The Kuzari Proof - 3 Million Witnesses Can Be Wrong
The Kuzari Proof - 3 Million Witnesses Can Be Wrong
The Kuzari Proof is a famous proof of the validity of Judaism
and is commonly used in outreach programs to convince estranged
Jews to return to the fold of observance. (1) It was developed
originally by the 11th century poet Yehuda Halevi as a response
to the loss of Judaism's monopoly on monotheism. It was designed
specifically to prove that the Jews had a unique theological
gift: the direct and public revelation of God to all the ancient
Israelites at Mt. Sinai. (2) In recent years, the 'proof' has
been offered as a proof of many things. Most commonly it
attempts to prove: the existence of God, His revelation to the
ancient Israelites at Sinai, His authorship of the Torah, and
the resulting inerrancy of the Torah. My purpose is not to argue
for or against the veracity of any of the above claims, but
instead to show why the Kuzari proof is not a proof of any of
them. Part of the search for truth entails the culling out of
implausible options. It is my hope that the de-legitimization of
the Kuzari proof will lead the observant and the secular alike
to come closer to the truth.
The Kuzari 'proof' has been proffered in several forms and
incarnations but the gist is as follows:
1) 3 million Jews witnessed the revelation of God at Sinai. (3)
2) Starting with the witnessing generation, one generation has
told the story to the next, leading us, in the current
generation, to be inductive witnesses to this event.
3) It is impossible to fake a large public event and its
subsequent intergenerational transmission (with inferred
acceptance) as described in steps 1 and 2, thus the original
event must have happened.
It would seem to be common sense that events with many witnesses
cannot be faked. However, history has taught us that many who
have invoked 'common sense' have been frustrated by how rare
indeed a sense it is. Needless to say, I find many problems with
this 'proof'. I will take each in sequential order.
First, I address the '3 million Jews witnessed the revelation'
claim. In logical discourse, one cannot assume what one is
trying to prove. You cannot assume that the Torah is inerrant in
order to prove that it is inerrant. The 3 million figure (or
600,000 adult males to be more precise) comes from the Torah.
(4) One cannot use this figure then, to prove that there were 3
million witnesses to an event which then makes the Torah
inerrant. To do so is to construct a tautological proof, or in
lay terms... a self-validating statement. The statement "if it
rains, it will be raining" is syntactically valid, but is
semantically meaningless, in that it is tautological. The proof
of the inerrancy of the Torah cannot be made by using statements
that require the Torah to be inerrant. In short, we do not know,
independent of the Torah claim, that there were 3 million
witnesses at Sinai, hence the proof falls apart right there.
Next we look at the 'witnessed the revelation of God at Sinai'
part of the first statement. As I can recall from my Hebrew
school days, the voice of God at Sinai was so powerful it could
'tear the soul from your body'. I also remember descriptions of
smoke and fire similar to the poor Technicolor animations of the
DeMille classic depicting the same. (5) Now Joan Rivers has a
voice that in my mind can tear the soul out of my body as she as
she squawks and screeches about the stars' fashions at the
Oscars. I am in no particular hurry to worship Joan Rivers nor
Cecil B. DeMille. What I mean to get across comedically is that
special effects capable of being produced cheaply these days by
Industrial Light and Magic and the good folks over at Lucasfilm
hardly proves God for me. A simple retort might be "but no one
believes the fantastic stories and special effects of today to
be true". Tell that to the people who suffered mass panic and
hysteria at the radio transmission of Welles' "The War of The
Worlds" in the 1938. (6) In summation, as we build here, for
statement 1, we have 3 million unproved witnesses witnessing
something they say was fiery, scary and spoke with a loud voice.
If one were to tell a Kuzari adherent of UFO sightings, they
would likely start to ask questions as to what other
explanations could explain this phenomenon: why not here too?
(7)
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 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 3 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.
Next we address statement 3, the inerrancy and incorruptibility
of generational transmission of this revelation. Note: this
statement is really just a summation of points 1 and 2 where the
true Kuzari argument rests. Many people have accused the Torah
of suffering from 'broken telephone' transmission. The orthodox
authorities have correctly retorted that they have proof,
archaeological no less, that the Torah has shifted perhaps 2 or
3 letters at most during all of its transmission.
Parenthetically, for those keeping score and who just noted an
asymmetrical application of explanatory logic, a gold star to
you. You correctly noted that all of the sudden archaeology IS
an acceptable proof that the Torah has not changed through the
generations, yet archaeology IS NOT acceptable as proof that
there were not Israelites in Egypt.
If the Torah did not significantly change over they centuries,
which is a statement I will accept due to archaeological
supporting evidence, the question becomes: why would any people
accept the Torah as history, as the ancient Israelites seemed
to, if its contents (the description of the revelation at Sinai)
were not known to be true? In typical rabbinic style, let me
answer a question with a question: Why would the multitudes that
accepted the Gospels as gospel, accept them unless they knew
somehow that Jesus had indeed miraculously fed the multitudes
fish and loaves of bread as the gospels describe? (10) "After
the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to
say, 'Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.'
" (John 6:14) (11) The problem here exists in yet another
asymmetrical application of explanatory logic. If you cannot
pervert a generational transmission of a miraculous event, then
adherents to the Kuzari proof must by definition, accept that
Jesus fed the multitudes by miracle. To be clear, I am not
saying whether Jesus fed the multitudes or not, nor am I proving
or disproving a revelation at Sinai, I am simply saying that the
evidence of cultural widespread acceptance of an event as a
miracle cannot be the proof of Judaism because it proves
antithetical Jewish and Christian miracles at the same time.
In summation we see that the Kuzari proof is a failed proof
because of fundamental flaws in logic. The two main fundamental
flaws are assuming that which is trying to be proved and
asymmetrical uses of explanatory logic at the convenience of the
argument. The Kuzari proof is an attempt to prove the divine
revelation at Sinai which, in turn, is a cornerstone of Jewish
faith. (12) For the orthodox that appear vexed at the decline of
Judaism, the message is clear: The rest of us will accept what
you have to say when you provide cogent proof. The Kuzari proof
is not cogent and the burden of proof is on you.
Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuzari
---------------------------------------------------------
1
http://ohr.edu/special/books/truth-6.htm
2
http://www.talkreason.com/articles/kuzari.cfm
3 Numbers
(1:46) There were 600,000 adult males generally leading us to
conclude a total population of 3 million.
4 ibid
5
http://www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=2047
6
http://radio.about.com/library/weekly/aa102302a.htm
7
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9923316/
8
http://ohr.edu/yhiy/article.php/2053
9 The number of
Egyptians must have been greater than 3 million if the biblical
account is true because it would be impossible to subdue and
enslave a population of 3 million Israelites with an equal or
smaller number of Egyptians.
10
http://www.gardenofpraise.com/bibl43s.htm
11
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%206:1-15
12
Aish.Com - Rediscovering The
Revelation