spin-off: who wrote the torah / first five books of the bible

[doubledutch]

spin-off from the 'history' thread. what does your religion teach about the author/source of the torah / books of moses / first five books of the bible? (and what religion is it?) is that what you, personally, believe as well, or do you believe something different?

just curious, as the statement was made that christians believe god wrote the torah, and i was taught (seventh-day adventist) that moses wrote these books, with prophecy/revelation/divine inspiration allowing him to go all the way back to the beginning and beyond his own death. i was also told maybe someone else (another human) finished writing for him after he died.

(i don't have a religion and don't know what i think, although some evidence seems to suggest multiple human authors over time, or that if it had a single original source, then it was probably altered by others over time.)

[MyLittleWonders]

I am, for lack of better term, Christian (and that is a whole other conversation, so I'll leave it at that ). In any church I have been in, it was taught that Moses, through the divine hand of God, wrote the Torah. No explanation has ever been (satisfactorily) given as to who finished writing when Moses died. As my religious beliefs have evolved over time (and changed and come back again), I tend to go more with modern (mainstream) scholarship on this one and take the "Documentary Hypothesis" as much more likely as it makes a lot of sense out of why things are in there the way they are.

[Smokering]

I believe it was God who wrote the books, but using Moses' hands and brains, if that makes sense. I believe in inerrancy, but that doesn't preclude good hard spadework being done by the human writers. In the case of Genesis I think it's commonly believed that Moses used historical (presumably oral?) sources to gain information on events that occurred before his lifetime. Others believe he acted more like a scribe, simply copying down what God dictated. I wouldn't stake my life on either scenario, but definitely believe that the ultimate author was God.

[umsami]

Growing up Presbyterian, I was always taught Moses. I seem to remember them sort of being dictated by God... but it's been awhile.

Then later, when I went to Seminary and studied the Pentateuch, there was a whole bunch on different authors... that went by initials.... I remember J and E... but there were others. Once again, it's been a long, long time.

[TzippityDoulah]

growing up non-denominational and Assemblies of God Christian, I was taught that God told Moses word for word what to write. (I actually don't think people thought a whole heck of a lot about it ... that's just what was belived and that was that. I don't recall anyone asking more about it honestly... except maybe a stray person or two who never considered themselves christians anyhow)

what do I believe now? oh gosh... well... (heh) I think that Moses wrote it and likely someone else did too. maybe at the same time, or maybe afterwards to clean it up and make it better understandable.

[genifer]

Christian here, and ditto what Smokering said, pretty much word for word.

[doubledutch]

interesting. i was raised seventh-day adventist and we were taught that all the biblical writers were "inspired" by god but not literally just transcribing word-for-word.

[Comtessa]

The Documentary Hypothesis certainly makes the most rational sense of any of the explanations, and it explains why certain stories appear to be exact copies of earlier Babylonian myths. If the "P" editors were compiling their scriptural tradition while in exile in Babylon, it would make all the sense in the world for them to co-opt their oppressors' creation myths and replace their gods with the Jewish One True God. The implicit message written into the scripture is, then, "you might be more powerful than us right now, but our God is still the God of the universe."

There are plenty of instances in the Pentateuch that appear to be multiple authors and editors working with traditional material. There are two creation stories in Genesis; 1:1-2:4a appear to be a later creation based on the Babylonian creation story, while 2:4a-3 seems to be an earlier story and probably originated in ancient oral tradition. Other explanations don't really make sense of the existence of multiple accounts of the same event in the same book. (A careful reading of the Flood, BTW, will reveal the same thing - two different stories, smushed together into one.)

[imnottelling]

Originally Posted by doubledutch

i was also told maybe someone else (another human) finished writing for him after he died.

Joshua.

[Smokering]

Comtessa: The other explanation for the similarity of the biblical creation and flood accounts is that the events occurred and were remembered by different people groups. YMMV, of course, but from an anthropological perspective it's certainly a rational explanation. As for the two creation accounts, the first is more general and describes the creation of the universe, while the second hones in on the creation of man, thus setting the scene for chapter 3. It's not just the same thing twice. I don't see that that explanation fails to account for the phenomenon, and it's a commonly-held one.

[MyLittleWonders]

But the two creation stories don't even tell the same story in the same order - I could buy the argument that the first tells the creation of the universe and the second the creation of man if they followed the same creation order, but they don't.

[Comtessa]

There are lots of differences in the two stories, besides the order of creation:

- in the first story, God creates by saying - "God said... and it was." In the second story, God creates by doing - shaping, building, making.

- in the first story, God is pictured as transcendent, creating at a distance; in the second story, God is anthropomorphic, immediate. (Most scholars believe that this represents a later and earlier understanding of God, respectively.)

- in the first story, God is called "Elohim," an odd plural name usually used for God by the priestly establishment of the 6th century BCE. The second story uses the name "YHWH," a much older title which pre-dates the later "Elohim."

