> This does not say what was written on the tablets.

Exodus 32.15: "Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back.”

We find out there are two tablets, they are the tablets of the Testimony, and are inscribed on all surfaces. The term is הָעֵדֻת, or "testimony; covenant." Moses received the covenant in Ex. 20-23. This covenant was confirmed in Ex. 24. The ark of Ex. 25 was the ark of the testimony/covenant (25.16, 22; 26.33-34; 30.6). In Ex. 31.18, we find that this covenant/testimony was inscribed on two tablets of stone. In 32.15-19 Moses descended the mountain with these two tablets of the Testimony in his hands (32.15-16). So it DOES say it was written on tablets. There's a thread of thought all the way from chapter 20 to 32. Exodus 40.20 tells us this was put in the ark of the testimony/covenant.

> Again, it does not say mention the content of the tablets.

It most certainly does: "Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.” The second ones were like the first ones. Both contained the words of the covenant given to Moses on Sinai. Exodus 34.28 is explicit: "Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments."

> You presented no justification [b]in scripture[/b] to say that the commandments in stone tablets 1.0 are the ones in Exodus 20.

All I've done, and repeatedly, is present the [b]scriptural[/b] evidence of everything I'm saying. Ex. 34.1 explicitly connects the first tablets with the second. Exodus 34.28 explicitly connects the second tablets with the "10 words" that were on the first tablets.

>> how do you come to the conclusion that the commandments in Ex 20 were written on stone tablets (version 1.0)?
> Exodus 32.15-19.

This does not say what was written on the tablets. It could be anything or everything from the previous chapters until shown otherwise.

>> Why do you say these are the "ten words" that Ex 34 talks about?
> Exodus 34.1.

Again, it does not say mention the content of the tablets. If anything, it limits the contents of the tablets to what is in that chapter (34).
​
You presented no justification in scripture to say that the commandments in stone tablets 1.0 are the ones in Exodus 20.

> how do you come to the conclusion that the commandments in Ex 20 were written on stone tablets (version 1.0)?

Exodus 32.15-19.

> Why do you say these are the "ten words" that Ex 34 talks about?

Exodus 34.1.

That's why I think the accusation of eisegesis is misplaced and illegitimate.

> But I fail to see why you conclude that Exodus 20 contains any "ten words", or why you would use that name for the commandments therein.

What I mean is: the bible says "ten words" are in Ex 34. It says these "ten words", whatever set of commandments they refer to, were written on stone tablets for the second time.

Here is the important question: how do you come to the conclusion that the commandments in Ex 20 were written on stone tablets (version 1.0)? Why do you say these are the "ten words" that Ex 34 talks about? This connection is the apparent eisegesis I mentioned.

> This is disingenuous. This argument would only hold if one scholarly group didn't hold a consensus view.

It's not disingenuous. A majority viewpoint is different from a consensus view. There is usually a majority view on any particular issue, but not necessarily a consensus view. In the case of this particular issue, the viewpoints range all over the map. Besides, as you well know, even a consensus view (14th c. flat-Earth science) is no guarantee of accuracy.

You seem to want to say your viewpoint is correct because you can find a lot of scholars who support that view. What I want to do is discuss the issue with you, not just say, "I found a group of scholars who hold the same position I do, and therefore the matter is settled and not subject to discussion."

> An unthinking YEC could make a similar (albeit much worse) claim with regard to evolution. Let's not pretend these groups have similar sway.

I wouldn't BEGIN too pretend that these groups have similar sway.

> That's just not true. It's something the extreme conservative wing tries to tell themselves.

You're just wrong about this, and I don't know where to go with this. I have read many scholarly articles from many perspectives finding flaws in the old theories, presenting new evidence that leads us in different directions, and even computer analyses teaching us all kinds of new things about these writings. It's an active and exciting fields, and many of the old theories can no longer be considered legitimate. They are under quite a pit of scholarly assault.

> Biblical scholars today agree almost unanimously that the Torah is the work of many authors over many centuries.

It depends what you mean by this. Just about everyone admits that the text was edited by later generations. There are some obvious redactions. It's indisputable. But a "unanimous" conclusion of multiplicity of authors? That just not so.

> And what dates are you considering the "Mosaic era" as archaeology has demonstrated the exodus tale has major anachronisms.

