I feel it necessary to bring an example about
the issue of tradition to show why it is highly problematic to rely on a
tradition, even a tradition speaking of mass events which would be expected to
leave many witnesses behind (as is claimed concerning the Sinai Revelation).
In 361-363 CE, the emperor Flavius Claudius
Julianus ruled the Roman Empire. Since he was a bitter enemy of Christianity
and publicly announced his conversion to Roman paganism in 361 CE, Christian
chroniclers titled him Julian the Apostate. One of the deeds attributed to him
is the order to rebuild the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, destroyed by Titus in
70 CE.
The Christian historical tradition, starting with sources contemporary
to Julian's reign, brings the account of events that followed Julian's order: "He [Julian] at last brought the whole
body of the Jews upon us, whom... he endeavored to convince from their sacred
books and traditions that... they should return to their own land, rebuild
their Temple, and restore everything to its former splendor... The Jews set
upon the work of rebuilding with great vigor, and advanced the project with
diligent labor. Suddenly they were driven from their work by a violent
earthquake and a whirlwind, and they flew together for refuge to a certain
neighboring church, many to escape the impending danger, and others being
carried along by the dense crowd in its flight. There are some who say that the
church door were closed against them by an invisible hand, although these doors
had been wide open a moment before -- which hand was accustomed to work these
wonders for the confusion of the impious and the comfort of godly men. It is,
moreover, affirmed and believed by all, that as they strove to force their way
in by violence, the fire, which burst from the foundations of the Temple, met
and stopped them; some it burnt and destroyed; others it injured seriously,
leaving them a living monument of the Divine wrath against sinners... But
still, the most wondrous thing was that a light appeared in the heavens, as of
a cross within a circle... Nay, further, they who were present and were
witnesses of the following miracle, still show the mark of the cross that was
impressed upon their garments. For whenever these men, whether they were of us
or strangers, were showing these marks, or attending to others who were showing
them, each observed on his own or his neighbor's body or on his robe a shining
mark, which in art and elegance surpassed all painting and embroidery. Most of
them ran to our priests, begging to be baptized, and humbly entreating their
mercy."
This description was written by Gregory of
Nazianzus, a prominent Christian theologian who studied with the future emperor
Julian in Athens in the 350s CE. The text above, taken from Book 2 of Gregory's
"Invective" against Julian (cited by Rabbi Michael Adler, "The
Emperor Julian and the Jews," Jewish Quarterly Review, v. 5 (old
series, 1893), pp. 631-632), was written only a year or so after the events
supposedly occurred. The events, including the mass Jewish movement of
rebuilding the Temple, the earthquake and the whirlwind which stopped their
work, the fire which killed and injured many of the builders and caused the
Temple project to be finally abandoned, the great cross mark in the sky and the
smaller cross marks on bodies and clothes which lit up when shown to anybody,
and finally, the mass baptism of those Jewish builders who survived the
incident, would leave a huge amount of evidence and many witnesses to the
events. It seems impossible that Gregory's account could be written and
believed in by many people (as it was), were this account all a fiction.
And not only that, but two other Christian
authors -- Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan (in his letter to the emperor Theodosius
I), and John Chrysostom, a renowned Christian thinker (in the 3rd of
his Homilies Against the Jews) -- left us their own accounts of the
events, written about 25 years after the events supposedly occurred. Both
Ambrose's and Chrysostom's accounts corroborate Gregory's report. In the first
half of the 5th century CE (i.e. less than 90 years after the supposed events),
we have four more accounts which point to Christian-tinged miracles, including
the earthquake, fire and lighting crosses, which stopped the Jewish attempt to
rebuild the Temple according to the order of Julian the Emperor. These accounts
belong to four different people: Roman Christian theologian and historian
Rufinus, Byzantine church historians Socrates Scholasticus and Sozomen, and
Syrian theologian and historian Theodoret. Sozomen, in his "Ecclesiastical
History" (book 5, chapter 22), finishes his account of the events with the
following passage: "A more tangible and still more
extraordinary miracle ensued; suddenly the sign of the cross appeared
spontaneously on the garments of the persons engaged in the undertaking. These
crosses looked like stars, and appeared the work of art. Many were hence led to
confess that Christ is G-d, and that the rebuilding of the Temple was not
pleasing to him; others presented themselves in the church, were initiated, and
besought Christ, with hymns and supplications, to pardon their transgression.
