As foretold, here she comes…
First off, what this argument is emphatically not. It’s not about speculation or theology; no appeals to providential Jewish survival, cultural chauvinism, Divine favor in revealed, historical miracles, or the like. Human life is too brief to start comparing many different truth-claims. This isn’t about answering pagans, either (go read my ebook?). Humans need a shortcut, and Thank God, He gave us all a nifty one.
Get out of the weeds. It’s high time for a systematic, transcendent argument building upon centuries of demonstrated demolitions of the foundational competence of interlopers.
A simple parable:
A man bangs on your door claiming your house belongs to him. You say, “I’ve lived here all my life, as did my ancestors before me. I’m literally speaking to you from the inside threshold! I have the house key; where’s yours? I know which outlet sparks, which cabinet sticks, and how to jiggle the basement door so it doesn’t creak.” The stranger doesn’t have the street address right, can’t tell East from South, and thinks the mezuzah is upside down. “You must have changed the locks!”, he yells. “I’m building a second floor to fix all your mistakes.” He’s never seen the foundation, doesn’t know what the house is made of—but he’s already drafting renovations.
At that point, the issue isn’t who owns the house — it’s how this man ever got past the front gate.
In one word, “Epistemology”: Why trust an innovator or revisionist who demonstrably lacks mastery of the established Body of Knowledge he wants to innovate, renovate, replace or reinterpret?! Command of the source material is a necessary (and arguably still insufficient) credential. This is a transcendent, universal logical principle of credible testimony, authority, and authentic transmission.
The Hebrew Bible was written in Hebrew. Not Syriac, not Koine Greek, and not Arabic. Any kind of claim to inherit or complete a thing must begin with initial competency in its language. Yet the vast majority of Cursedians and Mohamedans — even today — cannot parse a Hebrew sentence, let alone a Biblical verse. They rely on translations they cannot verify, pronunciations they distort, and texts whose grammar they generally do not study.
Look, the question is not what to believe but whether the apostate claimants even understand the mutually agreed-upon “First-Evidence” sources. The world’s two major “religions” (and other, smaller streams) each claim to inherit, restore or complete Judaism (which survives alongside them still in both textual and human form. Awkward…). But we need not bother listening intently to their various arguments from success, scripture, the heart, revelations, etc. for a simple, logical reason: They all make specific, falsifiable claims yet they don’t know the original well enough (Think: Lex specialis).
This is not a matter of drifting phonetics or dialect. While true there are divergent pronunciations among Jews, we do still preserve grammar, etc. (or some of us do), even if certain groups or generations may ignore or deemphasize our own linguistic knowledge in everyday usage for historical reasons (including me). You don’t want to mess with the least of us. We’re all links in an unbroken transmission chain – and you are not.
Even according to their own accounts, these renegade movements erupted without firsthand Torah knowledge (Mohamed and/or Koran authors surely couldn’t read or write Hebrew, Yoshke [pick whichever one] was a Torah nobody, ex-student Paul was an imperial tax collector. May their memories be blotted out). Whatever they claim they think they know comes solely through hearsay or translation, or is uncontroversial, and all of it via the Jews (call us “Pharisees” or “Yahood”, and see if we care). So, on what basis do they claim to correct or enlighten those from whom they borrowed everything or accuse them of distortion?!
As Rabbi Tovia Singer points out, ask a Cursedian to distinguish between a Zayin and a Tzadi in English transliteration. They cannot. Names like Bezalel, Boaz, Zadok, Belteshazzar, and Hezekiah get mangled because the difference between the “Z” and “Ts” sounds is undistinguishable to them. The same goes for Sin/Samech (not “sin“!), Ayin/Alef, Chet/Chaf. The letter Yud morphs into “I” (Isaiah) or “E” (Ezekiel) or “J” (Joshua) based on…? The wrongful Bible chapter divisions and Concordance were invented by Cursedians to assist them in their debates against Jews.
