Hey guys. I read something great about Shavuos and wanted to share it:
Our knowledge that the Torah is true stems from the amazing event when our forefathers received the Torah at Har Sinai about 3,330 years ago. Hashem appeared before three million of our ancestors — the entire nation at the time — and spoke to them. He told our nation that He is the God who took us out of Egypt and that we should not serve any other “gods.” He then informed us that Moshe Rabbeinu was His prophet, and that He would convey everything He wanted to tell us through him.
It is impossible for this event to have been an invented tradition. It would be impossible to get three million people to claim that they all heard G-d speak and to dramatically change their lives had it not occurred. It would be impossible for one man to convince so many people that they heard G-d speak if they hadn’t. Even a single individual would not accept someone telling him that he experienced an event that never took place. An audience of three million would certainly never accept it.
[Footnote: “Impossible” is a strong word. There is no doubt that someone could come up with outrageous “explanations” about the revelation at Sinai. For example, someone could suggest that aliens gave us the Torah and convinced us it was G-d. However, we must understand that any such explanation would be wild, ludicrous fantasy. We would never act upon “possibilities” that are beyond the realm of normalcy. We certainly would never give them consideration in any other area of our lives (did you ever consider that your mother might really be an alien?), so why should we do so with matters of faith? No educated person would give such ridiculous “suggestions” any credence; on the contrary, these ideas would be laughed at and disregarded. Thus, we can say that we [i]know[/i] Hashem gave us the Torah, and we can consider the alternatives foolish and impossible.]
The only alternative suggestion is that some persuasive man convinced a large group of people that he rediscovered their long-lost tradition. He would have to claim that the tradition was forgotten because otherwise, nobody would believe him. If the entire nation had experienced an event of such magnitude, it would have been told over through the generations. He would have had to somehow convince the people that due to some disaster, the event had been forgotten, and he was the only remaining person who knew about it.
Clearly, there are many problems with this. First, there is no reference in any Jewish tradition to the Torah being lost and rediscovered, which is the message that would have been passed down had that been the case. There also is no mention anywhere in the Jewish tradition of the identity of this important man who supposedly rediscovered the lost tradition. And there are many known direct chains of teacher to student that extend all the way back to Har Sinai with no gaps. Clearly, there is no tradition that the Torah was temporarily forgotten. On the contrary, the Jewish tradition is that the Torah was passed down from generation to generation without fail. We would not believe in an unbroken chain had there been a gap, which disproves this theory.
Another problem with this suggestion is that the Torah itself states that it will never be forgotten: “. . . for it will not be forgotten from the mouth of their offspring” (Devarim 31:21). How could a group of people have believed someone claiming to have found their forgotten tradition, a book allegedly written by G-d, which states within its own text that it will never be forgotten? It could never have happened.
Our tradition is unique. We are the only religion in history to relate that G-d appeared in front of three million people and spoke to them. We are the only nation that claims to have witnesses to a revelation who could be accessed afterward. Every other religion started with one man or a small group of men (most often no more than two people) who claimed that the L-rd told them to tell everyone to change their lives. Yeah, right! Our religion is the only one that says that the entire nation of three million people saw G-d appear to them together. The reason for this is that a claim like that is impossible to make up. A religion based on such a claim could never get off the ground unless the event actually happened. The founder of the religion would never be able to persuade his followers to listen to him unless they had actually heard G-d speak.
That is why every charlatan who ever wanted to start his own religion had to claim he had experienced a private prophecy. He couldn’t start with a claim that people knew was untrue, nor could he make a claim that they could investigate and find to be false. It would have been the end of his religion. Although all the liars who started false religions would have loved to claim a public revelation to add to the new religion’s credibility, they did not because it would have worked against them. They had to resort to claiming a private vision — even though it has no credibility — so nobody could disprove it. We, however, have the well-known tradition of a public revelation in front of the whole nation, which would be impossible to make up.
A public revelation is the only sensible way for G-d to reveal His wishes. If He had appeared to one man and told him to convince everyone about His message, how would that be fair? How could people be expected to figure out whether this man was telling the truth? With so many people claiming to have experienced personal revelations from G-d, how could people be expected to figure out who the right one was? How could people even be expected to know that there was a right one, instead of assuming that all of them were lying? There would be no way for anyone to know the truth. That would mean that G-d would be expecting people to trust with no reason for doing so and to somehow guess whom to trust. It would be cruel for G-d to give His laws in an unverifiable way and then to punish everyone who didn’t guess right! That would be evil! The only sensible way for G-d to reveal Himself was to do it in a way that could be verified. And that is precisely what Hashem did for us when He gave us the Torah publicly, in front of the entire nation.
We are fortunate that Hashem revealed Himself to us in an event that proves that His Torah is true. Armed with this knowledge, we will have the strength to stand strong against the yetzer hara and achieve incredible success in the battle of the generation.
Quick Recap:
- The most significant question in the world is whether Hashem actually appeared to our entire nation on Har Sinai, and we can prove with irrefutable rational evidence that the answer is yes.
- By asking ourselves how the Jewish people came to believe that Hashem spoke to their ancestors publicly, we come to realize that it must be that it really happened.
Source: The Battle of the Generation (Download here:
https://guardyoureyes.com/ebooks/item/the-battle-of-the-generation )
