Monday Reflections...stepping back in time

First off, this is not my nose, just a free image of someone's nose on the internet.  I have posted it to use the phrase "as plain as the nose on your face."  My Monday Reflections takes me back in time but with some solid answers to early 80's college questions.

I have started my second online masters class and this one is the study of the Pentateuch, the first 5 books of the Bible, referred to also as the Torah.  We are looking at Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.  Any serious study of any book of the Bible usually starts with identifying the author.  This is where I travel back in time.

I went to a small Christian liberal arts college in the early 80's.  There really wasn't a degree on Bible education.  You could get an associates in the area of Contemporary Ministries but the closest to and preferred route for someone entering the pastoral field was a B.A. in Philosophy/Religion.  This is what I hold but what did I get?  Very little in the area of the actual study of the Bible's contents.

I was introduced to a new foreign concept.  "Moses didn't write the first five books of the Bible.  It is a compilation of 4 different authors that we don't know with a redactor piecing them together at least 1000 years after Moses lived and died."  This was called the JEDP theory and it stretched to other books of the Bible.  I had a semester not looking at what the book of Isaiah actually said (which I was looking forward to) but the possibility of the book of Isaiah having 6 authors rather than 1.  This was probably the number 1 reason I did not go onto seminary because if it was more of the same, I'm out.

I am so thankful that the class I am taking now provides rebuttals to this theory that came mostly from German theologians.  I am reading familiar material and it is still as ridiculous as before.  Each letter is an unknown author.  J is the Yahwist.  E is the Elohimist.  D is the Deuteronomist.  P is the Priestist.  The J and E were thought to be more of the oral tradition while the D and P were the written form.  They are in order from when they believe they came into existence from 900 B.C. to 450 B.C.  Moses was referred to in the text but he was not the one who put down the words of God or put them together as we have them.  Further study separates the J contributor into a J1 and J2 and the E contributor into an E1 and E2 which drew from an earlier common source labeled G.  I think there is also an addition of a K contributor but I am not sure where that fits in.  All I know is that it is looking like a bowl of alphabet soup.

In college, this was presented as fact.  Now I get to hear from those who help me understand more fully what I already believe.  What was hypothesized using theories about different words for God and duplicated texts created an almost "evolutionary" type of explanation for how the Bible began.  Instead of taking what the Bible actually says, a complicated answer is presented from very highly educated men and it became what "must be" true.  

For me it is "as plain as the nose on your face."  Jesus asked the question many times, "Have you not read?"  "Scholars, what do you do with all the references to Moses and what Moses wrote and the books attributed to him as 'the book of Moses.'"  It seems that these references made by Bible authors much closer to the event than the scholars is dismissed by our "higher" or more advanced way of thinking.  

I came across this way of thought from a fellow graduate of my school when he commented in a sermon that King David didn't write any of the Psalms.  I shot off an email to ask him about our Lord Jesus referring to David as the author of a psalm.  His answer was that Jesus only knew what the Jewish man on the street knew as common knowledge and lore that King David was the author of some of the Psalms.  I was shaking my head.  "Jesus, the One who had foreknowledge that Judas Iscariot would betray Him didn't know who wrote the Psalms?"  At that moment I realized how much this theory, that we know more than the original writers, had reduced what God had said and it was in the church and among its leadership.

What does the Bible say about Moses in regards to him being the actual author of the first 5 books of the Bible?  This is what was not presented to me then but is now.  Praise the Lord!

Joshua, the one to followed Moses and closest in time to him said, (bold and underline mine to emphasize)

“Be very strong and continue obeying all that is written in the book of the law of Moses, so that you do not turn from it to the right or left,..." Joshua 23:6

The author of 2 Chronicles said of Moses,

When they brought out the money that had been deposited in the Lord’s temple, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of the Lord written by the hand of Moses.  2 Chronicles 34:14

The prophet Ezra said of Moses,

They also appointed the priests by their divisions and the Levites by their groups to the service of God in Jerusalem, according to what is written in the book of Moses.  Ezra 6:18

Nehemiah said of Moses when the Israelites came back from exile to Babylon,

At that time the book of Moses was read publicly to the people. The command was found written in it that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God,... Nehemiah 13:1

Let's throw in how our Lord Jesus Christ refers to Moses.

Now concerning the dead being raised—haven’t you read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God spoke to him: I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob?  Mark 12:26

Let us look at some references that indicate that Moses actually wrote.  Exodus 24:4 says,

And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. He rose early the next morning and set up an altar and 12 pillars for the 12 tribes of Israel at the base of the mountain.

Numbers 33:2 says,

At the Lord’s command, Moses wrote down the starting points for the stages of their journey; these are the stages listed by their starting points:

Deuteronomy 31:22 says,

So Moses wrote down this song on that day and taught it to the Israelites.

Mark and Luke record the common knowledge of Moses as the writer.  Mark 12:19 says,

“Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaves his wife behind, and leaves no child, his brother should take the wife and produce offspring for his brother.

John chimes in with John 1:45 and Philip's education on the matter.

Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the One Moses wrote about in the Law (and so did the prophets): Jesus the son of Joseph, from Nazareth!”

John also gives us Jesus' words in John 5:46 about Moses.

For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, because he wrote about Me.

Does the Apostle Paul have anything to say about this matter?  Romans 10:5 says,

For Moses writes about the righteousness that is from the law: The one who does these things will live by them.

2 Corinthians 3:15 says,

Even to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts,...

Finally Acts 28:23 gives the response of the people to Paul's preaching.  

After arranging a day with him, many came to him at his lodging. From dawn to dusk he expounded and witnessed about the kingdom of God. He tried to persuade them concerning Jesus from both the Law of Moses and the Prophets.

It is "as plain as the nose on your face" that the Bible and the Holy Spirit guided writers attribute the writings of Moses to Moses.  He is referred to as the author.  He is spoken of as actually writing.  Our Lord Jesus Christ chimes in on the matter.  How would you be able to explain away what is given to us?  How would you dismiss information from those closer to the event?  How would the Lord not make a correction in His own remarks about Moses as the writer and the books attributed to him?  

I didn't get any of these biblical references the first go around but I am glad that I have on the second go at it 36 years later.  This blog post might not mean much to you and that is okay.  I would say to you, "Don't dive into this alphabet soup!"  Hold fast to what the Bible says about itself and that it gives us historical facts and reliable eyewitness accounts to supplement the faith God has given to us as a gift.  The grace gift that we hold unto is not a blind leap or something hypothesized but based on the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.  He said He would come back again.  This trustworthy One, who His closest disciples died martyr deaths rather than recant what they had seen,  has given us a document that we can stand upon confidently.

Rant over.

Adam