First, let’s differentiate between “difficult to dispute” and “indisputable.” I don’t believe there’s indisputable evidence for any event of history. All we can do is apply the same criteria we apply to everyday situations. When we sit in the dentist’s chair, we don’t demand “indisputable proof” that he’s a dentist. There’s the possibility that he’s not. Really—it’s happened. But that’s how life goes—you take the most likely scenario.
The MSE (Mount Sinai Event) is the most likely scenario to explain the Jewish people. Any other scenario is **very** difficult.
The evidence for the MSE has been discussed by many classic Jewish writers. The best known—but not the only—proof is that stated by Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi in his book known as the Kuzari: “The Mount Sinai Event is the central event of Jewish history, theology and consciousness. It is the shared memory of an entire people who claim to have heard the Creator of the Universe speaking to them en masse. It’s far too outrageous to be a myth—how could you possibly convince an entire nation of such an event if it never happened? People would say, ”Why did my father never tell me any of this?” The very fact that no other people ever came up with anything like it screams out its veracity.”
It’s too difficult to convince people of a historical event of this sort that never happened. This means that historical events involving masses of people are very difficult to make up. That’s why legends and mythology are always about private or “biographical” events. For example, a certain person, or small group of people, were told something by G-d (or “the gods”). Or a great hero wrestled a monster before a handful of villagers. Those things are easy to make up. But to come to a people and say, “Guess what! Your father and mother may never have told you this, but all of our ancestors experienced this cataclysmic event that forged our entire history ever since!” You’ve got a hard sell.
Why would you want to make such a sale? So that people will obey these commandments, I suppose. Which leaves a very good question: If this is such a good way to get people to follow the laws of your society, why didn’t any other people come up with the idea? Why does everybody else either claim their laws were handed to a single individual or small group, or simply admit that they were made by human beings? For the reason I gave above: It’s too difficult to convince people of an historical event of this sort that never happened.
You might say, “Well, maybe they took some minor event and just kept exaggerating it over the centuries?” This could happen. People love to add on to stories.
However, when this occurs we inevitably end up with highly diverse, multiple versions of the story—sometimes so diverse they are no longer recognizable as the same story. In our case, there is only one version of the story, accepted by not only all Jews until recent times, but also the ancient Romans and all Christians and Moslems. This can only be attributed to the preservation of a consistent written account.
But, as I wrote the **real** problem for most people is not the evidence or lack thereof, but the difficulty they have in conceiving such an event. It simply does not fit into their normative realm of experience. That is why I wrote what I wrote—simply to relate it more to that which we know and understand.
Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
http://www.askmoses.com/article.html?h=416&o=399