- in the first story, man and woman are created at the same time, together; in the second story, man is created first (a rough draft...), and woman is created second.

- In the first story, the world before creation is described as a watery chaos. In the second story, the world before creation is described as a barren desert. (This is understandable if the original myths come from two different places, geographically. Babylon, a city built on the side of a river, is more likely to see "chaos" as unpredictable water... whereas the nomadic Israelites, wandering in the stony wilderness of ancient Palestine - even Egypt, perhaps - would have understood chaos as a barren desert.)

- they differ in style and tone: the first story is repetitive, almost liturgical, the sort of story you would read at public prayer. If this version was indeed composed by the priests in the 6th cent. BCE (as most scholars believe), then this would make sense, as would the story's climax on the seventh day - the Sabbath, the day "ruled" (at that time) by the priests. The second story is a narrative, with characters and dialogue - the sort of essential cultural myth that would be passed down in oral tradition long before it's written down.


They just aren't the same story. And the biblical authors never intended them to be read as the same story. They're two different accounts of the same event, placed side-by-side. They were both preserved because they both tell some truth about humankind and God and the creation of the world - but I don't think it makes any sense at all, given the evidence, to read them as a single continuous historical narrative.

[Smokering]

I never said they were to be read as a single continuous narrative. I said one described the creation of the universe, and the other the creation of man.

They don't follow a different creation order - that argument rests on the word "formed", which can also be translated as "had formed", quite happily reconciling the two. As for your other objections, they're not contradictions so much as different emphases. It's perfectly possible to place the creation of Adam and Eve on the same day, with Adam still being created first. It makes sense that God's transcendence would be emphasised in Genesis 1, which deals with the creation of the whole world and various forms of matter, and His immanence emphasised in Genesis 2, in which His personal relationship with mankind begins to unfold. And so on. Also, barren desert vs watery chaos? Where do you get that from?

[genifer]

Yeah, Genesis account of creation does say the same things twice, like Smokering said. The first account is the general account of the creation of the universe, the second telling is, like smokering said, honing in on the creation of man and his fall. I had a hard time with it as well, bc at first glance it does look like its telling two different stories. I wonder if the problem comes in with the division of the chapters. I think this is wha threw me.

At the end of the first chapter, I think we finish reading about creation. Then the beginning of the second chapter in the KJV it talks about 'this is the generations of how the heavens and the earth are made...'. Then it goes into a summary of those first acts of creation. Then it focuses on the 6th day, giving details that were simply not added in the overview of the creation event in ch. 1. The seperate origins of man and woman are brought into sharper focus. So the first ch of Genesis is a summary of the creation event. From ch 2:4b we get more detail of what happened in relation to how man and woman came about. And it all fits beautifully with the rest of scripture. It really really does.

Im not trying to argue, Im just trying to give info that ... I dont know, maybe you didnt know about? Trying to clarify things for ya's.

[MyLittleWonders]

As I'm not trying to argue either. But, we definitely see things a bit differently. The interesting part, to me at least, is that even if they are two completely different stories written in two different time periods/geographical locations, and not written by Moses at all, there is intense beauty and truth in both stories. Scripture, to me, is actually more beautiful without the need to make it all fit together, if that makes sense. When I tried to remove contradictions, I ended up right out of Christianity. Being able to embrace contradictions because, to me, it is not written by God, but rather written by man in an attempt to capture God in the only way we know how (through words that are ever so inadequate), has brought more truth to the Bible than was ever there when I thought it was inerrant "Truth."

So while I can understand and agree that the first creation story is an overview of the creation of the universe and that the second creation story focuses on the creation of man, they are not the same story with just a different lens applied. They are two different stories. But, that is a freeing thought to me. It actually allows me to see them each in their profound truth without getting bogged down by the need to make them fit together when they were never meant to fit together.

In the first story, I am reminded that God is a God of order. That his fingerprint is on everything, and because of that, we are called to honor all life, all creation, all the universe with reverence because it was created by and is in constant creation by God.

The second story is a wonderful analogy of our role as parents. (I am reading a wonderful book unrelated to the study of Genesis that explained this so well.) Just as God created the first man and woman (no matter whether that was through evolution or creation or something else we have not yet figured out), we continue to create men and women through procreation. Just as God set man and woman in paradise, we are to raise our children in paradise (peace, calm, harmony, unconditional love). God fed them, taught them, showed them how to care for the garden (as we are to teach how to do chores/care for their immediate environment and the greater environment), he clothed them when they realized their nakedness (we are to "clothe" our children with our love when they mess up). He also disciplined them, but he never abandoned them. Combine the second creation story with the other stories of forgiveness, redemption, compassion, and love, and you get an amazing picture of God in our lives and how we are to be towards those in our lives.

