What EXACTLY Happened at Mount Sinai?

the question that i want to address tonight is is very narrow meaning there's a lot we could speak about in terms of you know where the torah come from and there's the written tradition in the oral tradition there's a lot of different issues but i want to focus on the most basic issue because we have limited time and that is what exactly happened at mount sinai 3 300 years ago in other words is that mythology is that a real historical event you know what what exactly happened and the approach i would like to take is an academic approach i would like to to treat the question with you tonight in the same way that i treated it when i was in the university so what we'll try to do is keep our feet very firmly on the ground and not take leaps of faith um and just think very clearly and very carefully okay now the the the discussion that we're about to have is not a simple discussion uh you'll see that there are are many moving parts and they fit very neatly together but it's not it's not simple and so you have to follow it each step of the way therefore what i'm going to recommend is that general questions or counter-argument wait until the end because i'll probably anticipate those questions i've been lecturing this for more than 20 years but if i say something that you don't understand or it doesn't seem to fit the previous step so then stop me immediately so i can just make that connection so i don't lose you along the way okay i'm going to start off with the broadest picture which is a discussion of how religions start generally or you could say what is the credibility of religions generally and again i'm treating this as an academic topic so you know please be open-minded with me i'm not i'm no way condemning any and any approach that anyone wants to take in life i'm just doing a very calm analysis when you look at any religion on the planet and for my undergraduate degree i studied about 165 major religious families that included thousands of sex and cults what i discovered is that all religions on the planet begin when one or two people have some sort of transcendental experience a revelation or some other sort of experience and then those one or two people convey that experience to others who are very moved by the by the revelation narrative and then those people then follow them and access the wisdom through those one or two leaders that's usually how religions get going when you ask a religion what do you have to offer so every religion will describe various benefits you'll get if you join that religion and then you say well can i get those exact same benefits if i join that other religion instead of joining your religion if i join that religion will i get those benefits so invariably the the the the the founders of the religion will tell you no for example if you accept jesus you'll be saved so to ask a christian well i'm not going to accept jesus i'm going to become a hindu will i be saved so the answer is no i mean that you just have to be honest the answer is no and if you if you become a hindu you'll gain control over certain aspects of nature you can actually rise above the forces of nature and actually gain control over those forces of nature if you ask someone in a hindu sec tell them you know listen i'm not going to become a hindu i decided instead i'm going to become a jew will i gain control over nature in that way and they'll honestly tell you no you know we have a unique technology here and the same is true by every religion whatever whatever benefits they grant you buddhism will grant you an unparalleled sense of oneness with the universe you can you can become essentially a deity you can become uh achieve this essentially divine state of being b-u-d-d-h-a and that that that state of divinity cannot be achieved you can't pass through the a stage of transit insight unless you you actually follow the the the path that was laid out by siddhartha gautama that's the only way to get there so when you say to these people well listen the the the technology that you're offering with the system you're providing for me is obviously not obvious because it was obvious everybody in the world would be doing this so where did you get it then they will tell you their revelation narrative and every religion has a revelation narrative and invariably the revelation narrative is one or two people have this experience and get everyone else to follow i'm not gonna because of limited time i'm not gonna go through with you tonight but i did bring this sheet which is i think it's the first sheet in your packet i wouldn't go through it right now because it'll distract you but but uh how much religion started the sample of i don't know a dozen or so religions um and you can see that that all religions do start in fact when there's these one or two people who have this experience and then and then get everyone else to roll with it just to give you some examples of things that you you're already familiar with i'm lecturing now in a christian country so most of us here are very very familiar with christianity and most people who study christianity realize that christianity does not begin uh the christian that we possess today does not begin with jesus the the even the catholic church which is the oldest of the churches today uh does not begin with jesus it begins with paul and the story is that jesus jesus lived jesus died about 35 years later after jesus died he was walking alone on the road to damascus and walking along the road suddenly 35 years after jesus died he has this vision and jesus appears to him and jesus tells over all the stories of of of the miracles that he experienced when he was alive and paul is so moved by this his name actually was sha ul he was he was actually a jew shall is so moved by this that he converts on the spot changes his name to paul goes back into the city tells all the people that he's become a christian and that that jesus is the way and if you accept jesus you'll be saved and tells over the stories of of that jesus told him and he then sits down and writes more than half the books of the new testament including all of the books of the new testament that contain the miracle stories about jesus so it turns out that and then those stories are passed down those pauline documents are passed down from about 65 ce down to about 325 ce and 325 ce they all get gathered together at the council of nicaea along with other fragments that were written based on the pauline documents all of those are put together into the new testament it's codified into the new testament and christianity is up and running so it turns out that if paul told the truth the whole thing is true and if paul lied the whole thing is a lie or if paul had a trip or whatever the case is you know what you know the the the entire credibility of the religion rests on paul know that doesn't mean that christianity is not true it just means that the the credibility of the religion is rest on the credibility of one person that's the key and the same is true by buddhism with sir hathaway who sends to the eighth stage of trans insight comes to know all there is to be known descends back into his body again stands up begins his 45-year career as a leader and teacher and and and gives over the ways of buddhism to people now if siddhartha gautama actually ascended and became a buddha then in fact the whole thing is true and if he made that up or if he fantasized or or had some other sort of of hallucinogenic experience so then the whole thing is not true so it's true it's not true we're not really addressing that issue what we are pointing out though is that the there has never been somebody since siddhartha gautama who achieves the a stage of transit insight there's never been anyone else who's achieved that state by the way before siddhartha gautama there were 44 other people 45 people actually did this before siddhartha gautama they ascended also but the thing is they never came back down again the only one who came back down was sidhartha gautama so how do we know about the other 44 take a wild guess he told us and would he lie so it must be true okay now again i'm not i'm not telling you that it's not true what i'm pointing out though is it's an interesting coincidence that all religions on the planet begin with this trans transcendental experience experienced by one or two people what i concluded when i saw this was that one of two things is true either for some reason god is very shy and so he only appears to wire to people at a time or the other possibility is that and this is what we teach in university the ability to maintain a conspiracy is inversely