When I was in Bible college, and then in seminary at Fuller,
I learned about "Bible scholars" of the past
who said that Moses couldn't have written
the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible:
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy),
because writing was not invented yet!
Okay, then archaeology came in and
proved THAT to be a lie! There was lots of writing
in the time of Moses, all the way back to
the time of Abraham.
But what about the time before that?
For instance, when was Genesis written?
Just the other day I found a couple of verses
that shed a LOT of light on that subject.
Would you like to know?
Hi, I'm David Daniels from Chick Publications.
Another thing we heard about in seminary
was something called, the "Documentary Hypothesis."
It went like this: basically all of
the Old Testament was written in a short period
between the 800s and the 500s BC, for the most part.
No, really.
Another story I heard was something,
that Moses actually wrote Genesis,
because it came down from heaven.
God revealed it to Moses while he was up on top
of Mount Sinai.
That comes from something called
the "Oral Torah." That's Jewish tradition
that was placed on an equal level with scripture.
Is that true? Well...
All that really does is back up the claim
that it was never written down before Moses,
and that actually, it was just talked about,
around the fireside, over generation to generation,
passed down, until finally
it comes down to Moses, who writes it down.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
A number of years ago, when I was writing
Babylon Religion, Brother Kent Hovind
got hold of me, and he mentioned to me that
he saw things as labels of different books in Genesis,
compiled histories, as it were. And the labels
were these words: "Elleh toledoth,"
"These are the generations." Well, that's a label you find in
Genesis 2, 5, 6, 10, 11, 25, 36 and 37.
Genesis 2:4, for instance, says, "These are the generations
of the heavens and the earth when they were created,
in the day the LORD God made
the earth and the heavens,"
In Genesis 5 it starts out, "This is the book (sefer)
of the generations of Adam.
Do you think that maybe this "book" was something
Noah carried with him on the ark?
I mean, after all, these five chapters of Genesis
probably could fit in a 450 foot boat.
You know, reading material.
But is there something in the Bible that
gives us an end-date, after which
something before it could not have been written?
Yes, as a matter of fact.
If I tell you something "IS there" or "WAS there,"
it means different things, doesn't it?
If I say something "was there,"
and "did this," then whether it's still there
and still does this is anybody's guess, right?
But if I write something down,
saying it "IS there" and "DOES this,"
then at the time I wrote those words,
anybody else could come up and read it and say,
"Yeah, it IS there and it DOES this."
Otherwise, I'd be a crackpot and nobody would believe me.
But you know, we are talking about
God's words here, okay?
Look at Genesis 2:10-13. I was blown away by this
just last weekend.
You can still learn after 34 years.
Genesis 2:10-13 "And a river went out..."
Notice the past and the present tenses.
"And a river went out (past tense)
of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted
(past tense), and became into four heads.
11 "The name of the first is Pison: that is it
which compasseth the whole land of Havilah,
where there is gold;"
Now, "is" is not in the Hebrew.
So don't count "is." That's why it's in italics.
But look at that other word
in verse 11.
"COMPASSETH" --present tense.
Compass, you know, to go around something.
That's why we use a compass to draw circles.
Compasseth what? The "land of Havilah."
Let's take a look at a map here.
A lot of people think "Havilah"
was located in Arabia. Do you see any river
compassing "Havilah, where there is gold?"
No? Well, neither do I.
Now let's look at verse 13. In verse 13 it says,
"And the name of the second river
is Gihon: the same is it that
COMPASSETH (present tense)
the whole land of Ethiopia."
This is Ethiopia. Some people think
the river Nile was the Gihon, and
somehow it meandered around Ethiopia in old times.
Other people say, "No, Ethiopia is 'Cush,'
and therefore Cush could have been
in another place."
But one thing is true, no matter what you do.
IT'S NOT THERE NOW, IS IT?
Why, no!
So when did it go away?
The Bible leaves us one, big, obvious answer:
Noah's flood.
That one event changed the geography
of the entire world.
If it was carried by someone on Noah's ark,
then it was preserved after that.
You know how we know?
We have it! There's no other explanation, right?
And Moses couldn't have written it
in the present tense, because it wasn't there
when he was on top of Mt. Sinai.
That would have been a lie.
So Moses didn't write it.
So, if it was preserved
through the Flood, and preserved
after the Flood, it is conceivable
it was passed down by one generation
to another. And more "books"
were added to it, or one "book" was
added to, after it in succeeding generations,
say from godly Shem, then through to Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, then maybe Levi.
That would explain Moses (from the tribe of Levi),
and then him writing the Pentateuch,
and then passing it down through the tribe of Levi,
according to God's word.
Under inspiration, then, Moses wrote the Torah scroll,
compiling the old information, plus the information
that God revealed to him on Mount Sinai.
And all together, that is called the Torah.
And the first book we call "Genesis."
A God who went through all that
to preserve His words --the Fall of man,
the Flood of mankind, Moses and the wilderness,
and the kings and all that, that is a God
who could preserve His words from that day to this day.
And do you know what? In English, we have it.
It's called the King James Bible. God's preserved words.
He preserved those same words,
starting with the words He spoke to Adam
in Genesis 1 to the ones He spoke to John
in Revelation 22. God preserved His words.
Isn't that awesome?
God bless you, and have a wonderful day.