IS THE TORAH A LIE

IS THE TORAH A LIE?

Hugh Fogelman

God founded not a religion, but a nation”

And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.” Exodus 6:7 King James Version (KJV)

Do you remember way back in grade school when the teacher would say, “When I assign you a book report, all I require is one thing: read the book! Don’t rely on the movie; don’t take it from the Cliff Notes. If you’re doing a book report, read the book!”

The Torah records that Moses told the Israelites:

9. But beware and watch yourself very well, lest you forget the things that your eyes saw, and lest these things depart from your heart, all the days of your life, and you shall make them known to your children and to your children’s children, 10. the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when the Lord said to me, "Assemble the people for Me, and I will let them hear My words, that they may learn to fear Me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children. 11. And you approached and stood at the foot of the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire up to the midst of the heavens, with darkness, a cloud, and opaque darkness. 12. The Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire; you heard the sound of the words, but saw no image, just a voice. 13. And He told you His covenant, which He commanded you to do, the Ten Commandments, and He inscribed them on two stone tablets. Deuteronomy 4:9-13 (Judaica Press Complete Tanach)

A specific claim is being made here, that an entire nation―the three million men, women and children who came out of Egypt―heard God speaking at Mount Sinai, saying, “I am the Lord your God.”

You can not formulate a lie based on someone else’s experience. For example, pretend you are God and you want to transmit a religion to a people. You have two choices: You can either give it to a messenger to give to the people, or you can give it to the entire people directly. Which is the better choice? Which would you accept?

If you want a revelation to be accepted by everyone, it is plainly obvious that you would come to all of the people, rather than to one person. That is the only way to avoid any doubt. Why? For example, I can make up stories about myself and if you like me or trust me you could choose to believe me. But if I make up a story and say it happened to you, then there’s no way you’ll believe me unless it really happened.

It’s obvious that you can not get away with a lie on the basis of someone else’s experience. So if you’re going to start a religion and you want to make sure everyone’s going to accept it, the intelligent choice is to tell everyone, not just one person. If it is true, then everyone in the national group will know it at the deepest level of knowledge, since everybody in the group was actually there. There will obviously be no need to present any additional evidence to anyone of that generation. Also, the next generation will know that the event occurred, both because their own parents who were direct eyewitnesses told them, and because everyone else in the nation is either a direct eyewitness or the offspring of a direct eyewitness.

However, what if a large section of a nation were somehow duped and were convinced to the extent that they actually passed on a lie to their children as if it was their own personal experience? This would not yield a believable, communicable, verifiable national truth, because the next generation would find many amongst them who either denied the universal character of the national claim or were never told about it by their parents.

Perhaps we can better appreciate the tremendous discrepancy between different types of claims by imagining the following scenario: A man is walking along the beachfront, followed by a single line of 100 blindfolded men, each with one hand on the shoulder of the man in front of him. Should we view this group as a collection of independent thinkers, each deciding for himself which direction to walk in, or is it really one leader followed by 100 followers such as in Christianity or Mormonism?

If the chain of blindfolded men behind the one leader grew to one thousand or even one million, it would still be no more impressive an occurrence. Why? Because each is not independently choosing which way to go, but is only relying on the man in front of him in line, who in turn is relying on the man in front of him.

Now, imagine just ten men each walking independently. Do they not represent a stronger statement about which way to go than the 100 men being led by one leader?

What emerges from all of this is that in evaluating the relative strengths of various types of historical claims, the key number to keep in mind is not the number of people who at some later date came to accept this claim as true. Rather, the significant factor is the number of people it is claimed were direct participants or eyewitnesses.

Does it make sense that God would allow the most important issue in our lives―i.e. His purpose or plan for us―to be undertaken without proper evidence for us to make a logical decision? Moreover, why would God establish His entire relationship with a nation through one man, without any possibility of verification, and still expect this nation to obediently follow an entire system of instructions, based only on blind faith?

Of course not! And that’s why Judaism is based squarely on national revelation. And this is why other nations, other religions cannot and have not made the claim of national revelation. Of the 15,000 known religions in recorded human history, how many stake the foundation of their belief on the idea that God spoke to their entire nation? ANSWER: One. Judaism. - Isn’t that strange? If a national revelation is the best way to go, why has no other nation or religion ever tried it?

The answer/reason is that this is one lie you can never get away with. Human events fall into two basic categories: legend and history. Legend, though it may be true, is unverifiable due to the absence of eyewitnesses. History, on the other hand, is verifiable because of witnesses.

Now apply this to religion. If someone claims “God spoke to me,” then other people have a choice to believe the claim or not. Some people will choose to believe the claim―and from there could start a whole new religion, like Paul with Christianity, and Joseph Smith with the Mormons, and Mohammed with Islam, plus countless others.

But if someone claims that “God spoke to all of you,” he’ll never get away with that if it did not really happen. Because if an event never happened to someone, you surely cannot convince him that it happened to him! And that is exactly why no other religion in history has ever made the claim of national revelation.

The point is not to put down other religions; the point is merely to the truth of Torah and of the Children of Israel. So it is worthwhile to investigate just how many people claimed to see Jesus rise from the dead (the count varies, depending who is telling the story), or how many people accompanied Joseph Smith when God and Jesus (of only God depending on the tale) appeared to him or when he received the Book of Mormon (NONE), or who witnessed anything Mohammed said.

“As G-d created our minds, He expects us to use our reasoning together with our faith. Faith is not a substitute for reason, but a development from it and alongside it.”

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