Part I of this post is where we started down the path of considering the power of miracles (yes, yes, if they exist Mr. Skeptic!).
When we kick all of those factors into gear, we get a very strong challenge to our thoughts of the Jews coming out of Egypt. Here it goes:
The Torah claims (and for 3000 years no Jews denied) that the miracles of the Exodus included 2 – 3 million people (this is a huge variance – it’s based on the Torah’s claim of 600,000 military aged men). The miracles lasted for over forty years! These messages of G-d revelation were crucial to the daily lives of the Jewish nation, and we were left with physical confirmations of these miracles for subsequent generations.
Each of these contains a “Wow Factor” that deserves its own paragraph, page, chapter, or book. I’ll give them each a sentence or two, which just may lead into a paragraph for your reading ease and visual comfort. As we expand each idea, it would do us well to consider these implications. To go from one person to two people, the believability more than doubles. Each person we add to the count of people present to see and experience a miracle, the more powerful it becomes, and the more near to impossible does the ability to deny it become.
A miracle that lasts for a full day would shape a person’s life forever. The Torah claims that the Jews lived in the desert for forty years, eating manna from heaven and drinking water that sprang from a rock and traveled with them throughout their sojourn. Their clothes didn’t wear out. To experience one miracle for one minute would likely change your life. They lived in a world of constant and total miracle for approximately 21,024,000 minutes.
The skeptic’s question at this point is simply, “Who says that the Torah is valid?”
I’d like to address this topic more fully later, but let me throw out a thought or two to chew on for now.
Once you have a claim of such an awesome magnitude, – and a claim of 2+ million people living in a constant state of “suspended reality” for 40 years is seriously awesome magnitude – you have to consider how such a claim could have sneaked into the collective knowledge of a people. Where was the generation that first believed this? What was the generation before them believing? Who would believe a claim that includes, “Your parents experienced this,” if their parents deny this? The Torah life is centered not around the places of worship, nor even the study halls. These institutions are crucial to our people, but the most important institution in the Jewish people is the family. Passover centers around the Jewish table, where the father tells his children about these great miracles. That part is not a new invention. It’s written in the Torah. How did this get past the collective conscience gatekeeper?!?
Please post with questions or attacks (friendly and polite, of course). Challenge this if you can. I’d like to hear a plausible answer to this. I don’t seek blind faith. So many people respond, “Well, when it comes to religion, it just comes down to faith.” This is an interesting idea, but it’s not true. The way that this has been expressed to me is really a substitute for, “You just have to believe because it can’t start from the intellect.” This is not the approach that I try to live. It is not the traditionally Jewish approach.
