The Coercion Hypothesis
We have spent some time trying to find plausible scams that explain the ridiculous fact that Jewish history revolved around a crazy originating narrative for over 3000 years.
Having had all the previous attempts snookered, the next secular approach is often to invent an unrecorded imposition of Judaism by force.
This was not a lengthy affair but perhaps definitely happened during a short and forgotten period.
It perhaps must have been rapid and through coercion.
So, perhaps one day, in perhaps an unspecified period, in perhaps an unspecified place, perhaps an unspecified number of unspecified people must have been forced by the sword into accepting Judaism.
Thereafter this fact was cleverly hidden.
This is against every piece of historic evidence and far less likely than the Jewish account of the Sinai convocation.
Further, the only coercing party would have had to be an irresistible tyrant or party able to subdue the entire Jewish population and then hide the scam and coercion.
It had to happen before the Jews were scattered.
Well, who was it?
Leading Torah Characters Got a Lot of Bad Press
None of the characters we meet in the Torah – because they all get pretty frank and bad press in one way or another – even Moses.
No tyrant enforcing something on a people is going to write a book criticizing himself.
And again, if you are going to invent a narrative and make people believe it, surely you would put yourself in somewhere as the ultimate saviour and leader.
This unknown dictator remains invisible.
Remember Moses ends up not being allowed into the Promised Land – dying on an unknown mountain.
Further it had already stopped being effective by 500 years before the Christian era because we had five centuries of tragically rebellious and non-observant leaders and Jews.
So it had to be before that the coercion stopped.
And there is no hint, in any account ever, of coercion.
Had there been mass forced conversion, we would have heard of it clearly, as with other religions.
Islam is proud to have saved millions from paganism by coercing them to accept a new religion. This is not an attack but a defense of the spread of monotheism in the world. In fact, in the largest Muslim country (Indonesia) the spread was remarkably peaceful.
Further, with a conversion by the sword, all that to which the convertees would avow is that someone else’s forebears – not their own – witnessed Sinai and then forced them to convert.
We never have the slightest suggestion of this – in our history or in our enemies’ account of our history.
The Hidden Converts Hypothesis of Jewish History
There is, also, the ‘Hidden Converts’ ancillary hypothesis.
This is tacked on to either the Later Scam or Coercion stories.
After two or three generations, converts tend deliberately to hide their conversions and eagerly melt into the general population.
The theory is that those scammed or coerced into conversion to Judaism from their paganism just swept the ‘embarrassing’ change-over under Time’s dusty old carpet.
Now, this is a perfect illustration of Hope drowning Reason.
The secular Jew clutching at this way of keeping his ‘freedom’ is really letting himself down.
Yes, the individual, insecure convert, family or group desire more than anything to be accepted and achieve full status.
Thus their conversion is ‘forgotten’ as soon as possible.
However, if an entire peer group of thousands convert or accept a new aspect of their belief then they publicly celebrate this.
Look at the conversion of pagans to Christianity or to Islam.
Everyone rejoiced in this – officially at least.
Jus’ Happened Hypothesis
We have discussed at length that our narrative could not have been invented.
It remains more than inexplicable.
But, despite this, another suborn hypothesis is that, yes, however unlikely, some religion or other with our utterly ridiculous story had to survive.
And the Jews just got lucky – yes, OK, 50,000 to 1.
However improbable, incredible and unfeasible – we wrote the script first, got away with it and kept the sole rights.
And how did we – and it – survive?
Simple – Darwinian survival of the fittest.
Does Jewish History Prove Survival of The Fittest?
The constant culling of the Jews meant that only the toughest and smartest survived.
They were therefore more able to survive the next holocaust and take their religion with them.
In fact – hey, we prove Evolution!
Well, sorry, no.
Let us say the Funny Who-Ha Faith had been the winner not the Jews.
It made exactly our claim.
Great.
Where’s the Book?
What about the history?
Where’s the people?
Who managed to invent the story?
Who managed to change countless texts being used daily and scattered around the world?
And if you do manage to scrape together all these elements – what of the central revelation.
This is why its inexplicability is important.
It is not simply that it was difficult but we did it.
It is impossible – but it happened.
The Jews Are Just That Good, That’s All!
OK – a smart Jewish boy called Saul/Paul managed to persuade ultimately 2 billion fine and decent people to be Christians.
Yes, there was the miraculous Six Days War.
I admit, we run the world finances.
Yes, we caused the Black Death or in fact all death.
