Historical Verification of the Torah - Part 5 - Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb

you we have today in tomorrow so far we've looked at the evidence for the revelation sinai as a real historical event and prediction the end of the book of Deuteronomy of conquest exile survival in return tell you tomorrow I at least want to do a sketch of your survival my position is that your survival has no remotely plausible natural explanation we look at the facts of the survival details if we consider it explanations that have been offered there's no remotely plausible natural explanation now of course if I'm right so what a person could always say we haven't found one yet we'll find one tomorrow or next century or an explanation you could say that but we don't always say that we don't always preach unlimited patience sometimes when we come across something that has an explanation and it looks pretty hopeless we change our picture of how things work early in twentieth century when they detected the nucleus of the atom and it was thought that was composed of only protons and protons are all positively charged and like charges repel so people ask how come all those identically charged protons are sitting together nucleus they didn't say what we ever have an explanation yet but let's wait a century or two and see if we can figure out it expedites you know what they said is there's a new force a force that we didn't know about before they invented and add it to our picture of the world because with the old picture we're not going to get an explanation when freud introduced the unconscious some people that was almost almost self-contradictory an unconscious belief after that be I believe it so they must know that I believe it people had a lot of difficulty with it now he's trying to explain certain things the human behavior people didn't say let's wait another five hundred years and see if we can explain it the old way know what they say they discovered something brand new and it seems to explain what we're dealing with so let's change our picture of how the world works and it in something new called the unconscious not always do we say well if you haven't found an explanation you wait another couple hundred years and maybe we will we don't always say that depends upon how serious the problem is and how seriously contradicts the resources we have before and I'm going to try to show you that your survival is that kind of radical contradiction to the kinds of resources we have for explaining things that justifies moving to another picture picture of divine providence now I have to set the background of what it is we need to explain and then I'll run through the proposed explanations to show you why I think they are dreadfully inadequate first of all this is crucial it's not just that we're very old that's not the issue if there were cultures older than ours and have survived longer than errors that might not matter it's not age that's the issue the issue is surviving under conditions which should have led to our disappearance let me give you a brutal ridiculous example a hundred people at the beach fifty people spent the afternoon in beach chairs on the sand 50 people are in the water is a sudden undertow which pulls the people who water under water and they're under water for half hour of the 50 people who go under water per half out of 48 drown and to survive who's experienced that the beach is puzzling who's experienced that the beach needs to be explained well not the 48 underwater who drowned that's what you expect your underwater behalf I are you going to drown the two people are underwater for a half hour that's utterly unexpected and we want some special explanation for that so for somebody says but the geysers of each cheers we're on the sand but realis three hours is longer than a half hour what would we say sure but they've run the same so why shouldn't miss all right their survival doesn't need explanation people send the same for three hours it gonna survive it's not how old you are it's continuing to survive under conditions that should lead to your disappearance so if it were true it isn't true but if it were true let's say that Confucianism is as old as Judaism or Hinduism is as old as Judaism that might not matter because if you have under your control an entire subcontinent if you have hundreds of millions of people all living together in the same of geographical area leaving the same thing why shouldn't you survive your need special reason why that survive what should this arrived what's putting it under pressure to disappear i'm going to show you is that the Jewish people with its belief system was always under pressure which should have led it to disappear that's the issue issue is surviving when the conditions should have wiped you out that's what needs an explanation now i'm going to divide to its history into two periods from about King David down to the end of the Second Temple which is about a thousand years and from the end of the Second Temple to the present why am i doing that for two reasons first of all I'm dividing it there because from the ends at Second Temple to the present it's almost all exile even some would continue account our present condition exile since the majority was still don't go to the Land of Israel exile the special condition and that has be treated in terms of its possibility of survival going back I'm only going back to King David because Jewish historians are divided how much of biblical history can be taken seriously