6 million Jews at Mount Sinai? (Catholics, civilization, women, believe)

[whoppers]

Some clarifications are in order.

Retrojecting later interpretations into ancient and formative texts
Consulting the Mishnah and the Talmud (which one?) or Rashi (or any other number of Jewish interpreters) to clarify what is written in the Torah can not be used by Jews to claim that "this is how we work"; that is a blanket statement that overgeneralizes the facts. To the contrary, this is how SOME Jews "work".

Other Jews, have a much more balanced and non-biased approach to the subject. So that I cannot be accused of using a non-Jewish approach (and somehow invalidated), I will quote James Kugel - a well-respected adn well-known Jewish scholar and part of the Jewish faith, by his own admission - and his book How to Read the Bible, which deals with the differences between what the Bible (the Hebrew Bible is assumed when the term "Bible" is used) says and how it has been interpreted throughout the years by the Bible itself, by different Jewish groups, by Christians, and even by Moslems. As both a biblical scholar and a Jew of the traditional faith, he was reticent to even approach the problem. He writes "If I nonetheless went ahead, it was because I felt that it was dishonest, and ultimately would prove impossible, to hide from the central questions addressed by this book" (p. xvi, New York: Free Press, 2007).

When speaking of the "ancient interpreters" - those who began to authoritatively interpret the Bible to others and floruished from "around 300 BCE to 200 CE or so" (to name one particularly important stage) - he mentions that

They had a rather idiosyncratic, even quirky, way of interpreting the Bible. For example, they believed that the Bible did not always say openly what it meant; it was full of cryptic hints, and when these were carefully studied, all manner of hidden meanings could be revealed. In reading this way, ancient interpreters sometimes deduced the existence of whole incidents or teachings that the Bible had never mentioned - indeed, they often "found" here and there doctrines or ideas that came into existence only centuries after the biblical text in question had been written. Their interpretations soon became what the Bible meant. Their explanations of different stories and laws and prophecies were passed on for centuries afterward. Institutionalized by church and synagogue, preached and sung about, depicted in floor mosaics, stained-glass windows, paintings, and statues, endlessly talked about in monasteries and on village greens, echoed in poetry and philosophy and learned discourse of all kinds, this interpreted Bible (that is, the Bible as explained by the ancient interpreters) was the Bible all throughout the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and to a large extent, even up to today. (ibid, p. xiv-xv, emphasis his)

There's not much more to add to that to improve it - except for the contents of the actual book which traces this history of interpretation to a large degree. Kugel has spent much of his career working on such matters of interpretation. A detailed look at JUST how the Bible itself interprets previous Biblical books (intertextual interpretation) can be found in Michael Fishbane's Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford, 1988).

The Hebrew language - the Bible and how it changed.
Another assertion is that the Torah has somehow, magically remained unchanged over the years since it's "inception" by Moses.

1- Mosaic Authorship no longer accepted. It's not even merited to enter a discussion on the Mosaic authorship of the Torah. In the Jewish tradition, Ibn Ezra in the Middle Ages was one of the first to point out the problems with this traditional teaching, later to be expanded by Baruch Spinoza (excommunicated for not being as tactful as Ibn Ezra had been on certain matters concerning Jewish tradition and it's "always-So" claims) and long ago (hundreds of years ago, in fact) proven beyond a shadow of any reasonable doubt that Moses did not write the Torah in it's entirety, if he even wrote any of it at all. Ephraim Speiser - another well-respected and well-known scholar - testified to this most basic of modern knowledge of the Torah when he wrote that

Abraham Ibn Ezra (twelth century) managed to suggest his acute awareness of the problems implicit in the assumption of the Mosaic authorship of the Torah. Although he couched his hints on the subject in guarded language, Ibn Ezra was able, nevertheless, to intimate to his readers that certain passages in the Pentateuch must be post-Mosaic....
It required, however, the penetrating proving of Spinoza (seventeenth century) to launch "higher" biblical criticism - that is, internal anlysis as opposed to textual or "lower" criticism - on a truly productive course. Steady subsequent progress left little doubt that instead of being the work of Moses in its entirety, the Pentateuch was actually the product of a number of writers.
(AB: Genesis, p. xx, New York: Doubleday, 1962)

Suffice it to say, conservative and orthodox claims to the contrary remain exactly what they are: tradition-based claims. Important faith-claims, but still only faith-based claims.

