Historical Moses?

[thephilosopher6]

Most scholars see the Pentateuch as legendary/mythical in nature. There is, however, much discussion on a possible historical core to its traditions. Many scholars are willing to accept that “a Moses like figure” existed in the Transjordan area but may have been increasingly mythologized over centuries.

Some scholars propose Moses may be based off of a real Midianite prophet of YHWH who essentially founded the Yahwehist religion and may have led or inspired a small band of nomads/bedouins to migrate into Canaan thus introducing YHWH to the early Israelites; over the centuries his story became more and more mythologized until it was redacted into its final form in the Pentateuch.

Thoughts?

 

[Spyridon]

I believe what all the doctors of the Church believed -

Moses literally did everything written of him in the Torah and also wrote the Torah himself.

Every single Doctor of the Church believed this.

Not a single one believed the “scholarly” view.

 

[thephilosopher6]

This is your opinion, and that’s fine, but little can be said historically.

 

[Spyridon]

It’s no more or less historical than the modern scholarly theories.

I’ve studied this in depth - at least the traditional view has the backing of 2500 years of Judeo-Christian tradition.

Regardless, this falls under theolegoumena - theological opinion.

So long as one holds that God is the primary author and the Scripture is inerrant, then various views of human authorship are acceptable in the Catholic milieu.

 

[thephilosopher6]

Again, this is your opinion, and this is fine. I’m just informing you that most professional historians who study this have come to vastly different conclusions. You can question the methodology if you want, though it seems to work out quite when applied to other historical or ancient data.

Anyway, in this thread, your theological opinion is irrelevant to the historical question.

 

[Spyridon]

And the various scholarly views are wildly different.

Barely two scholars can agree on when the Yahwistic account was authored - was it in the 11th, 9th, or 3rd century?

Barely two can agree on who the Yahwist was - was it someone in Solomons court? Who knows.

It’s all scholarly conjecture.

I get the vibe that you seem to think these scholarly views are more than simple conjecture - they are not.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

My issue with most modern scholarship on the subject is that they assume it’s mythology because of the supernatural elements in the story. They completely discount even the potential that it may be true history, and so their default position can’t be anything other than that it is inaccurate. As such, most of them can’t be said to have truly studied the history, given that they are unwilling to entertain one of the two potential origins.

 

[BartholomewB]

ome scholars propose Moses may be based off of a real Midianite prophet of YHWH who essentially founded the Yahwehist religion and may have led or inspired a small band of nomads/bedouins to migrate into Canaan thus introducing YHWH to the early Israelites;

That sounds very unconvincing to me. “A real Midianite prophet of YHWH who essentially founded the Yahwehist religion and may have led or inspired a small band of nomads/bedouins to migrate into Canaan” is too insubstantial to have been the beginning of the history of Israel as recorded in the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. Even Freud’s theory sounds more realistic than this one.

Freud’s last book, Moses and Monotheism, sets out the case against the Biblical account of the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt followed by their escape and return to the land of their origin. Freud’s primary thesis is that thousands of slaves, of many different nationalities, escaped from Egypt under the leadership of Moses, an Egyptian officer who was about to be arrested and probably executed for the murder of a brother officer. The fugitives spent many years searching for a safe place to settle until they finally crossed the Jordan into the land then known as Canaan. In the course of their long march, the escaping slaves and their descendants merged into a single nationality, calling themselves the Israelites or, later, Judahites (Jews). According to Freud, this was a wholly new national identity: prior to the Exodus there had been no Jews or Israelites.

Freud’s two secondary theses:

1. Some of the twelve tribes did not join the new nation until after the original Children of Israel had arrived in Canaan.
2. The Moses who led the Children of Israel to the border of Canaan was the successor to the earlier leader, also named Moses, who had organized the escape from Egypt many years previously. Neither of the two Moses was Jewish to begin with.

Freud says he got the idea from a university colleague, Ernst Sellin, who was a professor at the Evangelical Faculty of Theology in the University of Vienna (1897-1908). Freud is not denying, of course, that the Exodus is a historical event or that Moses was the true historical leader of the fugitives. His revisionism has to do, above all, with the background to the Exodus, not with the event itself.

Moses and Monotheism by Sigmund Freud: 9780394700144 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

 

[Spyridon]

What do you personally hold to?

Classic documentary hypothesis?
Neo-documentary hypothesis?
Supplementary hypothesis?
Fragmentary hypothesis?

 

[ProdglArchitect]

Does Freud provide any actual evidence for this assertion?

If not, then its nothing but the conjecture of a questionable psychologist.

 

[Spyridon]

not, then its nothing but the conjecture of a questionable psychologist.

All historical-critical scholarship boils down to educated guessing and conjecture.

Which is why I choose to believe the traditional views, which can be defended quite nicely. Gleason Archer was a Protestant scholar who defended the traditional views in a powerful way.

Scott Hahn wrote an epic tome about this topic called “Politicizing the Bible: the roots of historical criticism and secularizing the Bible.”

