Uhhh... I know you haven't gotten to this part yet, so El Cazador may be unaware, but Moses was raised by his biological mother, who served as his nurse. There's a good chance he would have learned Hebrew there. There are plenty of arguments against Mosaic authorship, but that's not one of them

Couldn't god have filled him with the knowledge of the written word and how to write?

After all god can do anything.

Actually, many upper- and middle-class Egyptians were quite literate and well-educated. There's all kinds of graffiti inside the pyramids and the towns where their builders lived. Workers wrote all kinds of things on the walls, like how much they hated their bosses, reminders to buy more milk at the market, etc. Archeologists LOVE this graffiti, because it's a great source of information about daily life for the average guy in Egypt, who, apparently, could write quite well. Check out a NOVA article that mentions the graffiti: Who Built the Pyramids?.

And as the Biblical story goes, all the Jews were slaves in Egypt (that's why Moses had the big campaign to get them OUT of Egypt--couldn't take them out if they weren't IN in the first place, ne?) and Moses knew quite a few of them. They could have taught him Hebrew quite easily during his childhood. As I recall, the Bible specifically mentions his sister and brother caring for him as a child; why couldn't they have taught him to read and write Hebrew?

The one theory I've heard is not that Moses wrote the first five books completely from his own information, but that he took word-of-mouth stories and older writings and compiled them together and wrote them down. He was more of an editor than a writer. On the other hand, some people say God told Moses the story and Moses wrote it down, in which case he's also not really the author. I don't think I've ever heard anyone claim that Moses wrote this story all on his own without help.

So whether you believe the story or not, it has internal consistency. El Cazador's remarks just indicate that he hasn't read the story very carefully and he's getting very basic details wrong. Not to mention that he's very ignorant about basic Egyptian history. Next time he should check his facts before he posts.

Just because scribes knew how to read and write doesn't mean that everyone else didn't. That was just their primary job, like a sternographer in court or a secretary taking down letters for his or her boss. There are finds in the pyramids of glyphs written by the workers who built the things. if lowly pyramid builders knew how to write, surely those raised in the Pharaoh's own house would be taught.

I thought it was commonly accepted, if not known, that the 1st 5 books of the Bible were passed down from generation to generation verbally for a considerable amount of time.

Different individuals (can we call them men? They probably were, given cultural considerations) were responsible for remembering different parts of the story. That's why different styles are observed. But the story is still what it is.

Eventually, the nation of Israel had scribes of their own, and they wrote down what people who claimed to be prophets said. If it became obvious what they were saying was true it became part of the Bible. But usually, they killed these prophets because they wouldn't take back what they said. Isaiah, for example, was sawed in two.

Should I say that again?

Plus, God put something in writing for Moses. Why wouldn't he let him read it?

I recommend studying the discoveries of an amatuer archeologist named Ron Wyatt. And the people who took it to the next step, Like Jim and Penny Caldwell.

Then you can put pictures with the story.

El Cazador lived through the Carter years and he's still a sophomore?

Who told this guy that most zealots and scholars believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch? I'm sure he's not the first to notice that Deuteronomy includes the details of Moses' death. Inspiration includes more possibilities than God simply dictating His Word into a scribe's ear. Might want to look into any college level intro to Old Testament. Check the index under "authorship."

And another thing, the Bible is about Who, not how! Let's not get into silly arguments about the Bible not being scientific. That ain't the point.

I appreciate that the correspondent fancies himself a questioner, but let's remember that the purpose of questions is to find answers, not just to ask more questions.

Even if Moses didnt know Hebrew, and had written the first 5 Books in Egyptian, they were probally translated later, such as Bibles are tranlslated into English. Hebrew was the language of the Hebrews(obviously), so it would have been translated.

Or Moses could have dictated it to a scribe who wrote it in Hebrew.

Of course this is all stating that Moses did not know Hebrew, which is something pretty debatable in itself, as he certainly knew how to speak Hebrew.

Obviously, Moses didn't write the portion about his own death. Duh.

However, as to the "Moses didn't know Hebrew and didn't know how to write" thing, I would doubt that. As Timothy mentioned, Moses was raised by his biological mother even though he'd been adopted by the Pharaoh's daughter. Also, El Cazador's point that the scribes of the day were all priests... well, Moses' parents were both of the tribe of Levi, which was the priestly tribe, so chances are his family was literate.

