Divinity of the Torah

Talia Friedman asked: Why do we believe God wrote the Torah? I know the Torah says so, but if I wrote a book I may also claim that. Why do you believe the Torah's claim to divinity?

I want to start by saying that I personally think that we can never 100% prove things such as God’s existence or that He wrote the Torah; I believe that religion by definition requires at least some leap of faith. Still, we can (and I think should) come up with arguments that make these fundamental beliefs more believable/logical so that the leap is a little less daunting. Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen has written 2 books on these topics: Permission to Believe, which presents arguments for God’s existence, and Permission to Receive, which offers arguments on behalf of the Torah’s Divinity. You may want to read them.

One of the arguments that I personally find one of the more convincing ones on behalf of the Torah’s authenticity is one that I think I first read in Rabbi Kelemen’s book. It is as follows:
There are only 2 possible explanations of how we have the book known as the Bible/Torah: The first possibility is that it was Divinely given on Mount Sinai as it itself describes. If that is NOT how it was given to mankind, then that would necessarily mean that some person at some point in history fabricated it (meaning he made the whole thing up and wrote it himself), brought it to the public, and lied, claiming that he had unearthed this amazing book written by God that had somehow gotten lost up until his amazing discovery. At first glance, the second possibility sounds more logical and likely than the possibility that God Himself spoke to an entire nation in the middle of the desert. However, if that is what happened, then why is there no record whatsoever of who this person was who brought the most important book in the history of the world to light??? Why do we not know anything about who this person was or when he/she lived??? The total lack of any mention of any such person or any such thing happening strongly indicates that it did not in fact happen – that there never was a person who at some later point in history brought the Bible to mankind. The only person ever mentioned as the one who brought this book to mankind is Moses, who is described as having received it on Mount Sinai directly from God Himself.

One might try to argue that perhaps Moses himself made the whole thing up. However, this possibility is highly unlikely, because in contrast to virtually all other religions, the Torah makes the claim that God revealed Himself to the entire nation - men, women, and children - in order to give this book. Moses could not possibly have come to the Children of Israel and given them a book that explicitly says in it that every single one of them saw God Himself on Mount Sinai if none of them actually experienced any such thing. It would have been a ridiculously blatant lie; the people would have laughed him off. So if Moses could not have made it up, and there is no record whatsoever of any other person later in history introducing this all-important book to the world, then the only remaining possible explanation as to how we have this book in our hands is that we received it exactly as it itself tells us we did – through Moses who got it directly from God Himself after He revealed Himself to the entire nation.

Again, I am not claiming that what I wrote above is indisputable (I can think of at least one strong argument that could possibly be made against it – if you’re interested, you can ask me in school). As I said at the outset, I don’t think there can be any absolutely indisputable proof of God’s existence or His authorship of the Torah. But I personally feel that the above argument at least helps make something that otherwise sounds completely outlandish – that we have a book in our hands whose author is God – a little more believable.