The Kuzari Principle

The Kuzari Principle argument is the primary outreach argument of Orthodox Jews to establish that Orthodox Talmudic Judaism is the one true religion. The Kuzari principle is as follows: Suppose that at least one hundred thousand people claim to witness a certain event. Then almost certainly, this event must have occurred. Since only Judaism claims that its origins are in national revelation rather than merely personal revelation, it must be the true religion. There are two versions of this argument of which I am aware. Here is the first.

Judaism makes these four claims:

1. At least 600,000 Israelites gathered at the bottom of Mount Sinai over 3,300 years ago.
2. All of the Israelites heard God speak to them at Mount Sinai, and they then asked Moses to be His prophet.
3. Moses received the entire Torah from God and taught the Torah to all of the Israelites standing at Mount Sinai.
4. The Israelites transmitted the Torah and also the history of the transmission process of the Torah from generation to generation in an unbroken chain of generations for over 3,300 years until today, with at least one hundred thousand Israelites in each generation of the chain.

Here is how the proof is supposed to work: Suppose that 100,000 people all claim to see a flaming unicorn appear in their midst. Is their testimony likely to be true? I think so. Suppose these 100,000 people form a community and all tell their children about the flaming unicorn incident. Is the witness of that entire second generation enough to establish that the first generation believed they saw a flaming unicorn? I think so too. When a third generation is produced, it attests the validity of the second generation's beliefs, which attests to the validity of the first generation's beliefs, which attests to the validity of the original event.

No matter how many generations away from the event you go, as long as you have that unbroken chain with at least 100,000 in each generation, you have proof of the original event. In this way, the modern Jewish people are in a sense direct witnesses to the events on Sinai.

So what's the catch? Why is this argument so thoroughly rejected by liberal Jews, many Modern Orthodox Rabbis, and even some Haredim?

The fatal flaw with this entire argument is in the central claim itself. Remember what it states: Suppose that at least one hundred thousand people claim to witness a certain event. Then almost certainly, this event must have occurred. Do you see the flaw? This version of the Kuzari Principle argument is really nothing more than a Sorites paradox.

What is a Sorites paradox? A Sorites paradox is a paradox that arises from vague predicates. The paradox of the heap is an example of this paradox which arises when one considers a heap of sand, from which grains are individually removed. Is it still a heap when only one grain remains? If not, when did it change from a heap to a non-heap?

Just because a sand heap can remain a heap when you remove one grain of sand, it does not follow that you can remove any number of grains of sand and expect that it will remain a heap. Likewise, if you hear the testimony of 100,000 people that they witnessed an event, is that the same as witnessing the event yourself? Is there absolutely no difference? I think there is. Hearing the testimony of the second generation attesting to the first generation is not as reliable as hearing the testimony of the first generation directly. You lose credibility with each generation.

In order for the argument to actually work, the Kuzari Principle would have to be reformulated as: Suppose that at least one hundred thousand people claim to witness a certain event. Then 100% certainly (or 100% minus some infinitestmal amount certainly), this event must have occurred. But that's obviously false. Hearing the testimony of 100,000 witnesses just isn't the same as being an eyewitness to the event.

If we think about this proof in mathematical terms, suppose we attached a percentage of certainty to the 100,000 witnesses. Let's say that the witness of 100,000 people gives you a 97% certainty that the event was true. The 97% figure is only for illustration purposes. It was chosen just as arbitrarily as the 100,000 figure. So speaking to the eyewitnesses of the event, you're 97% certain it happened. Speaking to the children of the eyewitnesses, you're 97% certain that the parents believed it, which if true would give you a 97% chance that the event happened. So 97% of 97% is about 94%. Not too bad, but at the 20 generation mark that brings you to about 54%. Twenty more generations takes you to about 30% certainty. Twenty more generations which would get you to around the time of the Macabees, and you're at 16%. Today, we are somewhere around 150 generations from the time of the event, which even under these generous probabilities, would you about 1% certainty based on oral tradition alone.

