John F. Winston
2005-04-02 16:00:36 UTC
Subject: Who Wrote The First Five Books Of The Good Book?
April 2, 2005.
Here is some information from a person who thinks Moses didn't
write the first five books of the you-know-what.
.....................................................................
.....................................................................
The first five books of the B-ble, the Pentateuch, also known as
the Torah, were supposed to have been written by Moses. Early
Chr-stian and J-wish tradition held this view even though nowhere
in these five books does the text say that Moses was the author.
Bi-lical scholars generally date Abraham to about 1800 - 1700 BC.
The same scholars date Moses to 1300 or 1250 BC However, if we
track the generations as listed in the Bi-le, we find that there
are only seven generations between and including these two
patriarchal figures! Four hundred years is a bit long for seven
generations. Allowing 35 to 40 years per generation, places
Abraham at about 1550 BC and Moses at about 1300 BC.
Tracking back to Noah, using the generations listed in the Bib-e,
one arrives at a date of about 2000 to 1900 BC - about the time of
the arrival of the Indo-Europeans into the Near East. Again,
something is wrong with this picture.
Using the Bibl- as historical source material presents a number
of very serious problems most particularly when we consider the
"mythicization" factor.
There are many contradictions in the text that cannot be
reconciled by standard theological mental contortionism. In some
places, events are described as happening in a certain order, and
later the -ible will say that those events happened in a different
order. In one place, the B-ble will say that there are two of
something, and in another it will say that there were 14 of the
same thing. On one page, the Bi-le will say that the Moabites did
something, and then a few pages later, it will say that the
Midianites did exactly the same thing. There is even an instance
in which Moses is described as going to the Tabernacle before
Moses built the Tabernacle! (I guess Moses was a time traveler!)
There are things in the Pentateuch that pose other problems: it
includes things that Moses could not have known if he lived when
he is claimed to have lived. And, there is one case in which
Moses said something he could not have said: the text gives an
account of Moses' death, which it is hardly likely that Moses
described. The text also states that Moses was the humblest man
on earth! Well, as one commentator noted, it is not likely that
the humblest man on earth would point out that he is the humblest
man on earth!
All of these problems were taken care of for most of the past two
thousand years by the Inquisition. The Je-ish commentators took
care of the problems for their own re-igion in novel ways that the
Chr-stian chu-ch might have done well to adopt, (and I am not
suggesting that it was right, just that it would have saved them a
lot of later problems).
For the -ews, the contradictions were not contradictions, they
were only "apparent contradictions!" They could all be explained
by "interpretation!" (Usually, these interpretations were more
fantastic than the problems, I might add.) Moses was able to
"know things he couldn't have known" because he was a prophet!
The medieval bi-lical commentators, such as Rashi and Nachmanides,
were VERY skillful in reconciling the irreconcilable!
In the 11th century, a real troublemaker, Isaac ibn Yashush, a
J-wish court physician in Muslim Spain, mentioned the distressing
fact that a list of Edomite kings that appears in Genesis 36 named a
few kings who lived long after Moses was already dead. Ibn Yashush
suggested the obvious, that the list was written by someone who
lived after Moses. He became known as "Isaac the Blunderer."
The guy who memorialized clever Isaac this way was a fellow named
Abraham ibn Ezra, a 12th century rabbi in Spain. But Ibn Ezra
presents us with a paradox because he also wrote about problems
in the text of the Torah. He alluded to several passages that
appeared not to be from Moses' own hand because they referred to
Moses in the third person, used terms Moses would not have known,
described places that Moses had never been, and used language that
belonged to an altogether different time and place than the milieu
of Moses.
He wrote, very mysteriously, "And if you understand, then you
will recognize the truth. And he who understands will keep silent."
So, why did he call Ibn Yashush a "Blunderer?" Obviously because
the guy had to open his big mouth and give away the sec-et that
the Torah was not what it was cracked up to be and lots of folks
who were totally "into" the Je-ish mysticism business would lose
interest. And keeping the interest of the students and seekers
after power was a pretty big business in that day and time. More
than that, the entire C-ristian mythos was predicated upon the
validity of J-daism, (being its "New Covenant"), and even if there
was apparent conflict between -ews and -hristians, the C-ristians
most desperately needed to validate Ju-aism and its claim to be
the revelation to the "chosen people" of the One True G-d. It
was on that basis that Je--s was the Son of Go-, after all.
