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Topical Scriptures (Please subtract 30% from the total amount of your Donation before making Donation) 1 Corinthians 9:11 |
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Moses' Authorship __________ *Moses Collected and Wrote the Torah __________ *Jesus Declared Moses Author of the Torah “And Jesus said to him, “See that you tell no one; but go show yourself to the priest, and present the offering that Moses commanded, for a testimony to them.’” (Matt 8:4) “They said to Him, "Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?" He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.” (Matt 19:7-8) “For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, “He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him be put to death.” (Mk 7:10) “But regarding the fact that the dead rise again, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; you are greatly mistaken.’ (Mk 12:26-27) “But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ But he said, ‘No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!’ But he said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead.’” (Lk 16:29-31) “And beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.” (Lk 24:27) “Now He said to them, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and He said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and rise again from the dead the third day.” (Lk 24:44-46) “For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came into being through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:17) “Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, ‘We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’” (John 1:45) “Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote of Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (John 5:45-47) “Did not Moses give you the Law, and yet none of you carries out the Law? Why do you seek to kill Me?” (John 7:19) “If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath that the Law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with Me because I made an entire man well on the Sabbath?” (John 7:23) *Writers of the Bible Declared Moses Author of the Torah “And Moses wrote down all the words of Yehovah. Then he arose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain with twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel.... Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people: and they said. ‘All that Yehovah has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient!’” (Exodus 24:4, 7) “Then Yehovah said to Moses, ‘Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel:’” (Exodus 34:27) “So Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi who carried the ark of the covenant of Yehovah, and to all the elders of Israel.” (Deut 31:9) “And it came about, when Moses finished writing the words of this law in a book until they were complete, that Moses commanded the Levites who carried the ark of thecovenant of Yehovah, saying, ‘Take this book of the law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of Yehovah....’” (Deut 31 :24-26) “Then Yehovah said to Moses, Write this in a book as a memorial, and recite it to Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” (Exodus 17:14) “And Moses recorded their starting places according to their journeys by the command of Yahweh, and these are their journeys according to their starting places.” (Numbers 33:2) Exodus - 12:1 -28; 20-24, 25-31, 34; Leviticus- 1-7, 8, 13, 16, 17-26, 27; Numbers- 1, 2, 4, 6:1-21, 8:1-4, 8:5-22, 15, 19, 27:6-23,28,29, 30, 35; Deuteronomy- 1-33. *Historical Evidence of Moses Authorship There was no doubt that Moses was the author of the Torah when the Old Testament was canonized in 400 B.C.261/133 An Apocrypha book, Ecclesiasticus, written in 180 B.C. acknowledges Moses as the author of the Torah: “All this is the covenant-book of God Most High, the law which Moses enacted to be the heritage of the assemblies of Jacob.” (Ecclesiasticus 24:23) The Talmud, dating to 200 B.C., and the Mishnah, a rabbinic interpretation and legislation dating from about 100 B.C. both attribute the Torah [Pentateuch] to Moses. Philo, the Jewish philosopher-theologian born approximately 20 A.D. held to Mosaic authorship.262/279 The first century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus says in his Josephus Against Apion (11:8): “For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us disagreeing from and contradicting one another (as the Greeks have) but only 22 books [our present 39], which are justly believed to be divine; and of them, five belong to Moses, which contain his laws, and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death.”165/609 Junilius, an imperial official in the court of Justinian I, Byzantine emperor from 527-565 A.D., held to the Mosaic authorship of the Torah.263/44-45 Leontius of Byzantium (sixth century A.D.) said in his treatise Contra Mestorianos: “As for these five books, all bear witness that they are (the work) of Moses.”263/45 Other Church Fathers attributing the Torah to Moses in their lists of the Old Testament canon are: Melito, Bishop of Sardis 175 A.D.; Cyril of Jerusalem 848-386 A.D.; Hilary 366 A.D.; Rufinus 410 A.D.; Augustine 430 A.D. Welhausen, in the Documentary Hypothesis, stated that the Torah was authored around 700-400 B.C., not during the life of Moses in the second millennium B.C. There is however absolutely no external historical evidence whatsoever supporting these late dates which claim Moses was not the author of the Torah.35 There is however more than ample external archaeological evidence supporting Moses authorship in the second millennium B.C. The science of archaeology has shown us that there is absolute historical evidence of writing up to 3500 B.C. in Ebla and 2700 B.C. in northwest Syria. The Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians would not make a transaction, even in the smallest details of business, without putting it down in writing. Moses wrote the Torah in 1450 B.C. which is 2,000 years later than the earliest known writings. Moses is credited with, in both the Old and New Testament and by Jesus Himself, with writing what is known as the Torah292 or the Pentateuch.32/957 The Torah is the first five books of the Bible from Genesis to Deuteronomy. It is stated clearly that Moses is the author in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, but not in the book of Genesis. Why is this? There is archaeological evidence that Adam wrote part of the book of Genesis. Genesis Chapter 5 and verse 1 states: “This is the written-account376 of the generations377 of Adam.” Obviously writing is as old as the human race itself. When God created Adam, He created him a full grown man with the ability to communicate. Why wouldn’t He have also given him the ability to write. What is the historical and archaeological evidence that Adam himself wrote this genealogy? In the times of Genesis Cuneiform writing was the system used by all civilized countries east of the Mediterranean: Assyria, Babylonia, Persia and by the Hittites which are mentioned seven times in Genesis from Genesis 15:20 on. Cuneiform writing is a series of wedge-shaped impressions made in clay. The word cuneia itself means “wedge”.375/214 The Hebrew word for writing, bt'K;, means “to engrave”378 to cut into, dig. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all used this form of writing. Cuneiform was not a specific language but a method of writing on clay tablets. These clay tablets were made of clay from the Euphrates Valley that was mixed with chalk or gypsum to keep the tablets from shrinking or cracking. They were dried in the sun or a kiln. It may very well have been these kind of Tablets that God wrote the ten commandments on that He gave to Moses (Exod 32:15-16). All archaeological evidence indicates clearly that everything written before Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees was written on clay tablets in cuneiform. The book of Job, written before Abraham, talks about this kind of writing in Job 38:14. Papyrus was the common writing material in Egypt, but the Tell-el-Amarna tablets found in Egypt in 1888 revealed that these clay tablets were letters dated about 1400 B.C. from Palestinian officials to the Egyptian government in cuneiform. Therefore Egypt knew and used the cuneiform method of writing as well. The most significant and distinguishing phrase in Genesis is “These are the generations of. . . .” The book of Genesis is usually divided around this phrase which is found eleven times (2:4, 5:1, 6:9, 10:1, 11:10, 11:27, 25:12, 25:19, 36:1, 36:9, 37:2). Even the translators of the Old Testament into Greek around 250 B.C., known as the Greek Septuagint, gave so much significance to this that they named the book Genesis which in Greek means “generations.” The word Genesis is equivalent to the Hebrew Word tdol]/T (toledot) also meaning “generations.”377 What is the significance of this and how does this give evidence of Adam having engraved the genealogy of his life until his death? Ancient records almost always begin with a genealogy or a register documenting close family relationships. Because several of the phrases with the word toledot were followed with a genealogy in Genesis, for years scholars assumed this phrase referred to what followed. As a result, you will find the book of Genesis divided by these phrases. However due to the large amount of discovered clay tablets of surrounding cultures of the times of the Old Testament, scholars now realize that due to the similarity and customs of the time that these phrases in Genesis do not refer to what follows after but are at the end of each of these genealogies referring to what was just stated previously. This is consistent with the meaning of the word toledot itself which means “history, especially family history” meaning something associated with origins not descendants. The word toledot by definition talks about looking backward rather than forward. The first toledot is mentioned in Genesis 2:4 which states, “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth.” Many liberal scholars realizing that Genesis 2:4 referred to what was stated previously thought that the redactor had placed this verse in Chapter two by mistake and should have been at the beginning of Genesis instead. However, in light of the evidence of archaeology we now realize that this is a concluding statement of what Moses has recorded in Genesis Chapter 1 about the creation of the heavens and the earth. As a result this should be a part of Genesis Chapter 1 rather than the beginning of the narrative which follows in Genesis Chapter 2. This phrase in Genesis 2:4 is the key as to how all other toledot phrases in Genesis are to be interpreted which is a looking back, not forward. In light of this new understanding about how letters and genealogies of families were recorded on cuneiform tablets, in 1936 P.J. Wiseman suggested that the material in Genesis was written by several authors based on these concluding toledot phrases. He suggested rightly that the authors of the material in Genesis are the following: Genesis 1: 1-2:4 Origin of the heavens and the earth. No author is given. Wiseman suggests that the author was God himself, who wrote it as he wrote the Ten Commandments, probably on clay tablets. According to its date, as given in the text itself, it was written very soon after the act of creation. Genesis 2:5-5:2 Tablet written by or belonging to Adam. Genesis 5:3-6:9a Tablet written by or belonging to Noah. Genesis 6:9b-10:1 Tablet written by or belonging to the sons of Noah. Genesis 10:2-11:10a Tablet written by or belonging to Shem. Genesis 11:10b-11:27a Tablet written by or belonging to Terah. Genesis 11:27b-25:19a Tablets written by or belonging to Ishmael and Isaac. Genesis 25:19b-37:2a Tablets written by or belonging to Esau and Jacob. Moses, the writer, editor and redactor of the Book of Genesis, recorded this information in Genesis word for word in its proper order as it was recorded on the tablets, including their colophon prases. Wiseman’s son, Donald P. Wiseman, a well known evangelical scholar himself who is the general editor of the Tyndale Old Testament Commentary series, endorses his father’s work along with R.K. Harrison, professor of Old Testament University of Toronto who has incorporated this material in his book, Introduction to the Old Testament.291 These phrases at the end of these genealogies are what are known as colophons. A colophon is a scribal devise that was placed at the conclusion of a literary work written on a clay tablet which gave the title or description of the narrative, the date or occasion of the writing and the name of the owner or writer of the tablet. This is just the opposite of how we do it today, but this practice in ancient times continued unchanged for over three-thousand years. Colophons are found in the Ebla tablets in northwest Syria (2700 B.C.), in the Akkadian texts from Ras Shamra (1300 B.C.), and continued until the time of Alexander the Great (333 B.C.). The name at the end of the tablet always referred to the owner of the tablet. Even if the owner had a scribe write it, the scribe never put his name at the end but the owners name. The word in Genesis 5:1, rp,se (sepher), means “book” or “a complete writing.”292 This is why the phrase in Genesis 5:1 indicates that Adam was probably not only the author of the material which precedes it but the owner of the tablets on which they were recorded as well. hv,mo Moses meaning drawn out, a prophet and lawgiver who led the Israelites out of bondage to Egypt to the promised land of Cannan; also son of Amram a descendant of Levi, 1571 B.C. Proper name masculine, 4872; from hv;m; to draw, 4871. Exodus 2:10. 1/519, 31/CD, 37/CD, 42/CD.
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