Here is the second version of this argument:

1. Suppose that a group of 100,000 people claim they have an unbroken line of tradition that a certain number of generations ago at least 100,000 people saw a single, spectacular, memorable event which we will call a national experiential tradition or NET for short.
2. If that claim is false, it would have to be introduced at some point without the event taking place
3. But such a claim of that type cannot be introduced without the event taking place
Conclusion: The claim must be true.

This is a better argument, at least this version is not fallacious. However, premise 3 seems weak. Why can't such a claim be fabricated? Proponents of the argument will usually give two reasons to support this premise.

First, all proposed scenarios where the claim slips into a national culture are implausible. How do you convince a nation of 100,000 people that such an event took place? Do you do it all at once?

My answer is: No, you can bring it in gradually through legendary development. Legendary development is a process by which oral traditions change as they are passed from generation to generation. The details change, and the stories often take on larger than life characteristics. Once you get past two generations from the original event, legendary development begins to wipe out the historical core. An example would be the legend of King Arthur.

Worse, the argument assumes a society in which texts and information are widely distributed, so that the people, when receiving a new text or story, will know that it is new. However, this is often not the case in ancient societies. People often had only the vaguest knowledge of their own family or national pasts, and were aware that information might well be in slow circulation about which they knew nothing. If an individual learned of what appeared to be that information, it would be welcomed and not questioned.

The second reason to believe premise 3 supported by Dovid Gottlieb, is that there are no counterexamples. Specifically, there are no stories that fit these five criteria:

1. The story must describe an event witnessed by a nation of at least 100,000.
2. The event must be one that would have created a national tradition.
3. The story was in fact believed to be true.
4. The believers included the nation composed of the descendants of those to whom the event was supposed to have occurred.
5. The story is in fact false.

These criteria seem both conveniently vague and enormously ad hoc i.e. contrived. It's almost as if in formulating the argument, Gottlieb did a survey of religions, observed which characteristics make Talmudic Judaism different, and made those characteristics his criteria for what constitutes true religion. Even if documents of a previously unknown ancient religion founded on national revelation were unearthed, Gottlieb could use the ambiguity in terms such as "national tradition" and redefine it to include Judaism and exclude the other ancient religion. And since such a religion would be long dead, one could not prove that all the descendants were were believers.

Also, why the figure of 100,000. Is 5,000 somehow not enough to verify an event? Gottlieb's methodology is like shooting an arrow into a tree and then painting the target around it.

Since Gottlieb has a degree in philosophy and mathematical logic, I hope he also realizes that there is no such thing as proof by lack of counterexample. Not in mathematics, not in philosophy, not even in history. A theorem is not proved by failing to find a counterexample. Otherwise, theorems like Goldbach's conjecture or the continuum hypothesis should be considered proven. This goes for science as well. If I claimed that there can be no gold spheres larger than 20 feet in diameter, and claimed as my proof the fact that there are no counterexamples, I do not think anyone would accept that.

Similarly, a historical hypothesis is not verified by a failure to find evidence against it. Instead, you have to show that if the hypothesis is false, there would be evidence against it. In this case, the proponent of the Kuzari Principle argument has the full burden of the proof. Good luck with that.

Besides, if we drop the arbitrary 100,000 requirement from the argument, then there is a plethora of counterexamples. The Kurukshetra War in India, the founding of Thebes, and the fouding of the Aztec nation to name just a few.

But speaking of counterexamples. Why are there no ancient Egyptian records of such an event taking place? The Kuzari proponent will reply: "The Egyptians did not record their defeats." Well hold on there, sparky. Does not that suggest that the Egyptians published a history and the millions of Egyptians that read it accepted it as true even though they knew it was untrue? So can you cause multitudes to accept a false history or not? Which is it? You cannot suck and blow from the same explanatory pipe at the same time.

It also may be the case that premise 1 of the argument is false. The Torah might not claim that there were at least 600,000 at Sinai after all. I think the problem is in assuming that the Hebrew word elef in the context of the Pentatuch only meant thousand. It could just as well have meant clan. If we are talking about 2,500 clans, we can get a number somewhere around 70,000 to 140,000. This figure is more consistent with ancient population statistics, as well as ancient archaeological evidence. Alexander the Great only had about 50,000 soldiers with him when he conquered Persia. Hannibal had about 20,000 soldiers with him. There were only about 20,000 soldiers in Egypt's army, so why would an Israelite army of 600,000 be afraid of them?