In 14th century Damascus, a scholar by the name of Bonfils
wrote a work in which he said "And this is evidence that this
verse was written in the Torah later, and Moses did not write it..
"He wasn't even denying the "revealed" character of the Torah,
just making a reasonable comment. Three hundred years later,
his work was reprinted with this comment edited out!
In the fifteenth century, Tostatus, Bishop of Avila also pointed
out that the passages about the death of Moses couldn't have been
written by Moses. In an effort to soften the blow, he added that
there was an "old tradition" that Joshua, Moses successor, wrote
this part of the account. A hundred years later, Luther Carlstadt
commented that this was difficult to believe because the account
of Moses' death is written in the same style as the text that
precedes it.
Well, of course, things were beginning to be examined more
critically with the arrival of Protestantism on the world stage,
and the demand for wider availability of the text itself. The
Inquisition and assorted "Ca-holic Majesties" tried, but failed,
to keep a complete grip on the matter. But, it's funny what
belief will do. In this case, with the increase in literacy and
new and better translations of the text, "critical examination"
led to the decision that the problem was solvable by claiming
that, yes, Moses wrote the Torah, but editors went over them
later and added an occasional word or phrase of their own!
Wow. Glad we solved that one!
The really funny thing is that one of the proponents of this idea
of editorial insertions, who was really trying to preserve the
textus receptus status of the B-ble, was blacklisted by the C-tholic
Index. His work was put on the list of "prohibited books!" Those
guys just kept shooting themselves in the foot.
Well, finally, after hundreds of years of tiptoeing around this
issue, some scholars came right out and said that Moses didn't
write the majority of the Pentateuch. The first to say it was
Thomas Hobbes. He pointed out that the text sometimes states that
this or that is so to this day. The problem with this is that a
writer describing a contemporary situation would not describe it
as something that has endured for a very long time, "to this day."
Isaac de la Peyrere, a French Calvinist, noted that the first
verse of the book of Deuteronomy says "These are the words that
Moses spoke to the children of Israel across the Jordan..." The
problem was that the words meant to refer to someone who is on
the other side of the Jordan from the writer.
This means that the verse amounts to the words of someone who is
WEST of the Jordan at the time of writing, who is describing what
Moses said to the children of Israel on the EAST of the Jordan. The
problem is exacerbated because Moses himself was never supposed to
have been in Is-ael in his life.
De la Peyrere's book was banned and burned. He was arrested and
told that the conditions of his release were conversion to
Cat-olicism and recanting his views. Apparently he perceived
discretion as the better part of valor.
Considering how often this sort of thing occurred, we have to
wonder about the "sanctity" of a text, which is preserved by threat
and torture and bloodshed.
Not too long after this, Baruch Spinoza, the famous philosopher,
published what amounted to a real rabble rousing critical analysis.
He claimed that the problem passages in the Bi-le were not
isolated cases that could be solved one by one as "editorial
insertions," but were rather a pervasive evidence of a third
person account. He also pointed out that the text says in
De-teronomy 34 that "There never arose another prophet in Israel
like Moses...." Spinoza suggested, quite rightly, that these were
the words of a person who lived a long time after Moses and had
had the opportunity to make comparisons. One commentator points
out that they also don't sound like the words of the "humblest man
on earth!"[2]
Spinoza was really living dangerously because he wrote: "It
is [.] clearer than the sun at noon that the Pentateuch was not
written by Moses, but by someone who lived long after Moses."[3]
Spinoza had already been excommunicated from Jud-ism; now, he was in
pretty hot water with the Cath-lics and Protestants! Naturally,
his book was placed on the "prohibited books" list, and a whole slew
of edicts were issued against it. What is even more interesting is
that an attempt was made to assassinate him!
A converted Protestant who had become a Ca-holic priest, Richard
Simon, undertook to refute Spinoza and wrote a book saying that the
core of the Pentateuch was written by Moses, but there were "some
additions." Nevertheless, these additions were clearly done by
scribes who were under the guidance of Go- or the Holy Sp-rit, so
it was okay for them to collect, arrange and elaborate on the text.
It was still Go- in charge here.
Well, you'd think the chu-ch would know when it was ahead. But,
nope! Simon was attacked and expelled from his order by his
fellow Cat-olics. Forty refutations of his work were written by
Protestants. Only six copies of his book survived burning. One
of these was translated by a guy named John Hampden who also got
into some hot water. He "repudiated the opinions he had held in
common with Simon [...] in 1688, probably shortly before his
release from the tower."[4]
Part 1.