There is amazing Truth in the two stories without any need to try and justify why they are, in fact, the same story, or how they were truly written by Noah. Personally, I have studied the entire Bible from a literal point of view. I have held the Bible to be the inerrant Word of God for many, many years. It just ended up not working for me - I could no longer deal with issues like the incongruity between, for instance, the two creation accounts in Genesis. Again, I'm not trying to argue either; just trying to show that another perspective can be as valid as the first.

[genifer]

I see what you're saying and I used to look at it that way too. It didnt matter to me if there were contradictions, if the world was made in 6 literal days about 6000 years ago, or if it was over millions of years the way secular science teaches. I saw it that way too, it became very interesting when I realised there werent any contradictions tho, that the contradictions I and others thought were there are actually part of God's beautiful plan for humanity and simply arent contradictions, but partly misunderstanding on our (the reader's) part. When I realised all this, the depth of it all hit me like a ton of bricks.

Here we are probably trying to defend our beliefs... it doesnt matter really tho...

[Comtessa]

Originally Posted by MyLittleWonders

Scripture, to me, is actually more beautiful without the need to make it all fit together, if that makes sense. ...Being able to embrace contradictions because, to me, it is not written by God, but rather written by man in an attempt to capture God in the only way we know how...

Thanks, PP, you put this so much better than I could have. That's exactly the way I see it. I grew up Catholic, with minimal biblical literacy of any kind, and really discovered the Bible as an adult. It has been an incredibly meaningful, important, deeply challenging journey. Every time I open the Bible I have to prepare to be disturbed, challenged, frightened, cowed, angered, shaken. Somehow I have a hard time understanding the folks who say they "read the Bible for comfort" - I don't find much comfort there at all!!!

Sorry, that was a tangent. What I really wanted to say is this: in my studies as an adult, I have come to the conclusion that the biblical text is absolutely jam-packed with Truth - though much of this truth is not empirical fact in the Enlightenment sense.

Two creation myths in the same text don't have to be reconciled into one set of historical "facts" in order to be True. They don't have to have the same author, or have been written at the same time, or even have the same point of view. Heaven knows there are a multiplicity of perspectives in the Bible - there's a whole chorus of different understandings clamoring for our attention.

There are as many ways of understanding Truth as there are of understanding God - and in the end, aren't those just two words for the same entity after all?

[javilu]

as one who has just recently begun thinking about the bible/torah, and how it might fit into my life, this thread is great to read. please, keep going!

[Smokering]

FTR I don't think it necessarily impacts upon inerrancy whether the stories were put together, by Moses or someone else, from orally transmitted sources - be they liturgical or otherwise. Luke is thought to have researched and talked to eyewitnesses to piece together the Gospel, as well as drawing on earlier Gospels; I don't see why Moses (or whoever) couldn't have done the same thing. And I can't recall offhand if Moses is actually said within the Bible itself to have written the first five books (minus the last part recording his death, obviously).

I am an inerrantist according to the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy, and as such I find the concept of embracing contradictions absurd. So I'm not pro-contradictions, as it were. I just think viewing the accounts as contradictory is a result of reading the texts incorrectly, and that it actually requires more reaching to assert that the accounts are contradictory than that they are not.

[Comtessa]

Originally Posted by Smokering

I can't recall offhand if Moses is actually said within the Bible itself to have written the first five books (minus the last part recording his death, obviously)

He is not. The tradition that claims that Moses wrote the Pentateuch is quite old, though, and is connected (I'm sure) with the concept of Moses as the one who "gave the law to the people." Not much of a leap to go from "Moses the Law-giver" to "Moses the author of the Books of the Law." And if a later community (such as the hypothetical "P" editor(s) of the 6th century BCE) wanted to be sure that their "new" compilation of the Law would be accepted by the people, then it would be entirely sensible of them to claim that Moses wrote it.

I just think viewing the accounts as contradictory is a result of reading the texts incorrectly, and that it actually requires more reaching to assert that the accounts are contradictory than that they are not.

To argue that two accounts of the same event contradict each other is quite a simple (and in many places, obvious) argument to make. Did Jesus heal one demoniac in Gerasa (Mark 5:1-20 and Luke 8:22-39), or two demoniacs at Gedara (Matthew 8:28-34)? Obviously the same event is described in all three passages, but just as obviously, the details differ. Do they contradict each other? Certainly. The real question is, "does it matter?" If there was one demoniac or two, if it was Gerasa or Gadara, does it matter a whit to the essential truth of the story?

To argue that any one account contradicts "what actually happened" is a lost cause - nobody actually knows "what actually happened," because we don't have eyewitness accounts of any of it. All we have are the stories. And the storytellers weren't concerned with "what really happened" in the way that we are, in our post-Enlightenment information age. So we don't know what really happened. We don't know IF it really happened. What we do know is, in some way, these stories really are true. And so, because they are true, it doesn't matter if they happened or not.