Because many people see in tradition the main
core of our faith, I find it necessary to expand on this matter. What those
people think is well described in Nachmanides' commentary on Deuteronomy 4:9: "What is said above (Exodus 19:9), 'And in
you, too, they will believe forever,' means that when we tell this story to our
children, they will surely know that the story is true, without a doubt, as
though all the generations saw [the Sinai Revelation]. For we will not testify
falsely to our sons, and will not bequeath them nonsense and useless things.
And they will not have the slightest doubt about our testimony which we will
testify before them, but they will surely believe that we all have seen, with
our own eyes, all that we tell them."
Maimonides likewise stated in the Laws of the
Torah Foundations 8:1: "Moses our teacher -- Israel did not
believe in him because of the wonders he performed, for one whose belief is
based on wonders has a fault in his heart, for it is possible that a wonder
would occur through sorcery or witchcraft... And why did they believe in him?
At the Sinai Revelation, when our eyes and not strangers' saw, our ears and not
others' heard the fire and the voices and the torches, and Him coming near the
cloud, and the voice saying him: Moses, Moses, go tell them this and that...
And from where do we know that only the Sinai Revelation is proof that his
[Moses's] prophesy is true, without a fault? For it is written, 'Here, I come
to you in a thick cloud in order that the people may hear when I speak with
you, and in you, too, will they believe forever' (Exodus 19:9)."
But even if at the Sinai Revelation the people
of Israel really saw the fire with their own eyes and heard G-d speaking to
Moses with their own ears, we now perceive contradictory data with our own eyes
and ears. We perceive that the shafan and the arnevet do
not bring up their cud, that there are no traces of a global flood on the
planet Earth during the past 10,000 years, etc., as I described in the earlier
pages of this letter. If the Torah does not describe the world correctly, is it
plausible to believe that it was given by the Creator of the world? These two
sources of "truth," namely, tradition and sense observation, are in
conflict. Are my own eyes and ears less reliable than the eyes and the ears of
the Jews at the Sinai Revelation?
Some people may answer "yes, they
are." For the "seeing" and "hearing" described by
Maimonides are not the usual, physical seeing and hearing, but spiritual senses,
on the prophetic level, and they are more reliable than our physical senses --
for we all know of incidents in which the senses are deluded (optical illusions
and the like), while prophetic or spiritual perception is 100% reliable, and no
delusions are possible there, etc., etc.
But in fact, though it is true that the
physical senses can be deluded, nobody can say for sure that spiritual
perception (whatever that is) cannot be deluded just as well. We all know that
there are many people, believers of all of the religions on earth, who claim to
have experienced some sort of spiritual revelation and have always been ready
to die for it in large numbers. Yet, since many of these revelations are
contradictory, we must assume that at least some of them were deluded.
Moreover, the Scripture itself admits that spiritual perception may be false: "And the Lord said, 'Who will entice Ahab
king of Israel into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there?' One
suggested this, and another that. Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before
the Lord and said, 'I will entice him.' 'By what means?' the Lord asked. 'I
will go and be a lying spirit in the mouths of all his prophets,' he said. 'You
will succeed in enticing him,' said the Lord. 'Go and do it.'" (II Chronicles
18:19-21)
To claim, without any proof other than the
proposition of an inerrant tradition spanning thousands of years, that the
Torah was revealed by G-d to the Jewish people through a true deep spiritual
connection while all our physical and historical observations that contradict
the Torah are rooted in sense delusions and the like, quite blatantly begs the
question, especially since in our times there are no people who had a direct
prophetic perception of G-d and the divinity of the Torah during the Sinai
Revelation or under any other circumstances. All contemporary religious Jews
have heard a story about it from their fathers and grandfathers -- no
more. And we heard it with our physical ears, through the very physical
sense of hearing. Why, then, should I trust my senses when told of this
inerrant tradition that G-d gave us the Torah but not trust them when I see
that the shafan and the arnevet do not bring up their cud?
