I wrote this article while going over the proof of Torah mi'Sinai with a student, which has caused me to rethink about the role it currently plays, and ought to play.
Unfortunately, the Kuzari Argument doesn't work. The main problems is, we see large periods of unorthodox religious traditions in ancient Israel, in which they didn't believe or know about the Torah we currently have. Specifically on the issue monotheism, the Biblical texts and archaeology testifies to the fact that for most of Israelite history, they were polytheists who didn't believe in "thou shall have no other gods," not did they believe that Sinai taught them that "there is none besides Him." We are told that Moses own grandson had an alternative cult that used graven images. Most of the Israelite kings, prophets, priests, and judges are said to been ungodly men. Imagine if we had such a story regarding the tradition of the Holocaust, where more than 50% of Jewish curators of Holocaust museums doubted that Hitler was an anti-semite, I could easily see why a rational person would deny the Holocaust.
However, even in my thought experient, one can always rely on numerous primary sources to reconstruct the history of WWII, and see the overwhelming data for the historicity of the horrors of Nazis. But with Sinai and the Exodus tradition we don't have that. The dominant position of biblical scholarship is that the Torah was written hundreds of years after Moses allegedly lived. Archaeologists and historians have further shown that the Exodus story as described in the Torah ahistorical. I would also point the reader to Psalm 68, Judges 5, Habakkuk 3, as well as the Documentary Hypothesis sources (JEPD) which portray the Sinai revelation rather differently in key details. I believe the Kuzari Argument is strong enough to establish a historical core to these tradions, but that's about it. We cannot use the Kuzari Argument to be certain that the Monotheistic Torah's revisions of the events are sufficiently accurate.
Unfortunately, the Kuzari Argument doesn't work. The main problems is, we see large periods of unorthodox religious traditions in ancient Israel, in which they didn't believe or know about the Torah we currently have. Specifically on the issue monotheism, the Biblical texts and archaeology testifies to the fact that for most of Israelite history, they were polytheists who didn't believe in "thou shall have no other gods," not did they believe that Sinai taught them that "there is none besides Him." We are told that Moses own grandson had an alternative cult that used graven images. Most of the Israelite kings, prophets, priests, and judges are said to been ungodly men. Imagine if we had such a story regarding the tradition of the Holocaust, where more than 50% of Jewish curators of Holocaust museums doubted that Hitler was an anti-semite, I could easily see why a rational person would deny the Holocaust.
However, even in my thought experient, one can always rely on numerous primary sources to reconstruct the history of WWII, and see the overwhelming data for the historicity of the horrors of Nazis. But with Sinai and the Exodus tradition we don't have that. The dominant position of biblical scholarship is that the Torah was written hundreds of years after Moses allegedly lived. Archaeologists and historians have further shown that the Exodus story as described in the Torah ahistorical. I would also point the reader to Psalm 68, Judges 5, Habakkuk 3, as well as the Documentary Hypothesis sources (JEPD) which portray the Sinai revelation rather differently in key details. I believe the Kuzari Argument is strong enough to establish a historical core to these tradions, but that's about it. We cannot use the Kuzari Argument to be certain that the Monotheistic Torah's revisions of the events are sufficiently accurate.