there are some who go back to the patriarchs and say that the patriarchs but Jewish historians achievement said that I should have said historians including non Jewish historians as well some say you can go back to the patriarchs some who now have been utterly exposed as ridiculous say some actually said the whole of cuties was made it by the Maccabees or the Maccabees was nothing no first temple no most is no Exodus no brown Sinai nothing okay archaeology not been kind to those people I'm choosing a midpoint King David is a reasonable midpoint many stories will sell you that distort that destroyed King David are basically correct so I'm taking that thousand years up to the end of the Second Temple as the first period and then from the end second temple to the present as the secondary each period has its own features and when we're asking how to explain it we have to pay attention to what the features are in the ancient period from King David to the end of the Second Temple if you look at Jewish beliefs and values you'll find that they are I guess should be called absolutely unique I have to explain they're two different types of uniqueness you have unique fingerprints no one on the planet has the same fingerprints as you even identical twins have different fingerprints but so does everybody else have unique fingerprints so the way in which your unique in your fingerprints everybody else is unique now imagine a person was born with two hearts he's different from everybody else and the way did everybody else is the same everybody else is born with one heart and he's born with two hearts that's why I'm calling absolute uniqueness absolutely unique this means where everybody else is the same and this one is different in that respect the book Jewish belief system is absolutely unique that which everybody else took for granted and agreed upon we disagreed on and that's going to be very important let me give me some examples we are my obvious no no monotheism in the ancient world certainly not in the ancient Near East and if someone will say because the studies in Gyptian history wasn't there a certain Egyptian pharaoh who himself worshiped only the Sun wasn't he a monotheist don't you have therefore monotheism in the ancient & Ancient Near East so the answer is one care for the story points out is no because he worshiped only the Sun but he of course was also a god he didn't give up on the god status of the Pharaohs so there were at least two him and the Sun and after his after he died the people were so disgusted and repulsed by him they destroyed his temples and moved to check the capital N and destroyed the records of his of his reign it was something which was utterly bizarre so monotheism sets us against all of the polytheism of the whole of the whole time God's morality God is morally absolutely the pictures of the gods in the Pantheon's has very little commitment morality in the Greek pantheon how does ooze become the chief God by murdering his father that's how his name was clumps and I guess this is deicide and bachelor side and doesn't matter God's do things like that they cheat each other they have shifting coalition's and they attack each other and nobody cares number three all the other pantheons the gods have some kind of physical form in the human form or animal form or the god is the son or the god is the wind that god is the sea or they have fantastic forms like serpents or monsters the idea of worshiping something that has no physical form was utterly absent from the ancient world so much so that when people came to contact with us they said we're atheists you have no statues you have no physical form you don't believe in a God I know you say you do but you're fully because if it doesn't have a physical form it's not real you're just talking nonsense then here's something which is I find fascinating historically ancient religions were very tolerant ancient religions recognized that the other religions were valid if you live in Egypt you didn't think that the Babylonians who worship different gods were somehow wrong or making a mistake Babylonians worship Babylonian gods because it is in Babylon and that's where the Babylonian gods have their main power Egyptians worse the Egyptian gods for the same reason if you're in Egyptian visiting Babylon you'll offer God sacrifices to the Babylonian you guys because that's where you are and vice versa one story sout that if you take out the stories of Maccabees we're fighting against the greeks for a thousand years there no religious wars no wheelie just wars because there's nothing to fight about why would one real if you fight against another religion what for your religions good for you it's all sort of Los Angeles you know what's good for you is good for you is good for me it's good for me no competition only Judaism said we have the truth the truth about how the world runs anybody else has a different picture is making a mistake you may like that like that but that is one way in which we are different from but everybody else agreed upon and then here's another feature which you may have may not like but we're talking about history now there's a book called the construction of homosexuality with my professor greenberg I think he was living were you he did a survey of all ancient cultures I can't imagine doing something like that his book has in it 100 pages of references and he documents that all ancient cultures practiced homosexuality in one form or another the only exception is introduced the only exception all over the world so what you have here is this you have a small group of people in a particular piece of geography thing is geography that's linked to three continents the crossroads or three continents every great Conqueror of that area of the world marched through our backyard and we are absolutely unique against the common beliefs of everybody else in the area that needs to be explained wouldn't expect four thousand years minority small minority to maintain that kind of uniqueness in the face of a whole culture of comics of common assumptions now if we had a great Empire like the Greeks did and like the Romans did then you could say the religion survives because it's a piece of the Empire when Rome was running the world the three hundred years it paid to believe in the Roman religion or at least to say you believe the wrong religion because it after citizenship in Rome of course emulators going to survive it's a religion of a very successful state we never had an empire I know you read about the times of King David in King Solomon it talks about expansion of the Jewish state it was small peanuts it didn't compare with Egyptians or the Assyrians of the Babylonians or the Greeks and the Romans it was small peanuts and it lasted for five or six decades and then was over so the idea of an empire carrying the religion along as a kind of secondary effect is simply not correct what about other cultural successes which could also carry the religion alone we didn't have great mathematics we didn't have great science we didn't have great pottery we didn't have great architecture we didn't have great agriculture you say look these guys craps I better than everybody else in the world and the religion is sort of how they live so therefore the religion gets carried aloft we didn't have it says we didn't have that explaining why we kept a belief system and a value system that is absolutely unique during those thousand years is very difficult one of the feature of the thousand years that has to be put on record is this there were many attempts to tamper with the formula to change the formula to become more like the people around us and in every such case those experimental changes ended up in failure historical failure disappeared for the first Temple period they were Jewish idol worshippers now one has to be careful today we have a certain mental set either you're a monotheists or your nana worshipper it's a matter of principle one or the other it wasn't like that in the ancient world ancient world was something called syncretism which is fogel dawai meaning take a little of this you take a little of that put it together in any practical way that suits your fancy so a person could believe in the god that took us out of Egypt and keep pace off because that God is obviously very powerful and he cares about us and simultaneously offering sacrifices to the local bow because I want my garden to grow and the local water supplies under the control of local bounce or sacrifice if I also wondered so when you read about Jewish idol worshippers it doesn't mean people who gave up pace off and gave up shabbos and gave up my he is amiss of a design well he isn't with some other powers that won't happen one has to take a counter now when I wish it disappeared from the world jewish either worship disappeared from the world then hang on as a secondary form of Judaism and let and live for thousands of years to the president just disappeared the Second Temple period there was a large thriving Hellenistic culture Greek culture in the Land of Israel people who had Greek schools Greek philosophy Greek religion Jews who believed in it we read about the Maccabees fighting against the greeks it was a civil war in which Jews were fighting on the side of the Greeks Hellenistic Jews what happened to that what happened to those Jews what happened to their practices their beliefs their literature disappeared when Hitler doesn't disappear physically the end of the first Temple period you have the saddest spooky they denied the oral tradition they said the richness genuine Arnold was made up they flourished for a couple of centuries they're gone absolutely going disappear so what we'll have to account for and we're going to explain Jewish survival try to explain it is how we survived as a small group and a much larger set of cultures who had agreements and we disagree with what they agreed upon and how it is that when groups tampered with the formula and and diluted it they also disappeared and only we survived that's ancient period last nineteen hundred years women small minorities scattered scattered under the control of majority cultures many of which were powerful sophisticated cultured the Romans weren't savages the Greeks certainly worried savages Islam was not savage at all I don't say they didn't disadvantage us and persecute us but they weren't savage when Europe was in the dark ages the Moslems were translating philosophy from Greek into Arabic and inventing mathematics and working on science and now I want you to try something on in your imagination I'm certainly not recommending this in practice but I the imagination imagined you are liberal sociologist an historian you're looking at a group of people will become scattered they start off with the culture of their own scattered in small minorities and the binaries are under the control of majority cultures that are very different let's take first of all Rome which ruled this part of the world for hundreds of years and then when Rome disintegrated became Christian