A while ago, I read Off Armageddon Reef, a science fiction novel by David Weber. In this novel (no spoilers here), set a few hundred years in the future, humanity is hunted to near extinction by an alien race known as the Gbaba. Even hidden colonies in distant star systems were discovered and destroyed by the Gbaba. Eventually, the remaining humans realize that the reason the Gbaba were able to find the hidden colonies was because of the radio emissions that they emitted. If any future colonies were to survive, they reasoned, they would have to be radio-silent to the extreme.
As a result, a new colony was set up on a planet that they named Safehold. The eight million colonists of Safehold agreed to have their memories wiped and to live a life without advanced technology. The colonists wake up one morning on Safehold, believing they've been created by a god. The "archangels" (the planners/administrators of the colonization fleet who still used the advanced technology) set up a new religion which proscribed the use of advanced technology as a safeguard against the last remnants of humanity ever achieving the technology that would alert the Gbaba to their presence.
The colonists on this planet have a bible -- the books given to them by the archangels. They also have the Testimonies, which are the writings of the eight million Adams and Eves who kept journals of their new lives on Safehold, including their first awakening and the subsequent visits of the archangels who flew through the air in glowing chairs and could perform "miracles." As a result, even hundreds of years later, after the "archangels" are all dead, the Church of God Awaiting is very strong and believed throughout Safehold.
Without intending to, David Weber constructed a form "Kuzari scenario" in this novel. There are a number of reasons why the church on Safehold is still very strong even hundreds of years after the last visit from an archangel, but one of the main reasons is because of the Testimonies. It's very difficult to say a religion is false when eight million people woke up together on the first day of creation, saw the wonders performed by the archangels and left behind written journals for their descendants. And, yet, ultimately, the religion of Safehold was a lie -- a fabrication designed of a mix between the megalomania of some of the colony administrators and a desire to forever retard human technological progress.
I'm not suggesting that Judaism is a deliberate hoax planted by people with or without advanced technology thousands of years ago. There are enough differences between what happened at Sinai and what is described in the novel to scuttle any serious comparison. Nonetheless, I did find it interesting how a "Kuzari"-type scenario could be both true in some respects and false in others at the same time.
The Wolf
Note: As an aside, if you're a sci-fi fan, the book was pretty good. The second book, By Schism Rent Asunder, was even better.
Showing posts with label kuzari. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kuzari. Show all posts
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Rabbinic Infallibility and the Kuzari Principle
I don't know how old the doctrine of rabbinic infallibility is, nor exactly how widespread it is. It certainly seems to have been with us for quite a while and also seems to be well entrenched in some of our communities. However, it's clearly not universally held. There are plenty of people in the Orthodox community who maintain that rabbanim can and do make mistakes. Even the gadol hador (no, not the blogger... we all *know* he's infallible. :) ) can make a mistake. This idea has clear support from the Torah, Navi, Mishna and the Gemara.
In any event, I was giving the matter of rabbinic infallibility some thought when I happened to listen to a lecture on the Kuzari Principle. The Kuzari Principle (in short, oversimplified form) states that the events of Mt. Sinai must be true because the entire nation witnessed it and passed the story of the Revelation to their children and grandchildren who, in turn, passed it along to their descendants, and so on. Had someone else invented the story of the Sinatic Revelation after the fact, the people would have rejected it saying "my father never told me that story." While it's certainly not a perfect proof to the factuality of the Sinatic Revelation, it's not a bad argument either.
However, it occurred to me that the doctrine of rabbinic infallibility actually wipes out the Kuzari Principle. If one accepts the premise that the leader or leaders of the generation are incapable of making an error, then it follows that they can formulate new traditions and have them be accepted by the masses. The fact that the audience did not receive these traditions from the ancestors won't matter. Just to take an extreme (and silly) example: Suppose a gadol announces that this year that everyone must, after eating the matzah at the seder, stand up and do the Macarena. He announces that he found sources which indicate that this practice is correct and should be done. Now, if you're going to posit that the rabbinic authority is always correct ("He's the gadol hador. Just listen to him. Be m'vatel your da'as to da'as torah.") then it does not matter that the people doing the Macarena this year never heard of this from their fathers or father's fathers -- they're going to take the gadol's word for it since he is infallible. But this scenario is exactly the sort of thing that undercuts the Kuzari Principle. The Kuzari Principle rests on the assumption that no one can introduce a new "history" to the nation because the check against that happening is the collective memory of the nation; but by granting someone the power to be infallible, you are giving them the ability to invent a new history and have it accepted despite the collective memory of the population saying otherwise. Therefore, in any system where the Kuzari Prinicple is accepted, human infallibility cannot exist.
The Wolf
In any event, I was giving the matter of rabbinic infallibility some thought when I happened to listen to a lecture on the Kuzari Principle. The Kuzari Principle (in short, oversimplified form) states that the events of Mt. Sinai must be true because the entire nation witnessed it and passed the story of the Revelation to their children and grandchildren who, in turn, passed it along to their descendants, and so on. Had someone else invented the story of the Sinatic Revelation after the fact, the people would have rejected it saying "my father never told me that story." While it's certainly not a perfect proof to the factuality of the Sinatic Revelation, it's not a bad argument either.
However, it occurred to me that the doctrine of rabbinic infallibility actually wipes out the Kuzari Principle. If one accepts the premise that the leader or leaders of the generation are incapable of making an error, then it follows that they can formulate new traditions and have them be accepted by the masses. The fact that the audience did not receive these traditions from the ancestors won't matter. Just to take an extreme (and silly) example: Suppose a gadol announces that this year that everyone must, after eating the matzah at the seder, stand up and do the Macarena. He announces that he found sources which indicate that this practice is correct and should be done. Now, if you're going to posit that the rabbinic authority is always correct ("He's the gadol hador. Just listen to him. Be m'vatel your da'as to da'as torah.") then it does not matter that the people doing the Macarena this year never heard of this from their fathers or father's fathers -- they're going to take the gadol's word for it since he is infallible. But this scenario is exactly the sort of thing that undercuts the Kuzari Principle. The Kuzari Principle rests on the assumption that no one can introduce a new "history" to the nation because the check against that happening is the collective memory of the nation; but by granting someone the power to be infallible, you are giving them the ability to invent a new history and have it accepted despite the collective memory of the population saying otherwise. Therefore, in any system where the Kuzari Prinicple is accepted, human infallibility cannot exist.
The Wolf
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