2- The Bible has undergone great textual change since it's inception.
Sticking to my theme (and guarding against claims of non-Jewish studies being invalidated), I will mention Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler's (two more Jewish and well-respected and well-known scholars) essay in The Jewish Study Bible (Ed. Michale Fishbane, Oxford, 2004), on the history of research into the Bible, and their comment that

No original manuscript of any biblical book has ever been discovered.....
For the biblical books, numerous copies or partial copies, varying greatly in age and quality, have been preserved in various parts of the world. Occasionally, as with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the mid-20th century, new copies come to light. Nevertheless, for the entire text of the Bible, scholars are faced with a situation in which they have multiple manuscripts that have been copied by hand so that each book is a unique product, unlike a modern printed book, and therfore the copies differ among themselves in many places, some differences trivial and some important.
(ibid, "Textual Criticism of the Bible", p. 2067)

I take it that the importance of the above is obvious. In case it is not - the Bible has undergone great change over the several thousand years of it's existence, and no miraculous power has protected it from the same fate that befalls all hand-copied collections.

3- The myth of the "outsider looking in".
It doesn't take much to show (and it has been shown repeatedly on this forum) that there are not special groups that can claim sole "owernship" of a text. The ones who could claim this have been long dead. To the contrary - there are groups that can claim ownership of a tradition - not of a text that formed that tradition, among many others. If the texts later religious groups had claim to that text alone, then by it's very nature the Torah could be claimed by Judaism and Christianity - and it frequently is! Kugel's book (quoted above) goes a long way towards illuminating this strange trend of "textual authority".

Apart from the fact that an outsider is sometimes the more objective observer of a phenomenon (rather than the one on the inside who has definite ideological motives to remain biased and subejctive), the fact still remains: there have been, and there are still many different types of Jews, just as there have been, and are still are, many different types of Judaism. A survey of Jewish approaches to the Bible and tradition was summed up by S. David Sperling (another well-respected Jewish scholar) in his essay called Modern Jewish Interpretation:

The status of Jewish Bible scholarship at the beginning of the 21st century is quite different from that at the beginning of hte 20th century. A significant number of scholars at Israeli universities are part of the mainstream of biblical scholarship, and Jewish Bible scholars now teach in many North American academic departments that previously had strong Protestant biases. In addition, the methods of critical study of the Bible are no longer perceived as anti-Semitic, and are entering into the Jewish consciousness, even into the new Bibles used liturgically by some Jews. Jewish Bible scholarship, for its part, including concern with traditional Jewish interpretation, has likewise entered mainstream academic scholarship, and is studied by Jews and non-Jews alike. One can only ponder what further developments the coming century will bring.
(The Jewish Study Bible, p. 1919)

I hope the Jewish nature of the sources quoted is illuminating.
Again - a group may self-interpret ITSELF, but it has become increasingly clear that the foundational texts of multiple groups are not the sole property of any one of those groups - especially those that attempt to retroject later interpretations back into an ancient text. Any claim to the contrary is just self-evidence of the group's ultra-orthodox metholodology.

More could be said, and HAS been said elsewhere - but hopefully this will once again enable fruitful discussion of the subject of the account of
the problems of the Exodus in the Torah:

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (who wrote in the early 1700s) was one of the first to write a truly probing account of the Exodus tradition, and is highly reccomended. Though known primarily for his contributions to the "historical Jesus" (though of a highly vituperative nature in this area), his contributions to the Exodus problem have been highly influential. I believe it was his calculations that are the starting point for some of the impossibilities of the standard appraisal of the number of Israelites who embarked on the journey. My apologies if he has already been cited.

[SeekerSA]

Originally Posted by theflipflop

Seeker, I've been told before in this forum and others that my viewpoints (Jewish viewpoints in general) are condescending. Perhaps they are. But you must understand why (actually, I know you already do from previous posts of yours - you're one of my favorite posters here in C-D). Jews absolutely don't care if non-Jews agree with the Torah or who finds it credible.

Thanks and to the last sentence, what saddens me is the concept that Jews claim as you later do here there is error but the only errors they seem to like pointing out are the alleged prophesies relating to jesus, that I see quite often and jews have no issue defending the non messiaship of jesus. However this exodus issue paints you all under one broad brush as it is foundational to both religions where the law of god was allegedly given for the first time.

The exodus tale suggest jews were chosen and the promise to Abrahams seed fulfilled. The xians take this a step further and lay claim to this promise and become the "new" or extension to this promise.

As you know, we're not proselytizing except to our own. Unlike many Chrstians, when you're not trying to tell the world how great your doctrine is, it really frees you up to believe whatever you want. And if it took 20 miles of camels 10 abreast to water all those Jews - so be it. I don't know the exact details of how they got so much water, nor do I care, as I believe in a G-d who is capable of "getting the job done." And if it seems inplausable to a non-Jew, then that's ok too, as long as you're not inclined to kill me for my attitude, like 2,000 years worth of Chrstians were.

