Kuzari: Encyclopedia II - Kuzari - The Kuzari Principle

Kuzari - The Kuzari Principle

The Kuzari has given its name to a "principle" of reasoning which is derived from the book. This principle claims to logically prove the historicity of major events recorded in the Bible from the nature of the belief in them. More specifically, it is argued that one can prove that some three million Israelites personally were led out of Egypt in an Exodus, and witnessed God's revelation to them at Mount Sinai, thus establishing the proof of the events discussed in the Torah, the five books of Moses.

A modern statement of the Kuzari Principle is as follows: Let E be a possible event which, had it really occurred, would have left behind enormous, easily available evidence of its occurrence. If the evidence does not exist, people will not believe that E occurred. (Rabbi Dr. Dovid Gottlieb, Living up to the Truth, Chapter 6.)

Gottlieb then goes on to argue that events such as the revelation at Sinai fit the requirements of the Kuzari Principle and so their truth can be deduced merely from the fact that the Jewish people believed they were true. He also argues that other mass beliefs, such as those of other religions, do not fit the requirements.

The basic logic of the Kuzari argument is that a story such as that of the Sinai revelation must have originated with a real event or have been introduced at some later moment. In the latter case, the population will have been able to infer its falsehood merely from their lack of prior knowledge of the claim. Therefore, according to this logic, the story can only have been introduced at a time when the population knew it to be true from their own observation.

Many circles have trouble accepting the Kuzari principle as logically or historically valid. Amongst the arguments against the principle are:

• This argument assumes that how the Torah is understood has always been the same. Thus, if people today believe that it is literally true about history, then it must always have been understand this way. However, many books originally written as a partial fiction, or as a story loosely based on real events, were originally understood as being imperfect, or even as fictional. Over time a community may gradually come to see this text in a different light. From generation to generation there often is a slight drift in how the story is understood. Over several thousand years the understanding can change drastically.

• This argument assumes that when a text is first written, its precise text became widely known among nearly the entire community, and that most people would know if the text changed. However, this is often not the case. The assumption is that if they are given a new story, they will know that it is new. However, in many times and places people had little accurate knowledge of their history.

• The argument assumes that widespread cultural acceptance of an event as miraculous as proof of the miracle in that the former is impossible to fake. The argument ignores the fact that using this line of reasoning, the arguer would be forced by symmetry to accept the public miracle claims of other conflicting religions. Thus by asymmetrical rejection of public miracle claims of other religions, the argument fails.

• This argument assumes that the text has always existed in one set form. However, research has shown that early versions of the Bible and other ancient near-eastern literature differed in a number of ways. Texts often existed in multiple forms for many centuries, and later forms were the result of an evolutionary editing process. Most Orthodox Jewish writers dispute the validity of this counter-argument, insisting that the Torah's transmission process ensures that it is little changed from its original form. [1]

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Kuzari Principle", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki