The irrelevance of the "revelation argument"

My reading over the last couple of days have been mired in troubling matters such as traditional rabbinical views about the relationship of our Torah text to what Moses did or not receive. I was going to blog about why, despite varying Orthodox views about what was written when and by whom, Masorti Judaism has seemed to given up on any relevant notion of "Torah min Hashamayim". In fact, I have meant to write about it since I heard (Masorti) Rabbi Wittenberg talk at Limmud, espousing views so close as to be indistinguishable from Reform. At the time, his views kept me up half the night. However, quite frankly, the rabbinic views themselves are giving me much too much of a headache to think clearly.

As such, I'll stick to much safer ground. Let us assume the whole Torah was dictated to Moses on Mount Sinai at the time he was first given the Ten Commandments. This, despite, being plenty of machloket in the mefarshim in last and this week's sidrot. For example, this week we have the classic disagreement about when Moses was given the commandments about the Mishkan. Do we go like Ramban and say that those instructions were given before the golden calf (i.e. when he got first set of luchot)? Or do we say like Rashi/ Rambam that they were given after the golden calf (i.e. second time around on Yom Kippur)? However, let us ignore that and assume he got the whole Torah at once. Then what?

Let us also assume that the 'revelation argument' the kiruv movements use, does prove one important point. Let us make what I feel to be an uncontroversial point. That is: if 600,000 men claimed to hear G-d's voice and weren't lying, and weren't deluded, then it actually was G-d they heard. Of course, it is the all-important italicised if which I'd usually object they haven't yet shown. However, let us concede the point as I don't have any paracetamol handy. Then what?

Here I want to take a liberty and concede two further points that no-one has actually made. To be more precise, they are ones I suspect that they hold but have been not articulated or argued for. They are: 1) if G-d wills something then it is something we should do and we don't just think he is a tyrant that holds a mountain over our head 2) we know that something is G-d's will if we first establish that we have heard it 'from G-d'. If no-one makes these assumptions, I apologise. However, if you don't, I fail to understand why 600,000 men merely hearing something from G-d, should make the slightest difference to me. But to avoid my head exploding its contents onto my creme sofa, I'll accept the points without argument. Then what?

"Then" so the interlocutor says smugly, "we have shown that the Torah is divine, is true and so we have to follow it". Phew!!! After making all those concessions, we have finally got to what we after. Or have we? The one problem with any of these arguments is the rather inconvenient fact of the Rabbinic tradition. Wouldn't it be so much simpler if we were all Karaites?

A widely-accepted opinion in the oral law that it was, in fact, only the first two commandments that the assembled masses heard from G-d. They couldn't hear the other commandments without dying and so had to learn them from Moses himself. At the time, they only heard the sound of the shofar and the rumblings of thunder etc. So, if the argument is about the testimony of thousands to the word of G-d, then not many of G-d's words got this testimony. In fact, Rambam intimates that Bnei Yisrael were only able to 'hear' these two because they are precisely the kind of commands they didn't need to hear from G-d. The prophet, he says, has no advantage over them in respect of knowing these are Divine commandments.

What then about the rest of Torah? How do I know it is an accurate representation of G-d's will? Why was it authoritative then and why is it so to this day? Why should we walk in G-d's ways and how does this text guide us in that? Not because we 'heard it from G-d' because we didn't. In fact, Rambam says the method of transmission between G-d and prophets is irrelevant anyway. The point we need to believe is that they had access to 'Divine Knowledge' and their writings are not merely their own ideas and conceptions. Point 2 above is backwards. We know something is 'from G-d' by knowing his will So why believe this? To this, the 'revelation argument' is simply irrelevant.

Which brings me back to Masorti. I challenged Rabbi Wittenberg at Limmud with the following point. Kiruv organisations assert that belief x has been proved true ,whilst you stand up and say that evidence has unfortunately proved this false. Yet, you're both so eager to prove a 'fact' about what people did or not hear, that you forget to say anything theologically or philosophically relevant about "Torah min hashamayim". What is the view that you are accepting or rejecting? What did the rabbis mean when they said that the Torah was ('literally') divine: what makes something divine and on what basis did they believe the Torah met this criteria? If you don't address this, you haven't shown anything. (He avoided the question)

I suppose the kiruv groups have one advantage over Masorti. At least they believe in the divinity of the Torah even if they have given me no reason why they should.