How Do We Know the Torah Was Really Given at Mount Sinai?

The Torah says we received it at Mount Sinai before millions of witnesses. How can I know that this really happened?

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The Torah states: “Know this day and take it to heart that the Lord is God” (Devarim 4:39).

Notice that it says “know”, not merely “believe.” Judaism doesn’t demand blind faith; it calls for both rational understanding and personal experience. Our faith combines reason and evidence (“know”) with emotional connection and spiritual life (“take it to heart”).

You asked: How can we know that the revelation at Sinai really happened? After all, anyone can write a story in a book. Even Shlomo Hamelech warned, “The naïve believe every word” (Mishlei 14:15). Why should we believe the Torah is true when so many false prophets and cults have written their own scriptures?

That’s a fair question — and it’s exactly the kind of question the Jewish tradition encourages.

A Nation That Questions Everything

The Jewish people have always been critical thinkers. Anyone who studies the Talmud knows how deeply our sages analyzed and debated every word of the Torah. They questioned, argued, verified, and never accepted anything blindly.

Let’s look at your question through that same analytical lens. If anyone could invent a book claiming that millions of people witnessed a divine revelation, why hasn’t any other religion done so?

Why No Other Religion Made Such a Claim

If it were easy to make up a story about a national revelation, wouldn’t every religion do it? Yet no other faith in human history claims that an entire nation heard God speak.

• Christianity begins with a few disciples who saw visions after their teacher’s death.

• Islam begins with one man, Muhammad, who claimed that an angel appeared to him alone in a dark cave.

• Buddhism begins with one person’s private spiritual experience under a tree.

Only Judaism begins with a public revelation to an entire people — men, women, and children, all hearing the same voice and witnessing the same miracles together.

If someone were making up a religion, why not claim that everyone saw? Because it’s impossible to convince an entire nation to believe they all witnessed something if they know they didn’t.

The Unbroken Claim of Public Revelation

The Torah boldly declares that the entire nation saw and heard God’s voice: “You have been shown to know that the Lord is God; there is none else besides Him… Did any people ever hear the voice of God speaking out of the fire, as you have heard, and live?”
(Devarim 4:32–35)

And the Torah concludes with these words: “Before the eyes of all Israel.” (Devarim 34:12)

No other religion dares make such a claim, because such a claim could only survive if it actually happened.

For over 3,000 years, the Jewish people have transmitted this same story — not as myth, but as national history, preserved through festivals, commandments, and rituals commemorating those very events.

The Logic of History

History shows that it's impossible to invent history and have millions believe it.

If the Exodus, the Ten Commandments, and the revelation at Sinai had not truly happened, how could anyone persuade an entire people to adopt hundreds of commandments to commemorate them?

Why would generations of Jews accept an invented story that begins, “You all saw this,” if they hadn’t? You may be able to convince people of what someone else saw — but not of what they supposedly saw with their own eyes.

That’s why the Sinai revelation is unique in all of human history. It’s not a claim about an individual prophet, but about a national experience, passed down by the very witnesses who lived it.

Why Christianity and Islam Rest on the Torah

It’s no coincidence that both Christianity and Islam are built upon the Torah of Israel. Neither could invent a new revelation before a nation — they had to borrow the authority of the Jewish revelation.

This isn’t because those religions loved the Jews. On the contrary, many of their followers persecuted us. Yet both faiths accepted the authority of the Torah, because they couldn’t deny the public event at its foundation.

A Rational Faith

Indeed, anyone can write a book. But for a nation to accept that book as its own national memory, and to live by it for thousands of years, something real had to happen.

We don’t believe in the Torah “just because it’s written.” We believe it because our ancestors experienced it, transmitted it, and reenacted it through every generation — Passover, Shavuot, Sukkot, daily prayers, and the Torah reading cycle, all commemorating events they themselves saw. If those events hadn’t happened, the people would have rejected the claim instantly.

Thus, Mount Sinai is not a myth — it’s a historical event, logically and rationally supported by the unbroken chain of tradition that began with those who stood there.

The Power of a Living Tradition

The Torah we hold today is the same Torah held by our ancestors thousands of years ago, letter for letter, transmitted by millions of hands and minds.

This unbroken tradition preserved Jewish identity and history through exile and persecution. It even foretold that the Jewish people would return to their land after thousands of years, and that prophecy has come true before our eyes.

Across the world, Jews have returned to Israel carrying the same Torah scrolls, keeping the same commandments, and reciting the same words passed down from Sinai.

That is the enduring proof of our covenant and the living evidence of the Revelation at Mount Sinai.