves (led alone millions, or even hundreds-of-thousands, of people.)

89

abele, you are not getting this.
You want to persuade me of your beliefs.
Your “evidence” is utterly unpersuasive.
I don’t have to “prove” anything because I already know that Kuzari’s thesis is tissue-thin and weak and you are only following him because you find it comforting to believe his nonsense.

If you want to persuade me, you need to provide concrete evidence and decent logic. As long as your “logic” demands special pleading, then you will fail to persuade me and I see no reason to feed your fantasies.

90

The burden is on you to prove the chain ever existed in the first place.

91

See, I don’t think the burden is on me at all. I never claimed that my evidence is infallible. I don’t have a position. It may be fallible, but I have not a shred of evidence that it is fallible.

The fact is, and the fact remains, is that there simply was never anything close to the sinai history. No nation has ever believed that 1) millions of its ancestors; 2) experienced extended miracles; 3) which were heavily commemorated by the same people who saw the miracles; 4) and the commemorations are quite burdensome.

Could the Jews have been extremely gullible to believe that? Sure. Could a spaghetti-monster have forced them to gobble up this false history? Sure. But I have no reason to make such an assumption. I follow the evidence; and the evidence I am presenting was never even close to being wrong.

Now, we can add a couple of additional points, but I admit that this isn’t part of the Kuzari proof; it’s just a couple of facts that provide us with added confidence that the history is true.
First, the Jews were very genealogically astute, or at least they thought they were. For example, in the Book of Ezra, we find that the priest who couldn’t produce their genealogical “papers” (which showed how they descended from Aaron) were dismissed from the priesthood. This genealogical astuteness, I think, makes it less likely that they would mess up the the rest of their history.

Second, the Jews were very literate. I am not claiming that they were better than the greeks or the romans or the chinese or the egyptians. Still, if you read the books of Job (Tom Carlyle claimed that the book of Job was the greatest book ever written), Isaiah, and Song of Songs, one doesn’t get the picture that these were dumb people. Therefore, you wouldn’t expect them to be stupid enough to accept a false history.

Third, the Jews of that era were less barbaric and close-minded than the nearby nations. For example, there isn’t a single verse in the entire bible which admits that astrology has any power. Indeed, Jeremiah and Isaiah specifically mock the idea of astrology.

I am not claiming that they were perfect; they were far from it. I am merely claiming that compared to their neighbors, the Jews would be the last society which we would expect would accept a false history.

So, to repeat, these aren’t part of the Kuzari proof, since they are mere details about the ancient Jews.

92

Would one who believes in the existence of Muhamed have to prove that there was a chain in the first place?

Why do I believe that Muhamed existed? (Among other reasons), I just strikes me as being impossible (or close to it), that a subsequent dude came along and claimed that all their arabic ancestors saw Muhamed, and commemorated his existence (by following the laws of Islam), when the man never even exited.

The same is true about the sinai miracles.

93

There is coroborrating evidence for the existence of Mohammed. It’s not just taken on oral hearsay.

There is no evidence the Sinai beliefs existed before the 8th Century BCE (at least in the form seen in the Torah, there might have been some kind of antecedent tribal mythologies), and there is ample archaeological evidence contradicting the story’s literal historicity.

It also isn’t a given that the “Jewish nation,” did univerally accept the “found” Torah claims at face value. Popular veneration of other gods continued until the exilic period. It took a couple of hundred years (at least) for the beliefs to really start sticking and become popularly accepted.

94

Do you believe that Muhammad split the moon in half as well?

95

How many people were said to have witnessed the splitting of the moon? Was it brief enough that it could be deemed a hallucination, or a mistake, such as a group of clouds which made the moon appear as if it split?

96

You still haven’t explained how it is that 8th+ century farming techniques were able to support 2.5 million people in an area which supports fewer than 8 million today.

97

abele derer, can you name some other national events that were accurately passed down through generations? You have dismissed all the other examples as not being on the some level or having the same attributes as the Sinai events. Are there other nation events (either ancient or modern) that are the evidentiary equivalent of the Sinai or is the evidence of the Sinai event unique?

98

Is that a “no”?

Also, what’s the critical threshold for witnesses? Is 100,000 to small but 100’001 good enough?

As to how brief, is that with regard to the miracle itself? Or how long the people were milling about?
As to the Kuzari, which specific miracle do you believe it proves? All of them (regarding Moses)? Also, do you have any independent accounts from any of the witnesses, or is it just the authors of the Pentatauch that you are trusting to speak for the entire group?

99

Hey Abele, I have a question as to your ability to understand basic reasoning.

If hundreds of years after an event is supposed to have happened, I say it had a lot of witnesses, are the number of witnesses I’m claiming actually evidence that what I’m saying is true?

You seem to not be able to understand why this is a stupid argument. I’m not saying you’re stupid, I’m saying that you don’t seem to have been taught how to reason.

Debate isn’t about mechanically repeating your assertions. You don’t win a debate by ignoring other arguments and reposting the same thing over and over again.

Someone who doesn’t understand that doesn’t belong in a debate. Such a person would be like a blind art critic or an armless boxer, if you can’t understand reason, you aren’t equipped to participate.

100

Yes, the number of witnesses that you claim is evidence that what you are saying is true if, and only if, you get people to believe you.

Let me elaborate. If a prophet falsely claims that MILLIONS of the Jewish ancestors saw extended, heavily commemorated miracles, is that proof that the miracles happened, or that millions of people were there? No. It isn’t even a shred of evidence that people were there.

HOWEVER, if that prophet successfully convinces the population that millions of their ancestors were there, we have to explain why the population didn’t immediately respond with this claim: “If millions of our ancestors were there, then why doesn’t anyone of us remember the miracles. How could our nation have forgotten such an important national event.”

Now, we have to be empirical. Let’s see if we can find even something similar to the Sinai history. Have people ever been convinced that even 100,000 of their ancestors witnessed extended miracles which were heavily commemorated from the time of the event? I have yet to see such a case.
(I personally believe that the Christian miracles come the closest to refuting Kuzari, but they didn’t happen to more than a few hundred or thousand witnesses. That’s much less than 2.5 million. Now, I do admit that the Christian miracles aren’t nothing. I don’t believe in Christianity for an entirely different reason. Even if I would see Jesus perform miracles with my very two eyes, I wouldn’t believe in him. It’s a long story, which isn’t relevant to kuzari.)