proportional to the number of people involved [Music] so as the number of people involved climbs the likelihood of that religion surviving drops geometrically without going into any of the heavy math but this just i'll give you a very simple model for how this principle works let's say you have one person who starts a cult i start a cult and i tell all of you i had this experience okay now there are two possible scenarios one scenario is that throughout the rest of my life i say to you i swear the whole thing is true in which case in that first scenario there is a chance this religion could survive the second possibility is that somewhere along the line i confess to you hey i made the whole thing up at which point the entire religion explodes so excluding psychological and sociological factors since there are two possible scenarios and the religion can only survive in one of them that means there's a 50 50 chance that this religion will survive okay with one person who's involved in founding it okay now skip to two people let's you have two people so if you have two people there are four possible scenarios in the first scenario both guys say it's true yeah it's true in which case the religion survives second scenario one guy says it's true in the other cases what do you mean we just made it up in the other room a few minutes ago in which case the religion explodes right third scenario the first guy says haha we made it up and the second guy says we're trying to start a religion here in which case the religion explodes third scenario both guys with arms over each other's shoulders say ha ha we made it up in which case the religion explodes it turns out of the four possible scenarios when you've got two people launching religion only one will allow the religion to survive okay the equation that we use is the ability to maintain a conspiracy is defined by one over two to the n where n is the number of conspirators so therefore if you've got three people who launch a religion there's a one out of eight chance a thing will survive you get four people launching religion there's a one out of 16 chance the religion will survive five people's one out of 32 et cetera that's why you've never heard of religion that was launched when five people had a transcendental experience because the odds of that thing making it are infinitesimal okay now zooming back again every religion on the planet starts with one or two people not surprising okay then you get to judaism okay now judaism starts like every other religion on the planet you open up the torah and it says in the beginning of the torah god spoke to abraham sure see how suspicious that is one guy a generation later god speaks to isaac uh-huh yeah sure one guy one generation later god speaks to jacob family business okay now this looks terrible it really looks terrible so when you look at judaism it's exactly like every other religion on the planet the initial revelation narrative is no different and therefore judaism has no more credibility than any other religion on the planet initially then skip forward a few chapters you get to a very unique scene in terms of the academic study of religions it catches everybody's attention it's discussed on every university campus in the second book of the bible in the book of exodus in the chapter called yitro there is a scene this is the first place it appears but then it appears over and over again throughout the book there's a scene in which the jews have escaped from egypt we have a tally there was at least 603 000 uh adult men between the ages of 20 and 50. you add up all the numbers it turns out there was a there were about 3 million people who walked out of egypt they arrive at the foot of mount sinai and there the text explicitly says that they heard god speak three million people heard god say i'm the lord your god you should know the gods before me moses moses come up to the top of the mountain i'm gonna give you the torah okay now that is far out you never have a religion that starts with three people let alone three million all the academics they say okay there's something unusual going on and by the way right after that after god has said i'm the lord your god you should know other gods before me moses moses come up to the mountain moses goes up he's up there alone he gets the tour he brings it down he says okay folks this is what i got on on top mount sinai so that looks very suspicious again yeah who knows what he was doing up there okay but in the initial launch you've got three million people hearing god speak three million people are experiencing prophecy this is the first i won't say the last but it's the first mass revelation recorded human history okay now speaking as a university professor i will tell you what we do in order to destroy jewish credibility in order to knock judaism down to look like every other religion on the planet because listen we got a problem on the table you don't want to face the number one over two to the three million yeah the odds that this thing is a lie are like you know it's it's impossible that it could be a lie one out of two to three million it looks extraordinarily credible so then the university professor goes to work and in two seconds i will destroy judaism it happens very very quickly here's how it works three million people heard god speak where did you get that so you say what says so in the torah so i said who wrote this she said one person wrote that so now we've actually gotten back to essentially the buddhist model in buddhism you've got 45 people who sent it to the eighth stage of transit insight but how do we know that through one fellow so you've got this massive event but the whole massive event is only being passed to you through one guy if the author of this book lied then the whole thing is a lie and if the author of this book told the truth and the whole thing is true now in in in in in in the university circles the way that we explain where this book came from is we don't say it was one guy there's technical problems with saying it was one guy so if you would go to a jewish studies department at any mainstream university at harvard yale at ucla all any of these places what you will hear is it was not written by one person it was written by four people it was written by j e p and d these are four authors they call them by those names you'll see in a moment why and then it was redacted by a fifth person who mixed everything together and produced this document j is called j because there are places in the torah where the tetragrammaton a four-letter name of god is used when they try to pronounce that four-letter name of god yud [Music] it sounds like it begins with a j and so they call the the author who who used that name the j author the only thing is the torah uses many names for god the tetragrammaton the four letter name is one of them there's another name which you've probably heard before elokim elokim that reference was written by the e author so you have the j author the e author who writes about elohim then there's the p author the p author is the one who stressed the importance of the priestly duties and there's major sections in the book that talk just about the importance of the priests so he was the one who wrote that and then finally you have the author that's the deuteronomist who comes at the end of the book okay now the problem is modern scholars discovered the people who put this theory together were not fluent in hebrew modern scholars discovered that in fact in one sentence you can have the j name the e name it could be discussing priestly duties and it could be in the book of devarim of deuteronomy so that blows the whole theory to pieces how could it all be in one spot if it was four different authors so they came with this other idea that a fifth guy came and redacted the whole thing and mixed it all up and so now you can have it all mixed together so on university campus today they say this is a book that was written by five people j e p and d redacted by r god has nothing to do with it it's cultural history that's the that's the approach that's used and now we've solved the problem three million people heard god speak it's not true they'll tell you three people didn't hear god speak it's a mythology written by five people okay that's the end of the university course this is where i step in okay this is the beginning of the lecture we're all on the same page now what i'm about to do is i'm about to explain i'm going to assume that this whole thing is a lie that this is really a mythology that in fact god never wrote this and i'm going to run with that theory as far as i can until it gets into into trouble and