How Thomas Paine Forgot Sinai

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Artwork: Portrait of Thomas Paine, by Laurent Dabos

How Thomas Paine Forgot Sinai

In 1794 Thomas Paine published his pro-Deism anti-religion book, The Age of Reason. Quite early on in the book he sets forth his refutation of "Divine revelation." He begins by affirming the centrality of revelation in the three major religions. 

Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet, as if the way to God was not open to every man alike. 

Each of those churches show certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say, that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all. 

So far, so good. Next, he defines the term "revelation" and, on the basis of this definition, states that something can only be considered a "revelation" by the direct recipient of the communication.

As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into the subject, offer some other observations on the word revelation. Revelation, when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man. 

No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication, if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it. 

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication — after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

Also good. This is why we reject the authority of any religion based on one, two, or several individuals who claim to have received a divine revelation. There is no way to verify such a claim, and no reason to trust those who make it.

But then he makes an egregious factual error about Judaism's revelation claim:

When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the hands of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than some historian telling me so. The commandments carry no internal evidence of divinity with them; they contain some good moral precepts, such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver, or a legislator, could produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention.

Thomas Paine completely missed the one claim which sets Judaism apart from all other religions: the claim of public revelation - that the entire nation of Israel heard God speak to Moshe at Sinai. 

The Torah explicitly makes this claim in a number of places:

Hashem said to Moshe, "Behold! I will come to you in the thickness of the cloud, in order that the people hear when I speak with you, and they will also believe in you forever." (Shemos 19:9)

Only beware for yourself and greatly beware for your soul, lest you forget the things that your eyes have beheld and lest you remove them from your heart all the days of your life, and make them known to your children and your children’s children – the day that you stood before Hashem, your God, at Horeb, when Hashem said to me, “Gather the people to Me and I shall let them hear My words, so that they shall learn to fear Me all the days that they live on the earth, and they shall teach their children” So you approached and stood at the foot of the mountain, and the mountain was burning with fire up to the heart of heaven, darkness, cloud, and thick cloud. Hashem spoke to you from the midst of the fire; you were hearing the sound of words, but you were not seeing a likeness, only a sound. He told you of His covenant that He commanded you to observe, the Ten Declarations, and He inscribed them on two stone Tablets. (Devarim 4:9-13) 

For inquire now regarding the early days that preceded you, from the day when God created man on the earth, and from one end of heaven to the other end of heaven: Has there ever been anything like this great thing or has anything like it been heard? Has a people ever heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire as you have heard, and survived? Or has any god ever miraculously come to take for himself a nation from amidst a nation, with challenges, with signs, and with wonders, and with war, and with a strong hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with greatly awesome deeds, such as everything that Hashem, your God, did for you in Egypt before your eyes? You have been shown in order to know that Hashem, He is the God! There is none beside Him! From heaven He caused you to hear His voice in order to teach you, and on earth He showed you His great fire, and you heard His words from the midst of the fire, because He loved your forefathers, and He chose his offspring after him, and took you out before Himself with His great strength from Egypt; to drive away from before you nations that are greater and mightier than you, to bring you, to give you their land as an inheritance, as this very day. (ibid. 4:32-37) 

These words Hashem spoke to your entire congregation on the mountain, from the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick cloud – a great voice, never to be repeated – and He inscribed them on two stone Tablets and gave them to me. It happened that when you heard the voice from the midst of the darkness and the mountain was burning in fire, that you – all the heads of your tribes and your elders – approached me. They said, “Behold! Hashem, our God, has shown us His glory and His greatness, and we have heard His voice from the midst of the fire; this day we saw that Hashem will speak to a person and he can live. But now, why should we die when this great fire consumes us? If we continue to hear the voice of Hashem, our God, any longer, we will die! For is there any human that has heard the voice of the Living God speaking from the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived? You should approach and hear whatever Hashem, our God, will say, and you should speak to us whatever Hashem, our God, will speak to you – then we shall hear and we shall do.” (ibid. 5:19-23)

So I made an Ark of cedarwood and I carved out two stone Tablets like the first ones; then I ascended the mountain with the two Tablets in my hand. He inscribed on the Tablets according to the first script, the Ten Statements that Hashem spoke to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire, on the day of the congregation, and Hashem gave them to me. I turned and descended from the mountain, and I placed the Tablets in the Ark that I had made, and they remained there as Hashem had commanded me. (Devarim 10:3-5) 

This was my first reading of Paine's The Age of Reason, and I must say that he severely undermined his own credibility by not even bothering to do a fact-check on the source-text of the religion he intends to debunk! He even stated earlier that "the Jews say, that their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face." Apparently, he didn't believe that we take our own claim seriously!

But it gets better! In the next chapter Paine sets up an argument about the evidence needed to believe in miracles. As we'll see, if he applied this line of reasoning to what Judaism actually claims, this would lead him to the conclusion that the Torah was given at Sinai. Paine writes:

When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven and brought to Mahomet by an angel, the account comes too near the same kind of hearsay evidence and second-hand authority as the former. I did not see the angel myself, and, therefore, I have a right not to believe it. 

When also I am told that a woman called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not; such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it; but we have not even this — for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves; it is only reported by others that they said so — it is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not choose to rest my belief upon such evidence ... 

The wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told exceeds every thing that went before it. The first part, that of the miraculous conception, was not a thing that admitted of publicity; and therefore the tellers of this part of the story had this advantage, that though they might not be credited, they could not be detected. They could not be expected to prove it, because it was not one of those things that admitted of proof, and it was impossible that the person of whom it was told could prove it himself. 

But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his ascension through the air, is a thing very different as to the evidence it admits of, to the invisible conception of a child in the womb. The resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon-day, to all Jerusalem at least. A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal; and as the public visibility of this last related act was the only evidence that could give sanction to the former part, the whole of it falls to the ground, because that evidence never was given. Instead of this, a small number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and all the rest of the world are called upon to believe it. But it appears that Thomas did not believe the resurrection, and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I, and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas. 

It is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter. The story, so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it. Who were the authors of it is as impossible for us now to know, as it is for us to be assured that the books in which the account is related were written by the persons whose names they bear; the best surviving evidence we now have respecting that affair is the Jews. They are regularly descended from the people who lived in the times this resurrection and ascension is said to have happened, and they say, it is not true. It has long appeared to me a strange inconsistency to cite the Jews as a proof of the truth of the story. It is just the same as if a man were to say, I will prove the truth of what I have told you by producing the people who say it is false.

To summarize, Paine's criteria for believing in a miraculous phenomenon are three in number:

(1) the miracle would have to be publicly visible ("admitting to public and oracular demonstration ... like that of the ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon-day") 

(2) it would have to have been witnessed by a large group of people (not "a small number of persons, not more than eight or nine ... introduced as proxies for the whole world" and "to all Jerusalem at least") 

(3) these witnesses would have to be identifiable (not "impossible for us to now know"), so that their testimony could be corroborated by non-witnesses 

Paine even acknowledges that the descendants of the alleged witnesses to a public miracle would be sufficient to establish its historicity, writing that "[the Jews] are regularly descended from the people who lived in the times this resurrection and ascension is said to have happened, and they say it is not true" - implying that if they did say that these miracles happened, then we would believe them.

Guess which miraculous event meets these three criteria? The Giving of the Torah at Sinai! If you haven't yet read the entitled Torah from Sinai, then I recommend you drop everything and read it as soon as possible. For those who have read it, I will quote the passage that speaks most directly to Thomas Paine:

We are now in a position to determine what [sort of miraculous] event could be performed that would retain its validity for future generations. Since future generations cannot observe the event directly, it would have to be an event that rules out in its process of communication the causes of doubt due to the ignorance of the communicators and due to fabrication. A simple event grasped easily by the senses that occurs before a mass of people who later attest to its occurrence would fulfill the requirements. Such an event would have all the credibility of the most accepted historical fact. If we doubt either a simple event attested to by masses of people or a complex event attested to by qualified individuals, we would ipso facto have to doubt almost all the knowledge we have acquired in all the sciences, all the humanities, and in all the different disciplines existing today. Moreover we would have to desist from consulting with physicians, dentists, lawyers, mechanics, plumbers, electricians, or specialists in any field who work from an accepted body of knowledge. 

The event at Sinai fulfills the above requirements. The events witnessed as described were of a simple perceptual nature so that ordinary people could apprehend them. The event at Sinai was structured with the same built-in ingredients that cause us to accept any historical fact or any kind of secondhand knowledge ...

Someone may ask how we know that these events were as described in the Torah, clearly visible, and that they transpired before the entire nation. Perhaps this itself is a fabrication? The answer to this question is obvious. We accept a simple fact attested to by numerous observers because we consider mass conspiracy absurd. For the very same reason no public event can be fabricated, for we would have to assume a mass conspiracy of silence with regard to the occurrence of that event. If someone were to tell us that an atomic bomb was detonated over New York City fifty years ago, we would not accept it as true because we would assume that we would have certainly heard about it, had it actually occurred. The very factors which compel us to accept as true an account of an event of public proportion safeguards us against fabrication of such an event. 

Were this not so all of history could have been fabricated. Had the event at Sinai not actually occurred anyone fabricating it at any point in time would have met with the stiff refutation of the people, "had a mass event of that proportion ever occurred we surely would have heard of it." Fabrication of an event of public proportion is not within the realm of credibility. 

History corroborates this point. In spite of the strong religious instinct in man, no modern religion in over two thousand years has been able to base itself on public revelation. A modern religion demands some kind of verifiable occurrence in order to be accepted. For this reason the two major Western religions, Christianity and Islam, make recourse to the revelation at Sinai. Were it not for this need and the impossibility of manufacturing such evidence, they certainly would not have based their religions on another religion's revelation. 

[I cannot emphasize this enough: if you haven't read the aforementioned essay - or this version of the same argument, or this one - then I urge you to do so.]

This isn't the first time we've seen a great mind spell out the Torah mi'Sinai argument step by step, only to stop short of the logical conclusion which follows. Several years ago we wrote about how Sigmund Freud did just that in his Introductory Letters on Psychoanalysis (1916). Just this summer we wrote about how Mortimer Adler also glossed over Judaism's unique revelation claim in his Truth in Religion (1992).

I guess this just goes to show that just because someone is great thinker who lives in The Age of Reason and advocates for a Life of Reason doesn’t necessarily mean that he will reach the conclusions dictated by Reason.