I have a bunch to say (grew up in an orthodox jewish community and rejected it + debated A LOT of apologists at an orthodox Jewish seminary as an atheist).
1) First off, you may wanna check out Richard Elliot Friedman’s book entitled Who Wrote the Bible -- it’s very accessible, and I thought very good. He has a discussion about how the tabernacle in the Jewish temple closely resembles structure in Egypt (without resembling any structures of the canaanites), which he thinks (for that and a few other reasons) is good evidence to at least think that the Levite class of Jews actually having an exodus from Egypt.
2) In regards to the chosen people, there are many interpretations of how this actually works, and it’s not clear they get more moral weight because of it. Some rabbis just believe that they have different duties - are supposed to get the rest of the world to follow the Noahide laws.
3) There are other morally repugnant things in the Torah -- God telling the jews to kill everyone - you can find a few examples of this online.
4) You should actually look at what the Torah says with regards to all the Jews hearing God at Mount Sinai -- it’s really not clear, but it was later interpreted to mean that they did (by Maimonidies, for example). Perhaps it would make sense that they didn’t have to make the claim originally but, years later, it developed into that claim.
5) There are a few instances in the Torah where the people forget a lot of the laws and later come back to them -- 1) after the Babylonian exile with Ezra and Nechemia, 2) Josiah “found” a Torah in the Temple after it was destroyed and realized that they were doing everything wrong and need to go back on the path. These might have been where new stories were introduced.
6) More methodological - this argument just relies on a ton of premises - mostly empirical/ historical clauims that seems really difficult to quantify and very uncertain. Giving the diminishing probabilities of the conclusion after a bunch of uncertain premises, you should lead to a very uncertain conclusion.
7) It’s quite strange that such a small religion would do so well -- especially given that they don’t missionize! This seems very weird for a false religion.
5) I think the right interpretation of those, as Tyron Goldschmidt argues, is that the Jews fell prey to syncretism, not that they ever forgot the old traditions.
6) Which argument?
8) Agreed--I was arguing for a pretty liberal Judaism.
I agree with most of this, except (shockingly) the part about Christianity contradicting the Hebrew Bible.
- I don't agree that the Shema contradicts the Trinity: it just asserts monotheism, and Christians are monotheists. One could claim that the Shema asserts unitarianism, but that's clearly question-begging.
- The claim that "God would not fear himself" seems very weak. The New Testament describes Jesus as obedient to God (Philippians 2:6-8), and Jesus himself refers to the Father as "my God and your God" (John 20:17), a mere eleven verses before he himself is called God (John 20:28)!
- Christians generally don't think that Ezekiel 46 is about the Messiah. That's one of the problems with arguments from prophecy: what counts as a prophecy often depends on who you ask! An obvious example of this is the Suffering Servant songs in Isaiah: Christians have historically interpreted them as messianic, while Jews (largely in response to Christian interpretations) have tended to interpret them as referring to the Jewish people as a whole.
You have to read Richard Lynn's book "The Chosen People". You could make your case 3 even much stronger. Lynn is a controversial author but this book is just amazing. He details the very disproportionate intellectual achievements of the (ashkenazi) jewish people in a rigorous and systematic way, it's so interesting.
Have you read the guide for The Perplexed? Maimonides writes Judaism for philosophers. He always suggests that other peoples had received their own prophecies. You cannot steel man Judaism without steelmaning the idea that religious universalism is bad. In Maimonides is clear that god speaks to all peoples, that divine inspiration and human reason to some extent overlap, and the Jewish faith is primus inter pares. Probably a useful theology to be in good terms with the ruling Muslims…
Not gonna lie -- I really don’t think this is a worthwhile read in terms of trying to steelman Judaims -- maybe for understanding the theology but im not sure you need to start with this text, as its long and difficult for no reason.
The fourth class includes the precepts relating to charity, loans, gifts and the like (...) The object of these precepts is clear; their benefit concerns all people by turn; for he who is rich today may one day become poor; and he, who is now poor, he himself or his son may be rich tomorrow”
Moshe Maimonides, “The Guide for the Perplexed”, Ch.XXXV
This is a modern defense of Welfare state, in a XIII century text. Social democratic Jews are an old tradition…
There is fascinating literature on “Game theory on the Talmud”, where the Economics Prize winner R. Aummann is main contributor:
Perhaps too long, this is a paper on the thorny issue of gentiles on the Messianic age. Remember that Maimonides suggested the possibility of Messiah to be a metaphor of Israel among nations, not a person.
