In the Western world, academia dismisses the idea that Torah is G-d given.

How robust is their theory of Documentary Hypothesis? Who was P? Did Ezra author any of Chumash?

Wouldn't a hurricane explain the Sinai experience or perhaps Mass-Hypnosis?

Live from the JLE in London, you're listening to History for the Curious, the podcast.

20 minutes with Rabbi Aubrey Hirsch, hosted by myself, Menah Reisner.

Join us as we cross continents, sail through the centuries, tracing lives, uncovering events, and following epic journeys to reveal the untold stories and the mysteries that have impacted our history and shaped us into who we are today.

And good evening Rabbi Hirsch for the second time this week.

Welcome back to part 2 of our very important series on Sinai, Torah at Menashemim.

So last week we explained how any theory about Torah being man-made, even if the events took place thousands of years ago, still have to fit within the rules of historical and philosophical theory.

And therefore, the critics need to answer a number of logical questions to establish the case, like you very eloquently explained.

We also spoke about mass revelation as being unique to the Jews.

Could we start this week by you explaining why is mass revelation such a big deal, was the sort of thing that you stressed, I would say, most

So basically, all the religions in the world rely on 1 thing, and I mean all of them, believing the bloke who talks to you.

Mass revelation means the leader doesn't have to prove anything.

But surely there has to be another religion that has made a claim of mass revelation, seeing that that's our golden ticket.

A number of ancient people and religions make a sort of claim saying this or that, gold appeared to thousands of people in Central America and the Far East, but never with the outcome that makes personal demands of my life, which are intrusive.

The Rabbi Gottlieb argument was if it will strongly impact my life, but if it's just an alleged divine encounter with no rules or demands, fair enough, I'm prepared to go along with it.

Yeah, which is why none of these religions then go on to make the claim that mass revelation will never happen again.

It could, but not the type of mass revelation that happened in the desert, where the Torah is telling us it will never reoccur as we find in Devarim chapter 4, in Possuk Yud and Possuk Lumbed Base and Lumbed Gimel.

That's a very challenging in-your-face claim.

But maybe God only does speak to 1 or 2 people.

Okay, so why would there be revelation at all?

What is the purpose for a truth to emerge?

If God would then only speak to 1 person, there is the challenge for this individual to convince everybody that it actually happened in a marketplace where everyone is making exactly the same claim.

So now the entire outcome is down to this individual's, I don't know, personality and charisma and it's going to probably die at birth.

I mean, I don't know if you're aware, every year they produce an encyclopedia of religions, thousands of them, and many don't make it into the second year.

Sheker and MS Truth and otherwise will be determined by numbers, which is why Christianity and Islam jumped on the bandwagon of Judaism.

However embarrassing it is for them to start their religion from ours, right, really not cool.

Of course, beyond why it should happen this way is the claim we have made that it will never be repeated, which is the main thrust of the argument.

As requested last week, we asked the listeners to hang fire on their questions, which indeed they did.

We got way less questions than usual, they're waiting for episode 2.

So I've prepared some of my own, which will hopefully cover most of the questions being asked.

But of course, we're still open at the end for more.

In other words, maybe there was an event that took place and it happened to be at the time that he was able to make use of a hurricane.

And he explained it away as, you know, the word of God and people accepted it and believed it and that was the sort of the lucky coincidence that he had.

If it's a natural phenomenon then natural phenomena repeat themselves and how come nobody else got this lucky break ever in the thousands of religions in the thousands of years across the entirety of the world.

But the second bigger question is if they didn't actually hear God say onoichi and lo yelecho in this earthquake then the claim isn't God spoke to us and said.

It's the same claim as God only spoke to me and I'm telling you what he said because you lot never heard it.

Yeah but maybe details were added over the years, maybe details of stories, details of commandments.

I mean you said last week it's either true or false, maybe it's somewhere in the middle, maybe it's partly true.

As above, Which part was there and which part was added?

Was it the vague part that doesn't anyway contain any commandments?

Or is it the part that does contain commandments that you have to give up your life for?

Is it the part that happens, that says that mass revelation happened?

In other words, is it the rappers and like the whipped cream or is it the actual cake?

Let's say he came up with 10 out of 613 commandments, which just by the way was 1 of those 10 circumcision, Because if it wasn't, it's very hard to introduce later on.

In other words, is he talking to people who have gotten together because he got them out of Egypt miraculously or not?

Did he invent the miracles and the plagues?