If any one does not feel disposed to believe my narrative, let him go and be
convinced by those who heard the facts I have related from the eyewitnesses of
them, for they are still alive. Let him inquire, also, of the Jews and pagans
who left the work in an incomplete state, or who, to speak more accurately,
were unable to commence it."
Later Christian historians -- Philostorgus in
the late 5th century, Theophanes in the 6th, George Kedrenus in the 11th,
Nicephorus in the 14th, the authors of Magdeburg Centuries, a history of
the Protestant Church, in the 16th, Bishop William Warburton in the 18th, and
Cardinal John Newman in the 19th -- also brought similar accounts of Julian's
order to rebuild the Temple and the events which followed. This is definitely a
Christian historical tradition of an incident which should have left many
witnesses of it and which is rather strong evidence in favor of the Christian
religion and against Judaism. Unlike the tradition of the Exodus and the Sinai
Revelation there are seven accounts of these events written less than 100 years
after the events' alleged occurrence: the first of them was written only a year
or so after the supposed events, another two about 25 years later, and four
more 50 to 90 years after the supposed events.
Moreover, even a prominent pagan historian who
lived at the time of the alleged miracles, Ammian Marcellinus -- a personal
friend of Julian's and a sympathizer of his anti-Christian reforms -- brings an
account of Julian's attempt to rebuild the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, which
ended when "fearful balls of fire, bursting out again and again, near the
foundation, rendered the place altogether inaccessible to the workmen, who were
scorched by the flames. And since the very elements [of nature], as if by some
fate, repelled the attempt, it was abandoned" (Ammian Marcellinus, History,
book 23, chapter 1). Ammian does not tell of glowing crosses in the sky and on
people's skin and clothes, but this may be attributed to his dislike of
Christianity. And what is even more remarkable -- there are even two Jewish
rabbis who adopted the tradition of the miracles which stopped rebuilding the
Temple in Julian's reign: R' Gedaliah Ibn Yachiah in his Shalshelet haKabbalah and
R' David Ganz in his Tzemach David! They do not mention the glowing
crosses, of course, but the very fact that these pious rabbis affirm miracles
which could be used to corroborate the Christianity is most remarkable, and can
be compared to the adoption of the story of the Exodus and the Sinai Revelation
by Christians. I could see a Christian evangelist using this tradition of
miracles which stopped the rebuilding of the Temple in Julian's days as a
mighty tool in his outreach activity, just the way our rabbis and outreach
professionals use the tradition of the Exodus and the Sinai Revelation when
trying to persuade their audience and readers about the veracity of those
events.
But there is in fact no reason to believe that
the miracles described by Gregory of Nazianzus and the others actually occurred
-- and here is why:
1. In Julian's epistle "To the Community
of the Jews," which is the major source that testifies to the emperor's
interest in rebuilding the Temple, he asked the Jews to pray for the success of
his military campaign, adding: "Thus should you do, in order that when I
return safely from the Persian war, I may restore the Holy City of Jerusalem,
and rebuild it at my own expense, even as you have for so many years desired it
to be restored." (Quoted by R' M. Adler, "The Emperor
Julian and the Jews," p. 624)
The emperor Julian himself stated that his
intention was to rebuild the Temple after he returned from his war with Persia,
but he never did return -- he was killed during his campaign in Mesopotamia in
the summer of 363 CE, either by Persians or by Christian soldiers of his own
army. Judging from Julian's epistle, the rebuilding of the Temple had not actually
started -- and could therefore not be stopped by any miraculous event. [Though
some historians doubted the authenticity of the epistle, there is no evidence
which would show beyond a reasonable doubt that it was fabricated while there
is a great deal of textual evidence that the epistle was indeed written by the
emperor Julian himself (see e.g. M. Hak, "HaMezuyefet Hi Hatzharat Yulianus?"
Yavneh, v. 2, pp. 118-139 and Y. Levi, "Yulianus Keisaru Vinyan haBayit"
in "Olamot Nifgashim," pp. 221-254)].
And since Julian's own epistle implies that the
rebuilding of the Temple was never begun, the tradition of Christian-tinged
miracles that stopped the rebuilding of the Temple appears to be based on
dubious foundations, it is hardly reasonable to build one's whole worldview on
such a tradition. However, this is also true for the Judaic tradition of the
Exodus and the Sinai Revelation, given its many internal contradictions -- let
us recall, for example, the question of how much time the Israelites stayed in Egypt:
430 (Exodus 12:40), 400 (Genesis 15:13) or 210 years (Rabbinic tradition).
