-The reference in Kings II to the “Scroll of the Law” being rediscovered in the ruins of the Temple, refers to the Torah scroll that was considered to have been written by Moses himself personally and placed in the side of the Ark, described towards the end of Deuteronomy
This is a common apologetic claim. It both doesn’t fit with the text and isn’t actually relevant. No claim is made in the text that it is a Sefer Torah from Moses. The priest just shows up with a book he says was found, and it is clear in the text that neither Josiah nor Shaphan have any idea what this object is. Shaphan refers to it just as a sefer not hasefer, it is a book, not the book. Neither Josiah or Shaphan seem to know much about it at all. How good was the tradition when neither the King nor one of his major scribes knows even what the text in question is?
If the episode had been referring to the entire Torah as a published document and tradition, the compiler of Kings II probably would not have included the brief episode in Kings II in the first place, and it would probably not be nearly so brief as it is
And the episode isn’t brief at all, the reign of Josiah is a major section of Kings. One and a half chapters are devoted to Josiah’s reign, and one isn’t talking about a text that at all gives details for major events. Moreover, the writer of Kings repeatedly references a non-extant more detailed text about the monarchs, (23:28 is one mention), so this is the set of events that the writer considers important. Frankly, I don’t think that the text in question was the Torah as we currently have it. But it doesn’t need to be: it just matters that something major (the text of Deuteronomy is a common hypothesis among scholars) was completely missing to the point where almost no one knows what it is. That strongly undermines any sort of Kuzaritic claim.
In contrast, the Kuzaritic argument has been accepted by the mainstream of Jewry for most of their history
This is both not true (the argument wasn’t popular until after the Kuzari was written) and essentially irrelevant. While I can see how a deeply religious Jew would think this matters (since halachah is frequently determined by tradition and the practice of Klal Yisrael as a whole), how commonly accepted a specific theological argument is has no useful bearing on whether or not it is correct unless one has already accepted pretty much all of normative Orthodox Judaism.
-True, a recurring blatant intervention would seem to be easiest, but such recurring intervention would have to violate the rule of yeridas hadoros, a principle of which is that Divine intervention becomes less-and-less obvious generationally
And this belief exists essentially to explain the apparent fact that the miracles get tinier and tinier. Nowhere even in the Biblical text does God ever say “oh, and I’ll use subtler and subtler methods as recording and history get better, and by the time you have things that can actively record sound and sight I’ll never do miracles.′ This is a universal throughout the planet- the further back in time one goes the more miraculous claims there are. One sees this in the mythology of China or Japan, or Australian aboriginal groups. The simplest explanation is the obvious one.
Further, for the Torah to state something like 2^n-1 along with a long series of possible outcomes, would only be accessible as a proof to the minority of individuals who would have the acumen to comprehend such a formula for themselves. The general, mass population would not understand it and would therefore not be convinced by it, unless they were to rely on mathematicians who do understand it, and then take their word for it, which would still require a leap of trust anyhow. Such a proof, though it would probably be genuine, would only be intellectually accessible to an elite; everyone else would have to take those elite at their word, and so would only constitute real proof for a minority of people.
First, this is exactly the state of things now. How many frum people can’t open and read a blat of Gemarrah? How many of them can even tell you off the top of their head which common midrashim are midrashim and which are actually in the Torah? Relying on the elite in this fashion is no different than relying on Moshe Feinstein or other more learned scholars to issue rulings and advice. Moreover, the math involved in my example is easy: most of it can be explained to a middle school student. And this is only one example of the many things a deity could do. I’ve got a lot of other examples, such as giving us the dates and times for when we will see supernovae. Since visible supernova to the naked eye occur every few hundred years and are not at all periodic, this would easily demonstrate things to the even ignorant masses. And I’ve literally only spent a handful of minutes thinking about what I might do if I were a deity, and I’m not particularly bright or creative.
These pronouncements cannot be taken to refer to the Babylonian exile alone; the pronouncements as they are articulated in Isaiah clearly refer to the whole span of history, leading up to some sort of Messianic redemption.
Or the writer of Isaiah thought that the end of the Babylonian exile was going to be the beginning of a Messianic era. And I really don’t think you want to try to point to fulfilled Biblical prophecies. That opens a whole different can worms starting with the prophesied destruction of the city of Tyre in Ezekiel that never happened.
Coming late… enjoying this discussion. I haven’t read much from Jewish apologists. Balofsky seems a cut above his Christian counterparts. But my question is about your mention of a non-extant history mentioned in 23:28. How do we know this is a non-extant history, and not a reference to Chronicles?
There’s some detailed scholarly issues about this. It looks like what he have as Chronicles may contains parts of the text that Kings calls Chronicles of the Kings of Judah. (To be precise, what Kings calls Divrei Hayamim and what is commonly translated at Chronicles. The Hebrew title of the extent book of Chronicles is also Divrei Hayamim).
So why do they seem to be distinct books?
First the extant book called Chronicles contains description of events after the time of Kings, so whatever Kings is talking about had at minimum to refer to something else. In particular, Chronicles includes the decision by Cyrus to let the Jews return and Kings ends with events happening about forty years before. (There are some complicating issues- the chronology in both Kings and Chronicles as well as other later books of Tanach doesn’t fit well at all with the Babylonian or Persian records when talking about the time period of the first exile. Exactly which bits are temporally reliable are not clear.) Now, one could say to this that it is possible that the book of Kings actually refers to an earlier version of Chronicles and that our text has sections added at the end. There is, as I understand, linguistic problems with this. In particular, the end of Chronicles_extant uses a pretty consistent language and style, but I don’t know enough about the linguistics to evaluate or comment on that claim in detail.
