Who Wrote the Bible and When?

I don't understand this statement. Isn't the measure you give is the measure you get a statement of consistency?

 

I'm not into eunuchs that much, but Jesus did seem to think they're okay. In Matthew 19:3-12, He finished telling his disciples that anyone who divorced his wife except for grounds of adultery could not remarry, and if he did, he'd be committing adultery. The disciples replied, wouldn't we be better off not to marry at all. That's when Jesus brings up eunuchs, whether "born that way", made that way, or chosing to make themselves that way. He concludes "The one who can accept this should accept it." (NIV) That's what He said. What did he mean? It seems to me, He's saying that if you don't want to marry, your best alternative is being a eunuch. Is it to be taken literally? Origen, who was famous for non-literal interpretation of scripture, took this particular part literally, and castrated himself. I prefer to take it figuratively, referring to the ideal of celibacy, and I must admit it's one are where I choose to fall short of Jesus' ideal.

I see nothing in these words that would suggest Jesus was gay or endorsing homosexuality, as is sometimes claimed. Eunuchs and gays are two very different things. Some writers have put this together with John's reference to the disciple whom Jesus loved (John 13:23, 19:26, 21:17) to conclude Jesus and John had something going. But this would take the Greek agape (spritual love) to eros (erotic love) which it clearly does not. It also assumes that "the disciple whom Jesus loved" refers to John himself, although the passages don't say that. The non-canonical Gnostic Gospel of Philip says that the disciple Jesus loved the most was Mary Magdelene, "and used to kiss her on the ...(missing fragment).

 

I understand. Consider truth has universal application. It is Jesus' only surviving comment of any variety on sexual orientation. I do not think Jesus endorsed any sexual activity one way or other. In the kingdom of heaven we are "as the angels", yet what God has joined... Civil unions however are cultural treatments and are not necessarily what "God has joined," as to Jesus' preface, "you do not understand."

 

You realize, I hope, I was being facitious. I consider myself to be a Progressive Christian, and I ain't no pussy. My point was that truth is not always at an advantage politically in contests with appealing, organized error.

 

Doctrinaire authoritarianism is fast-acting. Truth is timed-release.

 

I like that. Infinite patience brings immediate results.

 

It would. Socrates also never awarded any degrees to his students as well. What would our parents say to that?

 

Obviously then, Plato was practicing philosophy without a license.

 

Absolutly. He was among the most renown names on the alumni list, of the University of Real Life.

 

Ha! Next you'll be telling us Jesus was never ordained.

 

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It is interesting that you mention that, because there is little information regarding his education. It just says that he debated with Rabbies from a young age, and that when Baptised, the Holy spirit came down on him like a dove. When he got older, people called him Rabi, and were surprised at the authourity in his words, which is an indication that he was ordained for ministry, though not a confirmation of it; making it almost fascinating what great biographical, geographical, and visual details that have been left out of the Gospels. Hardly anything is written about his childhood, the exact location in which he stayed, and above all what he looked like. The Hebrew Bible tells us exactly the width and hight of Noah's Ark, while the New Testament does not even tell us if Jesus was Black or white. Only the book of Revelations gives us this strange description of Jesus, when in heaven, of having a tongue like swords, and other strange features that are beyond imagination. It is as though the new testament scholars were just screaming for people to write Apocrypha, about Jesus making his toy birds to come to life.

 

Thanks. i was kiddin'. He was in itinerant preacher with his own ministry outside the frameword of the Temple, although you might say his baptism by John the Baptist constituted a kind of ordination.

 

After talking to a stranger about Christ, being in the Christian Union, that person actually asked me why Jesus' birth certificate had not been found, if he really existed? I felt like telling him "Well do not have a birth certificate, unfortunatly. Would his drivings licence do?"

