We're in the Book of Exodus,
and God has just announced what we refer to today as the Ten Commandments.
God then gives Moses "two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone,
written with the finger of God."
Of course, we know Moses breaks those tablets pretty quickly,
so God tells him to bring two fresh tablets up the mountain again,
so that God can make him another copy.
Here's the problem. God makes a few changes.
Let's have a look. Here's the first set of commandments.
Looks pretty familiar, right?
Now here's the second set given to Moses in Exodus 34.
This time around things get a bit messed up.
We can see three of the original commandments:
Don't worship other gods,
don't make idols,
and make sure you obey the Sabbath.
Then the weird stuff comes out:
Don't leave animal sacrifices out till morning,
all the first-born are God's,
and then God tells the Israelites
not to boil a baby goat in it's mother's milk.
These important commandments from God are not very relevant are they?
But just in case we think the second set are not really THE Ten Commandments,
God clarifies it for us, right after the boiling goat part:
"Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write down these words,
for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”
Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights
without eating bread or drinking water.
And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant — the Ten Commandments."
How did he come down from the mountain after fasting for forty days anyway?
This verse is also the first time that the scriptures refer to the commandments
as THE Ten Commandments.
Not even the original ten were referred to as such.
The chapter title doesn't count because it wasn't added till centuries later.
This second set of commandments is like a video game glitch
where you end up on a level that's all messed up and weird things happen.
Things start out familiar,
but then it's like the scribe writing it down got confused
and copied the wrong text, or the book itself somehow got tampered with.
So for a while, we seemed to have 17 unique commandments
Two books later, in Deuteronomy,
we find Moses reviewing the Ten Commandments with the Israelites.
This time he uses the original set again,
with no sign of the previous blunder.
Hypothetically though,
if the Ark of the Covenant actually existed and was found,
which set of commandments would be inside?
If we take the Bible absolutely literally,
then it seems we'd find the goat boiling set inside.
The original set was broken by Moses,
so it was the second set that actually survived.
And when Moses presented the original commandments again later in Deuteronomy,
he was SPEAKING to a crowd of Israelites,
he wasn't actually writing anything down.
This commandment glitch is more evidence that the Bible
isn't the infallible book that many claim it to be.
So who actually wrote the Pentateuch?
Traditionally, it was said that Moses was the author.
Though most scholars disagree.
The best we can come up with in the Bible is that Moses wrote down the Law.
Moses also tells the Israelites to do the same thing.
"you shall set up for yourselves large stones,
and whitewash them with lime.
You shall write on them all the words of this law"
If what they wrote are these five books,
then we could just as easily say that the Israelites wrote the Pentateuch.
In fact, that's probably closer to the truth.
But according to the text,
it seems they were just writing down the Law itself,
not the entire narrative of the Torah.
Let's look at some additional evidence within the Bible
that Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch.
This is the obvious one.
Moses’ own death is recorded in Deuteronomy.
One could easily say that someone like Joshua took over writing at that time,
however the text indicates a lengthy period of time has elapsed:
“since then there has not arisen in Israel a prophet like Moses”.
That's not the kind of thing you would write so soon after Moses' death.
“Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem,
as far as the terebinth tree of Moreh.
And the Canaanites were then in the land.”
Here we are back in Genesis.
These verses are significant because the writer is looking back to a time
when the Canaanites still dwelt in the same land as Abram.
Obviously something had changed since then.
We do know that according to the Bible,
the Israelites were still battling the Canaanites up until around the book of Judges,
where the king of Canaan was killed by the Israelites.
This was long after the death of Moses.
"Now when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive,
he armed his three hundred and eighteen trained servants
who were born in his own house, and went in pursuit as far as Dan.”
Genesis and Deuteronomy mention the city of Dan.
However, at that time the city was known as Laish, not Dan.
The name is not changed until the city was conquered many years later,
as mentioned in the book of Judges:
“And they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father,
who was born to Israel.
However, the name of the city formerly was Laish.”
To give some perspective, the city name is not changed to Dan
until after the deaths of Moses, Joshua, Gideon, and even Samson.
Even if God supernaturally told Moses the new name,
it would be useless to anyone reading Moses' books.
They wouldn't know what city he was talking about.
“Now the man Moses was very humble,
more than all men who were on the face of the earth.”
Does Moses now congratulate himself on being the humblest man on earth?
“Now these were the kings who reigned in the land of Edom
before any king reigned over the children of Israel”
This shows that the writer already knew that kings would rule Israel for a time.
This places the author at least 300 years after the Exodus!
Given this evidence,
it seems highly doubtful that Moses himself wrote the Pentateuch.
This leads to a rather interesting problem in the New Testament.
Jesus himself condemns the Jews for not believing what Moses wrote:
For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.
But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”
That's a very good question.
If the evidence shows that Moses was not even the author of said writings,
why should we believe anything Jesus says?
Personally, I think the author of John's gospel was putting words in Jesus' mouth.
Did moses really prophesy about Jesus?
As with every other supposed prophecy of Christ,
you'll be disappointed to find out it's not the smoking gun Christians want it to be.
"The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst,
from your brethren. Him you shall hear"
Christians think this is talking about Jesus.
Muslims think it is about Muhammad.
Jewish literature says Moses is talking about Jeremiah.
If there is no consensus on what a prophecy means, then what use is it?
Because of God's failure to make the prophecy clear,
He now strengthens two opposing religions who claim the prophecy must be for them.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!