What's your ranking on the likelihood of the four major religions conditional on God existing? (excluding Buddhism because it doesn't require the supernatural to be meaningfully true) You've mentioned P(Islam) <<< MIN(P(Christianity),P(Hinduism),P(Judaism), any particular ranking on the other three?
I think when people say there’s something out there they don’t literally mean something. You’re being too autistically literal there. They probably don’t have the words to express exactly what they mean but I think they mean something like “there’s some transcendent part of reality beyond the matter of the universe”
I don't know what that means. Is it just that something nonphysical exists? If so, I agree, but I don't know what type of nonphysical thing they think exists.
I’m not sure they have a really coherent idea of what exactly they believe in. If you press them, probably that there is some sort of ultimate meaning/purpose, supernatural force or “higher power”.
This sort of belief heavily overlaps with what a lot of irreligious people in the US think. Most aren’t full-on atheists.
Regarding the term 'apiru,' see Genesis 41:12. The word apiru may be related to ivri, which, also from referring to Jews*, is cited by Rashi (the primary commentary) on that verse as a term of denigration in Egypt.
*The traditional reason is that Abraham traveled to Canaan 'me-ever hanahar,' from the other side of the river.
"I'm an ivri" is also how Jonah responds when asked about his identity.
Bentham, I love you bro, but you should excise the "Christianity contradicts the Torah" part. It just reeks of the standard Arian illiteracy when eisegeting those verses (Numbers 23:19? Seriously?). Not to call you an Arian or illiterate (you are hardly the first to utilize these verses) but they're very, very bad arguments when you read them in context and are familiar with the claims of Christian theology.
Same with the comments on the Christian doctrine of atonement. Look, it may seem strange or odd or bewilderingly complex to you, but, to me, someone familiar with, at least, the very basics of Christian doctrine, it doesn't. I find it to be comfortingly simple, in fact.
> fought several different attacking armies over and over again, and became the free-est and most Democratic country in the Middle East by an order of magnitude. If that’s not evidence of the favor of God playing a role, I don’t know what is!
"Divine Wind", or other repeated "acts of god", would seem like substantially stronger evidence to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze_(typhoon). Imagine a world where God regularly smites your enemies, but not his favored people, during wars. Surely that's much less ambiguous evidence for God.
More broadly, your implicit position here is that evidence of God's will comes from "The Lord helps those who helps themselves", where people who are unusually good at helping themselves are seen as evidence of God's workings, whereas I (and I imagine, most people who talk about miracles) would be more inclined to believe that statistically unlikely (natural) events will be more evidence.
There are convincing (to me) arguments that the Torah doesn’t take numbers literally, they are always there to convey some other message. A clear example of this is the “70 souls” that go down to Egypt, whose names are enumerated. But they are nearly all men! There are some women included, so it’s clearly not just counting men, but an implausibly small number. It’s clear it’s cherry picking to get to the number it wants.
It seems you're steelmanning Judaism by allowing for an errant bible. I'm curious whether you think it possible to steelman an argument that includes an inerrant bible.
It seems that you are specifically steelmanning Judaism, as distinct from Jewish arguments for Judaism.
I have a bunch to say (grew up in an orthodox jewish community and rejected it + debated A LOT of apologists at an orthodox Jewish seminary as an atheist).
1) First off, you may wanna check out Richard Elliot Friedman’s book entitled Who Wrote the Bible -- it’s very accessible, and I thought very good. He has a discussion about how the tabernacle in the Jewish temple closely resembles structure in Egypt (without resembling any structures of the canaanites), which he thinks (for that and a few other reasons) is good evidence to at least think that the Levite class of Jews actually having an exodus from Egypt.
2) In regards to the chosen people, there are many interpretations of how this actually works, and it’s not clear they get more moral weight because of it. Some rabbis just believe that they have different duties - are supposed to get the rest of the world to follow the Noahide laws.