you'll see as the theory starts to stumble let's assume that a liar or liars a group of charismatic leaders put this thing together and they wrote up the story about the mass revelation if that is in fact what happened then when they told people either handed them the book or orally explained to them that hey you know god spoke to three million people the charismatic cult leader or leaders who told that lie had to place that event of mass revelation somewhere in human history i'm arguing that the original lie had to take one of three forms that is there's only three times in human history where they could have argued that in fact this mass revelation took place again just to clarify i'm running with the assumption of the secular biblical critic that the book is not from god according to him a charismatic cult leader sold the jews on the story i want to go back to that moment historically when the charismatic cult leader stands up in front of group people and says to them hey folks god spoke to all the jews at mount sinai then they say really when and he gives one of the following three answers i'll start with the simplest model this symbolism is called the present model or the present lie in the present lie the charismatic leader says which generation heard god speak it was you all of you were sitting here today and of course we're going back to an event that is taking place 500 or 1000 or 1500 years or 2000 years ago whenever it was i'm the charismatic cult leader you're the people who are around at that time and i'm telling you you all just heard god speak you heard him say these words you heard him say i'm the lord your god you should know the gods before me motion motion come up to the mountain then i went up on the mountain i got this book i brought it down and i've brought it down to give it to you and i hand you the book and you're so blown away by my charisma that you all cried in unison amen and the thing is up and running okay now the reason why this is called the present lie is in this theory which generation does he claim heard god speak present generation which is why it's called present very simple okay okay let's leave the present for a moment let's move over to the everyone's with me so far yeah let's move over to the past lie in the past live past theory the charismatic leader comes to a group of people and he says to them you heard nothing because god never spoke to any of you but long ago there was a great mountain called sinai and all of your ancestors were there and there god settled on the mountain and god spoke to all of your ancestors he said i'm the lord your god you said no other gods before me motion motion come up to the mountain there was a great prophet there by the name of moses moses sent it he got the torah he brought that he gave to the jews they all accepted that judaism was up and running and judaism has been running now if i tell you it's been running ever since then until you you're not going to believe me why it's a lie and you know it's a lie because you say to your parents hey i just came from this lecture and this guy told me that there's this religion called judaism started by moses and all of our ancestors were all religious jews mom dad i don't remember you guys being religious shoes they say religious what i never heard of this thing before in which case i sink so therefore if you want to argue past theory the charismatic cult leader will not say that this tradition was passed down from mount sinai a thousand years ago or two thousand years ago but what is all the way down to your family he'll say that at mount sinai all the jews became religious and they were religious for two or three generations but then there was a terrible okay now insert whatever you want flood assimilation disease war right the entire tradition was fumbled they lost it everyone forgot about the mount sinai event and no one in your family has known anything about the sauna event until today when i frank have come to give you back the torah then i hand you this book claiming this is your long-lost heritage that has been not known by anyone in your family for a thousand or two thousand years then you ask well how did you get it and i say either it was passed only in my family or i say god came to me last night and he told me the story and i'm giving it to you because he told to me whatever the case is i hand you the book and again you're so blown away by my charisma that you all cried in unison amen and the thing is up and running okay so again in present theory the charismatic leader says which generation or god speak the present generation in the past theory the charismatic leader says which generation heard god speak it wasn't you it was a past generation and you knew nothing about it until i told you about it okay everyone's with me so far present past okay now you know what the next one's gonna be called okay we go over here the next one's called future and in the future lie or the future theory what happens is the charismatic cult leader comes to a group of people and he says to them you heard nothing and i did you hear nothing because god never spoke to you but god never spoke to your ancestors because god has not yet spoken five words but someday all of your descendants will gather at the foot of a great mountain sinai and there there'll be a great prophet moses and god will say i'm the lord your god you should have known the gods before me moses moses come up to the mountain moses will go up he'll get the torah he'll bring it down and i happen to have an advanced copy right here [Music] i then hand you the book and you're so blown away by my charisma that you all create unison amen amen and we're up and running okay good now understand the intellectual integrity of the argument that i just made i'm claiming that if this book is a lie the original lie that was told by the charismatic leader had to take only one of three forms he either had to say you all heard god speak present theory your ancestors heard god speak past theory or your descendants will hear god speak future theory there is no other law he could have told because where else is going to place that event of mass revelation besides the past the present and the future clear everyone's on board yeah it's what i'm saying is so simple you can't believe i'm actually making a point out of this i'll show you why i'm stressing it there are now only three possible lies that could have launched judaism what happens if i show you that for technical reasons the future lie could never have worked then i would know that the lie called judaism was launched either using the present or the past mythology okay the ones if i show you denied the future light couldn't have worked but the present lie couldn't have worked either then we'll know that the original liar told a story that was the past lie and that's how judaism got launched but what happens if i show you that the past life couldn't have worked either if the past lie the present lie and the future lie if none of these lies could have launched judaism then what's the other alternative right it's the truth and that is going to be the path that i'm about to follow in part one of this lecture there'll be two parts what i'm going to do is i'm going to point out a small problem with a future lie a small problem with the present lie and a small problem with the past lie when we see how difficult it would have been for any of these lies to have successfully launched judaism and given that these are the only lies that could have launched judaism think well there's no lie that could have launched this religion but the religion is launched which means it wasn't launched by a lie okay that's part one then in part two i'm gonna drop a bomb which in one fell swoop will take out past present future and any other theory you ever hear ever in your life in other words any explanation for how this thing could possibly not be from god dissolves in light of the bomb which is coming in part two okay so that's the road that's what's about to happen here we go everyone's with me so far questions technical questions anything do you want to ask i have trouble with your past life because it's your construct of how the past slide would have been a past lie and i don't necessarily agree good would have had to have so let's run with an alternative construct throughout like another 100 i'm totally with you what's about to happen is i'm going to expand my construct so much it'll include what you're about to say watch offer another theory that would fit in the past well i don't necessarily follow that everyone would have had to have been following the religion for it to have been given