The Gemara on the
reliability of tradition
From the Talmud, by the way, one may learn that
even if somebody tells me that 3300 years ago G-d gave us the Torah he is
absolutely unreliable as a witness, despite what Maimonides and
Nachmanides say. The Gemara in Shabbat 145a-b brings it as a law of the Torah
that a witness who bears hearsay testimony should be disqualified, at least on
matters of Torah law (the Sages sometimes permitted hearsay testimony to be
qualified on the matters of their own rulings). G-d himself does not rely on hearsay testimony! Why should we rely on it
to prove that He gave the Torah?
I agree with you that we must base our understanding of
physical reality on the information we receive from our senses, and I also find
the argument that Mattan Torah was (limited to) a spiritual experience, very
tenuous. Accordingly, one must endeavor to find ways to reconcile the apparent
contradiction between reality and the opinion of the Torah, that comes from our
observance of the arnevet, or the seemingly lack of traces of Noah’s flood.
I suspect that the reason why having such questions did not
undermine my own faith, is because I was fortunate enough to have a significant
amount of knowledge about Judaism, as well as which books to look up to find answers to
my questions (and a great library which had most of them). That gave me good
reason to believe that I would, in time, find answers to the questions that I
encountered.
I mentioned previously that one should never set a time limit for
finding the truth, as that will only encourage self-deception in one’s haste to
arrive at a decision.
This idea is actually reflected in some of the answers to your questions, as,
for example, I only thought of the answer regarding the camel and the pig
species, around four years after encountering the question for the first time.
Similarly, I only thought of the method to reconcile Egyptian history with the
Torah’s, around six years after coming across the question.
With the arnevet, I am not advocating that we should reject
our observation that that hare does not chew its cud, and as I mentioned
before, this is one of the questions that I do not have a good answer to (yet).
At the same time, however, I think that it is important to bear in mind that
for the hare to chew its cud is not me’ikarei hadat (one of the pillars of our
faith), as well as there remains the possibility that the Torah is referring to
a different animal and not the hare. But this still remains something important
to find an answer to.
Similarly with regard to not finding
traces of a global flood, I am not advocating that we should reject that lack
of observation, and frankly, I think that it would be dishonest to do so.
However, there are a number of possible ways to reconcile that reality with the
Torah, one approach being that the verses about the flood in the Torah are to
be understood allegorically. There are other possible answers as well, including
some, that in my opinion, are much better answers than that, but to address
them properly would require a separate response, as it is a full subject on its
own.
About your question that this tradition should
be considered hearsay, and therefore, unreliable – the Tzemach Tzedek of
Lubavitch provides a very clever answer in his Sefer HaChakira (page 127). He
explains that this testimony isn’t considered hearsay – as one witness from
another – but rather, constitutes edut mipi Beit Din (testimony from a Beth
Din), as the people who witnessed the event themselves, can also be considered
as judges to receive that testimony, as is ruled in Rosh Hashana 25b. There is
a difference of opinion between Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva, where Rabbi
Tarfon holds that this law wherein three witnesses can become the judges of
that case as well, applies to judgments of both monetary disputes and capital
punishment, while Rabbi Akiva holds that this law only applies to cases of
monetary disputes. On that disagreement, there is the further disagreement
between Maimonides and Tosfot, where Maimonides rules (see Kesef Mishna at the
end of the Laws of Testimony, chapter 5) according to the opinion of Rabbi
Tarfon, while Tosfot rules according to Rabbi Akiva. Even according to Tosfot,
it is not a problem, as even though the original generation that witnessed the
event would be disqualified from becoming judges as well, they relayed over
this testimony to their grand-children, and the grand-children became a Beth
Din to receive the testimony of their grandparents. It is also not a problem
that the witnesses were related (kerovim) to the judges, because even though
one grandfather is related to his grandson, the other 599,999 witnesses are not
kerovim to him. And therefore, it turns out that this testimony about receiving
the Torah, was relayed in the successive generations, from one Beth Din to the
next Beth Din, until our times.
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