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| Death of Moses (James Tissot) |
And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the LORD shewed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, And all Naphtali and the land of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea, And the South, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, unto Zoar.
And the LORD said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither. So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD. And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.
Hmm...
So, if we're to believe all the Christians and Jews who tell us Moses wrote the Pentateuch, including Deuteronomy, we have to believe Moses wrote about his own death. Even the great Jewish historian, Josephus, tells us that Moses wrote it. Josephus is the historian Christians quote as the earliest existing 'evidence' for Jesus. They tell us his authority is beyond dispute.
Hmm...
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| Thomas Paine |
The writer of the book of Deuteronomy, whoever he was, (for it is not an anonymous work), is obscure, and also in contradiction with himself, in the account he has given of Moses.
After telling that Moses went to the top of Pisgah (and it does not appear from any account that he ever cam down again), he tell us that Moses died there in the land of Moab, and that he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab; but there is no antecedent to the pronoun he, there is no knowing who he was that did bury him. If the writer meant that he (God) buried him, how should he (the writer) know it? or why should we (the reader) believe him? since we know not who the writer was that tells us so, for certainly Moses could not himself tell us where he was buried.
The writer also tells us that no man knoweth where the sepulchre of Moses is unto this day, meaning the time in which the writer lived; how then should he know that Moses was buried in a valley in the land of Moab, as is evident from his using the expression of unto this day, meaning a great length of time after the death of Moses, he certainly was not at his funeral; and on the other hand, it is impossible that Moses himself could say that no man knoweth where the sepulchre is unto this day... "
"... The writer has nowhere told us how he came by the speeches which he has put in the mouth of Moses to speak, and therefore we have the right to conclude, that he either composed them himself, or wrote them from oral tradition. One or the other of these is the more probable, since he has given in the fifth chapter a table of commandments, in which that called the fourth commandment is different from the fourth commandment in the twentieth chapter in Exodus....
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason. 1795
So, as Thomas Paine has clearly shown, Moses could not have written Deuteronomy at least, and the laws Christians and Jews believe were given directly by their god to Moses, and which he wrote down, are nothing more than oral traditions at best and just made up by the Bible's real authors at worst.
And so the entire body of Old Testament biblical law, including all the food taboos, dress codes, marriage laws, proscribed punishment for transgression, etc, has no divine authority at all. It is nothing more than an oral tradition later written down or even the invention of one or more writers writing long after the events they were describing. And all the genocides, child abuse, misogyny, sanctimonious homosexual condemnation, racism and war crimes supposedly ordered by this god are nothing more than retrospective self-justifications for antisocial acts and attitudes and attempts to absolve themselves of responsibility for their own actions.
And the entire foundation of both the Jewish and Christian religions has collapsed. All because of a few careless words in the Bible and poor editorial control.
You really would have expected an omniscient god to make a better job of it than that, wouldn't you?
*When one considers the shoddy work God did making the world how hard is it to imagine He messed up the Bible?
ReplyDelete*See, that's supposed to be funny.
Disingenuous are those that spend multitudes of time trying to dispute the existence of something that they claim does not exist. I certainly wouldn't spend massive amounts of time on something that does not exit. The Bible is right - they know in their hearts that He IS, EVEN while denying with their mouths. And they will have to answer to Him . . .
ReplyDeleteEven though you haven't the guts to post under your name and choose to snivel as "anonymous," I will pause long enough to thumb my nose at you AND your fantasies of a god-creature who's "will" you blindly genuflect to morning, noon and night. What a wasted life you must be leading, if your post here is to be taken into consideration.
DeleteAnonymous.
ReplyDeleteYour inability to deal with the subject of the blog is noted, as is your resort to infantile threats.
Do you seriously imagine any normal person is going to be afraid of your imaginary friend and so ignore basic logic in case it comes to get them?
Terroristic threats are the hallmark of an evil creed.
ReplyDeleteDear Anonymous at 14:39 on 2011-10-23,
ReplyDeleteDisingenuous are those who claim that their argumentative opponents are wasting everyone's time, instead of attempting to address the issue under discussion.
I submit the following questions: how do you explain the inconsistent nature of Deuteronomy's description of Moses' death?
Is it more likely that a human being, or many human beings simply made some mistakes?
Or would you rather believe that the ineffability and infallibility of God have just been wildly oversold?
Okay, first off, my impression of this article is that you were on some website trying to look up inconsistencies in scripture, and you saw Thomas Paine's quote. Not that you have ever read any of Deuteronomy besides 34 and a few choice verses that you can easily twist to your own meaning. And secondly (this is my argument against your's) in 31:14 God tells Moses that his end is coming and we can be sure that at least 31-33 were all written that same day. Moses takes Joshua to the temple tent God appears as a pillar of cloud and of fire. And Then God gives Moses this song and tells him to write it down and show it to all the people. So all that happens in 31 and then in 32 we see the song, and then after the song we see Moses telling the people the reason for the song and that they must sing it all the time and tell their children and all that, then it says in verse 48 "That very day the Lord said to Moses" and he tells him to go up on the mountain and that he's going to die, you can go read it yourself. Then in 33 all we see is Moses blessing his people kind of a farewell speech. So 34 could not have been written that day and had to be written by either Joshua or Ezra. And it wasn't written until some time after his death hence the "to this day" part. So my point is that it was no secret where moses was going to die... Like everyone knew because he told them, the account of his death in 34 is just a restating of 32... But you would know that if you read around and didn't just pick out random things...
ReplyDeleteJoshua Morgan
ReplyDelete>my impression of this article is that you were on some website trying to look up inconsistencies in scripture, and you saw Thomas Paine's quote.
Obviously, the idea of anyone actually reading a book is new to you.
I see you haven't made any attempt to deal with the points Tomas Paine raises - how could the writer have written about what Moses said and particularly about his burial when, by this account, no one was there to witness it, and why does he use the words 'unto this day' (Duet 34:6), clearly indicating the passage of considerable time between the events described and his description of them.
Your opening ad hominem indicates to me that you knew you were not going to be able to deal with these points but needed to tell yourself you had dismissed them. My blog, How Fundamentalists Cope With Unwanted Facts, explains this psychological process and how it is essential for religious people to use it.
I'm sorry? Does the scripture say that Moses was alone?
Delete>"how could the writer have written about what Moses said?"
MOSES DOESN'T SAY ANYTHING IN THAT PASSAGE! And why are you automatically assuming Moses was alone? You are seriously so prideful of yourself that you think you can tell me how I'm thinking? You CAN'T know how I'm thinking, you can't believe! Because the holy spirit enables it. I'm not trying to get you to accept Christ, though I would love it if you did. I am simply trying to show you, you are wrong! You know nothing of this, you are completely out of your field, go back to science or something if you want to have success because in this you are sounding like a fool. As I'm sure I would if I was debating science.
The question of whether Moses was alone is immaterial to the problem of him (apparently) having written about his own death. I can't think how you managed to confuse them.
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