take a road became Christian in the Arabian Peninsula to the east of here you had barbarians then you have to ride with Islam let's take his to representative examples the Jews in Yemen and the Jews in Poland Yemen is a desert country with a large seashore seashore very poor and from the 8th century on was Poland became Christian when the Roman Empire became Christian and it's North Central Europe and it's got a moderate to cold climate know exist to them to the sea and dominated by strict Christianity what would you expect Jews were in Yemen for 1,500 years at least some of our sources say was much older but the secular sources say there for 1,500 years and when Poland for a thousand years 1,500 years of 50 generations thousand years 230 generations what would you expect to happen to these small minorities they think what you have to expect is that they'll be affected by their environment physical environment and also the social environment and eventually they'll be affected by the environment and evolved to look much more like the environment so they can easily fit in and be successful in the environment it's shocking that Yemenite Judaism and polish Judaism are at least ninety percent identical yes dehumanize have different style clothes and polish jews sure because the turret doesn't dictate what kind of clothes you have so from the point the religion it's enough it's a no-brainer we don't care what kind of clothes you have doesn't show that the religion buried but shabbos is on the same day and the holidays are in the same day Christianity broke broke into the Western and Eastern versions their different calendars different calendars at different dates of their holidays and the variety in doctrines Christianity and Islam nothing like that happened in the Jewish in the Jewish context so what you have in our survival is the opposite of what you would expect you expect the culture to go to pieces and it didn't go to pieces now I told you about the gypsies do Romani's where they also were scattered minorities for a thousand years and someone wrote to me that since they survived and they still have us distinct distinct identity why do you think that Judaism special as I pointed out they lost ninety percent of their culture and no record of who they are where they came from their history they don't have any particular religion they take the religion of the land in which they live they differ on fundamental values almost all of the culture is gone I think that's a good example it's a good comparison a thousand years as scattered minorities is going to destroy your culture and we have 1900 years of scattered minorities and a survived culture that needs to be explained or also during this period experiments was changing the formula and also ended up in failure two prominent ones are the morano's and the Karaites when the Inquisition in Portugal and Spain was in force and it to check the details really Jews who claim to be Christians and then they or their descendants went back to Judaism that with what the Inquisition went after not to people who were supposed to have become Christians and then didn't but at a certain point the Jewish community was faced with be Christian or leave many left it was a gigantic Exodus swain Porsche many stayed behind what they did was they pretended the Christian in public and private they did their best to maintain Jewish identity now together with recognizing that they were under terrible terrible stress and it was life and death and was very difficult to go traveling hundreds of miles to a new environment still if you talk about Jewish norms Jewish values Jewish law that's not permissible it is not permissible to pass yourself off as bleeding in another village so they are talking about a breakdown in a traditional formula they're gone no manners are gone although are some spanish and portuguese Catholics we have funny customs like on friday nights going down to the cellar and lighting Cantus or kissing door jambs and you ask them why are you doing that why are you lying candles in the cellar on friday nights they say this is a customer family no that's what we do kiss door James that's what we do in our friends we do obviously those are holdovers from jewish practices but these people are believing in practicing catholics so that that mean that these piranhas survived as Jews survived as a kind of offshoot Jewish culture it simply was wiped out Karaites revived the idea of the SATA sees that there is no oral tradition they started in the 9th century in the Muslim lands and they became very popular among Jews it became popular Adonia Sheba's had their own heads Shiva's they produced literature some of which we have and by the way since they believed only in the written Bible they were very good at it even though there were some mistakes that I found and they had mutations with Christians and sometimes their material is very good in disputing with Christians and the question has been raised whether a bleeding Jew is permitted permitted to read a keralite book with his disputations against Christians that I got was it is reversible now they were a competition they were serious competition for us you had Muslim areas headed by a calif and it's a question who will support and sometimes he supported the what they called the rabaa night sets our group sometimes where the Karaites and there was a lot of competition about in the 16th century they started to decline recent surveys on their website say that they're about 35,000 Karaites left in the