Mass Revelation -- Not Unique to Judaism
Many times I have heard that Judaism is the
only religion in the world claiming that it was founded in a mass revelation of
its deity to people, and that makes it more trustworthy than all the other
religions. However, this claim is baseless for the following reasons:
1. It is unclear from the Judaic sources what
exactly the people heard from the Divine at Mt. Sinai. Anyway, nobody claims
that anything more than the Ten Commandments was revealed there to the people --
and the Ten Commandments, fundamental as they may be, do not comprise the whole
core of Judaism. There is no hint in them of such basic elements of our
religion as circumcision and ritual slaughter, the holidays and the Day of
Atonement, permitted and forbidden foods, laws of family life, or of all the
narrative portion of the Torah. All the latter were allegedly revealed by G-d
to Moses, who then told them to the People of Israel -- this may or may not be
so, but these matters definitely have nothing to do with any mass revelation.
2. As we have seen above, Judaism itself admits
that at certain points in the past masses had adopted anew belief in the Torah,
having simply been told by a few individuals that it was the belief shared by
their far ancestors. The people clearly believed stories which were told to
them -- so it really makes no difference whether those stories were about a
revelation of G-d to the masses or about His revelation to select individuals
(as in the stories of Christianity and Islam, for example). The bottom line, in
Judaism as well as in other religions, is that ancient people often believed
the stories they were told. It's really hard to understand why the stories of
Judaism are more trustworthy than those of other religions.
3. The story of a mass revelation is, of
course, not unique to Judaism. Catholicism has a highly developed tradition of
the revelations (apparitions) of Mary, Jesus's mother, to individuals as well
as to groups of people, Christians and non-Christians alike, throughout
history. These apparitions happened in various places all over the globe, from
the 1st century CE until these very days. In most cases, the apparitions are
said to have taken place before individuals or small groups of people, but
there are reports of mass apparitions, too. The most famous of the latter is,
probably, the case of Marian apparitions at the Coptic church in the Cairo
suburb of Zeitoun between April 2, 1968, and May 29, 1971. Millions are said to
have witnessed the apparitions, which attracted much interest, and reports
about them appeared both in the Egyptian and world press, as well as in a
number of books written on the subject. Here is the description in one such
book: "Exactly a week later [after the first
apparition] there was another apparition, then another and another at rapid
succession. They always took place at night and were generally preceded by
mysterious lights, flashing and scintillating silently over the church like a
canopy of shooting stars. One witness described them as a 'shower of diamonds
made of light.' Minutes later, formations of luminous doves would appear and
fly around the floodlight church. Eyewitnesses described them as 'strange
bird-like creatures made of light' which flew with astounding swiftness without
moving their wings. They always maintained a definite formation and disappeared
suddenly like melted snowflakes. Shortly after, a blinding explosion of light
would engulf the church roof. As it dwindled, it shaped itself into a brilliant
form of Our Lady. Invariably, she would be seen in a long white robe and veil
of bluish-white light. The awed spectators below could even see her garments
moving in the warm night breeze. A dazzling halo shone round her head... She
shone with an overpowering splendour like the sun in human form, bathing the
church in a glorious suffusion of light. The vision would glide with effortless
ease across the domes, bowing and greeting the beseeching throngs packed and
pressed around the church...
The frequency of the visions varied considerably.
In the early days she appeared almost every night, sometimes several times in
the space of a few hours. As time went by however, the visions grew less
frequent. The duration of each appearance was another unpredictable factor. On
the nights of 4-5 May and 8-9 June the apparition remained continuously visible
from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. enabling hundreds of exultant onlookers to hurry home
breathlessly and return with their startled families and neighbours...
News of the apparition spread like fire across
Egypt, generating a wave of intense excitement and attracting immense
multitudes of Christians, Jews, Moslems and unbelievers to Zeitoun to see the
visions for themselves. Within a few weeks, the crowds reached an estimated
250,000 nightly and the resulting traffic congestion threatened to paralyse
Cairo. At each appearance of the Virgin, a deafening cry would ascend from the
tumultuous thousands besieging the floodlit church on all sides. 'We believe in
you, St. Mary! We witness to you, St. Mary!' Great numbers of Moslems who had
been kneeling on their prayer mats reciting verses from the Koran in praise of
Mary, would raise their voices in fervent hymns to her... Others would pray in
unison with Catholics, Copts and Protestants -- the first time in history that
Christians and Moslems had prayed together in large numbers."
(Francis Johnston, "When Millions Saw
Mary," pp. 4-5)
All this, I repeat, took place only about 30
years ago. Many witnesses to the events are still alive, and numerous
testimonies of the apparitions, originating from the time when they took place,
are available. On the other hand, we have neither living witnesses nor any
written testimonies of the Sinai Revelation (except the Torah itself, and we
can't really prove that it was written down not significantly later than 1313
BCE). Of course, there is no reason to believe that Mary indeed appeared to
anybody at Zeitoun. Scientists think that all the people present at the site
saw was light, in different forms, which appeared due to the existence of
tectonic strain in the area (see J. Derr, M. Persinger, "Geophysical
Variables and Behavior," Perceptual and Motor Skills, v. 68 (1989),
pp. 123-128) -- but many people believe they saw Mary at Zeitoun, just as many
Jews believe their forefathers heard G-d speaking at Sinai. So one who says his
Judaic faith is based on the uniqueness of mass revelation at Mt. Sinai is
simply wrong.
The reason why our tradition remains trustworthy, despite it
only containing the idea that G-d spoke to Moses (even without it being clear
about what precisely that sentence was), is because even so, there are a number
of implications that one is forced to come to, including: that G-d exists; that
he speaks to His servants; and that Moses can be trusted as a conveyer of G-d’s
commandments, as he was chosen by G-d to communicate with.
Our tradition remains valid, even if, theoretically, there
were periods of time throughout history, where the majority of the Jewish
people were introduced to the Torah (which is similar to what has happened in
our generation, with Ba’alei Teshuva). That is because their new belief in the
Torah does not create the (false) tradition, that the Ba’al Teshuva personally
heard from his parents, who heard from their parents, in a chain stretching all
the way back to Mount Sinai, that they personally witnessed G-d speaking to
Moses – as in our case, the chain was definitely broken.
As for the apparition, I do not believe that it constitutes a
challenge to our religion for the following reasons:
Firstly, although officially the Egyptian police force did
not find any sign of a projector, I must confess that I still remain skeptical,
especially as the description of these lights, moving in this kind of fashion,
would be exactly what I would expect from a projector. And I have my suspicions
that the Egyptian police force, especially from a few decades ago, was not exactly
the most competent police force around.
Secondly, I have great trouble
understanding how we could know with any kind of reliability, how exactly she
really looked like, as she lived over 2000 years ago, and wasn’t famous enough,
in her lifetime, to have a sculpture made of her.
But mainly, I do not see it as
constituting a challenge, as it doesn’t mean anything.
I feel that I must accept the fact
that people actually witnessed this event, if I do not want to violate the
principle that ‘one must always base their conclusions on reality, and not base
reality on their conclusions’. But as there was no message, such an appearance
can mean 101 different things – I do not understand why I must conclude that
this was a sign confirming their religion and not something else, even as to the
opposite. It is an inherently meaningless observation (in that one cannot prove
that it has a certain meaning).
In other words, I am not arguing with
the fact – I am arguing with the interpretation given to it. In contrast, the revelation
of G-d at Mount Sinai came with a message, which in turn, creates a number of
implied conclusions that one is forced to reach, one of them being that the
Torah is true.
No comments:
Post a Comment