Bible books before Genesis and where did Moses get his information from?

by truthseeker 16 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  LtCmd.Lore

  Where did Moses get his information from?

  In order for me to answer this, you must fist be able to comprehend and extremely complicated religious equation.

  A concept so advanced, that religious leaders are widely considered more credible than all of science combined. It has answered thousands of questions, from 'where did the universe come from?' to 'why do bug bites have to be so dang itchy?'

  The equation: G = A - S

  Let G = "God did it" and A = "Answer" and S = "Science"

  Can you feel the overwhelming insight rushing through your mind?

  Seriously though, that's all it takes. But if you think about it, that's not a very good answer anyways: You mean to tell me that god sat down with Moses and painstakingly explained to him how old Adam was when he died, how old Noah was when he made the ark, the exact dimensions of the ark, what Adam said when he first saw Eve, what the Serpent said to Eve.

  How many children Adam had, how old they were when they had children, how old they were when they died, The names of all these people.

  What the heck is wrong with God? Here we have the almighty creator of the universe, spending huge amounts of time teaching Moses a bunch of trivial historical facts. Why didn't he just take two seconds and poof a book into existance himself?

  Moses: "Allrighty then, you told Eve to kill Adam if he ate that fruit."

  God: "No Moses, I told Adam that in the day he ate from the tree he would positively die. Not because of Eve."

  Moses: "Oh, not because of Eve..."

  God: "Well sort of, Eve started it, so it was because of Eve, but she didn't kill Adam."

  Moses: "Got it."

  God: "And Adam lived on for a hundred and thirty years. Then he..."

  Moses: "Hold on a second, I thought you said he died the day he ate from the tree?"

  God: "NO, I told him he would die that day, I didn't tell you that he acctually DID."

  Moses: "OK, so he didn't die, he died 130 years later."

  God: "No, he died 930 years later, he had a child named Seth at 130 years. Now stop arguing and just write."

  Moses: "Oh, So this was after the Cain and Abel thing that he had Seth?"

  God: "Yes, after the Cain and Abel thing."

  Moses: "So how old was Cain when he killed Abel?"

  God: "Cain didn't kill Abel, Abel killed Cain. Remember, Cain was the nice one who only burnt plants, Abel was the mean one who killed an innocent sheep..."

  Moses: "Oh, sorry, my bad. Let me fix that, this won't take more than a half hour."

  God: "Oh Never Mind, Just Leave it, I have stuff to do! JESUS CHRIST!"

  Jesus Christ: "What?"

  Lore - of the just killing time while my downloads finish class.
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  Sarah Smiles

  Oral laws, or maybe from Noah sons.

  Anyhow, so you believe that Adam and Eve washed in this lake for so many days then they were forgiven. Some of those books are far fitch. They sound like fiction to me. How many days did Eve stay in the water?
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  Narkissos

  http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/genesis.html

  Shortly put, Genesis makes way better sense when you consider it as a fresh post-exilic book (i.e., about one millenium after the time ascribed to Moses) reworking and reshaping earlier traditions and stories from different sources, rather than the other way around -- i.e., as the transformation of (an) old text(s).

  From this perspective the time span is not so long between Genesis and its alternative versions, like Jubilees.
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  funkyderek

  Sarah Smiles:

  Anyhow, so you believe that Adam and Eve washed in this lake for so many days then they were forgiven. Some of those books are far fitch. They sound like fiction to me.

  Well, of course they're fiction. That would seem like an eminently sensible answer were it not for your statement just above:

  Oral laws, or maybe from Noah sons.

  which implies that you think the rest of it is not fiction i.e. that you genuinely think Genesis was written by Moses and is an accurate representation of what happened in the first 2,000 years of human history. Obviously, it's not and while the apocryphal tales may seem more "far fitch" [sic] to you, that's only because you're not familiar with them. Has you not been taught from a young age about a woman being made from a man's rib and being deceived into eating a piece of fruit by a talking snake, thereby being condemned to death, and such other nonsense you'd think it similarly far-fetched.