 

[Gorgias]

Moses literally did everything written of him in the Torah and also wrote the Torah himself.

Amazing how he wrote in Deuteronomy about his own death and the actions of the community following his death, eh?

Does Freud provide any actual evidence for this assertion?

That, I think, is the real issue in play here, in the context of the ideas that @thephilosopher6 has brought to our attention. It’s the classic “argument from silence” logical fallacy – "if it had happened in a way even remotely similar to its presentation in history, then we’d have physical evidence of it. Since we don’t, it’s clearly false… so let me tell you what I think really happened…

 

[Spyridon]

Amazing how he wrote in Deuteronomy about his own death and the actions of the community following his death, eh?

There are two traditional views on that.

God told him beforehand and he wrote. Or Joshua recorded that afterwards.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

Spyridon:

Moses literally did everything written of him in the Torah and also wrote the Torah himself.

Amazing how he wrote in Deuteronomy about his own death and the actions of the community following his death, eh?

I actually don’t find this that difficult to explain. He wrote down everything prior to it, and someone else capped off the story. Sort of like an autobiography getting an afterward from a family member.

Does Freud provide any actual evidence for this assertion?

That, I think, is the real issue in play here. It’s the classic “argument from silence” logical fallacy – "if it had happened in a way even remotely similar to its presentation in history, then we’d have physical evidence of it. Since we don’t, it’s clearly false… so let me tell you what I think really happened…

That what a lot of modern… “scholarship” seems to be, especially in regards to Biblical stuff.

 

[thephilosopher6]

Ok? So what? What does that undermine? All this indicates is there are still a lot of questions that need to be answered that we haven’t found the answer to yet. Same with many other disciplines unrelated to Old Testament scholarship.

Yet there are many things which scholars have come to a consensus or a near consensus on. Consensus doesn’t automatically validate something, indeed, but the question of the historicity is not based on the consensus, it based on the evidence found and the arguments put forth. The evidence that the consensus of New Testament scholars have put forth that the disciples really did believe they had experiences with the risen Jesus is compelling enough to be considered factually historical.

 

[Gorgias]

There are two traditional views on that.

God told him beforehand and he wrote. Or Joshua recorded that afterwards.

I actually don’t find this that difficult to explain. He wrote down everything prior to it, and someone else capped off the story. Sort of like an autobiography getting an afterward from a family member.

If “someone finished the story”, then the claim isn’t “Moses is the author of the Pentateuch”, but rather, “Moses is one of the authors of the Pentateuch.”

If the claim is that he received prophetic revelation and wrote it down before dying… then where do we see that being asserted? What corroboration for that claim is there?

 

[Spyridon]

What corroboration for that claim is there?

The same for the claim that an “Elohist school” wrote anything.

I’m not faulting people who take the scholarly theories seriously - my issue is when people act like those are the only reasonable views to hold. They are not. If they were, then 100% of the Doctors of the Church were unreasonable.

 

[thephilosopher6]

How is this unrealistic? There is a great amount of evidence that YHWH originated among the Midianites. This is called the “Kenite Hypothesis”, and it’s starting to find a great amount of acceptance among scholars today.

I suggest reading “The Rise of Yahwism : Role of Marginalised Groups”, by Marlene E. Mondriaan. You can find a pdf of it online. It’s very long and detailed, but it’s worth the read. The summary she puts forth is:

“My motivation and purpose of this research particularly evolve around the question on the origin of Yahweh and the development of Yahwism, as well as the role of marginal groups in the maintaining of a pre-exilic Yahweh-alone monotheism, and the subsequent conversion by Judahites – who previously practised a syncretistic religion – to a post-exilic Yahweh monotheism. In accordance with the Kenite hypothesis, the Yahwist tradition originated in the South amongst the Midianites and Kenites. A Moses-type figure acquired knowledge about Yahweh from these tribes who venerated Yahweh before the Israelites did. According to the Chronicler’s genealogy, marginal southern groups were all related. The Kenites and Rechabites had the opportunity, due to their nomadic lifestyle and particular trade – as coppersmiths – to spread their religious beliefs. Although the majority of Israelites practised syncretism, these marginal groups – particularly the Rechabites – sustained their Yahwistic faith throughout the Monarchical Period, actively involved in a Yahweh-alone movement. Jeremiah set the Rechabites – who followed a puritanical lifestyle – as an example for the inhabitants of Jerusalem.”

 

[Spyridon]

Dr. Archer is professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He holds degrees from Harvard College, Princeton Theological Seminary, Suffolk University Law School, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard Graduate School.

Dr. Archer has authored many books, including the two commentaries The Epistle to the Hebrews and The Epistle to the Romans, as well as his Survey of Old Testament Introduction, and The Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties.

He argues forcefully and convincingly for the traditional views of Mosaic authorship.

Read an article of his here: https://www.jashow.org/articles/bib...oses-wrote-the-first-five-books-of-the-bible/

 

[thephilosopher6]

I suppose not convincingly enough to change the minds of most historians. But, fine, your opinion stands. I now urge you to please take a look at what I referenced above.