you're kind of basing it on that if this was told and saying that it couldn't have been told because i wasn't religious i never heard this before that sort of europe is something you're setting as the tone that people would have followed it just because they would have known it and i'm not agreeing that everyone would have followed it just because they were it was revealed to them all right let me just say over here what you're saying i agree with you 100 i agree with you let me make sure that i'm getting it right though what you're saying is that in the past lie the way that i presented it was uh a charismatic leader says to them that uh once upon a time there was moses mount sinai the whole thing took place it wasn't passed down through the generations none of you ever heard about it because the whole tradition was lost kind of i mean i think the way you initially presented it was it was passed down but and they're saying well it wasn't because i never heard of it oh so so right so i'm clarifying what i really what past theory is is pat you're 100 correct past theory is just clarify one point first in past theory let's just like redo past theory right now looks like live two thousand years ago were there watching jesus get launched i make this whole religion up in the other room fifteen minutes ago the religion has not existed up until now right i write the book ink's almost dry i walk into the room right and i say to you folks that this is not a new religion right this religion was created a thousand years ago and all of your ancestors used to keep this religion so you say funny we never heard this before so i said well of course not why because the flood or the disease or the war or the assimilation or whatever it was wiped out any trace of this thing in your history and no one in your family has known about this religion already for five hundred thousand two thousand years whatever it is and that's a lie what i'm telling you the truth is i just made it up but i've got to explain why don't you know about this if this is an old religion in your family so i make up this whole lie about how the whole thing was lost and that then enables me to pass it off on you so i i think i'm totally agreeing with you no one is going to be keeping this thing before i show up in the room because i just invented it okay within five minutes you'll be back you can ask retroactive questions just say i got it now yeah so as soon as soon as the question becomes clear again what i'm saying is fairly clear everyone understands the first the three theories that are on the table okay now i'll start to show you small problems with these three theories some are more obvious some are less obvious let's start with the problem with future because it's pretty obvious i'm going to show you the weakness with future lie by showing you a relative strength of present and past when you see the relative strength in president pass right away you'll look at future and say oh that's really weak okay watch here's how it works one of the the rules in academic analysis is quote one of my professors you're not allowed to suck theories out of your thumb that is you can't just make up whatever you want to propose it all theories have to bubble up from data you've got to have data if you don't have data then what you're proposing is wild is crazy so we don't go in that direction everything has to be as we say move us it all has to be it all has to be rooted in in data one of the the facts that nobody involved in this discussion contests is that there are a group of people on the planet today who believe with all their heart and soul that their ancestors heard god speak at mount sinai 3 300 years ago these people are called orthodox jews i've met them i know they're out there yeah and they think this thing is for sure true okay now until i've interviewed an orthodoxy for the first time i thought that the reason that orthodox jews believe in this thing is because it says so in their book and that's where they got it because it says so in the book okay now i've interviewed thousands of orthodox jews since my first interview and i have not once met an orthodox jew who first heard about the sinai revelation by reading it in the torah when you meet an orthodox jew and you asked them where did you hear about this thing what do they say from the family their parents told them so now what we've established is this is not the first generation orthodox jews in the year 2011. there were orthodox jews in the previous generation also and if you would come with me back to hebrew you right or down to the israel museum i live in jerusalem if you go to the israel museum i can show you documents going back 2 000 years showing you generation after generation after generation of these orthodox jews who believe with all their heart and soul this whole story perhaps a mythology about god speaking to jews mount sinai so now what you've got is you've got a chain with links going back 2 000 years now the whole discussion in the university is what's at the top of that chain is the top of that chain a very charismatic cult leader or is the top of that chain god at mount sinai but there is no one in the discussion who disputes the chain there have been two thousand years of these people believe this thing yeah that is accepted by the secular the reform the conservative the reconstructionists the non-jews and academic circles everybody agrees there is a chain okay now watch the strength and present the strength and path past and right away you'll see the weakness in future go to present theory in present theory the charismatic leader comes to you and he says you all heard god speak now if i'm incredibly charismatic and you're wild-eyed crazed escaped slaves and you believe this thing and i tell you yeah you are god speaking you buy that what do you tell your kids we heard god speak what do your kids tell their kids your grandparents heard god speak and what do their kids tell their kids your great-grandparents heard god speak and what you'll end up with is a chain going down through history of people saying yeah our ancestors heard god speaking about sinai okay the present theory the present lie would generate a chain of people going two thousand years through history saying our ancestors heard god speak at mount sinai what do you see the present lie could generate the sociological phenomena that we're looking at today clear you ever understand what just happened the present lie works it could have done the job am i with you with me watch go over here to past in past lie the charismatic leader comes to you and he says you heard nothing but long ago god spoke to your ancestors if i'm incredibly charismatic and you buy this lie god spoke to your ancestors what do you tell your kids god spoke to our ancestors what do they tell their kids god spoke to our ancestors you end up with 2000 years of people saying god spoke to our ancestors is that the sociological phenomena we're looking at yeah that's these orthodox jews so what do you see the present lie could have launched this tradition that has existed for the last two thousand years the present lie could work also you with me presently works past life works watch small problem with future in the future lie the charismatic leader gets up in front of you and he says five words god has not yet spoken if i'm incredibly charismatic and i persuade you god has not yet spoken what do you tell your kids god hasn't spoken and what do they tell their kids god hasn't spoken and you end up with generation after generation after generation saying god never spoke is that the sociological phenomenon we're looking at when we look at orthodox jews no what do you see the future lie could not have been the lie the generated orthodox judaism it couldn't it could never put that thing out did i just lose everyone are you with me should i say it one more time clear no yes say it again or you're clear you're clear good okay fine good yeah i just wanna make sure okay fine one down two to go yeah this future lie does not match the reality that we're looking at so therefore it did not produce this reality that's not how judaism started not with future lie go to present okay okay the fastest way to do this i think is with uh a metaphor a real uh an example then you understand what the weakness isn't present one of the most studied cults in modern american history is a group that was launched in southern california it was launched by a very charismatic leader by the name of marshall applewhite applewhite uh went to a wealthy community called rancho santa fe in california rancho santa fe makes beverly hills look like a slum just to