Revelation?

With Shavuot starting Tuesday evening, I just wanted to address a point I see debated all over the Internet on blogs and biblical criticism sites everywhere. I don't know if I'm missing something, but it almost seems too obvious to me. I'll explain:

The argument about revelation at Sinai, when the Jews received the Torah, and were all witnesses to that fact, is that there is no proof to that. The logic goes that the Torah tells us that we were all there and saw it happen so because it says so in the Torah, it makes it true. The problem, as the argument goes, is that that is a circular argument. How can you use the very book in question to prove the book is indeed factual. In other words we say we were all there because the Torah says we were.

I don't think that is the proof. I think the proof inside the Torah is not so much that the Torah says we were there so therefore it must be true. I think that is the wrong argument/proof. I think the proof is the very fact that the Jews believed it is the actual proof. Let me clarify:

Everyone of us knows Jews. We know how pushy, obnoxious, overbearing and stubborn they/we can be. Moshe even addresses this point to Hashem when he complains that they are a stiff necked stubborn people. So let's put ourselves there for a moment. We have just left Egypt after a few hundred years of slavery and have witnessed countless miracles on our behalf, but still complain to our leader about everything under the sun. He goes away for awhile to rest and we create a new leader made of gold. Our leader returns and is a bit pissed about being replaced by a cow so he destroys the cow and goes away again. When he comes back, he brings with him a book that tells us of our history. In that book it says we went to this place and that place and did this and that. It says we were rescued in Egypt and it says we traveled in the dessert to XY and Z place.

We are all kind of sitting there listening to our history and taking it all in. Our leader tells us that we need to tell our children and their children about what is in this book because it speaks of our history and what we have been through. We accept it and do as it says which is now obvious from our very existance. Now, I ask you this as people who know Jews. Do you really believe if any of these things did not happen to them, that those stubborn people who first handed the Torah down to the next generation,would have done so? The Jews had no problems challenging Moshe and they did not do so in this case. The Jews I know would have been throwing stuff at Moshe telling him he was a nut and who was he Mr. Big Shot to tell us what we were to do. They would not pass down anything that he made up in order to enslave them just like the Egyptians did. They did not do that. They accepted what he gave them and passed it down.

So the argument isn't that the Torah tells us that we were there so we believe it because that's what the Torah says. The argument is that THE JEWS AT THAT TIME, ACCEPTED WHAT IS IN THERE ABOUT THEMSELVES AND WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM, WHAT THEY DID AND WHERE THEY WENT AND HOW THINGS HAPPENED and then passed that down to each generation, just like we all have had things passed down to us since the beginning of time. THE FACT THAT WE ACTUALLY ACCEPTED WHAT WAS WRITTEN AS TRUE AT THE TIME OF REVELATION is the actual proof-that we didn't argue the facts of the case but agreed that they were true because they had just lived and experienced them. In turn, they handed the Torah down to each subsequent generation afterwards as if to say-here is your history and you can believe from me it's true because I LIVED IT. That is what makes the Torah proof argument not only non-circular, but a solid proof to anyone who knows any Jews at all.

As for the argument that maybe the Torah was written and given generations later so there was no one to disprove what was written in it, it is an arbitrary argument. It is just as easy to say what I wrote above as it is to say the Torah was made up by some old guys 2000 years ago. So unless you can make that argument stick, I find myself going with the one I made above. Maybe the world was started in someones basement and just grew too big and we have what we have now. Whatever claims you can make about the Torah being written years later, I can make a stronger claim above because above is something tangible to base some facts on. Arguments to the contrary are simply arbitrary.

One thing is certain. Surely the Jews at the time of Moshe had more guts than we do today. They did not just accept his word blindly. They had experienced some bad things and were not just ready to follow him wherever he went. He had to prove things to them constantly and they became a thorn in his side at every turn. Yet, they accepted his Torah and the things that were written ABOUT EACH OF THEM PERSONALLY to be true and that alone is enough for me and should be for anyone who has an open mind.

For those who question this, look around you at Jewish leadership and our people today. Do you think we would have argued with Moshe or question the veracity of his claims? Of course not. We are a spoiled lot and we shiver at the site of anything different. I only wish that the people who left Egypt were alive today. They would stand up to a weak kneed leadership who would crumble at the pressure of their outrage. They would demand accountability from their leadership for cover-ups and violations of law both sceular and Torah and call for their ouster if they could not stand up to the pressure. They would ignore Rabbinical wanton orders and ask them based on what authority can they adopt such random edicts. I long for the survivors of Egyptian slavery who received the Torah at Sinai because they were history's greatest skeptics as their behavior indicates....and yet they accepted the Torah to be true and with open arms.

May this Shavout bring you peace, rest, happiness and a greater understanding of what the Creator of the World wants from you and all of us and may we live to see the final redemption with the coming of Moshiach speedily in our days.