2. It is quite possible (though not provable)
that the Christian authors who wrote on the subject simply copied from Gregory
of Nazianzus, sometimes interpolating a little, adding new details and
magnifying the miracles in order to encourage the reader in his Christian
belief -- in this case, obviously, we are dealing not with several Christian
sources relating a tradition of the miracles, but with a single source copied
and re-copied (with slight variations) for centuries by different authors.
Rabbi Michael Adler made this point in his article "The Emperor Julian and
the Jews" (pp. 591-651), and he summarized his argument by saying,
"Gregory started the tale of the miracles, and the chorus of Church
writers, even to this day, has echoed and re-echoed it until it has passed into
the domain of history, into which it ought never to have entered." The
tradition of the Exodus and of the Sinai Revelation is definitely based
on a single source -- namely, on the Scripture -- with some elaborations of the
basic narrative in the writings of subsequent centuries (Talmudic and Midrashic
homilies). R' Adler's statement should hold true for the tradition of the
Exodus and the Sinai Revelation also.
3. The writings of Gregory of Nazianzus, like
those of the other early Christian authors who reported the miracles which
stopped rebuilding the Temple, are permeated with anti-Julian and anti-Jewish
bias. It would not be reasonable to expect such an author to give an objective
report of the events without "embellishing" his account with miracles
designed to inspire the reader in his Christian belief, even if there were no
connection between these miracles and reality. Similarly, the Scripture and Judaic
tradition are no less full of bias against the other religions; it is equally
possible to admit that the author of the Torah's account of the great and
awesome miracles of the Exodus and of G-d speaking to the whole nation at Sinai
("You shall have no other gods before Me") intended to inspire his
readers in their Judaic beliefs rather than to describe the real and actual
history of the People of Israel.
4. Though Gregory of Nazianzus definitely wrote
his account of the miracles very shortly (a year or so) after the events were
said to have taken place, and though he spoke explicitly of witnesses of the
miracles who "still show the mark of the cross that was impressed upon
their garments," it must be remembered that Gregory then lived in Anatolia
(modern Turkey), and he could hardly know what actually happened in Jerusalem
during the attempt to rebuild the Temple. Similarly, it is evident from the
Torah's text that it could not have been written in the Middle East circa
1313-1273 BCE, as it is supposed to have been: the Torah speaks of "Ur of
the Chaldeans" while Chaldean tribes reached the city of Ur only about
1000 BCE, it tells of Abraham's and Isaac's visits to the Philistine kingdom
while the Philistines appeared on the southeastern coast of the Mediterranean
only in the 12th century BCE, and it speaks of the Egyptian army drowning in
the sea and unable to recover for at least 40 years, just at the time when
Egypt was in a state of permanent and indecisive war with the Hittite empire.
It appears from the Torah's text that its author must have been much less
acquainted with the reality of 1313-1273 BCE Middle East than Gregory of
Nazianzus was acquainted with Jerusalem of 361-363 CE.
5. The Christian writers were themselves
confused about a significant detail of the alleged events -- whether the fire
which finally stopped the Temple rebuilding burst from the foundations of the
Temple (according to Gregory and most of the later authors) or came down from
the sky (according to Socrates Scholasticus). On this point, at least, it is
impossible to speak of a consistent Christian tradition, but this detail is
rather minor compared with the disagreement which existed among Jewish authors
around the beginning of the Common Era about the number and nature of the Plagues
in Egypt, as I have shown above.
6. As said above, Ammian Marcellinus -- the
only historian who lived at the time of the supposed events and whose writings
are free from pro-Christian bias -- mentions neither glowing crosses in the sky
or on people's skin and clothes, nor an earthquake which destroyed the rebuilt
fragments of the Temple and killed and wounded many of the builders. Moreover,
Marcellinus mentions no Jews taking part into the Temple's rebuilding and
attributes the whole work to a gentile, Alypius of Antioch, who had formerly
been Roman pro-prefect of Britain. In fact, no source aside from accounts of
Temple-rebuilding-related miracles mentions any earthquake in Palestine or in
the neighboring countries in 361-363 CE. An earthquake is an event significant
enough to be noted by many sources, even without any connection to the Temple;
the absence of external corroborative evidence concerning this facet of the
Christian tradition makes the tradition unreliable. At the very best, it may be
said that Julian attempted to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple as a Roman rather
than as a Jewish enterprise and that the construction work was stopped by a
fire. This is rather far from the Christian tradition of the Jews attempting to
rebuild the Temple because of their ignorance or denial of Jesus' prophecy of
the Temple's eternal destruction and being punished time after time by Divine
wrath -- first by an earthquake, then by a fire -- while the Christian aspect
of this Divine punishment was manifest by a huge glowing cross in the sky and
smaller glowing crosses on people's bodies and garments.
But, the situation is actually much worse for
the tradition of the Exodus and the Sinai Revelation. There exists no external
corroborative evidence whatsoever from any source written at the supposed time
of the events. The existing historical and archeological evidence allows one to
speak, at the very best, of a continual flow of small groups of minorities out
of Egypt, continuing for decades or even centuries, as Prof. Abraham Malamat
asserts in an article bearing the telling title "Let My People Go and Go
and Go and Go" (Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 1998, pp.
62-66, 85). Needless to say, this picture is far from the traditional Judaic
account of 600,000 adult male Israelites with their wives and children leaving
Egypt in a single event, unprecedented in human history after Egypt is crushed
by G-d's awesome plagues.
7. Though Sozomen maintained that a person
skeptical about the Christian tradition of the miracles which stopped the
Temple's rebuilding should "go and be convinced by those who heard the
facts I have related from the eyewitnesses of them, for they are still
alive," it must be noted that several renowned Christian authors who
should have had close connections to the supposed miracles say nothing about
them. Jerome (347-419 CE), the author of the Vulgate (the Latin Bible
translation used by the Catholic Church), was a pupil of Gregory of Nazianzus,
had travelled through Palestine, lived for some time in Bethlehem (some 6 miles
from Jerusalem), and made many references to Julian and to the Jewish Temple
throughout his voluminous writings -- yet he maintained complete silence
concerning the miracles. In his commentary on Daniel 11:34 Jerome mentions that
it was the verse which Julian used to persuade the Jews that the time had come
for the Temple to be rebuilt. Jerome, however, does not bring any account of
miracles that stopped the attempt to rebuild the Temple -- it is hard to
explain this silence aside from Jerome's disbelief in the story. Cyril, bishop
of Jerusalem at the time of the alleged events, left many written works, but
none mentions miracles which stopped the Temple's rebuilding, nor even the very
attempt to rebuild the Temple. Another Cyril, bishop of Alexandria in the early
5th century CE, left a polemical treatise against Julian and comments upon his
opponent's views of the Temple worship and the Jews, but never speaks of even
an intention on Julian's part to rebuild the Jewish Temple, let alone miracles
which put an end to that attempt.
The situation is quite similar about the
ancient Israelites' acquaintance with the Torah in general and with story of
the Exodus and of the Sinai Revelation in particular. Dozens of ancient Hebrew
texts (inscriptions, ostraca, and amulets) of the First Temple period have been
discovered during our century. It is not much compared to the number of ancient
Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, or Babylonian texts known to us, but even so, the
picture arising from these ancient Hebrew texts is most remarkable. The
earliest texts which allow one to assume that their writer was familiar with at
least part of the Torah are two silver amulets found in Jerusalem, which
contain a text quite similar (though not identical) to the wording of the
Priestly Blessing in Numbers 6:23-27 (see Gabriel Barkai, Katef Hinnom, pp.
29-31). These amulets date to the late 7th century BCE -- 700 years after the
alleged time of the Exodus, and they testify only to their author's
acquaintance with a tiny fraction of the Torah text, telling nothing of the
degree to which he was familiar with the Torah's law or narrative in general.
The earliest text which reasonably suggests that its author had a good
knowledge of the Torah's law is the Passover Papyrus from Elephantine (Egypt),
in which the date and the laws of the Passover are brought in accordance with
the Written Torah (though, in contradiction to the Rabbinic Oral Torah, the
laws detailed in the papyrus permit one to own leavened bread during the
Passover if he does not bring it into his house). The Passover Papyrus is dated
to 419/418 BCE -- 900 years after we believe the laws of the Passover were
taught to the whole People of Israel (for the text of the papyrus see Bezalel
Porten et al., The Elephantine Papyri in English, pp. 125-126). As for the
7th century BCE, we possess the Yavneh-Yam Ostracon, dated by 639-609 BCE, the
petition of a harvester complaining against somebody who seized his garment.