OK – we made it rain last Thursday.
But, come on, that good we ain’t.
If we managed it, then there just must be some other lot who have done the same!
But there simply is not.
If it could happen once, it could happen twice.
What is stopping the purported founder of the Funny Who-Ha Faith repeating our scam of all scams?
Try it yourself.
It is impossible.
We have discussed this.
But you should prove it to yourself.
Close this book now and go to a non-Jewish person and tell him that he comes from a Jewish family.
After hitting you, he will have a thousand questions to ask.
Go to a Jew and tell him the same.
He will also hit you – for reminding him – but he will not question the fact.
Whilst nursing your black eyes, follow this through logically in your mind.
Why can you not invent such a simple lie?
A Constant Memory Through Generations
Further, through millennia of mass genocides of Jews, not in one instance have the survivors forgotten our central traditions.
The Torah has remained unchanged.
We never have had a generation when everyone forgot.
Yes, of course, many minute details were lost when entire communities were slaughtered or displaced.
There are many discussions of this and the loss of precise details.
But, except for such minutiae, the entire body of Law and practice has remained.
Yet, the introduction of the mass revelation lie requires just such total amnesia.
Searching For A Time Before The Clean Slate
One needs a clean slate on which to impose a scam.
So how is any religion believed?
Let’s be original and say our faith is in:
a human being confirmed as a god-figure;
a miraculous birth of a god-figure;
one individual – a saviour – having a private Divine revelation;
another individual receiving a private vision from that saviour;
a resurrection;
or indeed one of the thousands of often repeated stories.
Is it commonplace for such a faith to be believed to the point of willing martyrdom?
Obviously, yes.
Billions have followed thousands of exactly such faiths and do so today.
All these can be believed and are believed by mankind because the narrative is stated without judicial evidence and depends on the test of faith.
Mankind is programmed to have faith in the supernatural.
We see this in every group or tribe and nation.
Can you simply present the world with such a new faith.
Are they repeated in every generation?
Obviously, yes.
Just think of our Mormons or friend Applewhite and the epidemic of USA cults.
Now for your homework challenge – and your parents must not help you.
Tried Inventing Another Myth?
Invent another story: 3 million people [not the Jews, of course] of a single nation stood around a mountain and witnessed simultaneously a revelation, received a Holy Book, practised its contents and passed each detail on to their children for 3000 years.
Go on, spread it around the world.
I’ll give you a year, ten years and twenty years.
You will not succeed.
Can such an invention to be believed to the point of willing martyrdom?
Obviously, no.
No one has made up such an obviously doomed story.
It is not believable because it relies on masses of objective evidence which cannot exist if it is a lie.
Do new adherents join in significant numbers in every generation?
No.
It is a hopelessly transparent lie because all the claimed evidence does not exist.
Where are the descendants of the 3 million who kept this history alive in their families; where are their families or records thereof; the DNA, the Book, the practice, the archaeology, the history, traces through other nations’ accounts et al?
And if there are claimants then they must prove they are the descendants.
The DNA tests must be conclusive.
The Book, practices, historical records etc. must have existed from antiquity.
It is for this reason that no one has repeated the Jews’ story.
There is not one attempt to do this.
If it could be imitated, would this have happened?
Yes, almost certainly.
Has it been?
No, not even by known scoundrels.
All religions would love such a story.
Yet this untenable ‘lie’ has been carried down for 120 – 140 generations in only the Jewish people?
You and I prove that.
Jewish History 101: A Lie If False, Miraculous If True
Thus, we must conclude that imitating the Jewish lie is impossible.
It is too unbelievable.
Further, that the Jews continued to believe it is incredible.
No one else has even had, never mind believed in, a parallel lie.
It simply could not ‘jus’ happen’.
Period.
Talmudic style statement: Literally, our belief in Sinai is miraculous if it is a lie and miraculous if it is true.
Now, how Jewish is that?!
But, again, what could ‘jus’ happen’?
Well, this raises the connected and significant question we asked of the Mormons.
How do the other religions explain their lack of a Sinai-type proof?
If they were sent to save mankind then why were they not given irrefutable evidence – a very public revelation by that god or idol or force?
The world would have to accept them.
Where Are The Other’s Witnesses Today?
Many quote the miracles worked by their leader and witnessed by multitudes.
These prove everything.
Yet, these witnesses unfortunately are no longer identifiable nor is there any evidential trail.
All we have are claims of miracles with any proofs lost in time.