Not to detract from what yous said, songstress, but don't forget that the Levites were not preiests until after the exodus, before that Levi was just another tribe.

It seems to me that of all the Hebrews freed from Egypt at least one of them would know how to write. Dictation then seems plausable especially give 40 years to do it.

At the same time I think it is also very likely Moses learned to read and write Egyption. Just because we could'nt translate it until the Rosetta Stone doesn't mean it wasn't possible back then.

I can't provide a source right now, but I seem to remember one of the arguments against Moses' authorship was that Hebrew wasn't a written language until well after Moses' death. However, some group found written Hebrew back as far as Abraham's time.

Of course, none of this proves anything one way or the other.

"Obviously, Moses didn't write the portion about his own death. Duh."

Hmmm. What if he did?

Wouldn't that have been a kick in the pants? He's sitting there writing furiously as God dictates the story and then, "Oh, and you die in about 3 weeks when you get eaten by a hungry lion or something. Better write that down."

Setting aside the question of Pentateuchal authorship, El C's blithe assertion in his ambling preamble that the Bible does not hold to the application of the principles of logic is assinine. More accurately and, I suppose, kindly put, it is profoundly uninformed. El C needs to read more and perhaps write less on this subject. Many of mankind's most brilliant minds have applied themselves to this topic for centuries and there is an abundance of good information readily available. One of the very best quick reads on the topic would be the classic "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis, but there are many others as well.

And mark the sage wisdom of ted i in his comment above, "the purpose of questions is to find answers, not just to ask more questions". He knows whereof he speaks.

This is a quote from a intensive Bible study website: "Until the twentieth century, it was believed that Moses could not have written the first five books of the Old Testament because writing was said to be virtually unknown or, at least, not commonly used at his time.

Modern archaeological discoveries, however, show that writing was in common use prior to the time of Moses, and that Moses had the capacity to write the first five books of the Old Testament."
http://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/nbi/407.html

ReligiousTolerance.org provides two arguments, one that Moses did write the Pentateuch, and one that material was added to Moses' writings through the centuries.

We were always taught that Moses had primary authorship over the first five books, probably writing them in the 40 years of wondering around the desert. We were also taught that some editorializing was done later. That's not to say it's not accurate, but information about Moses' death, for example, would have been added later. Also, much of it was passed down from generation to generation by word-of-mouth. Many of the Jewish holidays are used as opportunities to do just that.

Just my $0.02

If none of the Hebrews could read, why did God bother to write down the 10 Commandments?

...And in what language were they written?

Um. I like it when Frank makes me laugh about the Bible better than when El Cazawhoozie makes me think about the Bible—I get enough of that in Bible study.

Bring back the funny!
Stop jumping that shark!

Why do so many people blather on about religious tolerance in the U.S.?

Religious tolerance was never part or parcel of the Founding; the entire reason for the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment to the Constitution was to keep religious intolerance from tearing the country apart.

El C., if you don't like protesting gin mills and porn dens, then don't do it, but don't try to spoil other people's fun.

El C. applies logic to the authorship of Genesis. Authorship is a side issue, but he reasons from some questionable assumptions. Mostly he addresses a literalist and extreme position. The problem with this strawman approach to debunking anything--from the Bible to Bush's 2d Inaugural address--is that it hasn't much to do with what proponents are actually saying.
--Moses couldn't have written the Pentateuch because he couldn't speak Hebrew. How do you know that? Is that because people couldn't speak more than one language?
--Moses couldn't "write" anything because priests always try to keep literacy a priestly mystery. Is that true? Who founded the Mediaeval universities, for Pete's sake? El C.'s attitude toward priests is as cliched and paranoid as Nancy Pelosi's attitude toward greedy big corporations.
--Pace El C.'s assumptions, there can be degrees of authorship. Given that there are as many as four traditions edited together in the Pentateuch, it seems unlikely that Moses literally wrote the books, but those traditions might very well go back to him.

There is nothing that self-conscious skeptics can say against any literalist/fundamentalist teachings about the Bible that the great majority of believers haven't already used to develop their own less literalist understanding of it, e.g., read the introduction to the Pentateuch in the (very Roman Catholic) Jerusalem Bible.