Though the harvester mentions that he finished harvesting and storage of the
grain "before the Sabbath," he nevertheless makes (in a legal
petition!) no reference to the law of the Torah, under any guise, appealing
instead to the local officer's sense of justice (for the text of the ostracon,
see J. B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old
Testament, pp. 568-569). One more ancient Hebrew legal petition of known to us
is the Widow's Petition Ostracon, dated to the 9th-7th centuries BCE. This
petition, written by a widow to her local governor, reads: "My husband is
dead, [having left] no children. And may your hand be with me; and may you
place in your servant's hand the inheritance which you promised to Amasyahu.
But regarding the wheat field which is in Na'amah: you have granted it to his
brother" (for the text of the ostracon, see H. Shanks, "Three Shekels
for the Lord," Biblical Archaeology Review, November-December 1997,
pp. 28-32). From the text it follows that the widow's deceased husband had no
sons but did have a brother. In this case, according to the explicit law of the
Torah (Numbers 6:9), the brother would inherit all the property of the
deceased, so that both the governor's intention to promise a part of the
inheritance to one Amasyahu and the widow's request to give the inheritance to
her would be illegal according to the Torah's law. Moreover, the widow asserts
that it was the governor's decision, and not the Torah's law, that gave the
brother of the deceased the wheat field in Na'amah. This document leaves an impression
that both the widow and the governor were unfamiliar with the explicit law of
inheritances in the Torah. The Gezer Calendar, dated to the 10th century BCE,
mentions a month of "harvest and feasting," but does not name the
feast(s) celebrated in that month; moreover, since, according to that calendar,
the month of "harvest and feasting" is three months before the month
of "summer fruit," it is evident that this month is not parallel to
the present-day autumn month of Tishrei, the most suitable candidate for the
title "the month of feasting" judging from the Torah's description of
the feasts. Most likely the calendar refers to the month parallel to the
present-day month of Nissan, but the Torah's name for that month -- "the
spring month" -- is not mentioned. Neither are any of the other Scriptural
names of months -- "the month of Bul," "the month
of Ziv," "the month of Eitanim" -- mentioned (for the
text of the Gezer Calendar see J. B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern
Texts Relating to the Old Testament, p. 320). And so on -- among dozens of the
pre-Exilic Hebrew texts, none can reasonably suggest that its author was
familiar enough with any significant part of the Torah's law or narrative.
G-d's name YHWH appears in some texts, and some ostraca even mention "the
house of YHWH" (e.g. the Beit YHWH Ostracon -- see H. Shanks,
"Three Shekels for the Lord"), but there is no way to find out
whether they speak of the Jerusalem Temple where YHWH is worshipped as one and
only G-d, or of a village sanctuary dedicated to YHWH as a local deity. On the
other hand, the excavations at Kuntillet 'Ajrud in the northeast Sinai desert
unearthed several inscriptions of that period with the following content:
"Your days may be prolonged and you shall
be satisfied... give YHWH of Teman and his Asherah... YHWH of Teman and his
Asherah favored..."
"A[shy]o m[lk] (the king) said: tell [x,y
and z], may you be blessed by YHWH of Shomron (Samaria) and his Asherah"
"Amaryo said: tell my lord, may you be
well and be blessed by YHWH of Teman and his Asherah. May he bless and keep you
and be with you"
(Eric M. Meyers [ed.], The Oxford
Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, Kuntillet 'Ajrud).
These inscriptions are dated to the 9th-8th
centuries BCE, and the pagan Canaanite goddess Asherah is described there not
only as a deity blessing her believers, but also as the favored one of the
deity YHWH -- a title referring usually to female consorts. Of course the
Scripture itself mentions many times that many of ancient Hebrews worshipped
pagan deities at certain periods, but here we have much more than just a pagan
cult: the worship of a couple consisting of YHWH and Asherah, that is, a
worship of YHWH itself as a pagan deity who even has some kind of family life.
Isn't it peculiar that while we have no text written at that time which
describes YHWH as the one and only G-d of the Universe, we have such outspoken
pagan descriptions of Him?
To the above one can add the complete absence
of any reference in Hittite sources of the late 14th-early 13th centuries to
the plagues of the Exodus and to the drowning of the whole Egyptian army in the
sea. The Hittites were at that time engaged in a continual and indecisive war
with Egypt, and they would be more than glad to record great disasters befalling
their enemies. Therefore the tradition of the Exodus and the Sinai Revelation,
and of the whole narrative of the Torah in general, appears to be in no better
a position than the Christian tradition of miracles which stopped rebuilding
the Temple.
