- Sinai Questions 4
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- Moshe Ben-Chaim
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- Question: In the case of Sinai you have a group of
people who claim that their ancestors witnessed something amazing.
None of the original witnesses is still alive, so you can't ask them
about it.
Mesora: You
would admit that George Washington, Caesar, Alexander the Great, and
Columbus existed, although you cannot ask anyone about them. One need
not ask someone else in order to have proof of something. I'm sure you
visit doctors when ill, and would even allow surgery, even though you
never saw this doctor attend medical school. How do you know he is a
doctor? Answer, you use second hand knowledge, even when you need
surgery! You attest that even though there are no witnesses, and the
doctor could be lying,you accept second hand knowledge. Well, that is
what we use to prove that Sinai existed. The same method you employ to
accept someone as a doctor, or that the world had leaders thousands of
years ago, even though there is "no one to ask."
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- Question: In the case of the Jews, none of these
alleged witnesses (except the author of Exodus) recorded his
testimony, so you can't examine that, either.
Mesora: Your
error here is that if there were no other witnesses, then why did the
story have survive? Imagine your argument as true for a moment: Moses
would go to a people called Jews, telling them that they were all at
an event. If they weren't there they would not agree that their
history as a nation was "X" when it wasn't. I would be akin
to someone telling the us today that we really never had Kennedy for
president. Moses could not get a nation to accept that their history
was something other than what it was. In such a scenario, Moses would
be a laughing stock, and not one person would accept his
"book". He would not be remembered either. But by the very
fact that this event at Sinai is accepted on not only a national
level, but on a world scale, that is the very proof that the story
must have happened, otherwise the Jews would not have circulated it.
At worst, we would at least have an alternate history of the Jews at
that time period of what you suggest "really" took place.
But we don't. Why then according to you is there no alternate history?
The answer is precisely that; there is no alternate history.
Sinai actually took place.
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