world is no central organization is no central authority there's no training ground for new the leaders it looks like it's just about on the way out another modification of the formula and historical failure these are the facts that have to be explained someone wants to explain how JEWS are survived this is what has to be explained the belief system in the ancient period and the survival as a small minorities in the last period less i can introduce ok now let's take a look at the kinds of explanations that are offered and let's see whether they could do the job one explanation which has been offered is that Judaism survives because of anti-semitism no this is not a joke can you set out to destroy me if you just set set out to wipe out my culture I don't like that and I'm not going to take that lying down and I'm going to survive out of spite just to show you that I'm not going to disappear i'm going to survive or let's kick battle because you persecute them that's why that's why there's a lot didn't persecute that they would disappear now to test a theory like that we have to ask can it do justice to the evidence can do justice to the record of Jewish survival let's remember what we're trying to explain we're trying to explain why we survived and other cultures disappear which I'll explain why we have a different history from others almost all the cultures from the ancient world disappeared what might argue they all disappear because some where the groups are still there they change their content so profoundly why did we survive when others disappeared so the first question you ask if someone says you survived because of Q first question units as well the Q only happen to us what about Q for all the ones that disappear if Q was applied to us and all the ones that disappeared it's not going to help to explain why we survived they disappeared were other cultures persecuted in the ancient world you bet they were when Constantine made the Roman Empire Christian that was Christianity period and have you belonged to another culture too bad get on the boat or die that's persecution why didn't they survive if persecution made us survive why did it make those other local cultures survive the Moslems they didn't say converted well they're positive i should say bebe careful the said this if you're not a monotheist convert or drive if your mana theist then convert or be a second classes they didn't kill christians and jews but you have to pay special taxes you have to live in certain areas there was systematically disadvantaged so if you're if you're a PI theist is converted I did any of those cultures that they conquered survive because they were persecuted know they did that they're all gone and Christians and Jews who when they persecuted Christians were gigantic worldwide culture so it's not a comparable to the cult of the we're talking about what about choose are Jews affect Fred persecution since when seclusion work against Jews or jerk for Jews survival consider Russia and Soviet Union in 1900 there were approximately 3 million identified Jews in the Soviet can but I'm those days with Russia 3 million by the end of the 20th century there were maybe accordingly that's a reduction of ninety percent where did they all go well they went because of persecution the Russians the KGB and then the NKVD were very good at persecuting Jews and almost all gave it when you wiped out by that persecution so it seems like persecution is successful in wiping out juice if it is then it can't be the reason why we survived final example is what's happening the United States of America if it's persecution that promotes you is survival what's supposed to happen in a country that doesn't persecute the history of Jews the United States of America for the last 150 years in the entire 2000 years of exile is better in the United States than anyplace else and we should be grateful for that and we should express our gratitude for that emotion Feinstein called America Medina show custard a country a society of kindness Jews were given a fair chance with a individual anti-semites here in there sure but institutionally and largely in the economy they were given a fair chance well for given a fair chance we're treated as equal to even treated with respect if it's Jewish if it's persecution that keeps us alive did we order disappear now let's take a look at what's happening in the United States of America last 50 years and see whether it meets that that that that prediction as a matter of fact you have a split in the jewish population and they have different fortunes if you look at the center and left reconstructionist conservative reform progressive humanitarian various groups with various names they indeed are assimilated they indeed are being lost being wiped out their population is the winslet but you look to the right Modern Orthodox is rocky and then ultra-orthodox fanatic you know people living in the Middle Ages and so on I see them Sheba's populations exploded it's exploding new institution opening all the population simply growing all the time that's not what the theory predict if it's persecution that maintains Jewish survival Jewish identity you take away the persecution to survival identity or to go down and suffer it's not all suffering some of it is growing and exploding so I suggest to you that this theory that it's persecution that maintain super survival just isn't right it's about how much gut appeal it might have yeah sure he told me to disappear i'm not going to disappears because i don't