 

Who wrote the first five books of the Bible, called the Torah or Pentateuch, which gave the Jews the "law of Moses"? Tradition says Moses, but the Bible doesn't say. One problem that led people to question Moses as author is the the text describes the death of Moses. It also says Moses was the humblest man on earth, which would be a rather "unhumble" statement if he were the author. Likewise, the statment in Deutoronomy 34 "There never arose another prophet in Israel like Moses..." suggests that they were written in the future by someone who had an opportunity to know of other prophets and compare them to Moses. A list of Edomite kings in Genesis 36 include some who lived after Moses supposedly died, some passages refer to Moses in the third person, etc. A tradition ascribes some of these passages to Joshua, but they appear to be in the same style as texts preceding it.

The so-called "Documentary Hypothesis" posits that the Pentateuch consists of material from at least four different source documents put together by at least one redactor. The author of one of the source documents was called J because he referred to God as "Jehovah" or "Yaweh". Another was called E because he consistently referred to God as "Elohim". A third was called P (for Priest), because he is associated with ritual, sacrifice, purity laws and other priestly matters. And the fourth is called D, for Deuteronomy. Wellhausen, drawing on the independent scholarship of Graf and Vatke, proposed a three-stage development of Judaism, with J and E belonging to the earliest stage of a "nature relgion", D reflecting an intermediate spritiual/ethical stage, and P coming in the last stage of priestly/legal religion centered on the Temple. This theory was supported and refined in the still-respected book Who Wrote the Bible, 2nd edition (1996), by Professor Richard Elliott Friedman. He makes a case for the theory based on: the convergence of several different lines of evidence. Sound reasonable?

 

Deuteronomy 31:24-26) And it came about that as soon as Moses had finished writing the words of this law in a book until their completion, 25 Moses began to command the Levites, the carriers of the ark of Jehovah’s covenant, saying: 26 “Taking this book of the law, YOU must place it at the side of the ark of the covenant of Jehovah YOUR God, and it must serve as a witness there against you.

Other Bible writers also testified that Moses wrote the Pentateuch.
(Joshua 8:31) . . .as it is written in the book of the law of Moses. . .
(Daniel 9:13) 13 Just as it is written in the law of Moses. . .

Even Jesus called it the "law of Moses".
(Luke 24:27) . . .And commencing at Moses and all the Prophets he interpreted to them things pertaining to himself in all the Scriptures.
(Luke 24:44) . . .that all the things written in the law of Moses . . .


Also Moses’ writership has never been questioned by the Jews.

So if Moses did not write the Pentateuch, then as John Laux said in his book Introduction to the Bible;
“If the extreme Documentary Theory were true, the Israelites would have been the victims of a clumsy deception when they permitted the heavy burden of the Law to be imposed upon them. It would have been the greatest hoax ever perpetrated in the history of the world.”

 

Perhaps Moses wrote about his demise in a dead language.

 

Deuteronomy is a special case. That book was "discovered" by priest Hilkiah in the Temple 622 B.C., preliminary to King Josiah's jihad against the idolators and a movement to centralize worship in the Temple (a development that seems to have been unknown to the early figures of Israel's history). That book identifies Moses as the author, but is believed to have been written by somene else--Hilkiah or another temple priest, perhaps?

The fact that the Pentateuch was called "the Law of Moses" doesn't settle the question of its authorship. I don't think anyone is disputing that tradition ascribed the law to Moses, and that it was called the Law of Moses. What it was called and who wrote it are two different questions. I've frequently called it "the law of Moses, myself, and will probably continue to do so.

Moses' "writership" has been questioned by many Jews, starting with Isaac Ibn Yashush in the eleventh century. Richard Elliott Friedman is a Jew, who writes: "..There is hardly a biblical scholar in the world actively working on the problem who would claim that the Five Books of Moses were written by Moses".

That is assuming that the only reason the Israelites "permitted the Heavy Burden of the Law to be imposed upon them" is that they thought Moses wrote it, rather than that they thought it came from God.

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None of your statements address the reasons I mentioned for doubting that Moses was the author:the fact that he describes his own death, describes himself as the most modest of men, says "There never arose a prophet in Israel like Moses, the list of Edomite kings, etc.

 

Charlatans.

 

Was that statement addressed to unbelievers?