Cursedians and Mohamedans have the identical problem. Scripture is vast, rich, employs a tough language, a precise grammar, loanwords. One could likewise delve at length into the difficulty of understanding the oral tradition they reject. Any knowledge some of the later imposters may today or in earlier ages possess of Hebrew or the Torah was admittedly gleaned from the Jews (Jerome, Ibn Hazm). The “Hebrew Roots” movement is illustrative: These moderns attempt to “rediscover” the supposed Hebrew roots of their culture as actual foreigners. And it’s still “too little, too late”. The foundations remain worthless.
Jews don’t generally know nor do we bother to know how to pronounce “Ibrahim”, the Arabic form; why ever should we? But how come you Mohamedans still can’t even pronounce Avraham, Yitzchak, or Yaakov in the original Hebrew? (Nor can Arabs pronounce the “P” in Palestine, a fictional identity of theirs. But I digress.)
So, Jews wield the passuk of “Shema Yisrael” to say God is One, while the imitators say it means three gods, or that the original text had “Yishmael” or something. Nu nu. Let’s ask the impostors to correctly pronounce the word “Echad“. They cannot!
This goes far beyond laws of mere First Possession. I’m not saying challengers must presumptively bear the heavy burden of disproof, because that’s stupefyingly obvious. Instead, I’m saying basic incompetence eternally disqualifies them from even adding, kal vachomer (a fortiori) contesting anything.
Imagine a student who never attended the lectures, cannot read the textbook, and cannot write in the discipline’s notation, and yet claims that…, Well, who cares what he claims?
An outsider (moreso, an insider) need not bother about the axioms underlying Christological readings of the Bible, the “Almah” debacle, or investigate the many Koranic distortions (Miriam sister of Moshe=”Mary”), gross mistakes, or malicious inconsistencies. Stick to basics: Why must the allegedly “real” children of God utterly depend on Greek (and Latin) translations (the “Septuagint” isn’t original, either) or garbled Arabic retellings? Only afterward can we talk about the verses regarding false prophets, etc.
The decisive point is this: if you cannot read the Torah, if you cannot even sound out the Alef Bet, you are no faithful custodian, and you relinquish hope of getting the right to forge sequels. You obviously have no standing to correct, replace, or reinterpret that which you do not even understand. It’s called “Circular reasoning”.
AND NO. You don’t get to claim you hold the cOrE sPiRiTuAl eSSencE (add your favorite Buzzwords) of something when The Jews™ are still extant, can exclusively still read and explain the original, and object not only to your false opinions but, more importantly, to your fake facts.
Time is a costly, scarce resource. Before anyone considers whether or not to consider your revisionist or innovative claims of new prophets, the Messiah or monotheism, you need to demonstrate some minimum familiarity with what you yourself concede to be your own foundation stone. If Mohamedan/Cursedian/Whatever scholars (even as hobbyists, not acting qua-religionists) did not and do not possess nor cultivate mastery by objective standards, the only appropriate response to anything they utter is laughter (especially now that we have our own country back, YAY).
Once again, this is about the minimum threshold of competence required to make the kinds of specific factual claims these anti-traditions make. The frauds flop this minimum threshold catastrophically. No matter how they might try to weasel their way out of this (e.g., “Outsider advantage”), our answer remains the same: “But only we the experts can be the proper judge of that!”
Epistemic absurdity. Case closed.
Note well: I am not making a soft, speculative claim of what God would or wouldn’t do. Example: “If etc., then why did God originally choose us?” or “Why has God preserved us still?” Not saying “Even assuming sin could mean rejection of the Jews as a people (Remember: we aren’t requiring Biblical familiarity) why would God deliver a fresh sequel in a new language to a group unskilled in the language, syntax, or grammar of His previous speech, while leaving the original custodians alive, literate, and still guarding the gates? What is the sheer likelihood, etc.?” The answer here is elementary: God wouldn’t because He didn’t and He therefore needn’t have because He in point of fact had not.
And so on…
You want to keep making those tired arguments, fine by me. Just don’t credit them to Hyehudi Editor!
Disclaimer: I am not an expert on the various nuances of these masquerades, so if one of my examples is doubtful, merely substitute another, readily at hand.