Also, if the larger figure is true, a mass exodus of 3 million people leaving Egypt, wandering through an uninhabited wasteland for 40 years, and then invading the Canaanite area would leave a massive trail of archaeological evidence. However, the much smaller figure would be able to make this type of journey without leaving such a massive trail. But if the smaller number is true, then the number at Sinai could be as low as 10,000, and we would not have the necessary 100,000 for the Kuzari argument to work.

To repeat, I am not arguing that the story of the Exodus is false. I believe that it is true. I am only arguing that it is not provable in the way that the Rabbis want it to be. By extension, the Rabbinic claim of an unbroken and uncorrupted line of Rabbinic Tradition and Oral Torah that dates back to Moses and Sinai is also not provable.

Consistency

When watching, listening to, or reading religious debate, you will need to look for one thing: consistency. It is one of the marks of a good argument. Holding one standard for evidence that supports your view and another standard for evidence that opposes your view is a fallacy so common in bad argumentation that it has its own name: special pleading.

When attacking the New Testament, the anti-missionary will engage in special pleading in a variety of ways. Hyper-literalism, the Bible Difficulties game, accusations of altering and misquoting the Tanakh, raiding the higher criticism of liberal scholars, and finally through the Zeitgeist game, where they try to connect the New Testament to pagan mythology.

On what consistent basis can an anti-missionary reject the inspiration of the New Testament? I have yet to meet a consistent Orthodox anti-missionary, one who is willing to hold one and only one standard of criticism, one set of presuppositions, one level of skepticism to apply to both the Tanakh and the New Testament. It intellectually dishonest to assert without question that the Tanakh is the infallible word of God and then put the New Testament on trial for its life, presuming it guilty until proven innocent. I believe most anti-missionaries are aware of the difference between humanistic and naturalistic scholarship that begins with the assumption that God has not and cannot speak, and scholarship that does not determine what God cannot do right from the start.

If the anti-missionaries want to hold the New Testament to the same standard as the Tanakh, they will be willing to harmonize the text, give flexibility in its interpretation, and give the authors the benefit of the doubt when assessing their motives, as they do with their own Scriptures. If they are unwilling to do so, then we know the anti-missionary position is untenable. Inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument.

If the words of the New Testament are to be contradicted in regards to their validity and historical value, the anti-missionary will have to do more than point out that liberal, secular scholars tend to disagree with works that claim to be inspired. That is a given. Without hard, manuscript evidence that the text has been altered, accusations that certain parts of the New Testament were changed later on remain nothing more than pure speculation.

In attempting to discredit the New Testament, the anti-missionary will apply inconsistent standards being flexible and gracious when interpreting the Tanakh, Talmud, and Rabbinic writings while offering no flexibility when interpreting the New Testament. They will use quotes such as "If your eye causes you to sin, cut it out" or "Give away everything you have" then fault us for not following it. They will suggest that accounts such as the resurrection are hopelessly contradictory and cannot be historical. They will also accuse the New Testament writers of misquoting the Tanakh, and sometimes even deliberately changing the Word of God.

However, all of these issues have parallels in the Tankah itself. The opening chapter of Genesis indicates a 6 day creation process, and the Talmud interprets day as a 24 hour period of time. The Torah declares an eye for an eye, allows slavery and orders the extermination of the Canaanites. How literally do you want to take these passages? If you want some flexibility in interpretation so you are not chopping people's hands off, please give the same courtesy to the New Testament.

As far as the Bible Difficulties game is concerned, placing Samuel and Kings on one side and the Chronicles on the other, an uncharitable interpreter can alledge all sorts of contradictions. Did Jesse have eight sons or seven sons? Did Solomon have 40,000 horses or 4,000? Did Jehoram son of Jehosophat begin his reign before or after Jehoram son of Ahab? It depends on which account you view. In fact, imagine a world in which these books of the Chronicles do not appear in the Tanakh but instead appear in the New Testament. Is there any doubt these would be the focal point of anti-missionary attacks? While I beleive all these issues in the Chronicles are able to be harmonized by a charitable interpreter, the same goes for the New Testament.