This attitude is found among xian theists too, they ignore the contradictions and logical impossibilities and it demeans their beliefs to simple special pleadings and/or invoking magic. Obviously there are many other facets of this Hebrew god that come over as overly brutal and read with an open mind, we see a pattern emerge that shows this god to merely be man made.

When Moses had set up the scene for god to speak to all the people, the people rejected the concept and declared that moses should be the one to talk to them and NOT god (From Exodus 20)

18 Now all the people witnessed the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood afar off. 19 Then they said to Moses, “You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.”
20 And Moses said to the people, “Do not fear; for God has come to test you, and that His fear may be before you, so that you may not sin.” 21 So the people stood afar off, but Moses drew near the thick darkness where God was.

I left in some context. After this all the laws are prefixed with "Then the LORD said to Moses..." and becomes a narrative in the third person. From this I determine that Moses was pretty much making stuff up as he went along.

Like the jesus myth, moses also conveniently disappears from the narrative when he is denied entry into the promised land. The rock he struck in anger is of course what xians claim to mean jesus which seems a little childish as he was after all a murderer that initially fled to avoid persecution. Gets away with murder, gets banished for whacking the water rock with his staff.

I never knew Chrstians felt they needed the holy spirit to read their books? Interesting. I hope they don't say the same about the Torah. They'll need more than the Holy spirit (whatever that is), they'll need a qualified and accomplished rabbi to teach them, and then they'll need to dedicate their life to learning the material. Oh, and learning Hebrew sure will help, as there's no substitute for learning the source material in the source language.

I agree here in part but unless you buy into some huge conspiracy, these translations have to be at least 98% accurate. I know there are some Hebrew words that have no English equivalent but that is the problem with all aspects of linguists and translations. Surely you are not suggesting the current Jewish language is 100% the same as it was back 3500 years ago? All languages evolve, even the Greek has changed and modern Greeks battle reading the original Greek of 2000 years ago.

And btw, it's not cultural roots that are important to understanding the Torah. It's the proper teacher, the proper language skills and the proper dedication. And since Jews are highly discouraged from teaching Torah to non-Jews, being the proper religion helps too. I know Chrstians have their own version of our Torah (the OT), but that's just an approximation and really barely even resembles the source document as a whole.

This may sound all good and dandy, yet one must place one's trust in one man and one man's interpretation. Men are fallible and as much as Jews like to lay claim that the original texts were faithfully reproduced without error in copying, this is a myth that already has been soundly refuted by archaeological evidence showing errors in simple copying. Stuff has been changed and there is no denying that.

My sincerest apologies for the cut/paste inference. I thought the posting was brilliantly put together. I don't ultimately buy into the conclusions held within, but I really was impressed by the methods you used to come to your conclusions, and if I wasn't such a crazy fundamentalist Jew, I'd be fully swayed by your arguements.

No need to apologise, I was merely taken aback by the inference. I tend not to use biblespeak as folk do not really read walls of text. My compositions are my own using my knowledge and speaking in a broader sense that all can get what I am trying to convey.

Correct, details ARE lost in translation. That's why Jews don't learn from translations. We learn form the source document in the source language, which has been unchanged since the arrival of the Torah 3300 years ago.

I would dispute that claim but is too long an argument for now.

If you truly have any interest in what this exodus looked like, you can't learn it from reading a translation of the Torah. First, you'll need to read the Torah without the translation (in Hebrew).

Nonsense. This infers the entire text is in error and that is a bold claim to make under the guise of simple language semantics. Again it is the same argument xians use laying claim to the authority of the holy spirit or if you will the spirit of the Lord IOW the same medium that allegedly spoke to Moses and all the prophets.

Perhaps all this gives is a richness in the poetry of how it was written but nothing more than that. I speak two languages fluently and can think in both, I need not put it through by preferred "English translator" and can switch between the two w/o even thinking about it.

Then you'll have to look and see what the Talmud (mishna and gamara) have to say. Then i would suggest seeing if there are Midrashim and Aggadah that reference the event. The next step would be to see what Rashi and the Rambam have to say on the matter. Then if it were me, I'd look at the Shulchan Aruch and the Tour to see if there is anything in there. As long as I had my Shulcan Aruch and Tour open, I'd see what the Shach, the Taz, the Pische T'shuva and others had to say. THEN, and only then, would I begin to formulate an opinion. At that point, I'd argue it out with other learned Jews to see if they have a mesorah (tradition) as to what occured at Mount Sinai.

