ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY EDUCATION NETWORK EXODUS DR. DAVID ADAMS #22 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> I have a similar question about defending our interpretation. Can we reasonably defend the idea that Moses wrote the Pentateuch? And how? >> David, you have rightly said that this is a similar question. So I'll give a similar answer. We can defend the historic Jewish and Christian position that Moses was the author. We cannot, however, prove it. We can defend it but we can't prove it. And notice that I said the historic Jewish and Christian position. Not our position. And I think that's worth underscoring here. The distinction is an important one. This isn't just our position as Lutherans as or conservatives. This is the position that has been taken by the majority of interpreters of the biblical text for thousands of years. So when we say it's ours, we have to be careful that we don't give the impression that ours is just one of many. Ours is far and away the dominant one. It may not be the one that's dominant in sort of academic circles today. But I don't think we have to apologize for it. I think we can defend it as a coherent position. And I'll try to demonstrate that a little bit. I've done this already in a document that is part of your course materials on the authorship of the Pentateuch, basically underscoring Moses as the author of the Pentateuch. And I would like to just walk you through some of the highlights of that document because this is -- there's a lot of material here, a lot of biblical references. There's no way that you can remember them all. But I would like you to at least try to remember the categories that they fall into. Because it will be a little easier to remember them than to remember the information itself. There are probably at least four or five ways of arguing the traditional Christian position that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. The first of these is to point to internal evidence. That is to say evidence within the Pentateuch itself, within the torah itself. There are in the Pentateuch six references to Moses as the author. Not the author of the whole thing. But at least the author of some parts of it. For example, in Exodus 17:14 we read "And Yahweh said to Moses, 'Write this memorial in the Book and place it in the years of Joshua.'" So here we have a divine command from God to Moses to write down the -- this memorial, this reminder, this way of remembering in a book and give it to Joshua. Now, I think it's reasonable to assume that if God commanded Moses to do this, that he would have done it. This is right after the exodus. And Moses is just seeing the miracles that God has done. And it's not likely that he -- and Moses has been pretty faithful in doing the things that God has commanded to him. So it doesn't exactly tell us that Moses went ahead and did this. But I think we can take it as a reasonable conclusion that Moses did what God commanded him to do and did write these things down. In Exodus 24 Verse 4 we read again, "Moses wrote all the words of Yahweh." So here we do get a reference to the fact that Moses wrote. And we're not told what exactly it means by all the "words of Yahweh." The scope of that phrase is unclear. Most likely in the context it refers to the material from Chapters 20 to 23, which is a series of instructions from God beginning with the Ten Commandments and running through the block of material that we call the Book of the Covenant. And so that's probably what's being referred to here. But it clearly establishes the principle that Moses wrote down what God had said to Israel and then handed it on. In Exodus 34 Verse 27 we read, "God said to Moses, 'Write these words, for the basis of these words I have made a covenant with you and Israel. Then he" -- that's Moses -- "wrote on the tablets the words of covenant, the Ten Sayings." There was a lot of debate about what the Ten Sayings are. Are these the Ten Commandments or is this something else? But clearly we have here an example of God commanding Moses to write and Moses following God's command and writing something. This is clearly important because this is the basis upon which God makes a covenant with Israel. And that we know from other places that this was handed down from generation to generation within Israel. So there's a reasonable case to be made here that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch as a whole. In the book of Numbers Chapter 33 Verse 2, we read, "Moses wrote their travels according to the stages of their journey at the command of Yahweh." This clearly refers to the travel log that follows in the next chapter, Numbers Chapter 33 Verses 3 to 49. When we were talking about the route of the exodus, earlier I mentioned that we have this account in the book of Numbers that gives us sort of stage by stage all the places that Israel went and stayed and journeyed on the way. It's unlikely that such a list of sites could have ever been envisioned by anyone later. For one thing, by the time of the exile, they didn't know about these places in Egypt anymore. You know, they were living in Assyria and in Babylon. So it's unlikely that they could have even known of the places that are mentioned in the book of Numbers. So it's much more reasonable to assume that Moses wrote this record of Israel's travels as we're told that he did here in the book of Numbers. In Deuteronomy Chapter 31 Verse 9 we read, "Moses wrote down this torah and gave it to the priests." Here again, the extent of what Moses has written is unclear. Is it referring to the whole torah, the whole