Does paraphrasing a text mean that you are maliciously altering it? If you think so, then you will have to throw the Tanakh away as well. 2 Chronicles 25:4 is written slightly differently than Deuteronomy 24:16. Also, remember Matthew's quote "he will be called a Nazarene" Is this evidence of misquoting the prophets? Not unless you are willing to discredit Ezrah 9:10-12 as well.

The Zeitgeist game basically is the assertion that the life of Jesus in general and his resurrection in particular is derived from pagan mythology. This is not a new theory, but is characteristic of the old history of religion school of thought at the beginning of the 20th century. Scholars in comparative literature ransacked pagan mythologies to try to find parallels to Christian beliefs. The movement soon collapsed for two reasons:

1. Scholars realized that the supposed parallels were superficial. The ancient world was filled with mythologies of every kind. When you look at these myths carefully, you find great diversity among them. Some are mythical symbols of the crop cycle, in the case of Tammuz and Osiris and Adonis. Some are apotheosis tales of the assumption of the hero into heaven, as in the case of Hercules. Some are emperor woship stories as is the case with Caesar. None of these are parallel to the Jewish idea of resurrection. None of them are true parallels to the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Describing pagan myths using New Testament vocabulary as we see in conspiracy movies like Zeitgeist is nothing more than pure charlatanism.

2. There is no causal connection between pagan myths and the New Testament writings. Jews found these pagan myths abhorrent. This is why Jewish writers such as Philo and Josephus refused to immortalize or deify Moses. This is why there is no evidence of cults of dying and rising gods in first century Palestine.

What the anti-missionary forgets is that the same line of reasoning was applied to the Tanakh. Scholars such as Joseph Campbell believed that the Pentatuch was borrowed from ancient semitic literature and was reactionary against rival mythologies, such as the stories of Marduk in Babylon as well as the epic of Gilgamesh to name just two. Is the anti-missionary willing to apply that kind of scholarship to the Tanakh? If not, why not?

Aah, but liberal branches of Judaism such as Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Humanistic Judaism are willing to hold Rabbinic literature and the Tanakh to the same standard of criticism as the New Testament, and have consistency in that area. However, in another area, they are even more inconsistent than the anti-missionaries. A common question Reform rabbis receive is "why don't Jews believe in Jesus" but to me a more interesting question is "why aren't Jews allowed to believe in Jesus" Why is it that members of liberal Jewish congregations lose positions of leadership and even their membership in a movement where belief in God (the first and most important commandment) is usually optional, and is generally forbidden in Humanistic Judaism?

Besides, most of the courses I have taken with Reform and Conservative rabbis have stressed again and again that Judaism is not about what you believe but about action. It is about identifying as part of a people group and adopting a choice of lifestyle, culture, language, food, and cycle of holidays. Christianity, particularly Evangelical Christianity, is not about culture but is mainly about creed. So why can't you adopt the creed of Christianity and place it within the culture of Judaism. How would that be any less legitimate than humanistic Judaism at least? I asked one Modern Orthodox Rabbi, who told me that in Modern Orthodoxy, you can adopt any interpretation of the Bible, and pretty much any theology you want. You just have to follow the lifestyle prescribed by the Rabbis (which now allows being both gay and orthodox), and not believe in the deity of Jesus...or Schneerson. In other words, it's arbitrary. It's inconsistent, and inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument.

Finally, it is important that we Christian apologists be as consistent as possible when we criticize other religions. In future videos when I criticize Talmudic Judaism, I will not give liberal critics of Rabbinic writings such as Jacob Neusner a free pass when they apply higher criticism to these texts. I am more than willing to allow for harmonization of the texts, and demand hard manuscript evidence whenever higher criticism asserts that the writings changed over time. Arguments that cut both ways and prove too much aren't of much use to anyone.

So in conclusion, when you hear an anti-missionary attacking the New Testament, you need to ask yourself "Would he be willing to do the same thing to his own scriptures?"