  Extra-biblical books are important sources for finding out the true origins of the bible, a much more intriguing story than any of the myths the bible itself contains.
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  Leolaia

  Jubilees is a second-century BC book from the Enochic/Essene stream of Judaism and is substantially later than Genesis, although some Enochic traditions of a mythological character may well be older than the current text of Genesis per se. I have an interesting article at home that explores how the author of Jubilees interprets Genesis.

  BTW, nowhere does the Pentateuch itself claim to have been authored by Moses. Since these books present the Law as revealed to Moses, the dominant tradition in post-exilic times was that Moses wrote the Torah down, which was supplemented either by Jubilees in Essene tradition or oral halakhot in Pharisee tradition (which both were believed to have equal or near-equal Mosaic authority). However there was an interesting tradition in some Essene or post-Essene sources (such as 4 Ezra) that claims that the books as we have them were really written down by Ezra through divine revelation since the originals were destroyed in the burning of Jerusalem in 587 BC. Thus, what we have in the Tanakh comes directly from Ezra's scribal activity. This might be closer to the truth, as scholarship generally holds that the Pentatuch was compiled in the early post-exilic period, and the reference to the Torah in Ezra might suggest that Ezra himself may have something to do with it.
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  the sage

  http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=ancient+records+and+the+structure+of+genesis+by+p.j.+wiseman&btnG=Google+Search

  The Tablet Theory of Genesis Authorship

  Truthseeker!

  A very reasonable and logical answer for all truth seekers.

  The Sage!
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  fiddler

  Hi,

  I haven't posted here in ages but think I'll start up again . Anyway, this is one of my favorite Bible topics, MOSES! First off, Moses is an Egyptian name. (duh) The meaning did have to do with being drawn from the water and I believe it was a bedtime story in Egypt long before the Israelites absconded with it. It can be found in the names Tutmosis, Ahmose, etc. Some of the ones generally associated with this name were associated with the Amarna period. That was a really enigmatic time where the likes of Nefertiti and the heretic pharoah, Akhenaten reigned. It has even been suggested that Akhenaten WAS Moses of the Bible. Don't know about that BUT it is not out of the question. Akhenaten was trully hated by the pharoahs and priest that directly followed him to the point that his name and image were chiseled out of their history to an extreme. He dared to bring the worship of only one deity to Egypt and he forbade the use of graven images of the "other" gods of Egypt. It was the Aten that he venerated and which was the principle deity of the priest of On or Heliopolis which I believe even the Bible says Moses was trained in that tradition or something like that. The Aten seemed to be a sun god of sorts.

  Anyway, his mummy has never been found but the beautiful bust of Nefertiti does exist in a museum in Germany. It's interesting also that Nefertitis grandfather (or great grandfather) was a man named Yuya who had the title "commander of chariotry" which was a title Joseph of the Bible had. Yuya can be translated down to Yusef or Joseph. His mummy has been found and it is very Semitic in appearance. You can read about all this in "The Hebrew Pharoahs of Egypt" by Ahmed Osman. I don't know as I buy all Mr. Osman says BUT pictures speak a thousand words and there are some great mummy pics in this book.

  Another aspect of Egypt that the Israelites seemed to have absconded with is the Ark of the Covenant. Ark like chest complete with wings on the lid were found in the tombs of Pharoahs. It was an Egyptian invention.

  So, my take on the whole Moses thing is that the Israelites over the years compiled a hodgepodge of stories and legends stolen from other cultures and made moralistic stories out of them. If you think about what was written during their exile in Babylon and Persia the prophetic books take on a very Babylonian and Persian feel to them. Angels with wings were not so much mentioned until then and Persia had lots of angels, or devas, with wings. There's so much more and you just need to get outside of the JW box and READ to start getting somewhat of a picture of what maybe really happened. I don't think we'll ever know exactly but I don't think the Bible is the be all and end all of the story by a long shot.

  fiddler