Further, as we note, simply because a man can perform miracles does not prove he had a revelation.
It establishes only that he can perform miracles.
The illogical and unintelligent supposition is that someone with such powers must be the appointed one, above question and undeniably great.
So, again, why is there no judicial proof?
Most answer, as explained, that their faith’s initiation could easily have included a public revelation, world-wide miracles and proofs which would melt the hearts of the most hardened cynics – but the absence of all this was a deliberate test for the faithful.
Honest intellectuals of world faiths recognize that these conundrums rule out any rigorous proof for their chosen faith.
Five Ways Of Implication, Not Evidence
Thomas Aquinas is merely the most famous of the Christian apologists who attempted to justify their faith, in the absence of acceptable inevitable evidence, in various other ways.
His central and famous work is ‘Quique Viae’ – the Five Ways – to prove Christianity.
This by no means contains all that he has to say on the subject – but it is ultimately theological philosophy.
Life must have a reason or purpose; a Creator must exist because … …, Christianity must be true because logically … ….
However this – and all one reads – are purely suppositions forced on us because of our logical presumptions.
The first sentence always is ‘There must be … … because …’ .
This is not evidential material.
Thus the atheist cares not if Aquinas’s Five – Motion, Causality, Necessity, Gradation and Design – all logically imply the Existence.
Implication proves nothing.
A Weak Christianity Without Sinai
Furthermore, that the Christians did not simply trust the Jews’ testimony of Sinai and needed independent proof very much weakens their entire case.
After all, their claim is that Sinai happened and the Jews sinned and needed replacing with the true new faith.
This does not answer that fact that if a public revelation can be achieved once, it must be repeatable.
I am tempted to say, with the atheist, that not knowing a definite answer to the eternal questions leaves no room for us to say ‘there should be, must be, is a Creator…’.
Neither need nor desire allows me to invent a deity – however comforting.
Further, simply because atheism has no better alternative answer does not mean that we can simply fill the empty space.
After all, each religion has said, ‘There should be, there must be, there is – our god!’
These are insupportable expressions.
That they are overlaid with millions of words of logic and argumentation does not alter this.
And yet, all the faiths ‘jus’ happened’!
Why Only One Public Revelation?
So, we must return to our central point.
Why do only we, the Jews, have Sinai?
The answer is simple.
You simply cannot invent a public revelation.
No one could and no one tried.
We have it because it is tr… …
Those Jews! Talk about chutzpah!
The Hindu Public Revelation
Now we need briefly to dismiss the incorrect but understandable claim that in our scam we actually have had successful partners – the Hindus.
‘What of the Bhagavad Gita?’ ask those who imagine they are in-the-know.
They say, ‘OK, fundamentalist Jewish creeps, just stop embarrassing the rest of us by claiming that the Jews are unique.
The Hindus also have a narrative of 3 million warriors witnessing Krishna.’
Yes, indeed, interestingly, Hinduism also claims a mass experience involving a god in front of 3 million people.
But it is starkly different from the Jewish claim.
A few facts – claimed by the Hindus – demolish this as a comparison.
A Fascinating and Complex Faith
Hinduism is an extremely complex and multi-facetted faith. Indeed, it is followed by over a billion people today, and you can frankly say, there are at least a million ways of following this religion.
It is justly proud of its ancient origins encompassing numerous metaphysical and moral codes, narratives and a large number of gods.
It hovers between this world and a timeless, spiritual existence.
Its origins lie in the earliest oral traditions of polytheist and pantheistic faiths worshipping idols representing multiple gods and a conglomeration of deisms.
At its root is an emphasis on a total life style of non-violent self-control.
There is a wealth of varied source traditions.
The Revelation At Kurukshetra
One of the most famous is the Bhagavad Gita revelation of Krishna to a warrior king debating the highest spirituality and war.
This is in front of 3 million warriors just before a tragic internecine battle in which they all die – except for those who, facing this esoteric depiction of the battle of life, lapsed into a deep and philosophical state of mournful acceptance before dying – leaving only a multitude of questions with no attempt to verify whether this wisdom is truly from gods or human experience.
Evidentially it relies on simple faith in this single account within a greater work called Mahabharata.
Sinai Vs Mahabharata
There are two vital differences between this and Sinai.
First, their Bhagavad Gita narrative is stated by the Hindus themselves to have been written down only centuries later by its transmitter, himself a godly figure who still lives – Vyasa.
You must have blind faith in Vyasa’s account.
