Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Johnny Skeptic · 06-14-2007, 10:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gundulf

I can't speak for ksen's reasons for believing Mosaic authorship. But the scholarly debate on the subject focuses on Moses having both the motive and opportunity to have written those the works attributed to him, in addition to the tradition of Mosaic authorship that had to have come from somewhere.

Genesis and Exodus, for instance, is replete with examples of why Israel should continue to follow Moses. Inheriting the Promised land was guaranteed by God to Abraham, Abraham made a similar journey to the same land, Moses' idea to go to the promised land was assured by God, etc., etc., etc.

There is no credible evidence that God ever made a land promise to Abraham, and it is a fact that today, Jews do not occupy ALL of the ancient land of Canaan as promised in Genesis 17:8. The verse says "And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God."

Are you an inerrantist? If so, what is your definition of inerrancy?

Gundulf · 06-15-2007, 05:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

There is no credible evidence that God ever made a land promise to Abraham,

Nor was I suggesting there was - I was suggesting only that Moses would have had significant motivation to have recorded that promise (real or fanciful) into his account of earlier history, as it would provide support to a less than thrilled constituency regarding his Exodus/invasion of Canaan.

Quote:

Are you an inerrantist? If so, what is your definition of inerrancy?

Yes; I'd be ill-equipped to come up with a better definition of inerrancy myself than you could find in the

Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. I generally agree with inerrancy as it is defined therein.

Jimmy Higgins · 06-15-2007, 06:11 AM

You know, Moses' authorship of the first five books seems unlikely. Exodus 4:24-26 would best seem to denote thusly.

And God told Moses this and that, warn the Egyptians I'll kill your first born son, yadda yadda...

Then God goes to Moses and was about to kill him (or the son?), but Zipporah (Moses' wife) circumcises the son and all is alright.

Then God speaks to Aaron as if nothing happened.

Speak about discontinuities! Besides begging the question as to why the son wasn't already circumcised or if he wasn't how Zipporah knew about circumcision then?

Johnny Skeptic · 06-15-2007, 07:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

Are you an inerrantist? If so, what is your definition of inerrancy?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gundult

Yes; I'd be ill-equipped to come up with a better definition of inerrancy myself than you could find in the

Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. I generally agree with inerrancy as it is defined therein.

Article X of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy partly says "We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original."

Why should anyone believe that? How can anyone know if and when the Bible authors were speaking for God, and if and when they might have been speaking for themselves?

What good are texts that faithfully represent the originals if people do not have access to them? God refused to provide any texts at all to hundreds of millions of people who died without hearing the Gospel message. He obviously does not consider the spreading of the Gospel message to be a priority. If he did, he would tell people about it himself. Since God does not consider the speading of the Gospel message to be a priority, why should anyone else?

Doug Shaver · 06-15-2007, 10:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ksen

I don't think I've ever said that thinking Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch was unreasonable.

In that case, that portion of my comment was not directed at you personally.

I am keenly aware that not all believers think alike. It remains a fact, however, that certain beliefs tend to be held in clusters, i.e. people who believe A usually also believe B, C, ..., etc. In my experience, people who believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, also believe, in most cases, that it is unreasonable to believe otherwise. If you are among the exceptions, more power to you.

Dave Hawkins · 06-16-2007, 04:46 AM

Was it "ksen" who has a theology degree from Pensacola? I think I saw that back there somewhere. If so, great. My oldest son (10th grade) is interested in attending Pensacola and I'm starting to ask people about it.

Anyway, I would be interested in hearing ksen's opinion on The Tablet Theory of Genesis, which I discussed in my current Formal Debate on the Historicity of Genesis here at IIDB. Here is an excerpt from my post yesterday ...

Quote:

GENESIS IS PROBABLY A COMPILATION OF WRITTEN RECORDS
So the assertion of Astruc and others following him about Genesis being a compilation is likely accurate, though not in the way specified in the Documentary Hypothesis with the imagined J, E, D and P documents. How is it accurate? Well, the careful student of the Book of Genesis will note that there are 11 occurrences of the curious phrase "these are the generations of ..." followed by a name, names, or, in the first occurrence, "the heavens and the earth." Long story short, it turns out that a study of the thousands of excavated Babylonian cuneiform tablets reveals that it was a common ancient scribal practice to put a "signature" or a "catch line" or "colophon" at the end of a written tablet account. The recurring phrase in Genesis "these are the generations of ..." matches this pattern. Thus we have evidence that yes, Genesis is a compilation, but it is probably a compilation of written records rather than oral tradition. These written records were probably written down originally by the person or persons named at the end of each section, the names probably being inserted by Moses the compiler from the records handed down to him. It is likely that the original records were written down on clay tablets by Adam, Noah, Shem, etc., carefully protected and passed down from generation to generation, much as the Jewish Scriptures have been passed down accurately (recently demonstrated spectacularly with the Dead Sea Scrolls). You can read my book review of Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis by Professor of Assyriology Donald J. Wiseman on this topic at my blog (link above). Wiseman's theory has a few problems which have been addressed by Sewell(3), DeWitt(4) and others. For original work on colophons in Babylonian cuneiform texts we are indebted to Hunger, Leichty, Lambert and Millard. See Reference (5),(6) and (7) below. So, thanks to the efforts of 19th and 20th century archaeology, we have something that previous generations did not have--physical evidence from archaeology providing support to the traditional (pre-DH) view that Genesis is a carefully recorded, eyewitness account of actual events which occurred during the lifetimes of the patriarchs who observed them and recorded them, probably on clay tablets.