The exodus story has a few anachronisms, not many. These anachronisms fit well with the contributions of later editors, so they're not a problem to the authority of the text.

> It's just the name it was given based on the large number of ritual elements

So what you're saying is it's not really ten, and there are only some ritual elements. In my list I came up with about 5-6 ritual elements, and the list you came up with were not rituals. "Make no idols" is not a ritual. Nor is "don't boil a kid in its mother's milk." So if they obeyed this, it would never happen—and how can something that never happens be a ritual? That's exactly what I meant: it's inaccurate, then, to portray the Exodus 34 as a "ritual decalogue."

> Authorship was not considered important by the society that produced the Hebrew Bible (the Protestant Old Testament), and the Torah never names an author.[2][3]

This is generally true, but particularly not so with Moses. There are dozens of references to the writings of Moses, the law of Moses, and the book of Moses throughout the Tanakh (OT). They seemed to care quite strongly about Moses's authorship.

> It was only after c. 300 BCE, when Jews came into contact with author-centric Greek culture, that the rabbis began to feel compelled to find authors for their books,[2][Notes 3] and the process which led to Moses becoming identified as the author of the Torah may have been influenced by three factors...

See, this is what I hate about Wikipedia. This is the perspective of a minimalist and secular scholarly school or thought that is not representative of the field. But, as we all know, anybody can write and edit wikipedia (though there are some checks and controls). This is simply not true.

> they were just repeating the original false claim and had no additional knowledge.

Is this your opinion, or do you have ANY evidence of this?

> Again not evidence as the scholarly analysis of authorship hadn't been developed yet.

Obviously you give more credence to modern scholarship over the eyewitnesses. You think modern scholarship has more credibility to the people much closer to the time, the language, and the culture. I'm not so easy. I'm would give more weight to our understanding of the Vietnam war than someone writing 3000 years from now.

> And yet the core of the story cannot be 2nd millennium due to major anachronisms.

I know of a few minor ones. This is your second time mentioning this. Possibly you'd care to identify these major, authenticity-destroying anachronisms. And to claim that the CORE of the story is obviously anachronistic just BEGS for evidence.

> The point I'm trying to make is: let's discuss your question and stop appealing to "authority."

Let's not dismiss consensus scholarly opinion as appeals to authority. That's unthinking.

> The chapter is highly debated, with many presenting opinions, so the fact that you can find some scholars to support your position is moot, because anyone can find a cadre of scholars to support virtually any position taken about this text

This is disingenuous. This argument would only hold if one scholarly group didn't hold a consensus view. An unthinking YEC could make a similar (albeit much worse) claim with regard to evolution. Let's not pretend these groups have similar sway.

> It doesn't prove your position; it only says that you believe the say a certain camp of scholars do. This is true, I'd be happy to talk about why this view has grown to be the consensus view and how the other views fell short in detail. But let's not pretend it's anything but much more massively supported by scholars.

> A particular camp of scholars have abandoned the Mosaic source of Exodus/Dt., but a growing number of scholars are also finding that theories of days gone by are not holding up, and there is a trend back toward Moses as tradent of the material, if not the actual writer of a whole bunch of it. The more work that happens, the more tendency is back towards Moses. It's a work in progress, but Mosaic authorship is FAR from abandoned.

That's just not true. It's something the extreme conservative wing tries to tell themselves. Biblical scholars today agree almost unanimously that the Torah is the work of many authors over many centuries. This is not some heated debate, it's false to charaterize it that way. And while certain theories do show holes, the trend is to adjust and amend those, not going back to single authorship or near single authorship because the original problems which caused that to be abandoned still exist.

[url]https://books.google.com/books?id=Dkr7rVd3hAQC&pg=PA21&dq=not+the+work+of+a+single+authorcomposed+over+several+centuries&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false[/url]

> source material more and more likely does date to "back then" (Mosaic era), and we are beginning to see the edits more clearly. Even then, though, we can't discredit the core material behind the edits as Mosaic. It's almost impossible to tell, but we certainly can't cavalierly jump to its inauthenticity.

