Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ Exodus

[Dinosaur Jesus]

> 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.

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

> 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.

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.”

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.

[jimwalton]

> 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.

[John Philip Sousa]

> 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.

[jimwalton]

> 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.

[John Philip Sousa]

>> 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.

[jimwalton]

> 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 in scripture 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 scriptural 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.