3) There are other morally repugnant things in the Torah -- God telling the jews to kill everyone - you can find a few examples of this online.
4) You should actually look at what the Torah says with regards to all the Jews hearing God at Mount Sinai -- it’s really not clear, but it was later interpreted to mean that they did (by Maimonidies, for example). Perhaps it would make sense that they didn’t have to make the claim originally but, years later, it developed into that claim.
5) There are a few instances in the Torah where the people forget a lot of the laws and later come back to them -- 1) after the Babylonian exile with Ezra and Nechemia, 2) Josiah “found” a Torah in the Temple after it was destroyed and realized that they were doing everything wrong and need to go back on the path. These might have been where new stories were introduced.
6) More methodological - this argument just relies on a ton of premises - mostly empirical/ historical clauims that seems really difficult to quantify and very uncertain. Giving the diminishing probabilities of the conclusion after a bunch of uncertain premises, you should lead to a very uncertain conclusion.
7) It’s quite strange that such a small religion would do so well -- especially given that they don’t missionize! This seems very weird for a false religion.
8) There are various points at which there is good reason to think that Moses was not the author of the Torah https://www.thetorah.com/article/who-wrote-the-torah-according-to-the-torah.
More things to be said, but this is a start.
3) Right, I was suggesting that Torah erred.
4) Interesting, I'll give that a look.
5) I think the right interpretation of those, as Tyron Goldschmidt argues, is that the Jews fell prey to syncretism, not that they ever forgot the old traditions.
6) Which argument?
8) Agreed--I was arguing for a pretty liberal Judaism.
I agree with most of this, except (shockingly) the part about Christianity contradicting the Hebrew Bible.
- I don't agree that the Shema contradicts the Trinity: it just asserts monotheism, and Christians are monotheists. One could claim that the Shema asserts unitarianism, but that's clearly question-begging.
- The claim that "God would not fear himself" seems very weak. The New Testament describes Jesus as obedient to God (Philippians 2:6-8), and Jesus himself refers to the Father as "my God and your God" (John 20:17), a mere eleven verses before he himself is called God (John 20:28)!
- Christians generally don't think that Ezekiel 46 is about the Messiah. That's one of the problems with arguments from prophecy: what counts as a prophecy often depends on who you ask! An obvious example of this is the Suffering Servant songs in Isaiah: Christians have historically interpreted them as messianic, while Jews (largely in response to Christian interpretations) have tended to interpret them as referring to the Jewish people as a whole.
Joshua Berman enumerates many other exodus details that would only have been known to someone who was actually familiar with a specific period of Egyptian culture: https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/history-ideas/2015/03/was-there-an-exodus/
‘The trinity runs counter the claim in Deuteronomy 6:4 that, "Hear Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is one."’
🤯
Mans just proved Christianity wrong! Boom
You have to read Richard Lynn's book "The Chosen People". You could make your case 3 even much stronger. Lynn is a controversial author but this book is just amazing. He details the very disproportionate intellectual achievements of the (ashkenazi) jewish people in a rigorous and systematic way, it's so interesting.
Have you read the guide for The Perplexed? Maimonides writes Judaism for philosophers. He always suggests that other peoples had received their own prophecies. You cannot steel man Judaism without steelmaning the idea that religious universalism is bad. In Maimonides is clear that god speaks to all peoples, that divine inspiration and human reason to some extent overlap, and the Jewish faith is primus inter pares. Probably a useful theology to be in good terms with the ruling Muslims…
I have not.
Not gonna lie -- I really don’t think this is a worthwhile read in terms of trying to steelman Judaims -- maybe for understanding the theology but im not sure you need to start with this text, as its long and difficult for no reason.