like to be told what to do but we look at it in face of the facts it's really a non-starter those shoes who are thriving and surviving commit can it be said that they are doing so a separation technique for such a way they think they're survived because they're separating itself from the assimilated culture so yes they're not being persecuted but they're also separated themselves from a sibling me too such a culture you might say that and that's similar to tour to the third example that i'm going to give of a bit of an explanation but notice that as you acknowledge that means you're not appealing to persecution you're going to something else which is fine well we'll go through them one by one but i'm just starting with this I'm sorry persecution because number one it has been said number two the way I'm treating it is a pattern it's a it's a paradigm for how I think the question should be treated I read a lot of books on it and Jewish history which speculated about this Jew survival and he had the theories not one not one made a list of the features of Jewish ship survival have to explain and then articulate your theory and they compared the theory with the things that have to be explained that one did that now maybe histories different philosophy of science but it seems to me try explain something you have explanation check it against the facts to see if it works or it does and not one did that tell you what Hills Eichmann series is like yes you say like as in somebody's coaches and how they died let's hit the road with them so the Roman the Romans didn't suddenly die they couldn't die is in a mood changed their name visit Ian's they didn't something is everyone died so it's same thing with the Jews and Judaism day is not at all similar to how Judaism was many years ago it's completely of sucking Purdue from how many years ago from than they were the whole thing was was farming and in go to the temple three times a year that's completely different all that users days completely changed well let's see completely changed how about a weekly holiday and Saturdays that completely changed the general culture I don't care isn't that a piece of the general culture a weekly holiday there are some things that I imagine that many culture on the world okay but in larnaca so I'm just taking your statement that Judaism has completely changed so I'm asked whether that's true or not if they completely changed what completing your use none I'm saying that the large I think if you look at duration as a whole it has changed very much well let's see now let's see whether the religion has changed if there are rules of how to deal with the temple the temple disappears and therefore you don't fulfill those rules does that mean the religion has changed I think of the religion is a set of rules set of beliefs a set of priorities is that if the circumstances under which you live change so that you can't fulfill the rule does that mean the religion has changed a person's 17 years old and II can't vote because 80 years old any can vote have the laws changed what was haven't changed he's got older that's all the fact that people do different things doesn't mean the religion has changed if you had a change of village where I said God destroyed the temple the temple is not longer part of Judaism we had 6 730 Commandments now we have 250 that would be a religious change but where the circumstance is making it impossible to fulfill the commandment that's not religious change I would argue that there aren't any aren't any either aren't any or let's put it this way there are no changes that aren't part of the same framework that was set in place in the beginning all the things that we do were discussed and debated on the basis of precedent the basis of prior law and all of them were justified in that way let me let me add something else to this point because maybe this will help with a little piece of background there is such a thing as Reform Judaism Reform Judaism that change their fortunes know what happened to it during the science of the mission they know what you did at that time and they said no we're not doing that even if Moses did it we're not doing that we know better and therefore they changed things it set out digit reform means to form again give it a different form and that's what they did no religion in the world has a reform movement other than Judea it's absolutely non-existent no Christian says look the founder of Christianity introduced a new idea it was nice for a time but we know better than he we're smarter than he were more sophisticated than eat and if we have to change it and keep it up to date with new things no Christian in the whole history of Christianity ever thought they'd superior 10 to the founder of Christianity no Buddhist could say no Buddhist would say I can out meditate Buddha okay he started it you know we introduced it but we have more refined techniques and if you were like today pro we put him in a basket we can meditate better than he no Buddhist will say that no Muslim was no possible say Mohammed he was McKeon hurry so pioneer founder but we know much better how what God wants and how to how to live a godly life then Muhammad did he was just to know 1300 years ago no other religion has a reform movement quite interesting only Judaism has a group of people who say we know what the fountain did we know what the originals did you know what they did four thousand years we know better they didn't need pace we face cuz nothing wrong with it we know better than me