8. And finally, that Jewish authors speak of
the failure of Julian's initiative to rebuild the Temple does little to help
verify this tradition. One of these authors, R' David Ganz (Tzemach David),
explicitly wrote that the sources he used for his account were two Christian
chroniclers -- Winting and Cassius -- and therefore his account adds nothing.
Moreover, R' Ganz does not detail which exactly events stopped the rebuilding
of the Temple, confining himself to the ambiguous formula, "the Heaven
made it so that the building was not finished, since the emperor [Julian] was
killed in the Persian war." As for the other Jewish author, R' Gedaliah Ibn
Yachiah's (Shalshelet haKabbalah) account states: "About the year 4349 from Creation, the
chronicles say that there was a great earthquake throughout the world, and the
great Temple, which the Jews had erected in Jerusalem by the order of Julion Apostata
the Emperor at a great cost, fell down. And next day, a great fire came down
from the sky, melted all the iron tools that were at the building site and
burnt a great number of Jews. And when the emperor Valenti [Valentinian?] saw
this, he sent other Jews from Constantinople and built up all that was
ruined."
The explicit use of the Greco-Latin term
"chronicles" (kroniki in the Hebrew original), which, in R'
Gedaliah's time (16th century) could refer only to Christian historical
writings, as well as the name Julion Apostata -- a corruption of Latin Julianus
Apostata, Julian the Apostate -- reveal the Christian origin of R' Gedaliah's
account. (It was the Christians who named their bitter enemy Julian the
Apostate for his renunciation of Christianity, while the Jews had no reason to
refer in such a negative way to the emperor so friendly to them; R' Gedaliah
apparently just copied the name from a Christian chronicle without having much
interest in what it really meant). Thus, R' Gedaliah's account can lend no
additional credibility to the Christian tradition -- just as the acceptance of
the Scripture's Exodus--Sinai--Land-of-Israel narrative by the Christians lends
no additional weight to the Scriptural narrative: in both cases adherents of
one religion adopted another religion's tradition not because they had external
sources corroborating it, but because of their spiritual needs, gullibility, or
other reasons which have nothing to do with the tradition's veracity. [It is
interesting to note that either R' Gedaliah or the author of the Christian
chronicle he copied made a grave error: the events in R' Gedaliah's account are
dated to 4349 years from Creation, which is 589 CE -- 226 years after Julian's
death! Moreover, R' Gedaliah recorded that the emperor Valenti (most likely
Valentinian I, emperor of Rome in 364-375 CE) rebuilt the destroyed Temple -
which, of course, did not happen.]
I feel it best to conclude the discourse on a
tradition's reliability with Rabbi Michael Adler's words in his article
"The Emperor Julian and the Jews": "Nothing should be admitted into the book
of history except that which, by reason of its undisputed truth, merits a place
in its sacred pages; and it is the time that the legends... of the reputed
rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem by the Emperor Julian, and the attendant
miracles, should be relegated to their proper sphere of imaginative literature
and fictitious history."
Unfortunately, as I have shown above, if we
apply same apparatus of reason to the tradition of the Torah's narrative as we
apply to the Christian tradition, we will come to the same conclusions about
our tradition that Rabbi Adler came to about this Christian tradition.
I completely agree with you that it is possible for someone
to create a false version of events, even when that event involved many people
who were witnesses to it. There comes to mind the words of the great scholar
and historian, Rabbi Abraham Zucato, who writes in his Sefer Yuchasin: “For as
I have seen with my own eyes, in my times, [how] many things that occurred,
were later written [by the historians] in their histories in a [manner] that
never occurred.” (Yuchasin, beginning of Ma’amar Shishi)
However, there is a simple distinction in the case of the
Kuzari proof that makes all the difference: we are not trying to prove that the
Torah is true, based on the text of the Torah that says that it is true, as that
is circular reasoning. The proof is from us, the people, and from the specific
type of tradition that we have, that we were told by our parents, who were told
by their parents, in chain going back all the way to that first generation,
that they witnessed that event themselves. Such a tradition, which is
identically carried by many thousands of people, is impossible to create, if it
were not true.