What's your evidence? And what dates are you considering the "Mosaic era" as archaeology has demonstrated the exodus tale has major anachronisms. And we can discredit the edits as Mosaic absolutely. The whole reason we can see they are edits is because they are so clumsy, merge different writing styles and word choices and even beliefs. It would be virtually impossible to find the coherent edits of an original author on his own work.

> First of all, there is no set of ten (decalog) of anything in Exodus 34. From vv. 10-26 we have a list of 15 items of what "the Lord said, and we can observe that there are 11 parts of chapter 23 that correspond to these 15 elements, but there's nothing in Exodus 34 that is "ten words." Secondly, there's very little in Exodus 34 that qualifies as "ritual." I see the Feast of Unleavened Bread (18), the dedication of the firstborn (19-20, 26), the Sabbath (21), the Feast of Weeks (22-24), blood sacrifice not with yeast (25), and not cooking a young goat in its mother's milk (26). That's 6 things. So where's the support that it's a list of 10 things that are ritual?

It's just the name it was given based on the large number of ritual elements. You are basically arguing with the modern naming convention to distinguish two sets of ten commandments which is a pointless argument. And breaking it up into 10 isn't any harder than with the exodus 20 account which again can be listed multiple ways (see the catholic vs protestant version).

1. Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going, or they will be a snare among you. 13 Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles.[a] 14 Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
15 “Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices. 16 And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same.

[list]2.Do not make any idols.

3.“Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread.

4.The first offspring of every womb belongs to me, including all the firstborn males of your livestock, whether from herd or floc

5.“Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest;

6.Celebrate the Festival of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Festival of Ingathering at the turn of the year.[b]

7. Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord, the God of Israel

8.Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Festival remain until morning.

9.“Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God.

10.“Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”[/list]

Not hard at all.

> "It very much is understood as 'the ten commandments." I agreed in response to the OP that there is no disconnect between Exodus 20 and 34.

Yes there is. And it's right here: "Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”

27 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” 28

"these words" in context are the exact words he just finished saying literally the exact sentence before. That being a reference to any other words is incoherent.

> The Jews and Samaritians of the 5th c. BC considered Moses to be the author. (This is especially poignant if you believe the book was written in the 5th c. BC.)

The wiki link addresses this and is well sourced:

"Authorship was not considered important by the society that produced the Hebrew Bible (the Protestant Old Testament), and the Torah never names an author.[2][3] It was only after c. 300 BCE, when Jews came into contact with author-centric Greek culture, that the rabbis began to feel compelled to find authors for their books,[2][Notes 3] and the process which led to Moses becoming identified as the author of the Torah may have been influenced by three factors: first, by a number of passages in which he is said to write something, frequently at the command of God, although these passages never appear to apply to the entire five books; second, by his key role in four of the five books (Genesis is the exception); and finally, by the way in which his authority as lawgiver and liberator of Israel united the story and laws of the Pentateuch.[19][Notes 4]"

> The Jewish traditions of subsequent centuries considered Moses to be the author.

meaningless. they were just repeating the original false claim and had no additional knowledge. That's not evidence.

> There is no competing theory or counterclaim for the author of Exodus until the 19th century.

Again not evidence as the scholarly analysis of authorship hadn't been developed yet. That's like saying newton is false because no one thought of gravity first.

> There are terms, styles, and themes, that date to the 2nd millennium, not the middle of the 1st.

And yet the core of the story cannot be 2nd millennium due to major anachronisms.

> The historical details in Exodus indicate that it accurately preserves information from the times it describes: The Late Bronze Age, or about a thousand years earlier than the oldest surviving manuscripts of Exodus. It’s reasonable to believe that some of this information had changed or would no longer have been known during the exile, so there is credible reason to believe an early source of this information.

The historical details are anachronistic and innacurate. Just as you would expect with a work that was not contemporaneous to the supposed story.

> Wikipedia is among the best. ... how it's generally understood by scholars. ... It's the prominent opinion and taught at most seminaries

> beyond that I'm not sure what point you are trying to make

The point I'm trying to make is: let's discuss your question and stop appealing to "authority." The chapter is highly debated, with many presenting opinions, so the fact that you can find some scholars to support your position is moot, because anyone can find a cadre of scholars to support virtually any position taken about this text. So rather than saying, "I have some scholars who support my position, which proves that what I'm saying is true," let's talk about the issues and hand and have a good conversation. It doesn't prove your position; it only says that you believe the say a certain camp of scholars do.