that's something which you have in those who decided to change the religion but also decided to keep the religion intact there's no evidence that was changed in those ways not at all it did not change in those ways so it's in terms of persecution it's like it's not going to be an accurate explanation now second explanation which will finish today then tomorrow go to the more popular explanation different cultures have different strengths of different weaknesses naturally so America has a consistent strength of inventing new technology Japan has a consistent strength of marketing new American technology manufacturing your margaritas no architect the housing the Russians produce world-shaking novels Dutch produce superior painting Germanic culture produces superior performance in very many different cultural fields mathematics art philosophy music each culture has its strengths and weaknesses although Americans have tried I don't think they produced a single classical composer of world class not one not even Aaron Copland so there are strengths and weakness is that each culture has maybe Judaism as a culture has a strength of surviving it's just a talent a gene or a genius or both of producing cultural products that lasts long lasting cultural products institutions beliefs associations practices was just good at that like other countries are good at whatever they good at but we know that's wrong you know that's wrong because the facts that i told you about experiments all the experiments in changing the formula those experiments are created by jews jews are part of the same culture and they all failed they all disappeared can't say that so-and-so is a genius in inventing new technology if in his whole life you have one patent Thomas Edison was a genius because he had a dozen paths one person had his whole life one patty could be just a lucky lucky fluke so to say it was a gene or a genius for creating long lasting cultural products I would expect to see Jewish idol worshippers on the first Temple period still around and Jewish Helenus fell the Second Temple period still around and your status see still around and thriving morano's communities and thriving carriage communities better man so I think that's just not a credible explanation the third type of explanation which I'll mentions you today we will talk about in detail tomorrow which is the most popular I would say most intuitive no let me put in Hills ifen and i'll do it tomorrow hillo cyclin Road book on the second commonwealth 20 volume work as a classical work in the mid 20th century when I was growing up argued now this may sound fantastic this is what he writes that the rabbi's of the late 2nd Temple period invented monotheism in order to survive in exile they invented monotheism in order to survive in exile because if you're a monotheists one god there's only one God that God is everywhere if you end of a thousand miles from home that doesn't matter because there's only one God that God is everywhere so you can relate to God wherever you are so if you end up in exile the fact that you've lost the home base isn't a lethal loss isn't a deadly loss because your mafiasss but if you're a polytheist your gods are where you are and other places are under the control of other guys end up in exile you're under the control of societies to believe in other guards your ability to survival is kenisha is going to be very cool therefore the invented monotheism in order to be able to survive that's what he writes ok now let's just take a look at two salient facts number one the Romans conquered Britain hundreds of miles from home what did they do they did they worship Jupiter and brick you bet they did Jupiter company of them are all advanced fact that there were hundreds of miles from home this means a Jupiter wasn't there so the fact that your apology is doesn't mean that you're curious exile from home it's separated my mom you can't worship the gods of your of your religion just simply not true and number two even though we are monotheists the loss of Atlanta Israel is a catastrophe for us there are 613 commandments there are approximately 250 that are operative today majority of the commandments can't be fulfilled they require a temple that require the majority choose living in the land of israel require a king they require sanhedrin we don't have any of that so that's Land of Israel essential to us even though we're monotheists and polytheists can worship their gods all over the world is simply not a reasonable explanation now what bothers me as a logician is he doesn't even think of these questions you think of the questions so I know this could be objected but we can answer it mrs. white he just says it and he expects a gut reaction oh yeah right you can worship God everywhere that's why you survived that's the end of it it's not satisfactory as a question terms of logic the explanation we're talking about tomorrow which appears to everybody is judy's and has in it certain rules and ideas and practices which naturally help the group survive like living in isolated places like Cassius which means you can't eat at your non-jewish friends table so that's going to isolate you and cut you off like a law against inter marriage which is going to isolate you and cut you off there are laws and rules and practices in Judaism which naturally serve to isolate the Jews and if it serves isolate the Jews that will serve to enable it to survive that's a that's one which appeals to many people and i'll try to show you tomorrow that is not you