And then subsequently, who is the guy who introduced the other 613 commandments and how?

You see, when the question is vague, it sounds strong.

But the moment you start defining the question, that's when the question falls apart.

In fact, underlying almost all of these questions are the same 4 points.

How did they slip in mass revelation and how come no 1 else has managed?

It clearly wasn't for power because this person is anonymous.

We've only got that 1335 year window, so what part of history was he in and how did he explain amnesia to his audience?

Matthew 15 Okay, I'll try and process that quickly.

How do we know that those weren't customs that they were already doing when Moses came along?

And maybe he just sort of put in a framework of religion, but they have been traditions passed down.

Is he just writing events or inventing them?

If he's inventing them, then we have all the problems we've already mentioned.

If he isn't inventing them, then what we're saying is it all happened 100 years earlier, so we're shifting revelation back by a century.

So then all the questions are relevant to that event 100 years earlier, which must have been very impressive, etc.

But what if the fact that Judaism has so many rules is the actual reason that got preserved?

Because people need restrictions, people need laws, or maybe the amount of rules was sort of a double bluff, let's say, to show it must have been real, because it's so detail-orientated and so many rules, who could have made this up?

In a world where none of the other religions had any rules, paganism,

new intrusive rules sounds like quite a bit to me.

How you testify in court, how you slaughter your animals, how you shave, how you plow your field, it's endless, even if it's only 150.

And therefore, double bluff runs out of steam after 150.

It's overkill for a religion that I'm inventing.

More than that, as we said last week, it will actually backfire.

Besides, you've got all the other questions.

They had no idea what was written in Torah.

Torah is not simply a dusty book accessible to the priests.

The Torah for the Jewish people was the basis of their social life, their economic life, their legislative life, trading in the market, their daily and weekly calendar, their married life, everything is in the Torah.

It's not just a collection of ideas, of morals.

know, they might have been illiterate but they needed to know what was in it.

Going back to your question of why would people believe it all 1, 000 years later, couldn't it be that they were in such desperate times?

People needed desperately to believe in something.

And he's telling a great story of revelation.

OK, so this is a question about the Fred scenario.

The problem is that we don't ever have that recorded.

When did it happen that people were this desperate?

Secondly, going back to what we said, how desperate would you be to sign your entire life away to something you know is a lie?

You know it's not true because no 1 ever heard of it.

And then once again, all the same questions, why, who, etc.

But We've touched on Fred, so let's now turn to the academic world, which claims not only that the Torah is deliberate man-made fabrication, but that it was reinvented 4 times.

If you study Bible studies in university, your degree will be learning and writing about this whole thing is simply fiction, like Harry Potter, but written here for political reasons and power.

Now, the origins of this theory, practically speaking, are in the 19th century, mainly with a guy called Wellhausen, who authored what is called the Documentary Hypothesis, a theory that the Torah was invented by 4, perhaps 5 people, not at 1 time, 4 authors over a period of around 500 years and each wrote a different section of the Torah, and it's called J-E-D-P.

The reason behind this theory was that 2 academics came across a problem.

God goes by different names in the Torah and the Torah uses different styles and different sections of the 5 books.

The story of the creation, for instance, doesn't have the same vocabulary or structure as the laws of paying your workers.

And the third problem is that The same stories appear in the Torah twice, Bereshith, the flood.

Okay, now, crucially for us to know, none of these questions are new to the 19th century.

All the Roshanim deal with this Rashi, Nachmanides, Ramban all the time.

But of course, these Bible critics didn't know that because they're Christians who've never opened a Chumash in their lives, only in Old Testament, so they have no access to anything really except the superficial text itself.

An author always writes in a singular style.

If there are different styles and different names for God, there must have been different authors.

They lived centuries apart from each other.

So the way it works is, about 2, 850 years ago, 400 years after we say the Torah was given on Sinai, a group of people, possibly in southern Israel, although it wasn't called that at the time, because the Israelites didn't exist as a single nation according to them, remembering that, you know, all these stories of Boratius and coming out of Egypt with the 10 plagues, it's all a myth, it's a legend.

So these primitive tribes, living in what is called today Israel, created text for their tribe.

They wrote a story and perhaps a few commandments in order to make the tribe cohesive.

And in this scroll, their god, a fictitious god, because the J-god doesn't actually exist, This god that they worshipped was called Yud-Kev-Av-Kei or J.

And their scroll was created by all the Psukim in Chumish that we have today which contain the J name of Hashem.