five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy? Well, possibly. It certainly could do that. Most people assume that at the very least it refers to the book of Deuteronomy as a whole, which is, as you'll recall, largely made up of the sermons of Moses and sayings and speeches that Moses would undoubtedly have known. Later on in the same chapter, Verse 24 of Chapter 31, we read, "After Moses had finished writing the words of this torah upon a scroll." So clearly later in the Chapter we have an assertion that -- a second assertion that Moses did write down all that God had instructed to them. And finally, last one, also in Deuteronomy 31 Verse 19. "God instructs Moses and Joshua together saying, 'Write this psalm and teach it to the sons of Israel. " Now, the psalm referred to in this case follows in the next chapter, Deuteronomy 32. We call it sometimes the Song of Moses. So we have six places in the Pentateuch itself where we have clear indications in the -- within the Pentateuch that Moses wrote at least parts of it, if not the whole. There's no place where, you know, there's a kind of copyright statement that says, "Moses wrote these passages beginning with Genesis 1:1 and ending with the last verse here at the end of the book of Deuteronomy." There's not that kind of claim of authorship. But there's a pretty clear-cut claim of authorship within the book itself. And that claim is that Moses wrote the text. Now, so that's the internal evidence. Another kind of evidence that Moses wrote the text also comes from within the Bible. But we would probably call that external evidence since it comes from outside the torah, outside the Pentateuch. In other words, there are a variety of places, many of them in the Bible, that mention that Moses wrote something. And this is usually referred to as the torah. You know, I mention this because the word torah in Hebrew is used later on as the name for this document, these first five books of -- five books of Moses, which were thought of originally as a single literary work. The torah, noun, is always in the singular. And so there's clear evidence in the Old Testament for a written torah at a relatively early date. For example, already in the book of Joshua we read in Chapter 8 Verses 31 and 32, "He built it according to what was written in the Book of the Law of Moses." Joshua copied on stones the law of Moses that he -- that is Moses -- had written. So clearly already in the book of Joshua there is here a reference to not just scattered things that Moses wrote but an entire literary work, a ***safer, a scroll. Or as this translation has it, a book. And there are a number of other references scattered throughout the Old Testament to the fact that Moses had written a book. And I'm not going to read you all of those. They are in the document in your study materials and you can look them up. They are not only listed there but I've actually quoted them so you don't have to stop and look them all up. And together they bear witness to the fact that the Old Testament clearly understands that Moses was the author of a major literary work, not just individual scraps of text. So that would be sort of external evidence within the Old Testament. But there's also evidence within the New Testament that Moses wrote the torah. And I've listed that for you, as well. Some of the most compelling comes from Jesus. For example, in Mark Chapter 12 Verse 19 Jesus says, "Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies." Well, if you believe Jesus is telling the truth, then Moses must be the author. At least of that portion of the scripture. Again, in Luke 24 he says to him, "This is what I was talking about when I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the torah of Moses" and identifying Moses as the author. Here he goes onto say the torah of Moses, the prophets and the psalms. Psalms probably represents all the rest of the books of the Old Testament that are lumped together with the book of Psalms, the Psalms being the most important book in that third section. And so clearly the phrase "law of Moses" here refers to the first five books of the Pentateuch as having been written by Moses. And there are other references from Jesus and throughout the New Testament that in one way or the other make it clear that the New Testament's understanding is that Moses was the author of these books. So there's a lot of evidence within the Bible itself both within the Pentateuch and beyond the Pentateuch that Moses was the author. But that's not the only argument that we have in support of mosaic authorship. In addition to that we can cite literary material and theological material in the Pentateuch that's inconsistent with a later date. And I've given you some examples of that in the document. There are literary phrases, for example, that just don't work at a later date in biblical history because they describe something that existed earlier that wouldn't have been known later or they use vocabulary that wasn't used at a later date. You know, we can look at books that we know were written later and look at the vocabulary that they use and see that this vocabulary used in the Pentateuch is different from the vocabulary used later in many respects. So we can use that kind of argument to bolster the fact. That doesn't prove that Moses wrote it, of course. But it at least helps us realize that it wasn't written at a later date. And even more importantly, we have theological material that's inconsistent with a later period. And here, you know, I can give you an -- just one quick example. In the Pentateuch there are a number of cases where other