I always learned (as I am now; I'm 15, and in High School doing Bible Studies for Theology)that the Pentateuch started as an oral tradition, eventually written and edited by 4 groups of men at different times: The Yahwist, The Elohist, The Pristly, and the Deuteronomist. Scholars have broken it down to these 4 by looking at writing styles (what is included, what is left out, what form the story takes, etc), and certain parts of certain books of the Pentateuch can be identified with these authors based on style and estimated time written. Every commentary on the Bible that I've seen has referred to these 4 groups as the writers of the Pentateuch.

Read Exodus 34:27
God tells Moses to write down the laws of the covenant and Moses does so.

The following is something I read:
"A team of researchers at the Technion Institute in Haifa conducted a linguistic analysis of the book of Genesis by feeding its 20,000 words into a computer programmed to study word usage and occurrence. The results touched off a new debate on the writership of the book. For years Biblical scholars have held to the so-called documentary hypothesis—that Genesis was not written or compiled by one person, Moses, but by several writers, some of whom lived long after Moses’ time. The researchers, however, reported that the computer study indicated an 82-percent probability that the book was written by one person and that it revealed the stylistic “fingerprints” of only one writer.

Though unconvinced, Professor Moshe Weinfeld of Hebrew University acknowledged that the study “perhaps has proven” that the documentary hypothesis “was not correct in asserting that portions of the Book of Genesis were probably written in the modern era.” Another professor conceded that the study “may show that some areas of the hypothesis have to be reinvestigated.”"

Jesus Christ attributed the compiling of the Law to Moses.—Luke 24:27, 44"

Cheese and Sean beat me to it. The "documentary hypothesis", first thought up by Benedict Spinoza in the 1600s(!) is still the consensus among scholars of the topic.

It's now a four-source hypothesis, more or less. Nowadays people like Israel Knohl are saying there were other editors, like the "Holiness Code Redactor" who revised P before it joined the JED. I wrote a little project on that once, actually; it proposed that Baruch 6 / Letter of Jeremiah in the Catholic Bible was based on P law with no knowledge of H law.

McWert, you'll be pleased to know that some think that the J source of the bunch was written by a woman. J incidentally extends beyond the Torah into the books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings. That explains why the icky stuff in Judges 19's Gibeah episode reads a lot like the icky in the Sodom story. Since the Gibeah icky is man-on-woman and the Sodom icky is man-on-man they figure that the Gibeah icky was probably a true story (icky!) and that the Sodom icky was a fanfic based on that. (I personally think that if Gibeah was true, which it probably is, then it's the sort of thing that could only be remembered for a century or two, which means J was probably written not long afterward, around 900 BC or so. But that is just my take on it.) Anyway Richard Elliott Friedman's written a number of good, accessible books on this topic. Except that he doesn't think that J stood for Judith like I do.

I appreciate El C's questions, but I think he needs to do a bit more research. The Hebrews as of 1200 BC spoke a language not all that different from Canaanite - and people were writing in that language all over the place (do a Google on "Ugarit"). In particular they were writing to and from the Egyptian court, which was ruling over them at the time (do a Google on "Amarna"). Expand that to the time the J, E, D, and old-P were written - 700s-600s BC - and you've got documents written in full-on early Biblical Hebrew at Lachish and Jerusalem (do a Google on "Lachish ostraca").

i always find people who immediately dismiss the bible and thoughts of the authorship to be questionable themselves. why doubt an entire book just because it is that particular book - the bible? for me, its kind of easy - i know moses wrote it because Jesus said he did. good enough for me! (John 5:46
For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.)

1) Simply put, all of Scripture speaks of Mosaic authorship. None of Scripture speaks of a JEDP authorship of the first 5 books. Joshua, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, the Psalms (several authors), Daniel, Malachi, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, and the author of Hebrews all describe the authorship of Moses in one way or another. Several possible arguments arise:

a) Ignorance. The whole of the Scriptural writers were not aware of information which far more wise 18th century German rationalists knew.

b) Perpetuating the myth. The whole of Scriptural writers were perpetuating the myth that Moses wrote the Torah, the Law of Moses.

Either way you go, the integrity of the authors then is clearly thrown into question.

2) The direct testimony of Jesus Christ about the authorship of Moses. My wife commented on this. Jesus is either telling the truth or not. The Christological implication are profound based upon how you answer this question.

3) Moses' death. A humanist view would be to view the last chapter of Deuteronomy as being written by the author of Joshua. A theological view would state that the last chapter of Deuteronomy was foretold to Moses in advance. One of those prophecy things which pervades the whole of Scripture.