I mean, at least in the first 2 books of Brashus and Shmoes.

Why should people accept stories which they knew weren't true?

We're not going to go into that because we have no idea.

Now Sefer Vayikra, Sefer Tavorim is not in there.

This scroll is mostly story base, had beliefs in God and it's let's say 20% of what we call today Chumash and they accepted it.

Now there's no chapter 1 in Bereshit, there's no story of a 6 day creation.

There was a creation, we don't have any details.

About a hundred years later, another group probably identified with the tribes living in the north, also came up with a set of beliefs and stories and legends, and their god was called E, Elohim.

So any verses in Bereshit and Shemes which have the name Elohim were written by the second author who has no connection to the first author.

You know, it's not his student or his school of thought.

This second scroll is being developed in a different part of the country and there are different beliefs in the 2 scrolls.

Some of the stories are the same because the 2 septs of tribes were related back in time.

But you've got, you know, Avram bringing his son Yitzchak on the Akedah.

It's in both scrolls, but they finish differently.

The god E apparently didn't believe in child sacrifice.

So for E, the Akedah finishes with Yitzchak alive.

The god J did believe in child sacrifice, so Yitzchak is killed on the Akedah.

Ya'n asher lo yichosachdo, you didn't withhold your son, which means you killed him.

And then sometimes, you know, 1 of the 2 scrolls has a story that the other hasn't, like the golden calf.

Now of course you're about to get a rather large headache when within the same paragraph you have both names of God.

And by the way this headache starts very early on because chapter 2 and 3 of Bratius, of Genesis, only have the name of God as HaShem Elohim, both together.

Okay, so To resolve this tension, and also to explain how we have 1 scroll nowadays which has both J and E in it, the 19th century Bible critics assumed that somehow the Jews, maybe a hundred years later, fused both scrolls together.

Even though there were glaring contradictions between them, and even though it's their core religious beliefs and narratives that they're fusing together, nevertheless they made them into 1 cholent, and in fact that's probably the first use of the word cholent in Jewish history is in the 8th century BCE.

This is all searchable online, don't take my word for it.

The motivation for them to accept it was unity, even though the 2 were never properly unified.

The 2 kingdoms went to war with each other, they had 2 places of worship, they're not unified by land or religion, and even though you don't find such a thing happening in the ancient world, that in order to keep people happy, they coalesce 2 very different religions together into 1.

You know, 1 religion dominates the other, you don't find a fusion.

And I'm prepared to accept this implausible scenario because it gets far worse.

They're teaching this in university, yeah?

Another hundred years later, at which time the Jews still don't have 60% of Chumash, nor is there a book called Yeshua or Sheftim or Shmuel or Molochim, the book of kings, none of it.

You know, there might be some legend swirling around about Samson, But for instance, King David, he never existed.

I mean, in more recent times, that was the 19th century, what they said.

Nowadays, they say, well, he did exist, but he was a minor figure.

There was never a united monarchy across the country.

But in 621 BCE, there's a need for power, so they created a third book called D.

And really this is the centre of Wellhausen's theory.

This book is really what made Judaism happen according to him because it's got a whole load of commandments.

I mean we're going to come back to why it's utterly implausible that Sefer Devorim would have come into being at

We'll come to it at length but just as a teaser, Devorim says you may not add or subtract any commandments.

Devorim also says the commandments that I gave you at Sinai 700 years ago will never be forgotten.

Yet this book of Devorim has just been handed to me and it's full of commandments that are new, that the people have never heard of, and in the text it says they've always been around.

But somehow, Dee got the Jews to accept it, uncritically, a new unknown book making its first appearance, and by the way, circumcision may not yet be part of it.

Anyway, whoever wrote D also wrote Sheftim Shmuel Molochim, very busy B.

Allegedly, this was written by King Yeshua.

As an aside, it's interesting that this king had such a major impact on Judaism because I would assume that most of our listeners couldn't tell you a single thing about Yeshua our Melech.

But according to biblical critics, he was major in our history, apparently.

And the Possack of Shema is also in Tevarim.

Yes, possibly only written in the 7th century, or invented, should I say.

Okay, so it's based on the story with Yeshua in Malachim base where it says that he found The scroll safer hot era and he tore his garments and he initiated the destruction of idols across Judea This is the basis for D.

It's interpreted to mean that he invented an entire scroll even though nothing in the verses suggests that reading and even though the verse said he didn't he didn't find the Sefer Torah it was Chilkiot.