Original root material and an oral version may have dated back well before 200 BCE but the language suggests that it was written in about 100 – 200 CE.
Secondly, Vyasa tells us that all the 3 million witnesses died without trace or written or familial record.
This is the opposite of our personal family chain that is at the centre of our religion.
It obviously lacks the essential, vital central substance of Sinai.
We all saw it; it was written down at the time; we read and preserved the Text and those who witnessed it told their children, who all passed it on their children, who all passed it on their children …. and we are all here today to tell the tale.
As with Christianity, in Hinduism there are no surviving witnesses and is no continuity of testimony.
They were both ‘published’ well after the events described.
Vyasa never claimed to have witnessed or met the protagonists, although as a god himself within numerous Hindu interpretations, he is deemed part of or party to the gods in the account.
Some teach that it is an allegory for mankind’s ‘war’ against evil.
This does not weaken the religion whatsoever; it merely clearly establishes their relying on pure faith.
The benefits that Hindus know flow from their faith justify it.
They absolutely believe their teachers as in all faiths.
In effect the Bhagavad Gita emphatically shows how different the Jewish narrative is from all others.
The Time Warp Gap Hypothesis
No, it cannot be true.
There must a way out!
You will claim there had to be – simply had to be – a nice, convenient, invisible hole in our history when a scam got going.
There absolutely definitely had to be a period of exile, persecution, chaos causing a complete break in the chain of tradition and teaching – the hypothetical ‘gap’ – that allowed those Rabbis to sneak in the whole scam or at least that supernatural part.
Obviously, a fragmented and disorientated mass of refugees with families torn asunder and no education for a couple of generations could easily be persuaded of a glorious and unique history – especially if it gave power to the Rabbis and kosher food merchants.
So, can we presume a gap long enough to have had a useful bit of coalescence of local Canaanite, Hittite, Jesubite, Moabite and Soundbite monotheistic ideas?
Could we have a time in which we invented weird ceremonies and customs – like holding lemons, waving palm branches around, murdering innocent little Passover lambs and molesting eight day old boys?
Debunking The Time Gap Hypothesis
Put simply, no.
There just is no such period.
Period.
From Ancient Egypt to yesterday afternoon, there is no unrecorded – unrecorded – disruption to our social cohesion.
Yes, there are plenty of carefully-recorded periods which include the tragic destruction of communities – but there were always Jews elsewhere with their old scrolls of the Torah and the laws intact.
So, you need to find a complete world-wide communal turmoil and disorientation of us all.
Since Solomon there had been innumerable communities of Jews living around the Mediterranean and Arabia, trading up the Rhine and further afield with their copies of the Torah and many other texts.
Later, we must bow before the 2700 year unbroken royal lineage of the Yemenite Jews.
In these circumstances, you could not make up even one extra word.
Jewish History Surviving Multiple Time Periods
When the Ten Tribes were annihilated in 555 BCE, the Southern Kingdom survived with a devout general populous and some religious kings who preserved every detail.
There were serious lapses but not across the entire land and not amongst the entire nation.
And the Kings and Prophets viciously reprimand the sinners – copiously quoting all the laws they had broken.
They could not have just made them up.
The Samarians, whom we have briefly met, date from this particular time with their mirror image of the Torah in the proto-Hebrew characters that we originally used at that period.
So when the Assyrian descended on the fold, a good many sheep were already safe in other fields.
All the Later Books – Judges, Kings, Prophets – are entirely predicated on the existence of the Five Books of Moses – our history until entering the Holy Land.
These Later Books themselves are impossible to have been compiled – except as they happened – as we prove.
We also deal with the Babylonian Exile which over-lapped the Later Prophets.
Babylon was the main centre of learning for over 1500 years and this preserved Judaism through the Roman holocaust and the blood bath of the Dark Middle Ages.
But we need to discount this magic time gap absolutely as a possibility.
We must thoroughly eradicate this lazy and comfortable notion of an historical Time Warp which gives modern secular Jews an escape hatch to oblivion.
To do this, in the midst of this discussion of all the possible scams that I can concoct, we should conduct the time-traveler’s guide through your personal history.
Let us first collect the historical facts proven by non-Jews and find the ‘gap’ for a scam.
In other blogs we journey back in time – tracing your own family’s proud footsteps, unpicking the evidence and disproving the usual misconceptions that you hold.
It will prove a sobering journey in that you will discover that you really were there at Sinai.
Leave a Reply