Days of Creation/24 Hour Periods, Age of Earth/6000 Years

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mattrose
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Re: Days of Creation/24 Hour Periods, Age of Earth/6000 Year

Post by mattrose » Wed Apr 13, 2016 1:19 pm

morbo3000 wrote:To clarify the phrase, anonymous means that the document itself doesn't identify its author. In Paul's letters, he said "I'm paul. I'm writing this letter to the church at corinth." None of the gospels do that. If Mark was connected to Peter, he could have said "I'm Mark, I knew Peter. These are the things he said about Jesus." Or John: "My name is John. I was Jesus's most beloved disciple. I was with him for 3 years. This is my story." The author never says "I'm Luke, I knew Paul."
If all you mean by continuing to insist that the gospels are anonymous... is that they are not letters (a genre which states the name of the author within the document itself), then, I agree, we need not be having this discussion (since it doesn't matter). Ancient biographies were not expected to include the name of the author within the manuscript itself. You're either making a category mistake or we're not in disagreement.
The bigger question, though, is why does this matter to you? I'm not pushing an agenda. It doesn't matter to me one way or the other. Except that I want to let the Bible be what it is, and not what traditional views about it have said it is. And that seems to be a common theme for people on the board. Why is the traditional authorship of the four gospels so important to you?
I'm not pushing an agenda either. Personally, I have doubts about whether the 4th Gospel was authored by John the Apostle. I think it could have easily been another 1st century eye-witness. So it's not that I have an agenda to defend traditional authorship claims. I just think there's no good reason to doubt the traditional authorship for the 1st three gospels. There's nothing noble about being as skeptical about things as possible.

The information I provided about the specific manuscripts was collected from Brant Pitre's book "The Case for Jesus." Specifically, the chart with the information was documented from Simon Gathercole's article "The Titles of the Gospels in the Earliest New Testament Manuscripts."

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morbo3000
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Re: Days of Creation/24 Hour Periods, Age of Earth/6000 Year

Post by morbo3000 » Wed Apr 13, 2016 1:39 pm

steve7150 wrote: I think we will have to agree to disagree as Duet 34.10 says "But since then there has not risen in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face" and this alone seems compelling to me.


This is an honest question, not snark. What does Deuteronomy 34:10 say about Moses authoring Genesis?

Additionally I asked what the motivation would be to fabricate Moses as the author of the Torah (which includes Genesis) from the 30 or so references to him.


Can you show me where the Torah says that Moses wrote the five books of the Pentateuch? I see YHWH telling him to write specific things.

Wikipedia page on Mosaic authorship]

The Torah has six mentions of Moses writing passages:

Exodus 17:14: God commands Moses: "Write this, a remembrance..." The context indicates that God is commanding Moses to record Joshua's battle with Amalek described in Exodus 7:8-13.
Exodus 24:4: "Moses wrote all the words of the Lord." This apparently refers to the laws which God has just given in Exodus 20:21-23:33.
Exodus 34:28: Moses "wrote upon the tablets the words of the covenant, ten words." The identity of these "ten words" is not made clear, but probably is a reference to the Ten Commandments given several chapters previously, in Exodus 20.
Numbers 33:2: "And Moses wrote their goings out according to their journeys by the commandment of the Lord: and these are their journeys according to their goings out." (King James Version) This refers to Moses recording the journeys that the Israelites took within the desert.
Deuteronomy 31:9: "Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, the ones carrying the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord" and Deuteronomy 31:24: "Moses ... finished writing the words of this law on a scroll." It is not clear just what Moses wrote. According to the Talmud, it in fact refers to the entire Pentateuch, but it is usually taken to be the collection of laws that make up Deuteronomy 5-30.[6][need quotation to verify]

I also asked why would external sources be more reliable then biblical sources?


They aren't more reliable. They are a confirming source. Example: The biblical account is the only witness we have to the exodus. That makes it one source. If there were additional sources, such as archaeological evidence, or contemporary historical documents, they would be external sources that help confirm the event. That doesn't make either the biblical or external sources more or less reliable. It means "“In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.”

Genesis as you know is not just about the creation account, it has a lot of info about the Hebrew people and Abraham and about God and many other topics.


I don't think I've tried to discredit the book of Genesis. I've said that the first chapters are of the genre: Creation myth. Whether of not it is man-made or God made is neither here nor there. Apocalypse is a genre. People believe John's Revelation is from God. This simply means that God used the genre of Apocalypse as the means to communicate his vision. In the same way, we could say that God used the genre of Creation Myth, of which we have many other ancient examples, to communicate the way he created the earth, and stars, and moon, etc.