I love above all this:
The fourth class includes the precepts relating to charity, loans, gifts and the like (...) The object of these precepts is clear; their benefit concerns all people by turn; for he who is rich today may one day become poor; and he, who is now poor, he himself or his son may be rich tomorrow”
Moshe Maimonides, “The Guide for the Perplexed”, Ch.XXXV
This is a modern defense of Welfare state, in a XIII century text. Social democratic Jews are an old tradition…
There is fascinating literature on “Game theory on the Talmud”, where the Economics Prize winner R. Aummann is main contributor:
http://www.ma.huji.ac.il/~raumann/pdf/Game%20Theory%20in%20the%20Talmud%20BI.pdf
Perhaps too long, this is a paper on the thorny issue of gentiles on the Messianic age. Remember that Maimonides suggested the possibility of Messiah to be a metaphor of Israel among nations, not a person.
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781618117892-003/html?lang=en
What's your ranking on the likelihood of the four major religions conditional on God existing? (excluding Buddhism because it doesn't require the supernatural to be meaningfully true) You've mentioned P(Islam) <<< MIN(P(Christianity),P(Hinduism),P(Judaism), any particular ranking on the other three?
I think when people say there’s something out there they don’t literally mean something. You’re being too autistically literal there. They probably don’t have the words to express exactly what they mean but I think they mean something like “there’s some transcendent part of reality beyond the matter of the universe”
I don't know what that means. Is it just that something nonphysical exists? If so, I agree, but I don't know what type of nonphysical thing they think exists.
I’m not sure they have a really coherent idea of what exactly they believe in. If you press them, probably that there is some sort of ultimate meaning/purpose, supernatural force or “higher power”.
This sort of belief heavily overlaps with what a lot of irreligious people in the US think. Most aren’t full-on atheists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ietsism
I would be amiss if I didn't toot my own article for Judaism here.
https://open.substack.com/pub/daastorah/p/why-i-believe-the-torah-is-true?r=33pit&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Note that this is more of a defense of Judaism than a proof to it.
Regarding the term 'apiru,' see Genesis 41:12. The word apiru may be related to ivri, which, also from referring to Jews*, is cited by Rashi (the primary commentary) on that verse as a term of denigration in Egypt.
*The traditional reason is that Abraham traveled to Canaan 'me-ever hanahar,' from the other side of the river.
"I'm an ivri" is also how Jonah responds when asked about his identity.
I have a lot of questions regarding the Kuzari as you present it, for a start:
What’s the evidence that the exodus story was accepted by a Jewish nation? Also which exodus story with which specifics?
Bentham, how would you compare the plausibility of Karaite Judaism to that of Rabbinic Judaism?
Bentham, I love you bro, but you should excise the "Christianity contradicts the Torah" part. It just reeks of the standard Arian illiteracy when eisegeting those verses (Numbers 23:19? Seriously?). Not to call you an Arian or illiterate (you are hardly the first to utilize these verses) but they're very, very bad arguments when you read them in context and are familiar with the claims of Christian theology.
Same with the comments on the Christian doctrine of atonement. Look, it may seem strange or odd or bewilderingly complex to you, but, to me, someone familiar with, at least, the very basics of Christian doctrine, it doesn't. I find it to be comfortingly simple, in fact.
> fought several different attacking armies over and over again, and became the free-est and most Democratic country in the Middle East by an order of magnitude. If that’s not evidence of the favor of God playing a role, I don’t know what is!
"Divine Wind", or other repeated "acts of god", would seem like substantially stronger evidence to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze_(typhoon). Imagine a world where God regularly smites your enemies, but not his favored people, during wars. Surely that's much less ambiguous evidence for God.
More broadly, your implicit position here is that evidence of God's will comes from "The Lord helps those who helps themselves", where people who are unusually good at helping themselves are seen as evidence of God's workings, whereas I (and I imagine, most people who talk about miracles) would be more inclined to believe that statistically unlikely (natural) events will be more evidence.
There are convincing (to me) arguments that the Torah doesn’t take numbers literally, they are always there to convey some other message. A clear example of this is the “70 souls” that go down to Egypt, whose names are enumerated. But they are nearly all men! There are some women included, so it’s clearly not just counting men, but an implausibly small number. It’s clear it’s cherry picking to get to the number it wants.
It seems you're steelmanning Judaism by allowing for an errant bible. I'm curious whether you think it possible to steelman an argument that includes an inerrant bible.
It seems that you are specifically steelmanning Judaism, as distinct from Jewish arguments for Judaism.
Thanks for an interesting post.