The Ten Plagues and Exodus narratives present a novel genre of claims. Here the bible makes the
unprecedented proposal that all of ancient Israel witnessed large-scale
miracles. Of course, rational explanations for many these narratives can be
proposed. A "bloody" Nile might have been caused by a sudden
infestation of reddish, marine microorganisms. The invasions of frogs, lice,
and locusts, along with the national outbreak of boils, might also be attributed
to some ecological fluke. Stampedes of wild beasts, livestock pestilence,
wildly destructive hailstorms, and "darkness" might also happen
naturally - although the biblical report that Jewish settlements exclusively
were untouched by these plagues is unusual, as is the report that only
first-born Egyptian citizens and animals perished in the final plague. The
"splitting" of the sea, just in time for Israel's escape, and the
serendipitous return of the waters at the moment of Egypt's crossing, if true,
are exceptionally bizarre events.
Skeptics must therefore
resort to a more radical rejection of these reports. They must theorize that
the biblical text evolved over several generations, and by the time these
manufactured details found their way into the narrative, only a vague national
memory of the events remained.
Even this
historical-literary approach falters when we focus on the Exodus' climax - the
giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. More than a dozen biblical passages
describe how all of ancient Israel experienced simultaneous prophecy. According
to the text, millions of men, women, and children heard God speak. Furthermore,
the sounds they supposedly heard were not similar to thunderclaps, or volcanic
rumblings; rather, they were "rules and laws." Several verses
explicitly quote portions of the prophecy, like, "God spoke all these
words, saying, 'I am God your Lord, Who brought you out of Egypt, from the
place of slavery; do not have any other gods before Me.'" For a complete
list of the Torah's revelation narratives, see Appendix II.
Could the Sinai Account Be False?
The Torah claims that
ancient Jewry experienced simultaneous, national prophecy. What are the odds
that such a claim is untrue?
If Judaism is a lie, then
it must have been launched several generations after the events the Torah
describes. After all, people of Moses' generation would know if they had been
enslaved in Egypt, seen Egyptians suffer ten plagues, escaped miraculously
through a split sea, seen the Egyptian army wiped out in the returning waters,
heard God utter commandments at Mount Sinai, and eaten manna in the desert for
forty years. Moses certainly would have failed had he approached even the most
primitive nation and tried to persuade them that they or their parents were the
people described in his book.
Skeptics must therefore
theorize that the Torah took its current form generations after the events it
describes supposedly took place. Ancient Israel might have possessed a vague
mythology about enslavement, escape, and supernatural events at the foot of a
great mountain; and one or several charismatic leaders, maybe even over a
period of generations, filled in details and created the Jewish people's
official history. Maybe the details were recorded as the leader(s) formulated
them, or maybe they were maintained orally and written down by later leaders.
Regardless of the precise
scenario, this theory proposes that some Jewish leader introduced into history
the previously unknown fact that God spoke to all Israel. Thereafter, this
assertion was recorded in writing and appears throughout the Torah (see
Appendix II).
The Unbelievable Lie
Until that Jewish leader
(or group of leaders) made this announcement, the evolving story of the Jewish
people was indisputable. Anyone who suspiciously claimed ignorance of a new
detail in the official mythology could be silenced with assurances that the
leader(s) possessed more information about Israel's history than did the
masses. However, with the proclamation that the entire nation heard God speak,
every Jew was suddenly granted equal access to this historical tradition. Not
only the leader's ancestors were there; everyone's ancestors were there.
Suddenly the masses could legitimately question any innovation in the story:
"If that is true, why are you the only one who knows it?"
Moreover, the most
difficult sort of detail to introduce would have been "all Jewry heard God
speak." People intuitively sense that traditions like that aren't easily
forgotten by every member of a nation. National memories of volcanic eruptions,
eclipses, and other extraordinary experiences typically linger on for
generations or centuries. We can imagine the masses turning to their parents
and grandparents to seek confirmation that they descended from prophets; and we
can imagine the reaction if not a single living Jew (besides the individual or
group making the announcement) recalled hearing of the event.
Any Jewish leader who
tried to introduce a mass-prophecy into Jewish history would thus face this
dilemma: If he would claim that the mass-prophecy happened many generations
earlier, the masses might appreciate why no one remembers that all of their
ancestors heard God speak - but they would also wonder how the leader could
possess clarity about such an ancient event. On the other hand, if the leader
would claim that he possessed clarity because the event was fairly recent, then
the masses would wonder why they and their parents never heard of this
fantastic happening. To appreciate this difficulty, imagine that the pope
decided to announce today that God once spoke simultaneously to all Italians.
Where in history could the pope place such an event and get away with it?
Here we arrive at a
critical distinction between the Jewish and Christian incunabula - that is, their
beginning stages. The most significant difference between Christianity's and
Judaism's founding is not in the numbers - that only a few thousand of Jesus'
followers witnessed his miracles while millions of Jews heard God speak -
rather, the significance is in the percentages.
Only some Jews and
non-Jews saw Jesus' miracles, but every Jew experienced the Sinai prophecy -
100 percent of a large and easily identifiable population. Early promoters of
Christianity claimed thousands of nameless witnesses, and skeptics couldn't
dispute such claims; but early promoters of Judaism claimed that all the
ancestors of the very people they were preaching to experienced prophecy.
Skeptics could easily poll vast numbers of the population - the descendents of
the purported prophets - to test the leadership's story.
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