I seriously doubt that if I were to take these long and painful steps any of my knowledge will be increased by perhaps more than 1%. If you read any of my other posts you will see I have examined the originals but only can work from the transliteration or phonetic translation. I would imagine most Jews are in the same boat that learn the original hebrew much like the muslims do with the qu'ran and really do not understand what they are reciting.

And then at that point, I'd probably say it was really all in hashem's hands anyways, and as much as i want to truly know what happened, I've done what i can to understand it. And then I'd give my kids a kiss on the head and I'd head off to shul for aftenoon prayers. I'm a Jew. This is how we work.

And that I can respect without reservation.

However others battle with concepts being trapped in dogma of their faith that go against all logic and that is why I share my knowledge. It may help some break free from the bonds of religion.

The word religion is derived from the archaic word relegare which literally means to bind up or place in bondage. Some folk merely need to have these shackles from indoctrination broken and I hope I help with my musings.

[SeekerSA]

Originally Posted by whoppers

Some clarifications are in order.

I hope the Jewish nature of the sources quoted is illuminating.

My apologies if he has already been cited.

Snipped for no reason except to say I wish I could rep you but +1 is deserved on all of your posts.

[whoppers]

Good post, Seeker.

What was revealing to me recently was the admission by one of our more Rabbincally-inclined posters that his actual working knowledge of Hebrew only extended to an ability to pronounce it, and anything in the realm of understanding what he was pronouncing was a no-go.

The claim that the Torah can only be fully understood in the Hebrew - I think - is correct. But NOT from any tradition-based, exclusive perspective; just a simple obvservation that a translation does alter things, and no translation can ever fully capture the original. I use the word "fully" in this statement pointedly to not give a false impression. I DO believe that an ecellent grasp and understanding of the Torah can be gotten by a competent reader consulting a competent translation, provided there are notes that may help explain some of the issues that may be unknowingly lost in translation.

Part of the semantic problems with the term Torah and claims to knowledge on it is that to some - "Torah" means something entirely different from "Torah" as a simple designation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible - and it is the former's view of "Torah" that may be prompting their insistence. "Torah" so easily becomes synonomous with Rabbinic Judaism and the contents of it's beliefs.


Anyways - it appears that the usual argument of "you can never truly understand or even comment on this text" is wearing out it's traditional welcome. It just misdirects the issue in an attempt to avoid its implications. Luckily, many great Jewish thinkers have not shyed away from the Exodus problem, but have instead embraced it and adapted. Aynthing else would be stagnation - and antithetical to the great adaptable nature of Judaism through the ages.

[whoppers]

Originally Posted by SeekerSA

Snipped for no reason except to say I wish I could rep you but +1 is deserved on all of your posts.

Ha ha - likewise!


You beat me to it this time - I was typing out the post immediately prior to this one, when you posted yours ha ha.

[Trimac20]

Where in Beelzebub's name did they get that figure from? Isn't that the number the Nazis supposedly exterminated? In 300 BC the population of China was 13 million. There were ALOT fewer people back then. We're expected to believe Israel, like 1/1000th the size of China, had 6 million?

[SeekerSA]

Originally Posted by Trimac20

Where in Beelzebub's name did they get that figure from? Isn't that the number the Nazis supposedly exterminated? In 300 BC the population of China was 13 million. There were ALOT fewer people back then. We're expected to believe Israel, like 1/1000th the size of China, had 6 million?

The figure has been bandied about here just recently, the poster knows who he is and also has come up numerous times by specifically YEC and literalists.

I once did an excel spreadsheet exercise using a three generations surving at any one time and 5 offspring reaching maturity and being able to have 5 kids of their own. Using the timeline from 70CE with two couples to today, we should have in excess of 150M jews and even taking the holocaust into account. The question of multiple exterminations seems to be undocumented. We only have a tenth of that figure worldwide. If we were to extrapolate other mythical claims, this figure would be far higher. Obviously my model is flawed and does not take every conceivable plague and possibility into account but it does raise doubts as to these huge exploits which IMO are mere embellished folklore.

The last stand at Masada ended in the folk taking their own lives in a mass suicide and that hardly paints a model to suggest these were warriors willing to fight to the bitter end.

History is written by the victors and we shall probably never know all truths barring the snippets that managed to survive. Mass literacy is only a recent phenomenon so prior to the mid 19th to early 20th centuries, much of what folk learned was by hearsay and what the literate deemed appropriate for us commoners to hear/understand.

Because literacy was for so long restricted to nobility and the affluent, it stands to reason, the few decided what we should know or believe.