You say "Exodus 34 is the ritual decalog (and the rest of what you said)" as if it's a done deal (which it isn't), and then conclude, "It's a factual statement on the development of 34," which is also not a done deal. Let's talk about the text rather than assume your camp of scholars settles the matter.

> There are a multitude of reasons mosaic authorship is nearly abandoned among scholars.

Here you go again. A particular camp of scholars have abandoned the Mosaic source of Exodus/Dt., but a growing number of scholars are also finding that theories of days gone by are not holding up, and there is a trend back toward Moses as tradent of the material, if not the actual writer of a whole bunch of it. The more work that happens, the more tendency is back towards Moses. It's a work in progress, but Mosaic authorship is FAR from abandoned.

> And yes, it is common for edits, which only strengthens the point. And the original source material may date back then, but it doesn't change that they are different traditions clumsily redacted into one story.

But that IS the point: the source material more and more likely does date to "back then" (Mosaic era), and we are beginning to see the edits more clearly. Even then, though, we can't discredit the core material behind the edits as Mosaic. It's almost impossible to tell, but we certainly can't cavalierly jump to its inauthenticity.

> you didn't meaningfully rebut anything that I said

This is a bit disingenuous since the only case you made was two sentences: "Exodus 34 is the ritual decalog. It's actually from an older version of exodus. It very much is understood as 'the ten commandments' exodus is actually a combination of multiple works redacted during the Babylonian captivity."

So let's talk about them. "Exodus 34 is the ritual decalog." First of all, there is no set of *ten* (decalog) of *anything* in Exodus 34. From vv. 10-26 we have a list of 15 items of what "the Lord said, and we can observe that there are 11 parts of chapter 23 that correspond to these 15 elements, but there's nothing in Exodus 34 that is "ten words." Secondly, there's very little in Exodus 34 that qualifies as "ritual." I see the Feast of Unleavened Bread (18), the dedication of the firstborn (19-20, 26), the Sabbath (21), the Feast of Weeks (22-24), blood sacrifice not with yeast (25), and not cooking a young goat in its mother's milk (26). That's 6 things. So where's the support that it's a list of 10 things that are ritual?

"It's actually from an older version of exodus." I did respond to this. I wrote, "since no older version of exodus has ever been found (nor is there proof of such a thing), it's an opinion, not a conclusion." There is no evidence anywhere of an older version of Exodus. If you know of one, please substantiate the claim.

"It very much is understood as 'the ten commandments." I agreed in response to the OP that there is no disconnect between Exodus 20 and 34.

"Exodus is actually a combination of multiple works redacted during the Babylonian captivity.' " I did respond to this. I said this point of view "doesn't speak to the issue of source material. It was common in the ancient world for material to be edited through time. That reality doesn't belie that Moses may have been the tradent behind the text or that the pericopes of Ex. 20 & 34 don't originate in the mid-2nd millennium BC, even though their final editing came about during the Babylonian captivity."

I can continue that case.

[list]* The Jews and Samaritians of the 5th c. BC considered Moses to be the author. (This is especially poignant if you believe the book was written in the 5th c. BC.)
* The Jewish traditions of subsequent centuries considered Moses to be the author.
* Joshua 8.31-32 regards Moses as the author. So also 1 Ki. 2.3; 2 I. 14.6; 2 Chr. 23.18; 25.4; Ezra; 3.2; 6.18; Neh. 13.1; Dan. 9.11, 13, all most likely books from the exilic and post-exilic era when Exodus was allegedly written, as believed by a particular group of scholars.
* There is no competing theory or counterclaim for the author of Exodus until the 19th century.
* There are terms, styles, and themes, that date to the 2nd millennium, not the middle of the 1st.
* The absence of Aramaic, Persian, or Greek influence in grammar and vocabulary or the sort visible in the books that are dated by obvious criteria after the Babylonian Exile (6th c. BC) makes it likely that the Exodus text is earlier than 6th c. BC.
* The historical details in Exodus indicate that it accurately preserves information from the times it describes: The Late Bronze Age, or about a thousand years earlier than the oldest surviving manuscripts of Exodus. It’s reasonable to believe that some of this information had changed or would no longer have been known during the exile, so there is credible reason to believe an early source of this information.[/list]

So I don't think it's straightforward to claim that I didn't "meaningfully" rebut anything you said. By devoid of "meaningful," are you saying that I proposed a different viewpoint than yours? Yes I did, but that doesn't make my response unmeaningful.