get this clear yeah and he he spoke to people there he told them that you don't have to live these lives of quiet desperation there's a better place a place we can all go a place called heaven and you can go to heaven if you'll just follow me through heaven's gate and he launched a group called heaven's gate okay now in his first revelation marshall applewhite revealed that if you want to pass through heaven's gate you must be wearing black nike tennis shoes and 40 members of the heavens gate cult went out and bought black nike tennis shoes and started wearing them 24 7. he was able to take a lot of money from them he bought himself a palace in rancho santa fe several months later he had a second revelation got the whole group together and there he explained to the people that the men are going to have a much more difficult time than the women passing through heaven's gate because there's a particular piece of male anatomy you cannot have when you pass through heaven's gate he passed out exacto blades and chloroseptic spray all the men performed minor surgery on themselves what was called minor surgery and uh and the cold kept going several months later applewhite got the group together again at the palace and you'll remember there was a spectacular comet that flew within eye side of earth called the hale bop comet so hail bob had this beautiful long tail and this bobble on the back of the tail there was a whole discussion what's the bobble on the back of the hail bob comet is it hot gases is it meteorite it turns out it was hot gases and i was involved in the study of colts i was told that if you do not know applewhite theorem well and live by it you could be drawn to a cult anybody can be sucked into a cult don't think that you know it's only crazies who get pulled into this thing it's not true and if you've ever spent time interviewing people from cults you'll see they start out as perfectly normal people most of them and i could start naming like you know meet people who are involved in scientology meet people and cult after cult after cold and these people everything going for them and then they get involved in something really bad what's appwy theorem two parts part a people are gullible they'll believe anything even something to ask them to act self-destructively people are gullible they'll believe anything even something to ask them to act self-destructively b as long as the lie cannot be checked now what do we mean as long as the lie cannot be checked why didn't marshall applewhite say hey the spaceship that dropped your mother off here is coming to pick us up why didn't he say that what would have happened someone would have called their mother and they said you're in a cult you would have said call your mother call your mother in 15 minutes the whole thing would have gone up in smoke marshall applewhite told a lie that couldn't be checked a spaceship is coming to pick us up right or i had a revelation that you should perform this terrible surgery on yourself or you should wear black nike tennis shoes no one can check that watch this hi my name is paul i just came back from the road to damascus where i met jesus can you check that hi my name is siddhartha tom i just descended from the a stage of transit insight can you check that hi my name is joseph junior i discovered golden tablets written in reformed egyptian which i destroyed because who needs golden tablets anyways but here's the translation you check that every single religion on the planet begins with a lie that conforms to applewhite theorem all religions start with uncheckable lies why because people are gullible that's the whole of the human psyche any normal person wants to believe stuff so because they want to believe things they can easily be sucked out into crazy beliefs as long as the lie cannot be checked people are naive but they're not that naive if you tell them a lie they can be checked they will check it which is why no religion start that way okay now watch here's the problem with present theory in present theory charismatic leader comes to you and says you all heard god speak you heard him say i'm the lord your god you have no other guys before you motion motion come up to the mountain now if he told you that your mother heard god speak could you check that he said your mother heard god speak call your mother if you said your grandmother heard godspeed could you check that ask your mother ask your grandmother but he's telling you the ultimately checkable lie he's saying you heard god speak you would know for sure he's lying and the entire cult explodes instantly therefore there are no mainstream academics in the world at any university that argue for present theory i've never met one person in my life who teaches at a university who believes in present theory because the violation of applewhite theorem people are dumb but they're not that dumb no one's going to believe that they heard god speak okay now i i have heard one man who had a phd argue for present theory he's not a professor at university but this was his argument he said isn't it true that abraham went to sacrifice his favorite son isaac so i say yeah says that in the book so what she said would any psychologically normal person want to kill his favorite son obviously abraham wasn't well step two he says isn't it true that isaac at the time of the sacrifice was an adult and if you work out the numbers he was 37 years old yeah he was an adult and he cooperated would any psychologically normal person stick at his neck for his father to slice obviously abraham's developmental disability was passed genetically into his son isaac isaac passed this disability into his son jacob jacob passed into all the tribes by the time they got to egypt his entire nation of people moses said to them you heard god speak and they said we are god speaking it was up and running so like this is ultimately what you've got to come to if you want to defend present theory you've got to say the people that we're dealing with back then were really dumb we're talking about people that are less intelligent than anyone you've ever met because you take any friend that you have and bring them to me and i'll say you heard god speak and they're going to say no i didn't no one is that naive that's the problem with present theory the problem with future is the future lie would not produce the sociological phenomena we're looking at there are people who believe their ancestors already heard god speak future life wouldn't produce that the problem with present lie is people are naive but they're not that naive if you tell them they heard god speak no one is going to believe it with me so far third problem here's the past theory the great white hope let's see if this is able to rescue write the mythology in past theory charismatic leader comes and he says you heard nothing but your ancestors heard god speak i why don't your parents know anything about this the tradition was lost there was moses he says there was a gap where no one knew anything about mount sinai and then came frank me right and i gave you the book moses gap frank that's past theory with me so far watch in your packet the the fourth sheet says on top of it one of the many chains of torah transmission okay now this little document took me two and a half years to put together i'll tell you what i did i i started with a man who i met in jerusalem who's listed on the bottom right of your sheet on the bottom right of your sheet there's a man whose name is listed there is rabbi volvo i put down his death date he passed away in 2005. okay now i i met rabbi volba and i said to him all this tour that you're teaching people where did you get it she said i got it from my teacher i said who's your teacher he said my teacher was rabbi your lavavitz from mere poland pre-world war ii so i did some research and i actually found four independent sources which mentioned that rabbi ruikum lavitz had a student by the name of versamova so i've now got four texts which are testifying that in fact there is a link between these two men and i played the game continuing backwards i found that rabbi rukovic was a student of rap simcha zizzle of kellum and the rap simcoe sister was a student of revisera cilantro and i wouldn't put a name down the sheet none of the post-biblical names unless i had four independent sources i'll explain why four in a moment in this way i was able to produce this chain of transmission this is an intellectual uh ancestry of the of the tradition of judaism going straight back from the man who i met back to moses and god at mount sinai straight without a break okay now all the post-biblical names were confirmed