01-02-2024, 03:54 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-02-2024, 03:59 PM by Dave Armstrong.)
Torah Manuscripts: Reply to an Atheist
Torah Manuscripts: Reply to an Atheist
This is a portion of a long reply to a guest article on Jonathan MS Pearce’s atheist blog, by “Lex Lata”: a sharp and fairly civil atheist commentator (a professor?), with whom I have had some stimulating dialogue now and then. His piece was entitled, “A study in straw: Apologetics, alphabets, and the Torah” (11-30-22). His words will be in blue.
The prevailing consensus among modern scholars of the Bible and Semitic philology (the study of structure and history of languages) is that the Torah—or Pentateuch, if Greek is your cuppa—was largely composed or compiled in its present form during the first millennium BCE.
“Composed” and “compiled” are two different things. The latter allows for the possibility of it having been written in the 13th century BC (the period of Moses), but later edited and translated according to the changes in language, sometime after King David’s reign (c. 1000 BC), when classic Hebrew was formulated. This is what I contend. The two things aren’t mutually exclusive.
This would place it compiled some centuries after the latest period depicted in it. . . .
Our earliest confirmed Old Testament manuscripts are papyrus fragments and scrolls dated to at least a thousand years after the time of Moses, and are written in first-millennium Hebrew with a late first-millennium script. We have zero extant inscriptions, tablets, or papyri of the Torah itself—not even fragmentary—from the second millennium.
Compilations, later editions, manuscripts, etc. are always relevant factors for ancient works: especially those that rely heavily or solely on oral traditions at their onset. This is nothing novel at all, even for biblical books (which can possibly undergo revision like any other books). If we compare the pentateuch or Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) to secular works, this is readily apparent.
The oldest extant manuscript for the Histories of the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484 – c. 425 BC), for example, is Codex Laurentianus LXX, from the 10th century (see more information on his manuscripts). By my math that is 1300-1500 years after it was written. The History of the Peloponnesian War was written at the end of the 5th century BC by Thucydides (c. 460 – c. 400 BC). The earliest manuscript for it dates from the 11th century (1400-1500 years later). The Geography by Strabo (c. 64 BC – c. 24 AD) was composed shortly before the birth of Christ. The best manuscript is from the end of the tenth century (900-1,000 years later).
I think readers get the idea, without need of further examples. The moral of the story is: “don’t try to make out that biblical manuscripts or editorial / linguistic revisions, etc., are something wholly unique, or uniquely problematic.” Lex clearly exhibits his bias in his next sentence:
Yet certain advocates of an orthodox or fundagelical bent cling to the tradition that Moses himself wrote the first five books of the Bible, ca. 1450-1250 BCE.
In other words (reading in-between the lines), “some fanatical, irrationally religious folks [complete with a derogatory term for them] ‘cling’ to the antiquated, thoroughly refuted notion that Moses actually wrote the pentateuch.” Following his line of reasoning, this appears to mean that Lex rules out as a virtual impossibility the scenario whereby Moses wrote the books, which were then subject to revision in later centuries (mostly due to evolving language). But it’s not impossible at all. Compilations and revisions do not change the fact that a human being or collection of people originally wrote what is being edited.
I believe the dates for the life of Moses are c. 1340 or 1330 B.C.-c. 1220 or 1210 B.C. (extrapolating from Egyptologist Kitchen A. Kitchen’s date for the Exodus: c. 1260-1250 BC). Some Christians (mostly Protestant) follow a chronology which is about two centuries earlier than the one I follow, and which most Christian archaeologists espouse.
The prevailing consensus among modern scholars of the Bible and Semitic philology (the study of structure and history of languages) is that the Torah—or Pentateuch, if Greek is your cuppa—was largely composed or compiled in its present form during the first millennium BCE.
“Composed” and “compiled” are two different things. The latter allows for the possibility of it having been written in the 13th century BC (the period of Moses), but later edited and translated according to the changes in language, sometime after King David’s reign (c. 1000 BC), when classic Hebrew was formulated. This is what I contend. The two things aren’t mutually exclusive.
This would place it compiled some centuries after the latest period depicted in it. . . .
Our earliest confirmed Old Testament manuscripts are papyrus fragments and scrolls dated to at least a thousand years after the time of Moses, and are written in first-millennium Hebrew with a late first-millennium script. We have zero extant inscriptions, tablets, or papyri of the Torah itself—not even fragmentary—from the second millennium.
Compilations, later editions, manuscripts, etc. are always relevant factors for ancient works: especially those that rely heavily or solely on oral traditions at their onset. This is nothing novel at all, even for biblical books (which can possibly undergo revision like any other books). If we compare the pentateuch or Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) to secular works, this is readily apparent.
The oldest extant manuscript for the Histories of the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484 – c. 425 BC), for example, is Codex Laurentianus LXX, from the 10th century (see more information on his manuscripts). By my math that is 1300-1500 years after it was written. The History of the Peloponnesian War was written at the end of the 5th century BC by Thucydides (c. 460 – c. 400 BC). The earliest manuscript for it dates from the 11th century (1400-1500 years later). The Geography by Strabo (c. 64 BC – c. 24 AD) was composed shortly before the birth of Christ. The best manuscript is from the end of the tenth century (900-1,000 years later).
I think readers get the idea, without need of further examples. The moral of the story is: “don’t try to make out that biblical manuscripts or editorial / linguistic revisions, etc., are something wholly unique, or uniquely problematic.” Lex clearly exhibits his bias in his next sentence:
Yet certain advocates of an orthodox or fundagelical bent cling to the tradition that Moses himself wrote the first five books of the Bible, ca. 1450-1250 BCE.
In other words (reading in-between the lines), “some fanatical, irrationally religious folks [complete with a derogatory term for them] ‘cling’ to the antiquated, thoroughly refuted notion that Moses actually wrote the pentateuch.” Following his line of reasoning, this appears to mean that Lex rules out as a virtual impossibility the scenario whereby Moses wrote the books, which were then subject to revision in later centuries (mostly due to evolving language). But it’s not impossible at all. Compilations and revisions do not change the fact that a human being or collection of people originally wrote what is being edited.
I believe the dates for the life of Moses are c. 1340 or 1330 B.C.-c. 1220 or 1210 B.C. (extrapolating from Egyptologist Kitchen A. Kitchen’s date for the Exodus: c. 1260-1250 BC). Some Christians (mostly Protestant) follow a chronology which is about two centuries earlier than the one I follow, and which most Christian archaeologists espouse.
[F]anatical atheists . . . can’t hear the music of the spheres. (Einstein, 8-7-41)
![[Image: fFgSnL4.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/fFgSnL4.jpg)
