- Sinai-Questions II
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- Moshe Ben-Chaim
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- A reader wrote:
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- Reader: .......masses of people
did not report the events of the Sinai, only Moses gave the report.
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- Mesora: Not true, the story
itself states the Moses assembled the people, and the people saw the
events themselves. It actually states this numerous times in
Deuteronomy. If the people did not witness the event, the story that
they did, would not have been circulated by those people themselves.
But they did circulate it, to the point that we have it today.
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- Reader: The difference, I
believe, is that there are indeed millions of contemporaneous reports
of the Kennedy assassination; there are not an equal number of reports
of the Sinai event. There are many believers, but not so many
reporters.
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- Mesora: Again you are not
reading the facts. See the account in Deuteronomy yourself. The
"millions of contemporaneous reports of the Kennedy
assassination" are equally equated to the millions of people at
the event. If you accept history, you are forced not to select which
parts you accept. Additionally, the story is amazingly identical in
tens of millions of editions of the Torah worldwide. Even the Kennedy
incident has more variations in text than the Torah. Check for
yourself.
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- Reader: Your essay also
indicates that Christianity and Islam adopted the revelation at Sinai
because it was necessarily a public event, and people need such a
public event in order to believe. Therefore, there is historical
corroboration. Another possible explanation is that sheer expediency
made it reasonable to adopt the story. Wouldn't the application of
Occam's Razor support this view? It is a much simpler explanation.
Perhaps the Sinai event was completely irrelevant. Perhaps it was the
fact that a tradition already existed upon which to base new religious
thought, that prompted Christianity and Islam to adopt many of the
stories and prophesies of Judaism. If new information is interlaced
with traditional information familiar to the masses, the new
information may be more palatable to the masses.
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- Mesora: That's exactly the
motive for other religions who degrade Judaism, to simultaneously
accept the Sinai event, as it lends credence to their own newly formed
religions. But this is no argument against the truth of the event, it
only explains a motive for alien people accepting the story, even
though it is contrary to their goals.
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- Reader: I believe the reason
many Judaic ideals and ideas are found in Christianity and Islam is
that Judaism is so elegant, and so beautifully simplistic. It can be
likened to an automobile that uses an internal combustion engine. When
such a vehicle was created, steam powered automobiles existed. But the
predominant mode of transportation was horse and buggy. The horse and
buggy crowd strenuously objected to powered vehicles. Slowly but
surely, powered transportation became the dominant mode. As it turns
out, an automobile using internal combustion proved to have greater
mass appeal than a steam powered automobile. Now, anyone wanting to
introduce a new vehicle and capture the market in automobiles, might
think it reasonable to embrace an elegant technology with established
mass appeal, rather than selling a vehicle as cumbersome as one
powered by steam. It doesn't matter whether the prototype internal
combustion engine worked the first time, or how many refinements had
to have been made over time. It doesn't matter how many people
observed the development of that engine. For the new entrepreneur, all
that matters is that internal combustion is more appealing than
whatever else is available. It was more refined, more elegant, and
more popular. So too was Judaism more elegant and popular than, say,
Zoroastrianism, as the basis for a religion such as Christianity. The
fact that awesome events are told in Torah, doesn't hurt, and perhaps
gives it greater appeal, but the reason it was adopted by Christianity
was that it was already a foundation upon which to build something
new.
- Where is this analysis wrong?
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- Mesora: Like I said, this is
exactly what the other religions wanted - mass appeal, not a search
for truth. You are admitting yourself that what Christianity desired
was popularity. If Christianity had any truth to it, let it stand by
its own codes, bare its ideals, and suffer analysis of the people. But
don't try to market it by claiming to sell Judaism, and then sell
Christianity, that is dishonest, a contradiction, and transparent.
- You argument only strengthens the truth in Judaism, and the fallacy
of all other religions.
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