The only possible origin for the revelation story of Moses is from the event itself

Thank you for your great response. I would take time and pull out specific sentences and respond to those, but I think in the interest of sanity I’ll just address the broader ideas and claims rather than the specific supporting points. The argument for the Sinai event happening boils down to something like this: 1) Jews alive today believe that their ancestors heard god speak. 2) Somewhere, someone must have told that lie in order to make everyone believe this. 3) It would be impossible to introduce the lie anywhere along the line in history because: There is an unbroken chain of Jews going back to the event itself The lie can be checked with family members 4) Therefore the only possible origin from the event must be the event itself I hope I didn’t misrepresent your position. I wanted to summarize to help my own responses to your broader point. —— Biblical claims are truly uncheckable. I can’t *prove* that the whole thing never happened, but what I can do is use rationality and logic to show that this is not sufficient evidence to make such a historical claim--that is, Con’s argument does not meet the burden of proof to make a positive claim about this event occurring. I will also show along the way that there are various other explanations besides divine that are more likely, that is they involve the fewest assumptions and I contend are simply more “reasonable”. Introducing the lie Kelemen... who this debate is really against… says “the lie had to have been introduced” by one of his three ways. However, his methods are all predicated on the story being introduced at a single point in time by a single person. This need not be the case. More on that later. I will show that point #3 is gone, that there is a much more reasonable way for the story to have come about besides “a lie”. Comparing real life prophets to a characters in a story An important thing to keep in mind is that when you talk about Joseph Smith, you are talking about someone who we know existed. Even Paul the Apostle is likely to have existed. However, when it comes to Moses and the Jews at Sinai, their existence is unestablished and unproven (see "unbroken chain"). So when you make historical claims ('no period after the mass revelation at Sinai was there ever an individual responsible for the transmission of the Torah' or 'To believe Moses told 3 million Jews G-d had spoken to them and they believed him - despite the fact that they heard and saw nothing - is unrealistic') you're presupposing the event happened to establish your argument. This is a relatively minor point. Exodus authorship All biblical scholars (minus the devoutly orthodox I suppose) agree: Moses did not write Exodus. I think you agreed with me on this, unless I’m misunderstanding: “...there is no single person, or even a group of people to whom credit of writing/transmitting the Torah is given.” I assume this means you don’t think Moses wrote it then. http://en.wikipedia.org... http://en.wikipedia.org... The point is that Exodus was written long after this supposed event occurred. Assuming that anything happened at all, how likely is it that the story was unmarred by (at least) 300 years of oral tradition amongst the uneducated, illiterate tribal peasants of the iron aged middle east? And that’s just from the supposed event’s date that we have written down. The story could easily have been a part of that culture for much longer. Or much shorter. A much more likely explanation is it that the Sinai story just simply grew over time through the natural, well-understood and well-exampled process of legendary development. That is, the tendency for stories passed down through oral tradition to change and adapt over time to fit the time in which it's being told, often taking on more fantastical elements. For a parallel, consider King Arthur and its many adaptions that happened over generations of retelling. There are numerous examples, available upon request, but the point is that the most likely method of story development is the same, not the particulars of the stories themselves. The “unbroken" chain Here’s a google doc I made: https://docs.google.com... I highlighted rows are the gaps in the “unbroken chain” where the difference between two dates was greater than 65 years (super generous). I also included some date corrections for some of the earliest figures based on wikipedia sources. But really it’s impossible for Kelemen to have created this list with any sort of historical accuracy. It goes from real people to kings to prophets to characters from the stories themselves, which can hardly be considered evidence. There is definitively no way to prove direct relationship, or even that some of these people even existed. Even Ezra is questionable as a historical figure, and he was supposed to have lived *almost a thousand years* after Moses did. No credulous person would believe that such a document could actually be produced with any level of historical accuracy. Some of these names are pre-history, and have no corroborating sources, secular or not, of their having lived. Claims that cannot be proven false are believed Kelemen emphasizes, and you also mentioned it in your argument, that claims that can be checked are treated with credulity while those that cannot be checked are believed. Kelemen says: “When [Applewhite said crazy thing X] was there any way to check that lie? No. Which is why it was believed.” Seriously, that's a direct quote. Absolute nonsense. Basically, “Oh, I guess I can’t check what he’s saying, so I believe him.” The reasons why rational people don't believe him is because there's no evidence for the claims. This is trying to set up a false contrast between claims that Judaism makes versus other religions, that is Judaism is special because it doesn't make faith-based claims, their claim could have been fact-checked when it was first told. See my legendary development assertion for why this argument doesn't apply at all. See the next section for why, even if the lie was introduced at a single time, this point doesn't matter. This entire premise--that only unproveable religions survive and that because Judaism is provable, it’s uniquely correct--is complete bunk. You and Kelemen got the first half of it right, but after one generation Judaism is no more checkable than the rest. Ancient fact-checkers Is it really reasonable to expect that ancient people A) were able to know a story was new, B) had an emphasis on critical thinking and questioning of one’s parent's teachings, and C) had the resources available to them to fact check a claim? I don’t have a choice but to appeal to your rationality. Consider: people today are *terrible* at fact checking easily disproven information. People eat up gossip, chain mail, political lies, urban myths and hoaxes. It’s why Snopes.com exists. Further, people get sucked into crazy cults (like Heaven’s Gate, Mormonism, etc), even when their claims are obviously bogus to a credulous individual, regardless of the falsifiability. Given this, a more likely origin story (over the actual Sinai event's occurence) would be someone jumping out of the shrubbery saying “Boy do I have a story for you about your ancestors!” because it's plain to see *some* people would have been inclined to believe it. As Kelemen says himself, “People are gullible”. Especially ancient, illiterate ones with no surviving grand parents, no cultural focus upon reason and evidence, and no written history about their origins and history. Now you add just a single generation to the original and the lie is no longer disproven by Kelemen's methodology of asking around. The Jewish claim of mass revelation is not unique Various religion's mass revelation claims: https://docs.google.com... Lakota story teller telling about their god’s mass revelation to their people. How cool is that? He says, “As far as the oral historians I have talked to, and others that testified during the Wounded Knee trials, they figure somewhere between 10 and 12 BC this woman came to Lakota people. It was there that she brought the seven sacred ceremonies of our people....” This man is claiming their god came to their people (the seven Lakota tribes), bringing the ceremonies they still practice to this day. This belief grew from a long oral tradition and the process of legendary development. All future generations of Lakota, as long as the religion persists, learn that their god appeared before them with a message and gifts. They also still have the peace pipe she gave them. Their claim is identical in every meaningful way and objectively has more evidence. Not enough evidence to believe the claim, but still more. Applying Occam’s Razor (not a "proof," but these are non-falsifiable claims) In summary, I contend that, precisely like the other religions that came out of cultures that had oral traditions, the jews have no true revelation narrative in the sense you describe and compare. Their revelation occurred over generations as the stories grew and changed during retelling, consistent with how other fables, legends and religions have. Further, even if there were a massive amount of “witnesses” of the event, that still wouldn’t be sufficient evidence because modern miracles (linked in the google document) have shown that even the testimony of “thousands” or “millions” is not proof of anything. And that’s during a time of photography and written language. Further still, this type of story (a god appearing to lots of people, giving a message, that message getting passed down through generations) is not unique. Even if your entire premise is true, applying it to the numerous, functionally identical, mass revelation claims will lead you to the conclusion that these other religions are true as well.