In everything I'm saying in this thread, I'm operating with three steps of hermeneutic.
  • 1. What does it say. What does it actually say. Not, what has been said about it.
    2. What did it mean. What was the cultural context for the writing.
    3. What does it mean to us. How do I appropriate what the Bible said to its original hearers into our 21st century context.


In nearly all of these conversations in this thread, I've been focused on #1. What does it say. When I talk about genre, I'm talking about #2. In other threads, I talk about what I believe #3 is. But in this thread, I've been narrowly focused on #1 and #2.
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Re: Days of Creation/24 Hour Periods, Age of Earth/6000 Year

Post by steve » Wed Apr 13, 2016 7:15 pm

In the absence of internal evidence that the books were written by a specific author, the burden of proof is on someone who wants to claim a specific author.
This is an interesting matter for discussion: "Where lies the burden of proof?"

Let us say that, two-thousand years from now, in the year 4016, some copies of "Mere Christianity" are found, of the 500th printing, printed in the year AD 2400. While no earlier copies were extant, every copy found, whether from the 25th century or later, attributes the work to one C.S. Lewis.

Let us say, also, that there were found the works of some Christian writers from the 21st century, who had read the 5th printing, and who also referred to this book as a work of Lewis.

I think it safe to predict that the general consensus of literary scholars in the year 4,016, would take at face value the fact that "Mere Christianity" was authored by C.S. Lewis, even though no copies nearer than 350 years to his time had survived.

It is hard to imagine any reason that the churches of the 20th-through-the-25th centuries would have falsified the authorship of one of their most beloved and influential Christian books. Of course, there is that possibility, but no reason to suggest it.

If it was known that the man C.S. Lewis was a man qualified and motivated to write on Christian apologetics, this would give an even greater credibility to the "tradition" of Lewis' authorship.

Now comes a man with another theory. He believes that "Mere Christianity" was either written anonymously, or that it originally bore the name of a different author. He believes that the original author was either unknown to the original publishers of the first edition, or that they (or the publishers of later editions) knew the true author, but had reason to conceal his true identity from the church.

These would be interesting suggestions to explore, and worthy of inquiry, but if our conspiracy theorist had zero positive evidence to support his thesis, and zero negative evidence against the traditional view, and all he had was his subjective skepticism about the unanimous testimony of surviving documents, scholars might feel justified in looking askance at his assertions.

Of course, either the "traditional view" or the "conspiracy theory" might prove to be correct, but would there be any doubt as to which side bears the burden of proof?

Since the Gospels were written in the latter part of the first century, and were regarded by all known church authorities by, say, the late second century (e.g., Irenaeus and Tatian—AD 170), to be the works of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, it would seem uncommonly bold to place the burden of proof upon the traditional view, in favor of a skeptical, 19th century conspiracy theory. If these men did not write these books, then we must assume one or more of the following (counterintuitive) things:

a) The Gospels fell into the hands of the first-century church without the church knowing the identities of those who handed them to them—perhaps appearing on the pulpit one night while everyone was asleep?;

b) The church was aware of the identities of the true authors, but had a vested interest in deceiving the next generation about their true origins—either out of embarrassment about the true authors or out of mere spite, wishing the future generations of Christians to live in deception concerning the origins of their founding documents (conspiracy theory—Big Time!);

c) The first-generation recipients of the original documents (which, unfortunately, did not bear the names of the authors upon them) knew the authorship, but failed to inform their children and the church leaders of the second generation, who also failed to inform the third generation, etc.—so that, less than a century after the books were written, the descendants of the apostolic communities were left to fabricate "traditional" authors for each book;

d) While these decades-removed custodians of the Gospels picked some, predictably, important characters to whom to attribute two of the Gospels (Matthew and John), they, shockingly, attributed the authorship of the two remaining documents to men of little standing and extreme obscurity in the early church (Mark is almost—though not quite—as obscure in scripture as is Tychicus; Luke is never named in scripture, except as a name in lists of Paul's companions, at the ends of a few letters).

It seems strange, if someone wished to fabricate authoritative authorships out of thin air, that men of stature would be passed over in favor of relatively unknown men. For example, Papias (one generation removed from the apostles) says that Mark wrote as Peter's interpreter, which seems to be Mark's principal claim to fame in the early church. If Mark really did not write the book bearing his name, why would the church, or Papias, attribute the book to Mark instead of Peter? If the early church wanted, falsely, to attach Peter's authority to the document, why not bypass the obscure, alleged middle-man?

Only a person prone to favor unlikely conspiracy theories (unfortunately, the description of a great number of biblical scholars) would suggest, without any evidence at all, that the early Christians either forgot, or deliberately deceived their children and grandchildren concerning, the true authorship of the Gospels.

