Reddit reviews Reasonable Doubts: Breaking The Kuzari

A lot of it is borrowed from surrounding ancient cultures and adapted to tell a Jewish story.

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The mabul was a popular story. It shows up in the Epic of Gilgamesh and other places. But where in Gilgamesh, the gods bring the Flood because people are noisy and annoying them, in the Torah's version it's a morality tale.

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Shimshon = Heracles, right down to the lion skin he wears.

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The Gan Eden story is borrowed from a story about the god Enki and the Goddess Inanna, in which Enki becomes sick after eating forbidden plants in Inanna's garden, and Inanna created goddesses to help heal him, including Ninsurtu, the Lady of the Rib.

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Yetzias Mitzrayim probably really did happen - sort of. Not millions of people leaving after ten plagues and all that, but there were Semetic slaves in Egypt, and small groups did occasionally escape. Many of them went to the Canaanite highlands and joined a group known as the Habiru. It's possible that one such group had some sort of religious experience in the desert, and that was the seed that grew into the story we have now.

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I go into a lot of detail on Yetzias Mitzrayim in my book, if you're interested, though that's not the focus.

https://www.amazon.com/Reasonable-Doubts-Breaking-Second-Son/dp/1690831723/ref=sxts_sxwds-bia?keywords=kuzari&pd_rd_i=1690831723&pd_rd_r=9bf82796-c25c-4830-ac4a-5751bd71b17d&pd_rd_w=etflI&pd_rd_wg=YKhwe&pf_rd_p=1cb3f32a-ccfd-479b-8a13-b22f56c942c6&pf_rd_r=8Z3EGTQSGS3SR2Z1W1N3&psc=1&qid=1573922229

I'm just gonna leave the link here and you can do with it as you please.

https://www.amazon.com/Reasonable-Doubts-Breaking-Second-Son/dp/1690831723