Other evidence of ancient written records at the time of, and prior to the Flood include references to the "Book of Enoch," the reference from Berosus of a command to Xisuthrus (probably the Biblical Noah) to commit to writing a history from the beginning to the Flood, the tradition recorded by Josephus about the children of Seth and their inscriptions in the land of Seriad, the references of Manetho to the books of Thoth (probably the same as Josephus' Seth), probably equivalent to the Phoenician Taut or Taautus. We also have the Indian Menu and the Persian Buddha, who also reportedly promulgated a heavenly book among men at the time of and before the Flood. The Celts of Britain and the Druids also have traditions of books no less ancient than the Flood. At least one Muslim writer records that Abraham found among the Sabeans the "long-lost chest of Adam" supposedly containing the books of that patriarch and likewise those of Seth and Enoch. Interesting material for further study to be sure.

I'm interested in others' comments as well, but I'm especially curious to know what "ksen" thinks of this.

Gundulf · 06-16-2007, 05:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

Are you an inerrantist? If so, what is your definition of inerrancy?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gundult

Yes; I'd be ill-equipped to come up with a better definition of inerrancy myself than you could find in the

Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. I generally agree with inerrancy as it is defined therein.

Article X of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy partly says "We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original."

Why should anyone believe that? How can anyone know if and when the Bible authors were speaking for God, and if and when they might have been speaking for themselves?

Why should anyone believe that? Simply because it is the claim of the Bible itself in various places. You don't have to believe that - no one is forcing you to. But the belief is that if the Scripture is "God breathed", that the Scripture authors were in fact speaking for themselves, while simultaneously speaking for God.

Quote:

What good are texts that faithfully represent the originals if people do not have access to them? God refused to provide any texts at all to hundreds of millions of people who died without hearing the Gospel message. He obviously does not consider the spreading of the Gospel message to be a priority. If he did, he would tell people about it himself. Since God does not consider the speading of the Gospel message to be a priority, why should anyone else?

Well, this is an entirely different question than inerrancy. But if by "priority" you mean in some sense God feels an obligation or requirement or motivation to save every last person on the face of the earth, then quite correct. The idea generally being that God has no obligation to save anyone, especially considering how much it cost him to save anyone. That he saves anyone at all should be the amazing part.

Johnny Skeptic · 06-16-2007, 05:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

Article X of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy partly says "We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original."

Why should anyone believe that? How can anyone know if and when the Bible authors were speaking for God, and if and when they might have been speaking for themselves?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gundulf

Why should anyone believe that? Simply because it is the claim of the Bible itself in various places.

But you do not know what the Bible is, or rather was. The Bible was a collection of original writings. No no knows what the originals said, and how many times they might have been changed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnnySkeptic

What good are texts that faithfully represent the originals if people do not have access to them? God refused to provide any texts at all to hundreds of millions of people who died without hearing the Gospel message. He obviously does not consider the spreading of the Gospel message to be a priority. If he did, he would tell people about it himself. Since God does not consider the speading of the Gospel message to be a priority, why should anyone else?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gundulf

Well, this is an entirely different question than inerrancy. But if by "priority" you mean in some sense God feels an obligation or requirement or motivation to save every last person on the face of the earth, then quite correct. The idea generally being that God has no obligation to save anyone, especially considering how much it cost him to save anyone. That he saves anyone at all should be the amazing part.

Actually, the amazing part is that based upon no credible evidence at all, you believe that God is perfect, and that everyone else is imperfect. How can imperfection judge perfection? Since the Bible writers were imperfect, they most certainly were not capable of judging whether or not God is perfect. Only a perfect being is capable of judging the perfection of another being.

Every last person is not the only issue. Another issue is that in the first century, for some strange reason God did not want to save ANYONE except for people who lived within a certain geographic proximity to Palestine. If the God of the Bible does not exist, it is to be expected that the Gospel message would have been spread entirely by secular means, in other words, entirely by human effort, according to the prevailing means of transportation, communciation, writing, printing, and translation of a given time period. It appears that that is exactly what happened.

By the way, there is not any credible historical evidence that it cost God anything to save anyone.

Doug Shaver · 06-16-2007, 06:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gundulf

That he saves anyone at all should be the amazing part.

That he saves anyone at all would, perhaps, be amazing if he were pretty much like us human beings except for having a lot more power.

From one side of their mouths, Christians carry on at great length about how incomprehensibly different God is from us finite, imperfect mortals. And then from the other side, they express all this awe and wonder whenever he does anything that they suppose no human would be unwilling to do.

Johnny Skeptic · 06-17-2007, 05:52 AM

Message to Gundulf: Please reply to my post #78.

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06-15-2007, 06:11 AM	#73
Jimmy Higgins Contributor Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Proud Citizen of Freedonia Posts: 42,473	You know, Moses' authorship of the first five books seems unlikely. Exodus 4:24-26 would best seem to denote thusly. And God told Moses this and that, warn the Egyptians I'll kill your first born son, yadda yadda... Then God goes to Moses and was about to kill him (or the son?), but Zipporah (Moses' wife) circumcises the son and all is alright. Then God speaks to Aaron as if nothing happened. Speak about discontinuities! Besides begging the question as to why the son wasn't already circumcised or if he wasn't how Zipporah knew about circumcision then?

06-17-2007, 05:52 AM	#80
Johnny Skeptic Banned Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Florida Posts: 19,796	Message to Gundulf: Please reply to my post #78.

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