Kuzari Principle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Kuzari Principle is a line of philosophic reasoning derived from the medieval work Kuzari. This principle claims to logically prove the historicity of major events recorded in the Bible from the nature of the belief in them. More specifically, it is argued that one can prove from the oral testimony of the story itself that some three million Israelites personally were led out of Egypt in an Exodus, and witnessed God's revelation to them at Mount Sinai, thus establishing the proof of the events discussed in the Torah.

[edit] Major formulation

A modern statement of the Kuzari Principle is as follows: Let E be a possible event which, had it really occurred, would have left behind enormous, easily available evidence of its occurrence. If the evidence does not exist, people will not believe that E occurred. (Rabbi Dr. Dovid Gottlieb, Living up to the Truth, Chapter 6.)

Gottlieb then goes on to argue that events such as the revelation at Sinai fit the requirements of the Kuzari Principle and so their truth can be deduced merely from the fact that the Jewish people believed they were true. He also argues that other mass beliefs, such as those of other religions, do not fit the requirements.

The basic logic of the Kuzari argument is that a story such as that of the Sinai revelation must have originated with a real event or have been introduced at some later moment. In the latter case, the population will have been able to infer its falsehood merely from their lack of prior knowledge of the claim. Therefore, according to this logic, the story can only have been introduced at a time when the population knew it to be true from their own observation.

[edit] Counter-arguments

There are both logical and historical counter-arguments, including:

• This argument assumes that how the Torah is understood has always been the same. Perhaps over a period of many generations the story of 'strange events at a mountain' evolved very slowly to the current version. Or perhaps the original was a partial fiction which slowly began to be accepted as a factual.

-The proponents of the principle view this argument as irrelevant. The Kuzari principle states that as long as a nation believes it had a national experience at any point in time that national experience happened (e.g. national revelation). -The proponents of the principle argue that this idea, while sounding plausible lacks any concrete details of how it could have happened and therefore is impossible to assess. Also even if someday a plausible sounding transformation is thought up, that doesn't mean it is actually possible. The very minimum indirect evidence would be for the critic to find some cases in which we know that this type of transformation did in fact happen. see [1]

• This argument assumes that when a text is first written, its precise text became widely known among nearly the entire community, and that most people would know if the text changed. However, this is often not the case. The assumption is that if they are given a new story, they will know that it is new. However, in many times and places people had little accurate knowledge of their history.

-The proponents of the principle argue that this argument suffers from the same flaws as the previous one.

• The argument assumes that widespread cultural acceptance of an event as miraculous as proof of the miracle in that the former is impossible to fake. The argument ignores the fact that using this line of reasoning, the arguer would be forced by symmetry to accept the public miracle claims of other conflicting religions. Thus by asymmetrical rejection of public miracle claims of other religions, the argument fails.

-The proponents of the principle argue that indeed we are forced to accept any public miracle claim of other religions, provided they do fit the same criteria. But the criteria of the kuzari principle is not simply that the miracle is public (happening to a group of people). For example one could claim that 500 years ago 1000 people in a village in Australia had a shared prophetic experience, in which the creator of the Universe came to them and gave them a book of rules to live by. One could conceivably go to Australia today and convince people of this story (if one was charimatic and convincing enough) even though it is false. However if one tries to convince them that ALL the population of Australia had this vision together then (according to Kuzari princple) people will reject the claim. The reason they will reject it is they are able to check to see if it is true. When they see that no one in their family, nor anyone they know has ever heard of this event, an event which if it had occurred would have had massive and lasting repercussions. Since no one has heard of it, it must not have occurred. No religious group claims that a miracle took that fulfills the Kuzari Principles criteria that Judaism does not believe took place as well.

• This argument assumes that the text has always existed in one set form. However, research has shown that early versions of the Bible and other ancient near-eastern literature differed in a number of ways. Texts often existed in multiple forms for many centuries, and later forms were the result of an evolutionary editing process. Most Orthodox Jewish writers dispute the validity of this counter-argument, insisting that the Torah's transmission process ensures that it is little changed from its original form. [2]

-Proponents of the Kuzari principle note that this argument is irrelevant (see previous notes about the proponents' view).

A refutation of the Kuzari principle will also have to explain how the Jews adopted all of their practices remembering the Exodus. Some examples:

The commandments to "tell about the exodos" to "tell it to your son" to "remember the day you left egypt" etc.

All the Jewish Holidays and the Sabbath recall the exodus

Teffilin and Mezuzos both contain passages recalling the exodus.

[edit] External links

• In Favor of the Argument
  • Dovid Gottlieb, Living up to the Truth
  • Betzalel Avraham Feinstein, The Kuzari Principle - A Rigorous Formulation (A Formal Proof of the Divine Origin of the Torah)
  • Nechemia Coopersmith, The Kuzari Principle (Formal explanation of how the Kuzari principle works)

• Against the Argument
  • Shlomi Tal, The Sinai Argument (a reply to Gottlieb), also see Gottlieb's rejoinder.
  • David Yust, The Kuzari - The Principle and the Formalism (detailed history and analysis).
  • Martin Winer, The Kuzari Proof - 3 Million Witnesses Can Be Wrong (discussion of why the argument is not logically sound).
  • Martin Winer, Reconciling Biblical Numbers: Three Million at Sinai is making a Mountain out of a Molehill (Alternate interpretations of the Torah suggest tens of thousands left Egypt, not millions.).
  • Mark Perakh, Prohibition to Think (Criticism of the Kuzari Principle as formulated in Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen's book Permission to Receive, including discussion of whether revelation at Sinai was before entire nation according to traditional Jewish sources)