John Winston. ***@mlode.com
April 2, 2005.
Here is some information from a person who thinks Moses didn't
write the first five books of the you-know-what.
.....................................................................
.....................................................................
The first five books of the B-ble, the Pentateuch, also known as
the Torah, were supposed to have been written by Moses. Early
Chr-stian and J-wish tradition held this view even though nowhere
in these five books does the text say that Moses was the author.
Bi-lical scholars generally date Abraham to about 1800 - 1700 BC.
The same scholars date Moses to 1300 or 1250 BC However, if we
track the generations as listed in the Bi-le, we find that there
are only seven generations between and including these two
patriarchal figures! Four hundred years is a bit long for seven
generations. Allowing 35 to 40 years per generation, places
Abraham at about 1550 BC and Moses at about 1300 BC.
Tracking back to Noah, using the generations listed in the Bib-e,
one arrives at a date of about 2000 to 1900 BC - about the time of
the arrival of the Indo-Europeans into the Near East. Again,
something is wrong with this picture.
Using the Bibl- as historical source material presents a number
of very serious problems most particularly when we consider the
"mythicization" factor.
There are many contradictions in the text that cannot be
reconciled by standard theological mental contortionism. In some
places, events are described as happening in a certain order, and
later the -ible will say that those events happened in a different
order. In one place, the B-ble will say that there are two of
something, and in another it will say that there were 14 of the
same thing. On one page, the Bi-le will say that the Moabites did
something, and then a few pages later, it will say that the
Midianites did exactly the same thing. There is even an instance
in which Moses is described as going to the Tabernacle before
Moses built the Tabernacle! (I guess Moses was a time traveler!)
There are things in the Pentateuch that pose other problems: it
includes things that Moses could not have known if he lived when
he is claimed to have lived. And, there is one case in which
Moses said something he could not have said: the text gives an
account of Moses' death, which it is hardly likely that Moses
described. The text also states that Moses was the humblest man
on earth! Well, as one commentator noted, it is not likely that
the humblest man on earth would point out that he is the humblest
man on earth!
All of these problems were taken care of for most of the past two
thousand years by the Inquisition. The Je-ish commentators took
care of the problems for their own re-igion in novel ways that the
Chr-stian chu-ch might have done well to adopt, (and I am not
suggesting that it was right, just that it would have saved them a
lot of later problems).
For the -ews, the contradictions were not contradictions, they
were only "apparent contradictions!" They could all be explained
by "interpretation!" (Usually, these interpretations were more
fantastic than the problems, I might add.) Moses was able to
"know things he couldn't have known" because he was a prophet!
The medieval bi-lical commentators, such as Rashi and Nachmanides,
were VERY skillful in reconciling the irreconcilable!
In the 11th century, a real troublemaker, Isaac ibn Yashush, a
J-wish court physician in Muslim Spain, mentioned the distressing
fact that a list of Edomite kings that appears in Genesis 36 named a
few kings who lived long after Moses was already dead. Ibn Yashush
suggested the obvious, that the list was written by someone who
lived after Moses. He became known as "Isaac the Blunderer."
The guy who memorialized clever Isaac this way was a fellow named
Abraham ibn Ezra, a 12th century rabbi in Spain. But Ibn Ezra
presents us with a paradox because he also wrote about problems
in the text of the Torah. He alluded to several passages that
appeared not to be from Moses' own hand because they referred to
Moses in the third person, used terms Moses would not have known,
described places that Moses had never been, and used language that
belonged to an altogether different time and place than the milieu
of Moses.
He wrote, very mysteriously, "And if you understand, then you
will recognize the truth. And he who understands will keep silent."
So, why did he call Ibn Yashush a "Blunderer?" Obviously because
the guy had to open his big mouth and give away the sec-et that
the Torah was not what it was cracked up to be and lots of folks
who were totally "into" the Je-ish mysticism business would lose
interest. And keeping the interest of the students and seekers
after power was a pretty big business in that day and time. More
than that, the entire C-ristian mythos was predicated upon the
validity of J-daism, (being its "New Covenant"), and even if there
was apparent conflict between -ews and -hristians, the C-ristians
most desperately needed to validate Ju-aism and its claim to be
the revelation to the "chosen people" of the One True G-d. It
was on that basis that Je--s was the Son of Go-, after all.
In 14th century Damascus, a scholar by the name of Bonfils
wrote a work in which he said "And this is evidence that this
verse was written in the Torah later, and Moses did not write it..