Any alleged word of god should stand up to any scrutiny and hold its own but sadly it does not. One has to really do mental gymnastics to try and get some semblance of seeing it as sensible. The mere fact we have apologists apologising for the bible's obvious lack in consistency and accuracy should tell us there is something amiss. Also these apologists cannot seem to agree either so that should lead one to question their alleged divine influence/inspiration.

People are generally lazy and take it on faith what their pastor is telling them is truth(tm) the few that actually bother to critically examine scripture for themselves usually come away with a whole different perspective.

[theflipflop]

Seeker and Whoppers, you both make the most logical and academic of arguements, that any sane person would believe. But you're not dealing with somebody willing to speak the same language as you. When I see logical and academic, my radar goes up. Perhaps I'm just a loony - I'll give you that. But i know I'm in good company as a loony, when i think about spending Shabbos with my white bearded rabbis and wonderful beautiful frum yidden neighbors.

that is why I share my knowledge. It may help some break free from the bonds of religion.

I would encourage you to continue this crusade. You can tell every non-Jew in the world that they have it all wrong. Fine by me if you do, or if you don't. But we religious jews have a tradition and Torah that we cling to. Many jews have lost this tradition, but many hold fast to it, and many others are returning to it. Your words are so logical, that they have the power to sway a Jew away from being a Jew. And in my experience, Jews who become agnostic are only a step away from believing in Jesus. And once that happens, they are lost.

I read both yours and Whoppers posts slowly and carefully, and I appreciate the effort you put in to refute my claims. I'm not swayed even the slightest, but again, perhaps I'm just nuts. I have counter arguements for each point you've made, but alas, I have a 10-day old baby at home, and i just don't have the time to dig in. And i suspect you cling to your secular ideas as tightly as i cling to my own ideas, so I'm not sure where we'd get.

My rabbaim often tell me to never engage in conversations with missionaries. You two are not Chrstian missionsaries, but by Seeker's admission, he is an anti-religion missionary. Perhaps my rabbi's are just afraid I'll be swayed. Perhaps they fear I'll trangress by teaching Torah to a non-Jew. Perhaps we're wrong, you're right, and I might figure that out. I dunno. But I do know Shabbos will be here in a few hours. The week will melt away, and I'll be immersed in a holiness and beauty that I don't guess either of you has ever experienced. So what's the big reason again, Seeker, for your mission to free people of religion?

[theflipflop]

Originally Posted by SeekerSA

Snipped for no reason except to say I wish I could rep you but +1 is deserved on all of your posts.

Just FYI, I'm not able to Rep either of you two, as I've repped each of you too many times to be allowed any others for the time being. I may be a crazy fundamentalist Jew, but I do appreciate a good discussion.

[SeekerSA]

Originally Posted by theflipflop

I would encourage you to continue this crusade. You can tell every non-Jew in the world that they have it all wrong. Fine by me if you do, or if you don't. But we religious jews have a tradition and Torah that we cling to. Many jews have lost this tradition, but many hold fast to it, and many others are returning to it. Your words are so logical, that they have the power to sway a Jew away from being a Jew. And in my experience, Jews who become agnostic are only a step away from believing in Jesus. And once that happens, they are lost.

You still have a cultural aspect which is missing elsewhere so no I do not think you are nuts.

I read both yours and Whoppers posts slowly and carefully, and I appreciate the effort you put in to refute my claims. I'm not swayed even the slightest, but again, perhaps I'm just nuts. I have counter arguements for each point you've made, but alas, I have a 10-day old baby at home, and i just don't have the time to dig in. And i suspect you cling to your secular ideas as tightly as i cling to my own ideas, so I'm not sure where we'd get.

It would be nice to see your counters even if we disagree, there is no "mission" to deconvert, merely to provide another perspective.

My rabbaim often tell me to never engage in conversations with missionaries. You two are not Chrstian missionsaries, but by Seeker's admission, he is an anti-religion missionary. Perhaps my rabbi's are just afraid I'll be swayed. Perhaps they fear I'll trangress by teaching Torah to a non-Jew. Perhaps we're wrong, you're right, and I might figure that out. I dunno. But I do know Shabbos will be here in a few hours. The week will melt away, and I'll be immersed in a holiness and beauty that I don't guess either of you has ever experienced. So what's the big reason again, Seeker, for your mission to free people of religion?

Well I am not a missionary, but offer alternative insights. If we have it all wrong then your stuff should stand if it has merit but being vague as I have previously mentioned seems like a cop out. I have learned a lot of your faith simply by reading your ask a Jew thread. The cultural aspect is intriguing.