before independent sources why i tried to confirm from five and i couldn't do it because there's a period between around 500 ce and 1000 ce where the literature is very sparse and to make all the connections i was not capable of making the connections i actually have heard that since i ran this project now or whatever 20 years ago somebody else has filled in a lot of the names during that period but i was only able to find four independent sources during that period that confirmed the chain that i was working on i didn't put three i didn't put names with only three independent sources because with three different sources i could produce 10 of these lists 10 different lists and if you only want two confirmations i could produce 100 of these lists right after all all these people had more than one student so therefore this is one of thousands of changes you could put together okay now here's the key this is all based on jewish literature all the the biblical names i got from the bible all the post biblical names i got from jewish literature watch in past theory the charismatic cult leader comes to group people and he says to them there was moses there was a gap and then came me frank m g f if i'm incredibly charismatic and i persuade you there was moses there was a gap and there was frank mgf if i tell you mgf and you believe it what do you tell your kids mgf and what do they tell their kids mgf and you end up with a chain going down through history about moses then a thousand or two thousand year gap and then frank here's the problem in an otherwise comprehensive jewish history there's no record of two things there's no record of a five hundred or a thousand or two thousand year gap where no one knew anything about the sign event and there's no record of a frank an incredibly charismatic leader who after the greatest crisis ever in jewish history when no one knew anything about mount sinai restarts the whole religion if i told you a lie about moses frank moses gap frank then people would know about moses gap frank somebody would know it would have been recorded somewhere in the last 2000 years there would be a mention of the gap in frank i mean after all listen if when i lecture in in university circles and i tell them listen folks tell me something what's the name of the man who brought down the tour and gave it to jews at mount sinai a hundred undergraduates will lift their hands and say that was moses i say great that's what it says in the book how about this when moses died who took the jews into the land of israel so 20 undergraduates to raise her hand says oh that was joshua okay very good you got it right here's a tough one what was the name of the man who brought the jews back from babylonian exile so a few of the grad students will say okay that was that was ezra so i said good you're right okay what was the name of the man who redacted what was the name of the man who redacted the mishnah so a couple of guys will raise their hand saying okay we know that was judah the prince it's okay great who redacted the talmud so another couple of people say okay that was ravina and ravashi now why do these university students know these people's names the answer is they made the most seminal contributions to jewish history and jewish literature but none of these guys that i just mentioned are as important to jewish history as frank who after a massive gap when no one knew anything about sinai restarted the religion but there is no frank in this list i have all these people's books on my shelves none of them are known for restarting duties and after a gap the opposite we know who each one's teacher was which means that in jewish street there was never record of a frank or a gap perhaps because there was never a frank or a gap okay past is gone present is gone future is gone there is now no lie that could have launched judaism okay end of part one beginning of part two the bomb okay now what i just did was child's play bomb is a thousand times more powerful watch imagine the following i pull out of my pocket a solid gold 14 karat gold pen and i show you folks this is no ordinary pen this baby writes with solid gold ink 14 karat gold ink so you say kelman that's that's amazing but where did you a university professor get one of those so i explained on my salary we really can't afford these what i did was i used this handy dandy chemical uh formula for performing alchemy and i i performed alchemy i transformed what was once blue and clear plastic into pure solid gold so you say really you're not lying to us no would i lie to you of course not so you say really could i borrow that formula for a few minutes and you grab the formula which i claim contains all of the elements of how to perform this procedure and you make copies of this thing and you hand it out to a hundred physicists and chemists and you say to them kelleman claims he performed alchemy turn plastic into gold we want to know if he's lying or telling the truth check it out you hand this thing out and 100 teams of physicists and chemists attempt replication they try to perform the exact same experiment i claim that i performed they try it every single day 365 days a year for 10 years and after 10 years all hundred teams come back they throw the thing on the table and they say it didn't work okay now be calm and rational what do you conclude when i claimed that i turned plastic into gold was i lying or telling the truth clearly i was lying how do you know right they attempted to replicate it didn't work okay now let me slow your brain down and show you how you came to conclusion i was lying you're 100 correct every person in this room believes in scientific method the backbone of scientific method is anything that's natural will happen more than once i can't claim that you know well i got lucky your 100 scientists didn't get lucky it doesn't work that way there's four basic forces in the universe there's gravity electromagnetism the nuclear strong force the nuclear weak force that's it you have four basic forces they never change their strengths gravity is always the same strength you know the gravity is not more powerful on earth and is on the moon just the moon has more mass so therefore it has a stronger pole but gravity that force is always the same the nuclear strong force nuclear weak force they never change their strength we send men to the moon based on that they will never change their strengths and matter is matter it doesn't go anyplace it can become energy it's a different form of matter but the amount of matter and energy in the universe is constant right the law of conservation of mass energy it never increases never decreases so if you have the four basic forces that never change their strengths and matter is matter and energy is energy every single time you perform an experiment you should get the exact same result every single time that i let go of this book it will fall down at least under these circumstances now if you change the physical circumstances you put a very powerful vacuum up there and flip that thing on then maybe when i drop the book it'll go up but under these physical circumstances every time i perform this experiment it will drop down natural things happen more than once okay this idea that natural things happen more than once is thoroughly accepted in every area of science in the soft sciences and the hard sciences the hard sides would be physics chemistry etc astronomy the soft sciences would be the sciences of the mind things like psychology history religions the sciences of the mind also believe that natural things happen more than once for example i have a book on my shelf called the diagnostic and statistical manual 4 i think they're up to 4b now but the dsm-4 the dsm-4 lists everything that could psychologically go wrong with an individual the book is that thick okay what's astounding is that with billions of people on this planet the book is only that thick there's only that many ways the human mind can malfunction why because brain chemistry has parameters and so you've got a lot of interesting stuff popping around your head but you don't have hydrochloric acid up there yeah in other words your brain is different than every other brain in this room but by very small percentages and because brain chemistry has parameters therefore you only react within certain parameters so for example you have somebody who's walking by a bush and i jump out from behind the bush and i go boo so the person might go ah the person might go yeah but they're not gonna go right they don't do that that's not how people react so within psychology we have the exact same phenomena happening over and over and