"He wasn't even denying the "revealed" character of the Torah,
just making a reasonable comment. Three hundred years later,
his work was reprinted with this comment edited out!
In the fifteenth century, Tostatus, Bishop of Avila also pointed
out that the passages about the death of Moses couldn't have been
written by Moses. In an effort to soften the blow, he added that
there was an "old tradition" that Joshua, Moses successor, wrote
this part of the account. A hundred years later, Luther Carlstadt
commented that this was difficult to believe because the account
of Moses' death is written in the same style as the text that
precedes it.
Well, of course, things were beginning to be examined more
critically with the arrival of Protestantism on the world stage,
and the demand for wider availability of the text itself. The
Inquisition and assorted "Ca-holic Majesties" tried, but failed,
to keep a complete grip on the matter. But, it's funny what
belief will do. In this case, with the increase in literacy and
new and better translations of the text, "critical examination"
led to the decision that the problem was solvable by claiming
that, yes, Moses wrote the Torah, but editors went over them
later and added an occasional word or phrase of their own!
Wow. Glad we solved that one!
The really funny thing is that one of the proponents of this idea
of editorial insertions, who was really trying to preserve the
textus receptus status of the B-ble, was blacklisted by the C-tholic
Index. His work was put on the list of "prohibited books!" Those
guys just kept shooting themselves in the foot.
Well, finally, after hundreds of years of tiptoeing around this
issue, some scholars came right out and said that Moses didn't
write the majority of the Pentateuch. The first to say it was
Thomas Hobbes. He pointed out that the text sometimes states that
this or that is so to this day. The problem with this is that a
writer describing a contemporary situation would not describe it
as something that has endured for a very long time, "to this day."
Isaac de la Peyrere, a French Calvinist, noted that the first
verse of the book of Deuteronomy says "These are the words that
Moses spoke to the children of Israel across the Jordan..." The
problem was that the words meant to refer to someone who is on
the other side of the Jordan from the writer.
This means that the verse amounts to the words of someone who is
WEST of the Jordan at the time of writing, who is describing what
Moses said to the children of Israel on the EAST of the Jordan. The
problem is exacerbated because Moses himself was never supposed to
have been in Is-ael in his life.
De la Peyrere's book was banned and burned. He was arrested and
told that the conditions of his release were conversion to
Cat-olicism and recanting his views. Apparently he perceived
discretion as the better part of valor.
Considering how often this sort of thing occurred, we have to
wonder about the "sanctity" of a text, which is preserved by threat
and torture and bloodshed.
Not too long after this, Baruch Spinoza, the famous philosopher,
published what amounted to a real rabble rousing critical analysis.
He claimed that the problem passages in the Bi-le were not
isolated cases that could be solved one by one as "editorial
insertions," but were rather a pervasive evidence of a third
person account. He also pointed out that the text says in
De-teronomy 34 that "There never arose another prophet in Israel
like Moses...." Spinoza suggested, quite rightly, that these were
the words of a person who lived a long time after Moses and had
had the opportunity to make comparisons. One commentator points
out that they also don't sound like the words of the "humblest man
on earth!"[2]
Spinoza was really living dangerously because he wrote: "It
is [.] clearer than the sun at noon that the Pentateuch was not
written by Moses, but by someone who lived long after Moses."[3]
Spinoza had already been excommunicated from Jud-ism; now, he was in
pretty hot water with the Cath-lics and Protestants! Naturally,
his book was placed on the "prohibited books" list, and a whole slew
of edicts were issued against it. What is even more interesting is
that an attempt was made to assassinate him!
A converted Protestant who had become a Ca-holic priest, Richard
Simon, undertook to refute Spinoza and wrote a book saying that the
core of the Pentateuch was written by Moses, but there were "some
additions." Nevertheless, these additions were clearly done by
scribes who were under the guidance of Go- or the Holy Sp-rit, so
it was okay for them to collect, arrange and elaborate on the text.
It was still Go- in charge here.
Well, you'd think the chu-ch would know when it was ahead. But,
nope! Simon was attacked and expelled from his order by his
fellow Cat-olics. Forty refutations of his work were written by
Protestants. Only six copies of his book survived burning. One
of these was translated by a guy named John Hampden who also got
into some hot water. He "repudiated the opinions he had held in
common with Simon [...] in 1688, probably shortly before his
release from the tower."[4]
Part 1.
John Winston. ***@mlode.com