GakuseiDon

This is a split from the "Bible errancy" thread. Kosh said:
Yes, Moses wrote on some other medium - just as he did with the Book of the Covenant. See Ex 24:7.

Remember, there aren't 10 items in the covenant - there are over 600. Compare Ex 24:8 and Ex 34:27 and the phrase "I have made a covenant with you according to these words".

The "10 Commandments" are special, as they were given out in the presence of the Israelites. See Ex 20:18, Deut 9:10, and Deut 10:4. They can only refer to the ones listed in Ex 20.

The commandments in Ex 34 are *symbolic* of the restoration of the covenant. Compare Ex 34 with Ex 23:14-19 (like the boiling a goat in its mother's milk) - they are being repeated to show that the old covenant is being restored.

The comparison is this:

Ex 34:1 - God promises to write the words of the first tablets on the new set, "The 10 Commandments".
Ex 34: 28 - God writes the words of the Testimony on the stone tablets.

Ex 24:8 - A covenant is formed "according to these words". Note that the covenant has more than 600 commands! Moses writes the words in the Book of the Covenant.
Ex 34:27 - A covenant is formed "according to the tenor of these words". God asks Moses to write the words.

Ex 24:20-33 Various commandments.
Ex 34:11-16 Similar commandments.

Ex 23:14-19 Various commandments.
Ex 34:18-26 Similar commandments.

As I said, the confusion comes from the ambiguity of the pronoun "he" in Ex 34:28. Once it is clear what God writes and what Moses writes, the ambiguity disappears.

gregor

Yes, but what's your point?

There are two separate lists of 10 commandments.

They contain different prohibitions/directives.

Using your argument, is the most current list (including goat boiling) the operative 10 commandments? Or is the first list the operative 10 commandments, and the second list was just a parlor trick, and the text isn't to be followed?

And if God wasn't changing the commands, then did Moses get the first list wrong?

GakuseiDon

Would you please reread my post? I'm sorry if I haven't expressed myself clearly.

My points:
(1) The Covenant between God and the Israelites consists of over 600 commands.
(2) The "10 Commandments" are special, as they represent the Testimony of God before the Israelites (see my references in the earlier post). However, the Testimony is NOT the whole covenant, just a special part of it.
(3) When Moses broke the first tablets, the Covenant had to be re-established.
(4) To do that, God gave a sample of commandments from the Covenant, which He asked Moses to write down.
(5) God then rewrote the Testimony on the stone tablets.

gregor

And he re-wrote them differently.

Or was it that Moses got 'em wrong at first.

Pick a horse

Llyricist

So God is capricious and inconsistent......got it.

GakuseiDon

Sigh... :banghead: :banghead: Perhaps I'll wait for Kosh to reply.

Kosh

OK, back from work. What GK is saying (because I have too much of a headache to try and spell his login name) is:

In Exodus 34, what we see is Moses up on the mountain. He would have us believe that God has called Moses up to there to re-write the 10 commandments on the stone tablets [NOTE: the passage is explicit that Moses only carved and hauled two tablets up the mountain). He claims that beginning with 34:10
YHWH is introducing a new covenant, which he then goes on to detail up through 34:26. Then, in 34:27 when YHWH says:
...he is telling Moses to write the preceding text on some other unknown medium. And then in 34:29
.. YHWH actually performs the writing of the original 10 commandments (the ones lifted from the Egyptian Book of the Dead) on the two stone tablets that Moses hauled up the mountain in his Kelty backpack (or maybe it was one of those frameless types, with good load distribution to make it easier on the old geezer!).

However, there are problems with this.
- It appears to be another of those apologetic "read more stuff into between the lines to make up for a conflict" type of reasonings.
- In vs 28, the Ten Commandments are explicitly referred to as "the covenant, which was introduced in 34:10
- There are exactly Ten commands listed in there. Some of them parrallell the original 10.
- It is possible to interpret a break in between 34:10 as a "covenant" where God (the kind, loving one) details all the nasty things he's going to do to the un-favorite people, and 34:17, where the 10 commands start. There is a decidedly different "tone" in that text.
- Even granting to GK that there were two lists of commands, it is not clear from vs 37 that YHWH is commanding Moses to write what was just listed. It could be he was commanding Moses to write some other commands that he was about to word (I'm reading into the text just as GK has done for his version).
- There is no further reference to anykind of second medium on which Moses is supposed to have written alternate covenant text.

Also, please note that in the King James version:
It seems to be clearer that words that YHWH just spoke are also considered the 10 commandments.

I would really like to hear from Doctor X, Toto, Vork or CX on this, as to what the prevailing scholarly opinion (biased apologetics aside) is on this issue.

tracer

Whether it is or isn't, it's obvious that Yahweh considered the anti-goat-boiling commandment to be extremely important, because He repeated it in two places in Exodus (23:19 and 34:26).

Doctor X

Kosh:

You rang?

Fortunately, I am running to a wine tasting. . . . Tomorrow I will grab the reference who explains the problem based on the authorship and post.

--J.D.

GakuseiDon

"GD" or "GDon" is fine.

No, no. Moses brings the stone tablets, God is the one who is going to do the writing on the tablets. See Ex 34:1.

Not quite. God is re-establishing the covenant. The commands in Ex 34 are not the whole covenant, just bits from whole covenant. Please remember: The covenant consists of over 600 commands. It is NOT just the 10 Commandments.

Yes! But not some unknown medium - in the Book of the Covenant. This is the same medium he writes on in Ex 24:4.

Yes (though not sure about the Kelty backpack).

No. The exact phrase is "And He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, The Ten Commandments". The 10 Commandments are part of the covenant, but they are not the whole covenant.

Everywhere else in the Bible, the Ten Commandments refers to Ex 20, where God gave those commands in the presence of the Israelites. So why assume that this time it refers to Ex 34? I think there are good reasons to assume it doesn't - Ex 34:1 the main one.

Note that it is *God* who writes this (See Deut 10:4 as well), not Moses. This matches with Ex 34:1, where God promises to write the words on the first stone tablets.

So what does Moses write? He writes the words of Ex 34, which is symbolic of the restoration of the covenant from Ex 20 onwards, that Moses had written in the Book of the Covenant in Ex 24:8.

Again, you can see the difference between "Covenant" and "10 Commandments". The Covenant are those 600 commands in Ex. The 10 Commandments are a special subsection of those.

I think the mistake comes about by assuming that "the words of the covenant, The Ten Commandments" means that the ONLY words of the covenant are the 10 Commandments. But this is like saying "I wrote on the card the words of Shakespeare: To be or not to be." But this doesn't mean that the only words ever written by Shakespeare is confined to those.

Here's a challenge. Divide Ex 34 into commandments, and tell me if you get exactly ten first time through.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. It doesn't seem relevant.

No: God wants Moses to write down what He just said in Ex 34. However, Moses was up there for 40 days and 40 nights, so I suppose it is feasible.

I'm not sure by what you mean "two lists of commands", so perhaps we are talking at cross purposes.

Ed. I had a list of questions here, which I split out in the post following this one. I think when you answer the questions, we can determine where the misconception lies.

In Ex 24:4, Moses "wrote all the words of the Lord". No reference to stone tablets there, either. Can we suppose Moses wrote on something, even though no material medium is listed?

Yes, I would like to hear from them, too.