4) Moses' literacy. He was raised in the Pharonic household. As such, there is no evidence to suggest he wouldn't know how to read and write. Further, Moses was raised by his mother, a Hebrew (Exodus 2:8). Contrary to popular cartoon versions, he did not have an epiphany later on in life that he was an Israelite. He was raised as an Israelite, speaking and writing Hebrew. It should be noted that even as far back as Moses' time, Egypt was a place of learning and scholarship. In fact, the Greek Old Testament was penned specifically for Egyptians. It continued to be so until Mohammed's minion took over.

5) Genesis. Genesis precedes Moses' life. One must take into account that Moses recorded other oral and/or written tradition when writing Genesis.

As to El Cazador, I would add, "Abraham said to him, "They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.' And he said, "No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' But he said to him, "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead."'" Luke 16:29-31

Frank, I must plead, give up the religion stuff. You're getting too serious here. Give us more In My World's and less scripture reading.

Joshua and 1-2 Kings are part of what scholars call the "Deuteronomistic History" (Google it), a attempt to explain Jewish history from creation up to the reign of Josiah as a function of God's pleasure or displeasure. Why's it called Deuteronomistic? Well...

According to 2 Kings, King Josiah of Judah had found a book in the Temple that explained the Law of Moses. What 2 Kings says of this book makes it clear that it culminated in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is largely made up of a long speech which Moses gave to his people. Hence Deuteronomy and its predecessors suffice as the Torah for the Deuteronomistic Historian.

Deuteronomy also agrees with the prophet Jeremiah, who in turn agrees with much of Isaiah 1-39. Friedman thinks Jeremiah's circle wrote the Deuteronomistic History.

Josiah doesn't say anything about the "Priestly" (P) portions of Torah... because the Deuteronomist either hadn't read P (much less H) or else didn't believe in it/them.

Of course, once you get into Chronicles and the later Psalms (remember that only some of them claim to be of David), the Torah did exist in full by then, as did the Deuteronomistic History. So we shouldn't be surprised to find references to Moses authorship there either.

JEDP, that is, like, a century old. The new hypothesis from the scholarly community is the JEDI theory.

J and E wrote this wonderful mystical saga about a great force which bound and united all living things and could be tapped into through meditation and prayer to perform miracles.

For instance, the crossing of the Red Sea before "I" and "D" began editing looked like this...

A dejected Aaron, padawan in training, standing at the Red Sea kicks stones and complains to Moses that the Sea is just too large. Moses, with a look of dejection which could peel paint which only a Jim Henson muppet could express, sighs, shakes his head, and raises his staff. The force parts, the sea, the rebel forces cross, and the sea closes back up entombing thousands of stormtroopers. Miriam begins to perform the R2-D2 happy dance and whistle and the rebel forces continue to march toward freedom.

However, when "I" got ahold of the text, he introduced Jar Jar Finkelstein, had the rebel forces checking for midichlorian counts like diabetics checking insulin counts in a candy factory, and basically ruined the story.

We give thanks to the force for D, Dp, Dtr, Dyoda, and all the other Dprimed editors who obliterated the I texts, and gave us the Torah as we know it.

You guys do realize that the above scenario has as much historical, theological, archaeological, and rational basis as the JEDP theory, right? You are worth more than that. You can't sell your soul for so little.

Sorry, last post was not heidi but husbandofheidi. While she,too, is a purveyor of the Lucas truth, she would never degrade the Biblical account with such an analogy.

El Cazador presents a horrible piece of argument. I hope that El Caz writes better SciFi than he does polemic.

Al sends

Heidi's hubby, since you think my soul is for sale, would that mean you're willing to buy it? How about a rental plan. Right now I think a fair rate per annum is, oh, $20,000. Come up with that amount and mail it to me, and my soul's yours 'til 19 Feb 2005.

Alternatively how about I look to my soul and you look to yours.

I ask apologies from the other posters for the mockery, but he started it :P

david, if he antes up the cash, do i have to feed it and pick up its socks, too? ;) souls might be a high maintenance thing to have hanging about the house...

I am so offended, dear, you said you didn't mind picking up my socks.

David,
Given your response on here and your blog, you seem to have taken the satire as a direct attack on you. This was not my intent. Several JEDP adherents responded on the list. That's the problem with English, no distinctive second person plural above the mason-dixon line (y'all).

If you would like to continue, the sign on my e-mail account says 'open'.