over and over and over again within history the exact same scenarios happen over and over and over again so much so that historians have a three-word algorithm describes patterns in history they say history repeats itself and it does in generic themes it does now of course there was never another napoleon who was short with a big nose who led a war of liberation yeah fine but if you want to see wars of liberation parallel to let's say the french revolution i can show you 100 in history the reason why you don't have another napoleon is because what are the odds that in only let's say 5 000 years of comprehensive human history we're going to discover another guy by the name of napoleon but if you had enough time if you had an infinite amount of time we would expect there to be more napoleons in history because history does repeat itself it's possible to be one guy's name napoleon eventually someone else come up with another name by the name of napoleon it'll happen again history repeats itself just as natural things happen more than once in history and natural things have more than once in psychology and in all the hard sciences natural things happen more than once when it comes to the study of religion for example every religion on this planet begins when one or two people have a mass revelation and persuade everyone else to follow having to have a private revelation persuade everyone else to follow that's a common pattern all religions begin that way okay i'm now going to arm the bomb once it's armed i will slide it off my table into your lap i will warn you right beforehand and then it will detonate okay watch if it is normal for religion to start with a story about 3 4 5 10 100 people hearing god speak if that's a normal natural phenomenon it should happen more than once to illustrate that point consider the following is it normal and natural for someone to get away with a lie that a divine creature impregnated a woman and she gave birth to a miraculous child is that a lie that someone could get away with the answer is yeah how do i know well christianity's got it the greek mythologies have got it repeats over and over and over and over again i can name a dozen religions that have that mythology okay is it normal to get away with a lie that a man ascended to the heavens achieved great wisdom and then came back down to earth to tell everybody else about the wisdom he'd achieved yeah it's easy to get away with that lie buddhism did it scientology did it uh joseph smith didn't descend but essentially he did it right i can name a dozen religions where a guy told a lie about ascending and then coming down and great wisdom you can get away with that lie can you get away with a lie the three or four or five or ten people heard god speak words and then those people survive to talk about it can you get away with that lie well the easiest way to find out is we'll see if anyone does is there any other religion on the planet that makes that claim so now at this point unless you actually have a masters or a phd in religions you won't know but don't trust me go do your research yeah today we've got google the whole world at your fingertips go check it out see if there's another religion on the planet anywhere that claims that more than two people heard god speak and if it never ever ever happens in history then it's not normal and natural okay now the bomb is armed i'm going to slide it off my table into your lap here we go this is the dramatic conclusion watch this you leave here tonight and you call up one of your friends you say oh you know it was better than criminal minds yeah it was really good yeah a guy made a rational argument in fact god spoke with jesus mount sinai your friend says what are you talking about are you crazy yeah he said you know like uh this whole thing couldn't have started this mythology that all these jews believed throughout history realize every person in this room descends is either a convert or descends from somebody who believed in the sign of revelation because until 200 years ago there was no such thing as reform or conservative or all those movements that exist everybody 200 years ago believed this thing so everyone here descends from somebody at some point believed it by the way you can check that go open up history book and see what jews believed 500 years ago or a thousand years ago so there's no way that story could have gotten launched you say to your friend unless god spoke to the jews francis that's crazy could have been launched in a million different ways naturally she'd say really tell me one cause your friend says um i'll tell you what it was when they left egypt so would they have one box of matzah how much food could they carry you know so like whatever after three weeks they were starving they came into a field and it was filled with mushrooms and they started to pop those things and then 15 minutes later whoa man we hear god speaking it was a mass drug trip okay so you say wow i never thought about that when your friend suggests that ask your friend three questions question number one is it normal and natural for a group of people on drugs to hear god speak and all think he's saying the same thing at woodstock they all heard god speak but they didn't think he was saying the same thing yeah is it normal for them all to think god's saying the same thing so your friend says yeah that could happen that's normal that's natural sure that could happen question number two do normal natural things happen more than once for instance i believe in scientific method sure normal natural things have more than once question number three can you name one other religion in history that ever made a claim that more than two people heard god speak it was normal natural should happen more than once why was there another group that took drugs and all thought they heard god speaking lots of people take drugs your friends no no it wasn't a drug trip i'll tell you what it was it was um they were walking through the desert and there was this wind blowing by this cliff and it made this noise like and moses got on top of this thing and stood there with a megaphone and he cried out i'm the lord your guys you know the guys before me and they thought it was god it was like it was wind and thunder and they thought it was god she said i never thought about that let me ask you three questions is it normal and natural for people walking in a desert when they hear when to think they're hearing god speak he says yeah yeah that's a normal natural shirt that could easily happen question number two do normal natural things happen more than once yeah yeah sure sure no i believe in scientific method question number three a lot of people walk through deserts can you name one other religion ever in history the result of walking through a desert hearing wind blow thought they heard god speak well no well then that's not natural well i'll tell you what it was it was a mass hysteria because they all left egypt when they were running and he saved their lives they owed him so i never thought about that let me ask you a question is it normal and natural for a group of runaway slaves right to think that they hear god speaking because they have a charismatic leader yeah that's normal natural that can easily happen question number two do normal do normal natural things happen more than once sure i believe in scientific method question number three there have been a lot of runaway slaves in the last 5 000 years and they always run into deserts because you don't run away into the city and they're always led by somebody was there ever another group of runaway slaves who concluded that they all heard god speak no well then that's not normal and natural either it turns out that no matter what explanation they give you if they start to argue yeah that's normal and natural then you'll ask then why aren't there other religions in history that ever claimed to mass revelation the fact that it never ever happened besides the jews means it's not normal and it's not natural okay now i'll leave you with a story and i'll give you a quick explanation of all the sheets that i gave you so you can work on them afterwards i gave this lecture about 20 years ago in jerusalem and at the lecture i i always try to point out where the holes in my theory might be so i pointed out there is a potential hole in my theory because i interviewed people from about 164 major religious families but there was a religious family that i had never interviewed anybody from and at the end of the lecture i said listen to my knowledge there is no other group in the world that has a mass revelation but i've never interviewed anyone