Second, Kings seems to be referring to multiple distinct books as Chronicles, one for the Judean kingdom and one for the Israelite kingdom. (For most of the First Temple period there are two distinct kingdoms). See for example 1 Kings 16:5, and the verse cited above. And in fact, Chronicles_extant makes a similar pair of references to two books of kings, although it isn’t completely clear that the author is talking about the same thing. See for example 1 Chronicles 9:1 and 2 Chronicles 16:11.
Third, Kings and Chronicles have very different attitudes about the same kings and events, and sometimes gives them different names. See in particular 1 Kings chapter 15 and 2 Chronicles chapter 13 for a glaring example. That strongly suggests that neither source had access to the other source.
This is a common apologetic claim. It both doesn’t fit with the text and isn’t actually relevant. No claim is made in the text that it is a Sefer Torah from Moses. The priest just shows up with a book he says was found, and it is clear in the text that neither Josiah nor Shaphan have any idea what this object is. Shaphan refers to it just as a sefer not hasefer, it is a book, not the book. Neither Josiah or Shaphan seem to know much about it at all. How good was the tradition when neither the King nor one of his major scribes knows even what the text in question is?
And the episode isn’t brief at all, the reign of Josiah is a major section of Kings. One and a half chapters are devoted to Josiah’s reign, and one isn’t talking about a text that at all gives details for major events. Moreover, the writer of Kings repeatedly references a non-extant more detailed text about the monarchs, (23:28 is one mention), so this is the set of events that the writer considers important. Frankly, I don’t think that the text in question was the Torah as we currently have it. But it doesn’t need to be: it just matters that something major (the text of Deuteronomy is a common hypothesis among scholars) was completely missing to the point where almost no one knows what it is. That strongly undermines any sort of Kuzaritic claim.
This is both not true (the argument wasn’t popular until after the Kuzari was written) and essentially irrelevant. While I can see how a deeply religious Jew would think this matters (since halachah is frequently determined by tradition and the practice of Klal Yisrael as a whole), how commonly accepted a specific theological argument is has no useful bearing on whether or not it is correct unless one has already accepted pretty much all of normative Orthodox Judaism.
And this belief exists essentially to explain the apparent fact that the miracles get tinier and tinier. Nowhere even in the Biblical text does God ever say “oh, and I’ll use subtler and subtler methods as recording and history get better, and by the time you have things that can actively record sound and sight I’ll never do miracles.′ This is a universal throughout the planet- the further back in time one goes the more miraculous claims there are. One sees this in the mythology of China or Japan, or Australian aboriginal groups. The simplest explanation is the obvious one.
First, this is exactly the state of things now. How many frum people can’t open and read a blat of Gemarrah? How many of them can even tell you off the top of their head which common midrashim are midrashim and which are actually in the Torah? Relying on the elite in this fashion is no different than relying on Moshe Feinstein or other more learned scholars to issue rulings and advice. Moreover, the math involved in my example is easy: most of it can be explained to a middle school student. And this is only one example of the many things a deity could do. I’ve got a lot of other examples, such as giving us the dates and times for when we will see supernovae. Since visible supernova to the naked eye occur every few hundred years and are not at all periodic, this would easily demonstrate things to the even ignorant masses. And I’ve literally only spent a handful of minutes thinking about what I might do if I were a deity, and I’m not particularly bright or creative.
Or the writer of Isaiah thought that the end of the Babylonian exile was going to be the beginning of a Messianic era. And I really don’t think you want to try to point to fulfilled Biblical prophecies. That opens a whole different can worms starting with the prophesied destruction of the city of Tyre in Ezekiel that never happened.
Coming late… enjoying this discussion. I haven’t read much from Jewish apologists. Balofsky seems a cut above his Christian counterparts. But my question is about your mention of a non-extant history mentioned in 23:28. How do we know this is a non-extant history, and not a reference to Chronicles?
There’s some detailed scholarly issues about this. It looks like what he have as Chronicles may contains parts of the text that Kings calls Chronicles of the Kings of Judah. (To be precise, what Kings calls Divrei Hayamim and what is commonly translated at Chronicles. The Hebrew title of the extent book of Chronicles is also Divrei Hayamim).
So why do they seem to be distinct books?
First the extant book called Chronicles contains description of events after the time of Kings, so whatever Kings is talking about had at minimum to refer to something else. In particular, Chronicles includes the decision by Cyrus to let the Jews return and Kings ends with events happening about forty years before. (There are some complicating issues- the chronology in both Kings and Chronicles as well as other later books of Tanach doesn’t fit well at all with the Babylonian or Persian records when talking about the time period of the first exile. Exactly which bits are temporally reliable are not clear.) Now, one could say to this that it is possible that the book of Kings actually refers to an earlier version of Chronicles and that our text has sections added at the end. There is, as I understand, linguistic problems with this. In particular, the end of Chronicles_extant uses a pretty consistent language and style, but I don’t know enough about the linguistics to evaluate or comment on that claim in detail.
Second, Kings seems to be referring to multiple distinct books as Chronicles, one for the Judean kingdom and one for the Israelite kingdom. (For most of the First Temple period there are two distinct kingdoms). See for example 1 Kings 16:5, and the verse cited above. And in fact, Chronicles_extant makes a similar pair of references to two books of kings, although it isn’t completely clear that the author is talking about the same thing. See for example 1 Chronicles 9:1 and 2 Chronicles 16:11.
Third, Kings and Chronicles have very different attitudes about the same kings and events, and sometimes gives them different names. See in particular 1 Kings chapter 15 and 2 Chronicles chapter 13 for a glaring example. That strongly suggests that neither source had access to the other source.