There are my rebuttals to your claims. Let's talk.

> With your link you have given an opinion, but we all know that wikipedia doesn't really count as an academic source.

No encyclopedia isn't a source, it's a source for sources and Wikipedia is among the best.

> Exodus 34 is one of the most difficult chapters in Exodus to analyze, and opinions about how to properly understand the chapter vary widely. Your quick conclusion of "Exodus 34 is the ritual decalog (and the rest of what you said)" is inadequate to comprehend or encompass the scope of the argument at hand.

It's a factual statement on the development of 34 and how it's generally understood by scholars.

> That "it's actually from an older version of exodus" is academic speculation from one of the camps, but since no older version of exodus has ever been found (nor is there proof of such a thing), it's an opinion, not a conclusion.

It's the prominent opinion and taught at most seminaries, beyond that I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.

> The idea that "exodus is actually a combination of multiple works redacted during the Babylonian captivity" doesn't speak to the issue of source material. It was common in the ancient world for material to be edited through time. That reality doesn't belie that Moses may have been the tradent behind the text or that the pericopes of Ex. 20 & 34 don't originate in the mid-2nd millennium BC, even though their final editing came about during the Babylonian captivity.

There are a multitude of reasons mosaic authorship is nearly abandoned among scholars. It's a belief that doesn't comport with the evidence at hand from multiple angles. And yes, it is common for edits, which only strengthens the point. And the original source material may date back then, but it doesn't change that they are different traditions clumsily redacted into one story.

> So I guess what I'm saying is that your comment doesn't possibly lend as much to the conversation as you intended, nor is it any kind of a rebuttal of my points.

It rather does, and you didn't meaningfully rebut anything that I said (which is in fact the consensus scholarly opinion). You basically said "I don't believe wikipedia" and "that's just your opinion".

> I'd be glad to continue the conversation with you, but let's stay out of wikipedia, and you can share with me the things that you have researched and are ready to discuss.

There is no reason to stay out of wikipedia save for a few contentious subjects./articles. It's as good as any encyclopedia. If you would like to focus on the sources referenced within the wikipedia page where you think the summary was inaccurate or the source weak that's perfectly fine. Dismissing an article because it's an encyclopedia is unthoughtful.

> You seem to only have addressed the term "Decalogue", not what I asked about it.

Yeah, with the bum reference (Dt. 34), the misnomer ("the decalogue"), the lack of specific reference in Dt. 4 (which you have now told me is v. 13), and that "Decalogue" doesn't appear in the biblical text, I was lost as to what point you were making.

But I did address it. I said, "What makes the most sense is that the 10 Commandments written in chapter 34 (though they are not spelled out in 34) are the same as the ones in Ex. 20) ... Exodus 34 is a record of the giving of the 2nd set of tablets, explicitly said to be repeating what was on the first tablets of Ex. 20ff. (Ex.34.1; Dt. 10.2), identified as the 'ten words' (34.28)."

So perhaps we can continue the discussion from here.

> I didn't mention anything about Dt. 34. (...) If you meant "Exodus 34

Yes, I meant Exodus. Thanks.

> Actually, the term "decalogue" never appears in the Bible. Ex. 34.28 is עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדְּבָרִים ("ten words").

Okay, "ten words". "Decalogue" is derived from Greek or Latin. Whatever the term is, it is what we translate to "The Ten Commandments", the set of commandments later put in the Ark of the Covenant.

> Deuteronomy 4? You'll need to give me the reference.

Deuteronomy 4:13

> Exodus 34 is a record of the giving of the 2nd set of tablets, explicitly said to be repeating what was on the first tablets (Ex.34.1; Dt. 10.2), identified as the "ten words" (34.28).

We agree on that. But I fail to see why you conclude that Exodus 20 contains any "ten words", or why you would use that name for the commandments therein.

You seem to only have addressed the term "Decalogue", not what I asked about it.