Now people are either JEDPeers, or they still want to hold to
Moses wrote every word, including the stuff about his own death,
you know, I don't see where that's necessary at all.
One more, he says, how are we to understand or explain
clean and unclean animals in Genesis before Torah is given?
Well, it depends on who you ask.
If you ask somebody who believes that Moses wrote every word of the Pentateuch,
the Torah, then you're going to get an answer like, oh, well, the clean and unclean
just foreshadowed the legislation coming at Sinai.
If you're going to get an answer from someone who doesn't believe that
we have to say Moses wrote every word of the Torah, you're going to get an answer
to the effect of the clean and unclean designations
are a result of later editorial handwork.
Okay, that detail was put in later after we had the legislation,
you know, come at Sinai, and some would still argue it was put in later by Moses,
others would say it was put in by a later editor who wasn't Moses.
So take your pick. I mean, this is tied to Mosaic authorship,
and those of you in this group I think predominantly know I'm not one who believes
that Moses wrote every word of the Torah.
I don't think it's necessary, and I think it's demonstrable that it's not likely,
but I'm also not a JEDPeer. I'm not a proponent of the documentary hypothesis
because I think it's based on circular reasoning.
So I think there's something going on in between.
I'm what used to be called back in the day,
in the late 19th century, early 20th century, a supplementarian.
That is, I think there's a substantial Mosaic core to the Pentateuch
that had later information accrued to it.
I think Genesis 1 through 11 went under a heavy editorial hand
during the exile to specifically interact with ancient Near Eastern Babylonian material
to create a prologue to the history of the patriarchs.
I think that was intentional and deliberate and inspired,
but it wasn't Mosaic at that point because Moses is long dead.
So again, I'm what used to be called a supplementarian,
which is, you know, out of fashion now. People are either JEDPeers
or they still want to hold to Moses wrote every word, including
the stuff about his own death.
You know, I don't see where that's necessary at all.
If you want my thoughts on this, you could Google drmsh.com and put in Mosaic authorship
and you'll find an old blog series about this.
The third person references in the Torah to Moses.
They're not just four or five of these. There are dozens, maybe even hundreds.
So it reads very much like someone else is writing about Moses.
You could say, well, we can refer to ourselves in the third person.
Yeah. Yeah, we can. If you do it a few thousand times, it starts to sound a little bit weird.
If you do it occasionally. Sure. But when it shows up hundreds or even thousands of times.
That's a little odd to say that that was done by the same person
making reference to themselves in the third person throughout.
And there's a lot of it. OK, there's a lot of it.
So you can just go look that up. But anyway.