I will confess that with regard to Julian’s Temple, I have a
hard time sharing your conviction that it truly never happened, and that an
attempt was never made under his orders to rebuild the Temple, as currently I
have not yet found evidence that would conclusively show that it never happened
(though the descriptions of the signs that appeared, seem a bit much). And
having ‘fearful balls of fire’ coming out of the foundations and stopping the
rebuilding of the Temple, does not have to be interpreted as a proof against
our religion; it could be explained that the Jewish G-d caused that the fire
should appear, as the time was not yet right for the rebuilding of the Temple.
As for the other examples that you mention, again, I would
prefer not to comment at all, as I do not feel that I have all of the relevant
details, which is crucial if I would want to reach the right conclusion. But if
I had to comment on them, this is how I see things:
1. The Gezer calendar – the text of the calendar reads as
follows:
ירחו אסף ירחו ז Two months of gathering, two months of pla-
רע ירחו לקש nting, two months of late planting
ירח עצד פשת a month of hoeing flax
ירח קצר שערם a month of barley harvest
ירח קצר וכל a month of harvest and feasting
ירחו זמר two months of (vine) pruning
ירח קץ a month of summer fruit
On the edge is written the scribe’s name:
אביה Abijah
I
will point out that the word used for ‘gathering’ in the first line, אסף, is
reminiscent of the Biblical term used for the Festival of Tabernacles, חג האסיף (Exodus
34:22). The fourth line, which mentions the barley harvest, brings to mind the
Omer sacrifice brought on the 16th day of Nissan, which would permit
the harvesting and consumption of that year’s barley for the rest of the
nation, from that day onward. Accordingly it could be argued that the meaning
of this calendar should be interpreted as follows: two months of gathering
corresponds to the months of Tishrei and Mar-Cheshvan (mid-September until
mid-November); two months of planting corresponds to the months of Kislev and
Tevet (mid-November until mid-January); two months of late planting corresponds
to the months of Shevat and Adar (mid-January until mid-March); a month of
hoeing flax corresponds to the month of Nissan (mid-March to mid-April); a
month of barley harvest corresponds to the month of Iyar (mid-April to
mid-May); a month of harvest and feasting corresponds to the month of Sivan
(mid-May to mid-June); two months of (vine) pruning corresponds to the months
of Tammuz and Av (mid-June until mid-August); and a month of summer fruit
corresponds to the month of Elul (mid-August to mid-September).
Accordingly, the month of feasting mentioned in the
calendar corresponds to the festival of Shavuot, and it can be strongly argued
that this calendar does in fact, support the Biblical calendar.
2. The widow’s petition – it may be possible that the
reason why she appealed to the governor, and not to the courts, was precisely for
the very reason you mention: since she knew that according to the law, she
would not be entitled to receiving her deceased husband’s field, she attempted
to go around that by appealing to the governor instead.
3. The mention of Ashera – it is possible to infer from a
number of sources, that in the First Temple period when idol-worship was
widespread, the people worshipped their idols together with worshipping
G-d.
Just to mention two examples: “Manasseh
was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem
fifty-five years, and his mother's name was Hephzibah. And he did what was evil in the eyes of the
L-rd; like the abominations of the nations that the L-rd had driven out from before
the children of Israel. And he rebuilt the high places that Hezekiah his father
had destroyed, and he erected altars to the Baal, and he made an asherah as
Ahab the king of Israel had made, and he prostrated himself to the entire host
of the heaven, and he worshipped them. And he built altars in the house of the
L-rd, concerning which the L-rd had said, ‘In Jerusalem I will establish My
Name.’ And he built altars for the entire host of Heaven in the two courts of
the house of the Lord. And he passed his
son through fire; he practiced soothsaying and divination, and he consulted
necromancers and those divine by the Jidoa bone; he did much that was evil in
the eyes of the L-rd, to provoke [Him]. He placed the graven image of the
asherah that he made, in the house concerning which the L-rd had said to David
and to his son Solomon, ‘In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen
from all the tribes of Israel, will I establish My Name forever...” (Kings II 21:1-7)
“And Elijah drew near to all the people and said, "Until
when are you hopping between two ideas? If the Lord is God, go after Him, and
if the Baal, go after him." And the people did not answer him a word.” (Kings
I 18:21)
Therefore, the findings from Kuntillet ‘Arjud that you
mention, can be interpreted as affirming the general description of widespread
idol-worship of that time, as found in the Prophets, and not as in
contradiction to Scripture.
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