WERE MOSES' FIVE BOOKS WRITTEN BY MOSES?

WERE MOSES’ FIVE BOOKS WRITTEN BY MOSES?

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Without any hard evidence, Bible critics maintain that Moses didn’t write any of the “Five Books of Moses” - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Instead, they claim that these books were written 800 years later, despite the fact that there exists an elaborate paper trial starting from Moses and the “Book of Joshua” through the Prophets claiming that the Law and the Mosaic Covenant were given through Moses, who also wrote them down:

∑       Then Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, "At the end of every seven years, at the set time in the year of release, at the Feast of Booths, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Assemble the people, men, women, and little ones, and the sojourner within your towns, that they may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God, and be careful to do all the words of this law.” (Deuteronomy 31:9-12 ESV)

The Law, The Books of Moses, claim their author to be Moses, and this is the consistent testimony of the entire Bible. In addition to this, the Law was committed into the keeping of the priests would periodically read, copy, and instruct from the Law. Therefore, along with the written Law, Israel passed on the consistent oral tradition that they had witnessed the Law being given to Moses and would regularly be instructed from the Law. To suddenly be presented five allegedly foundational and nationally defining books, claiming to have been written by Moses, with which they had had absolutely no experience, would not have been credible to the Israelites.

Instead, this Law, the Word of God, had already become central to Israel’s identity, history, and their welfare. They learned that when they followed the Law, they were blessed; when they violated the Law, they were punished. Every message of Israel’s Prophet had been predicated on the fact that Israel had in its possession the written Law and the supporting oral traditions of their historical engagement with these books. Besides, the books of the Hebrew Bible give ample testimony to the fact that Israel continually suffered because of their disobedience to the Law, the Mosaic Covenant:

∑       The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words and scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord rose against his people, until there was no remedy. (2 Chronicles 36:15-16)

Therefore, to claim that Israel had been without the Five Books of Moses is to suddenly remake Israel’s entire history and traditions.

While Israel had made many charges against their God, they never once charged that the Law hadn’t come from God through Moses, even though such a charge would have provided them with a convenient justification for their refusal to follow the Law of Moses, which they habitually violated.

Nevertheless, the critics continue to claim that the Books of Moses weren’t written until Israel’s exile to Babylon or even afterwards. However, everything in the Hebrew Scriptures is predicated on the fact the Israel had these books and were regularly nourished by them, even as the Psalms reflect. Even when the Israelites were charged with doing “whatever was right in their own eyes,” as indicated throughout the Book of Judges, this too implies that the Mosaic Covenant was being violated. Israel’s repeated descent into debauchery, followed by periods of great suffering, demonstrate the promised consequences of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God by breaking the Mosaic Covenant. All this is evidence that the Books of Moses had been in their possession. If these books of the Hebrew Scriptures had been introduced to Israel long after the fact, Israel would never have received them as their Scriptures.

To illustrate this, let’s imagine that scholars presented a nation with several books for which they had no record, claiming that what you thought had been your history was not really your history but rather what the scholars had just unearthed. Besides these problems, these books claimed to have always been in your possession, whereas there had never been even an oral tradition that acknowledged these recently found books. Would you receive such books as your defining history, especially in light of the fact that they are consistently critical of your people, even to the point of promising them doom?

Why then would the Israelites have received the Books of Moses 800 years later, which claimed to have been written by Moses, if they had had no prior knowledge of them?

The critics present the Israelites as gullible idiots. Instead, the Bible presents us with a coherent and consistent history of a people without any reasons to believe that it had been artificially hacked together and foisted upon ignorant Israelites.

EXTERNAL EVIDENCE OF MOSAIC AUTHORSHIP

Deuteronomy is written in a covenantal form reflecting the form of Hittite suzerainty treaties of the 14th-13th centuries.

∑       “Nearly all the known treaties of the 13th /14th centuries B.C. follow this pattern closely.” (Josh McDowell)

∑       This type of treaty form “cannot be proven to have survived the downfall of the great empires of the last 2nd millennium B.C. When empires rose again…the structure of the covenant…was entirely different.” (G. Mendenhall)

∑       Kenneth Kitchen writes that there is no “legitimate way to escape from the crystal-clear evidence of the correspondence of Deuteronomy with the remarkably stable treaty or covenant form of the 14th-13th centuries BC.”

EGYPTIAN SETTING

∑       “A greater percentage of Egyptian words than elsewhere in the OT” (Gleason Archer).  

∑       Egyptian Idioms and terminology: “This conformity to eighteenth dynasty Egyptian usage turns out to be strong evidence of a Mosaic date of composition.” (Gleason Archer)

∑       “Thus we can not but admit that the writer…was thoroughly well acquainted with the Egyptian language customs, belief, court life, etiquette and officialdom; not only so, but the readers must have been familiar with things Egyptian.” (Garrow Duncan concerning the Joseph and Exodus narratives)

CUSTOMS AND GEOGRAPHY:

∑       “The price of 20 shekels paid for Joseph in Gen. 37:28 is the correct average price for a slave in about the 18th Century BC: earlier than this, slaves were cheaper (average, 10-15 shekels).” (K.A. Kitchen)

∑       “When Pharaoh appointed Joseph prime minister, Joseph was given a ring and a gold chain or collar which is normal procedure for Egyptian office promotions.” (Josh McDowell, A Ready Defense)

∑       “The author of the Torah shows a consistently foreign or extra-Palestinian viewpoint.” (Gleason Archer)

∑       “The Shittim or Accacia tree is indigenous to Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula, but not to Palestine.” (G. Archer)

∑       “The lists of clean and unclean birds of Lev 11 and Deut. 14 include some which are peculiar to Sinai.” (G. Archer)

The nature of the Torah suggests that at the time of writing the people were nomadic (not settled in their nation as they were after Joshua.)

1.    Portable Tabernacle: instructions to create and carry.

2.    Encampment Instructions (Num.  2:1-31)

3.    Marching Instructions (Num. 10:14-20)

4.    Sanitary Instructions For Desert Life (Deut. 23:12-13)

5.    Sending Of Scapegoat Into Desert (Lev. 16:10)

“For centuries there was a tomb in Shechem reverenced as the tomb of Joseph (Josh 24:32). A few years ago the tomb was opened. It was found to contain a body mummified according to the Egyptian custom, and in the tomb, among other things, was a sword of the kind worn by Egyptian officials” [paralleling the Scriptural account]. (John Elder, Prophets, Idols, and Diggers)

CONCLUSIONS:

∑       “No evidence has come to light contradicting any item in the [Mosaic] tradition.” (J. Bright)

∑       “It is …sheer hypercriticism to deny the substantial Mosaic character of the Pentateuchal tradition.” (Albright)

∑       “It is worth emphasizing that in all this work no archeological discovery has ever controverted a single, properly understood biblical (OT) statement.” (Nelson Glueck—a Reformed Jewish scholar.)

If the critics had presented hard evidence that the Books of Moses had been written 800 years after the fact, we might have to pay greater attention to their claims. However, such evidence is lacking.