Of course, if the church never actually knew the true authorship of these documents, there is no explanation as to why they so readily, and so early, accepted them as genuine, while rejecting a great number of apocryphal counterparts. My impression is that the church leaders were skeptical about accepting "apostolic" authority from unknown or unconvincing sources (Acts 9:26; Rev.2:2; 1 Thes.5:21). Yet, some time considerably earlier than that of Irenaeus, the church was not skeptical about any of these four books or their authors (Against Heresies Bk. 3.11.8).

It would seem that a theorist speculating that the church either forgot, or deliberately misrepresented, the known authorship of their most sacred texts, within less than a century of their being penned, would certainly bear the burden of proof before any objective tribunal.

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Re: Days of Creation/24 Hour Periods, Age of Earth/6000 Year

Post by steve7150 » Wed Apr 13, 2016 7:53 pm

This is an honest question, not snark. What does Deuteronomy 34:10 say about Moses authoring Genesis?



Additionally I asked what the motivation would be to fabricate Moses as the author of the Torah (which includes Genesis) from the 30 or so references to him.


Can you show me where the Torah says that Moses wrote the five books of the Pentateuch? I see YHWH telling him to write specific things.



Wikipedia page on Mosaic authorship]

The Torah has six mentions of Moses writing passages:

Exodus 17:14: God commands Moses: "Write this, a remembrance..." The context indicates that God is commanding Moses to record Joshua's battle with Amalek described in Exodus 7:8-13.
Exodus 24:4: "Moses wrote all the words of the Lord." This apparently refers to the laws which God has just given in Exodus 20:21-23:33.
Exodus 34:28: Moses "wrote upon the tablets the words of the covenant, ten words." The identity of these "ten words" is not made clear, but probably is a reference to the Ten Commandments given several chapters previously, in Exodus 20.
Numbers 33:2: "And Moses wrote their goings out according to their journeys by the commandment of the Lord: and these are their journeys according to their goings out." (King James Version) This refers to Moses recording the journeys that the Israelites took within the desert.
Deuteronomy 31:9: "Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, the ones carrying the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord" and Deuteronomy 31:24: "Moses ... finished writing the words of this law on a scroll." It is not clear just what Moses wrote. According to the Talmud, it in fact refers to the entire Pentateuch, but it is usually taken to be the collection of laws that make up Deuteronomy 5-30.[6][need quotation to verify]




I also asked why would external sources be more reliable then biblical sources?


They aren't more reliable. They are a confirming source. Example: The biblical account is the only witness we have to the exodus. That makes it one source. If there were additional sources, such as archaeological evidence, or contemporary historical documents, they would be external sources that help confirm the event. That doesn't make either the biblical or external sources more or less reliable. It means "“In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.”











According to the references you provided, the Torah claims that Moses wrote the "law" and the "ten commandments" and the goings of the Israelites. This is the bulk of the Torah and in fact the Torah is often called "the law." You claim that these references refer only to very limited sections but the "law" is most of the Torah and the "goings" is most of the rest plus are there any hints or allusions that anyone else also contributed to the Torah? Not that I am aware of.
You said you are looking for confirmation but the 30 references to Moses outside the Torah are from multiple authors. I don't know exactly how many but probably at least a dozen. A dozen or more different authors all confirming Moses authorship. I fail to see what is lacking in this? Additionally there is an outside source of confirmation which is the Talmud. The Talmud claims to be based on oral tradition stretching back to Moses so in the Talmud we have numerous authors confirming this oral tradition of Moses authorship. This is non biblical support although perhaps not non biblical enough for you. So the people closest to the Torah always believed Moses wrote it, in fact never was there a doubt about until critics popped up over 3,000 years later.

On a less persuasive note but still may be worth mentioning , I did see a documentary on the Exodus and it showed film of "Mt Musa" in Saudi Arabia which claimed to be Mt Sinai and in nearby caves there was writing on the walls about the journeys of the Israelites and of course "Mt Musa" meaning Mountain of Moses. This Mt Musa was fenced off and guarded by the army BTW.

Lastly the author of the Torah knew a lot of info that only a member of the Israelites could know like Egyptian names, geography, customs and words and was conversant about their gods implying he was there.

Finally
Duet 34.10 calls Moses a prophet who knew the Lord face to face and it is placed as an epilogue to Duet and in fact the Torah at least IMO. So the placing of these statements and the content of them seems to me to be very compelling that Moses was the most important figure in Israel who knew God face to face and at his death the Torah abruptly ends. This seems tightly connected to me.

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