Just to verify, I am an Orthodox Jew, I’m not trying to disprove, I’m trying to prove and reconcile, I’m trying to find the Emet. On to the questions, “primitive man ’believed everything and anything’ they heard, and generally didnt question, and didnt have the empirical tools and/or methods to verify or document things” couldn’t a disbeliever in Oral Torah a similar argument to the passing down of mesorah during First Temple age? And we know people in those days had better memory, as they could remember so much Oral Torah, of course one person couldn’t, but among on Beis Medrash you have basically the whole Oral Torah, aside from the Kabbalistic Kabbalah only known by few (side question, couldn’t one say that this is like broken telephone CHVS?). About instances, the Constantine example, and about the Punic wars, before Romans fought Carthage in a certain battle, they supposedly wanted to feed chickens but they didn’t eat, and they asked their “gods” to show a sign and there was a lightning storm. I could go find the exact battle, if needed I will supply in next question. And I know Rambam says magic doesn’t exist and is slight of hand, I know that is a unique position, as most others say otherwise. Just a point I’m thinking about, one couldn’t claim the Rambam is using biased position, as these miracles, especially splitting of the sea (the Ben Yehuda going into ocean and only when he went deep enough it split, surely not a coincidence but HaShem causing the split in the zchut of mesirut nefesh) and Mt Sinai, where millions of people heard HaShem’s voice, unable to be copied, because (at least according to majority Rishonim) such a loud voice to kill millions instantly was never used before, and it was some type of magician trick, would be used in war to win (but who is to say Moshe didn’t know this hypothetical “secret magic”?, probably because), this also applies to Korachs stuff being swallowed, Moshe didn’t do anything, he prayed and it happened. And many people definitely saw the earth splitting. Basically, I am asking for Ramban’s explanation, as his claim makes more sense to me, and clearly to most Rishonim, and also, which Sefer does he discuss it in? Sorry for the long question Rabbi.

I didn't write that primitive man didn't have a good memory, but that doesn't mean that he had the post-Renaissance mindset & tools to check things empirically. It's true that the Jewish people were also not educated- having been slaves in Egypt, but as the Kuzari writes, we see already in the Torah that Israel was always skeptical and hard to convince ("a stiff-necked people"= stubborn), so apparently the super-natural miracles were very convincing. Also, it's true that primitive man based everything that he saw on the gods and through religious eyes, so the God of Israel obviously had to do real super-natural miracles (subordinating the Egyptian gods of the Nile, Sun etc. during the 10 Plagues), otherwise Israel would not have been convinced that He is the One and Only. Note: the Rambam would explain that the fact that we had real super-natural miracles doesn't mean that the pagan gods did as well. Just as the individual constantly matures, so too mankind does, as well. Accordingly God, already in Megilat Esther, stopped doing super-natural miracles, in order to enable man a higher level of free-will, just as a parent gradually gives his child more and more free-will and independence, but less so at a young age, when he can make illogical decisions. The Talmud explains in Shabbat 88a, that the real accepting of the Torah wasn't at Sinai (where the miracles blinded us), but a more mature and sophisticated acceptance during Purim, where we had free-will not to see God. That being said, the Ramban (Devarim 18, 9) & Vilna Gaon (on Y.D. 179, 13) disagree with the Rambam, and believes that the magicians of Pharoh actually did magic and miracles in the first 2 plagues, and that free-will includes that the "powers of tum'ah" [=spiritual impurity] also can sometimes mislead by doing real miracles. The reason is that God sometimes tests man, even through enabling misleading miraculous events (see Shmot 20, 17). Similarly, God rarely but occasionally granted prophecy even to Bil'am and Avimelech (Breishit 20), but again, that was in the olden days when it was necessary. Accordingly, I personally believe that both approaches don't contradict, for in the ancient world God "needed" to do super-natural miracles (for Israel and occasionally for the gentiles), but not any longer. One can look at the modern gathering of the exiles back to Israel, and our modern wars like the 6 Day War, and the commando raid at Entebbe as the Hand of God, but we have free-will to say that it was just the real-politic of Herzl and Ben-Gurion, or the expertise of the Israeli army. The truth is today, that we work together, God and His Nation, as envisioned by the prophets and sages.