from this group i've read their literature but you can't always tell from the literature so maybe go interview someone from this group and see if i'm wrong maybe they have a mass revelation the group is the oldest polytheistic cult on the planet they're entirely based in india that's one of the reasons i never interviewed anyone from that group was i hadn't been to india they're called hari krishna but they're not the high christians that you've ever met if you've if you've been traveling around the u.s hare krishna split when a hare christian from india came to america and transformed the religion he turned into a monotheistic religion it's really very very different here in america that is in india but the original indian hari krishna i never interviewed and they're a very very ancient group i said maybe they have a mass revelation if it happened two or three or four times in history it could be that it's a natural phenomena a guy walks up to me after the lecture and he says you know kellem you don't have to go to india to interview hari krishnan anymore which i said really i'm i was confident that you did and i knew he had made the mistake he was confusing the american and the indian hare krishna so he says no no they have they set up a temple in tel aviv so i said i doubt that it's the indian high christian i'm sure it's probably the american heart christian who i did interview and they don't have a mass revelation but uh but i'm happy to speak to the the people in tel aviv so i called up i spoke to the to the fellow on the phone i said listen i'd like to speak to the director of outreach indian high christian don't have outreach i said i'd like to be the director of outreach they say just a minute please a guy gets on the phone say hi to the director of outreach yes i am so now i know i've got an american group here so i said um are you the original from india he says yes we're the original community you're not the american group no we're the original from india interesting i said he's speaking perfect english with a new york accent i said interesting i said tell me something you know why are you speaking with a new york accent and what are you doing in israel i know that indian high christians don't do outreach so he says to me here's the story my parents were non-religious jews living in new york and they were looking for some sort of spirituality in their lives and so like any intelligent person in new york looking for spirituality they went to india when they got to india they discovered hare krishna and they became hare krishna and i was born in india the reason my english is perfect new york english is because right i my parents that's what they spoke but i was raised in india i am one of the original indian hare krishna so the story sounds very believable the guy's name i can't tell you his real name i can tell you his real first name his first name was shrewdlu his last name sounded like goldberg so i said i said shrewd i i really would like to meet you is it possible i can get together with you this is great come on down so i go down to tel aviv and i sit across from this man who's got the whole outfit the robes the whole thing and i said tim schroeder listen i'm sure you're a busy man i'm busy man um i really only have one question i need to know your revelation narrative how did your religion start okay that's all the information i need because once i hear it started with one or two people i'm done right i can walk away so i said how did your religion start she says to me uh mr kellerman we don't do it that way so he said okay schrute how do we do it so judy says to me mr kellen we share he says first you tell me your revelation narrative then i'll tell you my revelation narrative so this was too good to be true now i went there doing what i thought was academic research but this jewish fellow want to know about the jewish revelation narrative so i said great and i told him the whole story that i told you tonight that three million people escaped escaped egypt they arrived at mount sinai they all heard god speak right the god said i lord your guys you know the gospel emotion with the top of the mountain they were sold they all became religious that's the jewish revelation narrative i told him at mount sinai when the jews first heard god say i'm lord your god all the jews dropped dead they were then revived god said you should have no other gods before me they dropped dead again they were all revived this is part of the oral tradition i told him this whole story he said mr kellman that was beautiful he said now would you like to hear my revelation narrative i said true look before you tell me your revelation narrative don't you see i've just demonstrated to you that your religion judaism is true god spoke to jews at mount sinai and the proof is there was never another mass revelation ever in history if it was normal and natural for people to tell such lies it would have been told again mr while it might be true that your religion judaism is true it is also true that our religion hari christian is true i said but true you couldn't know if your religion is true your religious start with one or two people he said mr caliman our religion started with a mass revelation just like yours this man's very sincere so i said what are you talking about she says to me haven't you ever read the bhagavad-gita i said you're darn right i read the bhagavad-gita and there's nothing in there about a mass revelation so he said to me the written text of the bhagavad-gita just tells the story of the battle between two nations but we have an oral tradition he said that at this battle between these two nations our chief god k i descended in the sight of all the people and all the people who were involved the battle of the bhagavad-gita saw that god and heard him speak and mr kellerman was just like you he spoke and the experience was so outstanding so exquisite so powerful it blew their souls out of their bodies they dropped dead on the spot i couldn't believe it it happened twice judaism and hare krishna now that either means that hari krishna is also true or it means natural phenomena could happen more than once if it happened twice maybe neither is true and it's possible to get away with this lie i said true lu tell me the story again so he starts again right there's a million people standing at this battle of bhagavad-gita care is hna stands in front of them he speaks to them they all hear god speak they drop dead i said i can't believe this what happened next he says what do you mean i said they all drop dead what happened next [Music] they laid there i said they didn't get up again he said no they were dead so i said well if they all died how do you know the story so he says well many years later this one god came to one person and told him and that man told everybody else at which point i opened up a copy of the torah kerry kopitar in my breast pocket and i read him the following if you look on your sheets the torah revelations narratives yeah take a look at this read the paragraph one two three four five paragraphs left in the bottom this is the torah revelation narratives yeah it looks like this second third yeah second second part third page yeah count five paragraphs at the bottom you might inquire this is a passage from the torah you might inquire about times long past going back to the time that god created man on earth exploring one of the heavens to the other okay that was essentially what i did in my academic career see if anything as great as this has ever happened what what's so great or if the like has ever been heard has any nation heard god speaking out of fire as you have look at those last three words and still survived hey they all drop dead and no one gets back up again easy lie to tell no way to check it but every single one of you knows that you descended from a group of people who believe this thing with all their heart and soul they all survived it and you don't have to believe that god spoke to jews at mount sinai because someone told you that there is no other way to explain how millions you're talking about hundreds of millions of jews throughout history believe this thing unless something supernatural started it because if it could be started naturally other groups would have started as well thanks for watching click subscribe and hit the notification bell below for daily pearls of jewish wisdom

Channel: Jewish Learning Institute

Views: 78,231

Rating: 4.5749998 out of 5

Keywords: jli, Jewish Learning Institute, munt sinia, torah, judaism, story, bible

Id: PdqlaPYq-gE

Length: 74min 14sec (4454 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021