/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

Do you believe in biblical inerrancy? Moses.

Are you a Theological liberal? JEPD, and they were also black transsexuals.

>>789361

It's not necessarily an either/or. Some of it was edited at least. Just the mention of the city of "Ramses" is enough of a clue to tell you that. Ramses reigned in the 1200s BC and didn't exist in Moses timeline (unless you're one of those fags who give Exodus a late date, but please don't). When it mentions Ramses, it's calling attention to a later reader that it was the "location" of Ramses as they knew it (same goes for Genesis 47:11 that states Joseph and his brothers settled in the city of "Ramses".. hundreds of years before Ramses ever existed). It's an anachronism. Just like if we said the Romans built the city of York. It's true that they built the founding location of York, but the actual fort in their day was named "Eboracum", which only later evolved into York. Same goes for Ramses. In Moses and Joseph's day, it was the city of Avaris.

And the late date is untenable btw. The Bible itself states that the Exodus was in the 1400s BC range at least. It says in 1 Kings that Solomon built his temple in the 480th year after the Exodus. David and Solomon are easier to date around 1000 BC mark. So it would follow how far back the Exodus was from their time (the same goes for other passages noting similar timelines.. like one of passages in Judges that says it's been 300 years or so since the Exodus).

Long story short though, the bible itself attests that the Torah was lost after a long period of wickedness and fools running the country. Only in the reign of Josiah did they rediscover it:

>"And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it. [..] And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes." - 2 Kings 22:8,11

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>"And the king sent, and they gathered unto him all the elders of Judah and of Jerusalem. And the king went up into the house of the Lord, and all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the priests, and the prophets, and all the people, both small and great: and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant which was found in the house of the Lord.

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>And the king stood by a pillar, and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and all their soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people stood to the covenant." -2 Kings 23:1-3

This soon led to Josiah and Ezra's reforms and a rebuilding of their religion and ensuring this loss never happened again. There's a good chance that this is when some of editing and compilation took place.

One more thing - By the time of Josiah (and then afterwards, Ezra), it had almost been a thousand years since Moses. He was already ancient in their times. Kind of puts in perspective just how much they lost touch with and had to rediscover themselves. Nor did Moses even speak the same "Hebrew" they did… or write what they did. It was a miracle some still had knowledge of his more paleo-Hebrew that the original Torah was written in (the alphabet we know now as Hebrew is foreign and from Babylonian influence).

We can still say Moses wrote the Torah, but it still had to be reexplained/edited/maybe even retranslated somewhat (certainly on just the alphabet).

>>789403

>Some of it was edited

Why don't you believe in the preservation of scripture?

>>789411

What is this supposed to mean? That if I got some Bible.txt and try to randomly change a word my hands will spontaneously catch fire?

>>789403

Instances of editorial additions in place names or even Moses' death account don't make it such that Moses wasn't the author, like the Bible internally attests. The JEDP theory like all textual criticism is first predicated on scripture being erroneous, in which case christianity has no footing.

>>789478

Actually textual criticism as its basis is quite neutral. Its goal is to analyze the text as you would analyze any other text. Biases can and do arise out of this, on both sides the of the spectrum. Don't be the person who dismisses stuff just because they don't like it an accepts stuff because it agrees with your world view. Actually go out and investigate for yourself and make your own conclusion. If anyone happens to disagree, then respectfully debate.

There's enough reason to believe that both Moses and Joshua wrote the Pentateuch with some editing later on.

>>789403

>Only in the reign of Josiah did they rediscover it

The main contention behind the source theory, is that the Scriptures were edited or re-written (depending who you ask) to support the Kingdom.

Except, there's a bunch of stuff in Genesis that undermines the later Kingdom of Israel, mostly with Judah being recounted as guilty of a number of sins (not even counting the sin of Onan, one of Judah's sons).

Had the Pentateuch been necessarily re-written to support the Kingship, it did a pretty bad job.

>>789489

The source theory is based exclusively off a basis that the Israelites found their scripture and wrote in a "priestly tradition" and other pro-Kingdom propaganda.

Genesis, as we know it anyway, completely undermines one of the leading hypothesis of the sources critique. Much of the Law of Moses was written in its actual time-place, the stylistics of the Mosaic Covenant actually follow almost word-to-word the Covenants of secular kingdoms if that time period. The 500 B.C. folks would have happened to be aware of covenant writing 1,000 years in the past to make it coherent.

>>789489

another fun fact: the method in which the Israelites would deploy in battle with the Ark of the Covenant is almost 1:1 with how the Egyptians would deploy with their Pharaoh in the battle-field of around 1,600 B.C., or whatever.

The Pentateuch has a remarkable internal consistency with an author intimate with the Egyptians the time-period…this author would have be both an Israelite, and know quite a bit of Egyptian military and civic institutions. Which is pretty remarkably consistent with the idea that Moses wrote it :)

>>789403

>Long story short though, the bible itself attests that the Torah was lost after a long period of wickedness and fools running the country. Only in the reign of Josiah did they rediscover it

It was lost in the sense that the ruling class wasn't even aware of what it said. Not that nobody in the world had it.

The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law. - Deuteronomy 29:29

The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.

Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever. - Psalm 12:6-7 (note Psalm 12 is a psalm of David)

Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever. - Psalm 119:160

>>789432

>What is this supposed to mean? That if I got some Bible.txt and try to randomly change a word my hands will spontaneously catch fire?

It means you can't erase the existence or knowledge of it entirely. You can't, I can't, Jews can't, Caesars can't, popes can't, nobody can. This is because of what God said about the eternity of his word. So while people may produce corruptions in their own circles and add their sayings as their own kind of "head-canon," as an attempt to replace the word of God, the continued existence of God's real word will rebuke them at every turn. It's also one thing the state churches could never destroy despite many efforts. It calls out the manmade traditions in many places such as Mark 7:7-13 and 1 Timothy 4:1-3, Matthew 23:9, Matthew 6:7, and so on. Boy they wish they could get rid of those or alter them.

>>789529

>Had the Pentateuch been necessarily re-written to support the Kingship, it did a pretty bad job.

Yeah pretty much. All the prophets in the Old Testament are proclaiming these strong rebukes to the ancient kingdom of Israel and despite this none of them could get rid of it or change it. Because it's God's word. See Jeremiah 36, especially the ending.