Monday, January 02, 2006

Help me please!

At the end of my post about how the story of Chanuka changed, an anono commenter accused me of.... something.

After I protested that couldn't decipher his argument he left me this:

I'll explain myself again, but please, after you understand my point please tell me where i didn't explain myself clearly.

You wrote that the Nes of the Menorah is more than likely that it didn't happen. [DB: The atrocious grammar is a dead giveaway that I never said that]

Doresh asks that if so then the whole strength of Mesorah is being lost.
You say that it's only about Torah Shebaal Peh but not about the Torah proper.

I say; that once we see that a whole nation can have a tradition that turns out to be false that tells us that traditions are not to be relied upon.
I argue that we have only this one tradition that we can verify from sources other than traditional so that makes the average 1 out of 1 on not being reliable.

I add that the upkeeping of this untrue tradition shows us that tradition can be propogated without being true and even when a lot of evidence to the contrary is at hand.

In order to see where exactly you totaly don't fathom what I'm talking about I'd ask some questions.

1- Do you agree that belief in historical Judaism, i.e. the Miracles written in the Torah and Tanach, is based solely on Tradition.

2- Do you agree that consequentaly if Tradition will be shown to be completely unreliable as a source of information, i.e. it will be shown that Tradition can tell stories that never were, then the whole source of Historical Judaism has been completely demolished?

3- Do you agree that the Traditional story of Channukah is that there was a miracle with the Menorah, and that his story is in all liklehood NOT true.

4- Do you agree that we then have seen Tradition as not being a reliable source.

Please tell me which of these four question you do or don't agree on?

What am I being asked? Can any of you explain what my correspondent is saying?