people, non-Israelites, believe in Yahweh like Abimelech, who is pictured as a believer in the God of Abraham. Now, this is at odds with a later date where if you read the later books in the Bible, they are very aggressive in asserting that the Canaanites and the others in the surrounding culture sort of could not almost believe in Yahweh. They would not be welcomed almost as believers in some cases. It would have been almost an offense to later sensibility, especially postexilic sensibility, to suggest that some of their neighbors could be believers in the same God that they were believers in. So there we get something that's theologically inconsistent with a postexilic period of authorship. And I've listed some other examples of that in the document, as well, just to give you an idea that there are things that we can point to that would simply be inconsistent with a later date. You know, again, that doesn't prove that Moses wrote it. But it's a pretty strong argument that it was written early rather than later. There's also cultural material that we know doesn't fit in a later period. And here I'll give you an example that's actually very commonly cited even by critical scholars themselves. Even Gerhard von Rad noted this one. He says that marriage with one's half-sister was forbidden by later law, Leviticus 18 Verse 9, 11, 20, Verse 17 and some others. But it was still possible at the time of David, II Samuel 13:13. Therefore, the notation in Genesis 20:17 must be an early tradition. Here we've got Gerhard von Rad, who is no friend to conservative biblical interpretation, arguing that here's a cultural element in the Pentateuch that simply cannot be from a later date because it would not have been acceptable in a culture at a later time. And as our knowledge of ancient culture grows, we find more and more examples like this of things that were consistent with -- where the Pentateuch is consistent with the culture of the day that it says that it comes from. But it's inconsistent with later culture. Now, again, that doesn't prove mosaic authorship. But it does tend to support the view of mosaic authorship. And finally, I guess we could point to two other things that might not be very persuasive to critical scholars but at least we should mention them. One is I think we can make a solid argument that there is genuine literary and theological coherence in the biblical text. Now, critical scholars would object to that because for them, they hear coherence as sort of absolute uniformity of the kind we were talking about in a previous question where a single author always writes in exactly the same way. That's not what we mean by coherence. By coherence we mean something like a message that hangs together and a story that hangs together as literature. And one of the things that the more recent types of historical criticism like rhetorical criticism and narrative criticism and canonical criticism have done is to bolster our argument because they've taken the same view that there is actually much more literary coherence to the Pentateuch and also theological coherence to it than earlier critical scholars would have accepted. And the last thing we would point to I think is Jewish and Christian tradition. I mentioned earlier in answering your question, David, that this was not our view but rather this was the view of the -- this was the historic Christian and Jewish position. And I think that we shouldn't run away from that too quickly. While the fact that it's a tradition doesn't prove that it's true, however, this has been the view that has been handed down virtually from as long as there has been a Bible. And I don't think that it's an absurd idea to suggest that the persistence of this tradition and the strength of this tradition is at least a witness to some degree to the truth of the tradition. And while there are other things within Jewish tradition that Christians easily discarded as being unimportant because they weren't focused on Christ, this part of the tradition has remained. Because not only was Judaism convinced that Moses was the author, but also Christianity. And to the point that some have even said that if Moses -- if Moses wasn't mentioned in the Bible, if we didn't know that there was a Moses, we would have to invent him because some individual with breadth of vision and knowledge would have had to put this together. In fact, that's really what historical criticism did. They simply invented a different Moses because they didn't like the one in the Bible. Now, some critics have said that the Moses they invented was really Ezra the scribe at a much later date. And maybe they attribute to Ezra everything that the Bible itself attributes to Moses. But in some way historical criticism has simply reinvented Moses, either as a process or as an editor in the end. Because there must be someone with the breadth of vision to bring this literary and theological coherence to the text. It didn't happen by accident. It didn't happen by scraps of text being jumbled together. You know, it was put together by someone. And there's no reason that we should turn away from the person that the Bible itself says did it. Namely, Moses. So I think we can make a strong argument for mosaic authorship. It won't be proof. It won't satisfy those who are determined to be skeptics. But at least it's an argument that we don't have to be ashamed of. We can stand up and say it has intellectual credibility. And it can stand up at least as well as any arguments that historical critics can make for their theory. So I hope that answers your question, David. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***