Unpacking the Sinai Revelation: Compelling Evidence for a Cornerstone Belief

"How can I completely believe in it when I'm not sure if the Bible is just a collection of invented stories?" - This question is posed by many who were not raised in a religious household. They further ask, if we're to believe in a faith, why not Christianity or Islam, which have more adherents than Judaism?

The main question in this matter seems to be whether faith in the Bible is merely an "act of faith," only applicable to those raised with it, or if there's logical proof that the Torah given at Sinai by the Creator of the world and its ruler belongs to every Jew? The answer is unequivocal. Belief in the divine origin of the Torah from Sinai is indeed "faith," but not "blind faith." Every Jew can intellectually understand that the Torah of Israel is divine, as we will demonstrate. (It is important to note that the proof in this article is the one upon which the entire house of Israel relied throughout the generations to believe that the Torah is from Heaven. Other proofs serve merely as support to this primary proof. Therefore, belief that the Torah is from Heaven does not rely on the existence or refutation of any particular proof.)

We all believe in the existence of historical figures like the French general Napoleon, who conquered many countries, and Alexander the Great of ancient Greece, who also conquered many lands by a young age. Similarly, we believe the French Revolution occurred in the late 18th century and that the Holocaust happened in Europe. Why do we believe this? After all, we did not witness these events with our own eyes, as they happened long before our time.

Historical Events

For an event to be considered "historical" and an irrefutable fact, it must meet the following criteria:

1. Intensive historical continuity, meaning information flows consistently through multiple and diverse independent channels.

2. An event witnessed by a large group. Humanity agrees that we should trust human testimony—so much so that a person can be sentenced based on the testimony of two witnesses. However, when there are only a few witnesses, some may doubt their reliability. But when many people testify uniformly about an event, even the greatest skeptics will believe them because it's no longer plausible to assume the witnesses are lying, hallucinating, or imagining things.

Also, it is universally accepted to trust the testimony of the previous generation regarding major events that happened in their time, or events known through their forefathers if many from the previous generation corroborate it. With multiple witnesses, we cannot argue coordination, illusions, or fantasies. Nor can one concoct a massive event story and convince the public it happened without prior knowledge: "How did we not hear of this grand event until now?"

Observing the Sinai revelation—the descent of the divine and the giving of the Torah to the Israelites—we find it meets all "historical event" criteria with unparalleled intensity:

1. The "Sinai Revelation" was a massive event witnessed by countless people: God descended to Mount Sinai and gave the Torah to Moses before an entire nation numbering around 3 million people! (The Torah mentions 600,000 men aged 13 and above; with women and children, the count reaches approximately 3 million.)

2. The historical continuity of the "Sinai Revelation" surpasses any other historical event: The witnesses who saw the event testified to their children that all the Torah received through Moses, from beginning to end, is entirely true without doubt. Their children testified to their children, and so on, until our generation. In each generation, Jews assembled on weekdays, Shabbat, and festivals in synagogues and around family tables, passing down the extraordinary legacy in detail: the giving of the Torah at Sinai, the story of the Exodus, hundreds of thousands of laws in the Torah, and more.

Fathers Won’t Lie to Their Children

Consider this: The Jewish people were scattered among nations for over two thousand years of exile, across groups separated by thousands of miles, without any connection through phone, fax, email, or messages. Nevertheless, when Jews were reunited from all corners of the Earth—Persia, Tunisia, Lithuania, Poland, Morocco, and Russia—they returned with the same Torah and Talmud. They shared the same holidays and commandments. Astonishingly, despite those long separation years, the months were counted precisely the same way, despite the complexity of determining months filled (30 days) or lacking (29 days) and the lack of a following order. Every Hebrew calendar year was determined according to intricate rules. Another miracle was that when these communities arrived with Torah scrolls in hand, it became apparent that every letter of the countless letters, and every cantillation mark, was identical across the Torahs, apart from minor differences that did not alter the text’s meaning. How did this happen, which appears almost supernatural? The Jewish people meticulously passed down their testimony in detail with unprecedented precision and vibrancy throughout history.

Additionally, the witnesses to the Sinai revelation were not religious clergy with personal interests, unconcerned for the audience but rather "our fathers": fathers testified to sons, sons to grandsons, and so on. Fathers, loving their children profoundly, impart nothing but the truth, avoiding passing on falsehoods. As the Ramban (Deuteronomy 4:9) reflects: "When we convey [the giving of the Torah] to our descendants, they will know it is true without doubt, as if every generation saw it because we do not lie to our children, nor give them nonsense." It's impossible to claim "nature ran wild" and an entire generation conspired to deceive their sons with tales of the Sinai experience. Furthermore, this isn't about delightful, non-binding legends but passing down the rigorous "Torah," imposing constraints and sometimes requiring giving up lives for truth. It's inconceivable that countless fathers maliciously misled sons into living and dying for a fabricated faith! In short, an entire generation of fathers wouldn't lie to their children, nor children to theirs, reaching us today.

The necessary conclusion is that "the Sinai Revelation" should be regarded as existing and irrefutable fact: there is no doubt the prior generations genuinely heard from their fathers about the Sinai revelation; it can't be said that a particular generation invented this lie out of nowhere. Is it conceivable that millions of people coordinated a consistent false testimony fitting all details? Could they have convinced the masses about such a significant event unknown to them before? Regarding the first generation recounting "Sinai Revelation," we are confident they indeed witnessed it, for an entire nation couldn't create a story with matching details every individual tells the same way. Nor is it sensible to postulate a nationwide imagined experience.

The Difference Between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Here's the fundamental difference between Judaism and Christianity, Islam, and other religions: Indeed, millions of Christians and Muslims have passed down their religions perpetually, but they cannot authenticate the origin story of their faith since no witnesses exist—even by their accounts: no one witnessed the founder of Christianity receiving a divine mission, nor saw Muhammad meeting with the angel Gabriel in the desert, receiving a new religion. Therefore, we accept as "historical facts" that there was a person named Muhammad and a person named Jesus, who claimed they received a new religion, because many witnesses corroborate this through historical continuity. However, believing these claims means "blind faith," about which King Solomon said: "The naive believes everything," as it's believing a sole individual recounting an implausible story. Is it logical for God to change a religion given in a massive public revelation via one person needing blind faith worldwide? As humorously noted, a Jew once dreamt of becoming a rebbe; the rebbe replied, "Your followers should dream that, not you." Likewise, God should reveal to a nation to deliver the Torah, not to a single person requiring universal belief in him.

Thus, Christianity and Islam stand like inverted pyramids, based on a single individual, expanding as their believers grow...! Is there any strength in such a pyramid? Consider illustrating this difference by imagining a person leading a line of 100 blindfolded people, each holding the one ahead, following blindly—does this depict a decision made by 100 individuals to go this direction, or is it one person's decision leading 100 followers? Now picture ten independent people all going the same way independently. Doesn't this reflect a stronger personal choice than 100 led by one guide? This is the contrast between the faith of the Jewish people and other religions. We don't believe in a single individual; rather, the entire nation witnessed, heard, and directly experienced the Sinai revelation and God's manifestation before them.

"The Israelites did not believe in Moses for the signs he performed, for belief based on signs is questionable—one might perform them with trickery... So why did they believe? At the Sinai Revelation. Because our own eyes saw and not a stranger's, our ears heard and not another's, the fire and the voices and the torches. And he approached the thick cloud, and the voice spoke to him as we heard: 'Moses, Moses, go tell them such and such.'" (Rambam, Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah 8:1).