But leaving that to 1 side because as I say the real arguments against D are yet to come.

So fine, they've got now 3 parts of the scroll.

So it's now, you know, 600 BCE, but they still don't have the Chumash as it exists nowadays.

And 150, maybe 250 years later, Wellhausen theorizes that there was a fourth edition called P.

This is after the exile and return to the second temple, they're still adding and creating the Bible.

Although nowadays some people theorize that Wellhausen was wrong and that P was written before D.

I mean, it's all pure conjecture and theory.

There isn't a shred of actual proof for any of this.

I mean, I guess in the world of secular academia, you have to be really open-minded.

The Qahanim decided that they wanted in on power as well.

So they added the whole section, Sefer V'Yikroh.

Now, once again, when the Kahanim presented it to the people, they didn't say it was a new book, created in, I don't know, the 7th century or the 4th century BCE.

No, they claimed this was part of the old book of a thousand years ago, and the fact that you've never seen these words and chapters before, somehow they passed it off anyway because, you know, anyway there was animal sacrifice, so they just added bits to it.

Although by bits I mean hundreds of sentences, okay?

And these gullible, stupid Jews, for the fourth time, had their religion completely altered.

They accepted it uncritically, even though, as we said, no 1 has ever said about the Jews that they are uncritical, that they are gullible, and that they're not stubborn.

But somehow, just at these 4 junctures in history, they became all soft and easygoing.

And at all other times, their normal sort of national traits reasserted themselves.

So in summary, a Jew or some Jews, they wrote 4 separate books, each at least 100 years apart, each with different instructions and texts, and the Jews accepted the whole lot each time an amendment was made, you know, just give me the latest.

Now, the only problem is, we haven't finished.

You can't literally split this book into 4 very neat quarters.

So in order to edit it properly, there was, according to most theories in the JDP world, a redactor, an editor, who brought it all together, thankfully.

So that finally we have a single book of complete fiction called Chumash, created over a 700 year period which was foisted on the Jews and no 1 noticed.

Okay, so he is identified by most critics as Ezra Now what he does is not just cut up stories.

He edits single verses in Chapter 19 in choice where the receiving of the Torah takes place.

It's a classic example Literally you have a half a verse was written at a particular time in a particular place and the second half of the verse is written, you know, 100, 400 years later.

In the year 850 BCE this verse was 4 words long, after editing it becomes much longer, It's a bit like Pinocchio's nose.

He is literally sitting there with a pair of scissors, adding words here, instructions there, removing contradictions.

Now, this claim is of deliberate fraud, not simply mis-editing a text, and on a national scale, which you do not find anywhere else 2, 000 years ago.

Which other religion engaged in this anywhere in the ancient world?

Religions at the time simply absorbed other religions into theirs.

And there, as I've said, is not a shred of hard evidence for these theories.

4 completely different texts brought together without a single dissenting voice or recorded opinion anywhere.

And, as I mentioned, Torah isn't simply a dusty book accessible to the priests.

It's the basis of social life, economic life, married life.

How do you change it each time without anyone noticing or protesting?

I'm not going to dispute these Bible critics on the absurdity of their claims, which should be enough.

I'm going to dispute the philosophical and historical theories which they have to propose to be able to make these claims.

First of all, there are 4 books and 5 authors.

I will quote Richard Friedman, whose heretical book on the topic, called Who Wrote the Bible, was on the New York Times bestsellers list.

He sold a quarter of a million copies of it.

And he says, there is still much to be discovered about who wrote J and E.

We do not know the precise dates when they lived, and we do not know their names.

In fact, nowadays Bible critics are aware of the problems in giving 2 authorships, 1 to J and 1 to E.

The question remains as to why so many similarities exist between J and E.

They deal largely with the same characters.

Their styles are sufficiently similar that it has never been possible to separate them on stylistic grounds alone.

The whole basis for documentary hypothesis was that different authors write in different styles, so maybe they aren't written by 2 authors after all.

Although ultimately he remains in a state of deep denial.

The stylistic similarity of J and E is that rather than J being based on E or E being based on J, both may have been based on a common source that was prior to them, that was like an old traditional cycle of stories about the patriarchs and Exodus which both the authors of J and E used as a basis for their works.

See all History for the Curious - The Jewish History Podcast transcripts on Googlepodcasts

The Sinai Revelation II (1312BCE) - Challenges & Deniers