I find this arguement as amusing as those who think they can see different authors in Shakespere's writings and others'. It's alomst as if whenever we come across a great work we cannot accept that it came from a single individual if indicated that it does. As if a single individual (God inspired or not) is not capable of doing such things. Additionally, the documentary hypothesis seems to completely ignore tone. By that I mean that the writing style changes based upon the subject matter. I too fancy myself a writer and I'll tell you the truth, the way I write changes from fictional work, non-fictional work, letters and posts. Does this mean that since there's a stylistic change between these 5 mediums there must be 5 people writing them? I believe that it's quite possible that the stylistic changes in the text was done to emphasize the subject matter - to focus on a particular point to the exclusion of all others (mostly). Are there still questions that need answering? I'd say yes but I believe that "need" is too strong a word. I think the bigger question is, "What does all this change thoelogically?" The answer: Nothing. This is an interesting topic for scholars to debate and posture over and this allows so-called learned amatures to one-up one another with their knowledge of the latist scholarly gossip. Who cares? Knowing if Moses did or did not write the first five books of the Tanakh (I can be a sparty pants too!) is irrelevant. It's what you do with what is said that matters.

i always find people who immediately believe the bible with no thoughts of the authorship to be questionable themselves. why believe an entire book just because it is that particular book - the bible? for me, its kind of easy - i don't believe moses wrote it because Jesus said he did. not good enough for me! (John 5:46
For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.)

Referntial integrity isn't proof.

You all have to now believe me because what I just wrote was true.

Nyah nyah nyah.

corsair, you never cease to crack me up. especially on your site, even though we disagree, you are one whopper of an entertaining fella.

Defense Exhibit #1 – “Ethos Suicide”

[YOU SAID]“It is stated in the Bible, at least in mine, and believed by most religious zealots and scholars, that the first five books of the Old Testament were written by Moses.”

So in other words the scholars and translators believe this, but here is my uninformed opinion. Nice way to kill your ethos in the first argument. Now to you first point which I would label defense exhibit #2 “a sweeping generalization”

[YOU SAID]“That’s the problem. He couldn’t read or write. Public education didn’t exist. They had scribes that could read and write. No one else knew how.”

So what you are saying is that only priests ever learned how to write in the ancient world, ever. Absolutely all of the Egyptian literature is hence written by priests alone, without single exception. If you ever would like to share your magic Gallop poll time machine with me I would be interested. Let’s move onwards to bigger fish.

[YOU SAID]“you think Moses had a bunch of free time and hung out with the priests and learned how to read and write, what language did he learn? The Egyptians wrote in hieroglyphics. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew.”

Of course, who were all those pesky slaves and what language were they speaking? Does a non-indigenous lingua franca ever influence an indigenous population? Do any Anglo-Americans speak or write any Spanish in this English speaking country? Do any Poles, write and speak Russian? Onwards to more fun stuff.

[YOU SAID]"Scholars had been reading ancient Hebrew for a few hundred years (The original King James Version was completed in 1611, not to mention the Bishop’s Bible and others.)

You are simply misUNinformed here (to quote a great man). Hebrew scholars existed throughout the dark ages. Please reference the Diaspora Jews in the Holy Roman Empire.

[YOU SAID](And don’t try that tired old line, “God works in strange and mysterious ways.” That’s the biggest cop out of all time.)

No need to do that, you haven’t presented a cogent or historically viable argument yet. I generally won’t play the mystery card, although Im not sure that it is a “cop out.” If needed, more on this topic later.Let’s move onwards to Defense Exhibit #3 “The Ad-hominem.”

[YOU SAID]I have no delusions of convincing anyone. I already commented on arguing theology with logic.

Sheesh, what sort of school did you attend? So you insinuate a lack of logical thought among “lay theologians” and do so with abysmal logic. Nice tactic. I have a proposition. The next time you post try painting concentric red circles on your chest and giving the rest of us rifles.

[YOU SAID]“You can’t really learn unless you question. If you don’t question, you fall into the clutches of the shaman and their power.

Yeah Man! Far out! Fight the power!

[YOU SAID]Yeah, I know, this sounds a little scholarly

Little being the imperative word.

[YOU SAID]but next time I’ll examine the original Dirty Old Man.”

Sounds like fun, but Im going to leave the “examination of dirty old men” to experts like yourself. By the way, thanks for being candid with your abnormal hobby of dirty old men.

Squiggles and Hugs...Luther