Meditations

Passages included in this discussion are:

Deuteronomy 33

1 And this is the blessing, wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death.  -kjv

Deuteronomy 34

⁵ So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. ⁶ And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.  -kjv

Question from moody radio listener:

I am currently discussing in my bible study about the oldest book in the bible, some claim it’s Job, I can’t find any proof and a question comes up if Adam wrote the first few chapters of Genesis and Moses edited those? My question is do you find any evidence that support that?

Answer from Dr Michael Rydelnik:

No, what we know from scripture is that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, the Torah, Genesis through Deuteronomy as one book. Moses wrote it. There’s no evidence that Adam wrote anything. Too often, we think of the scriptures as sort of developing, sort of with different writers. Even famous biblical theologians and they will write books on biblical theology and they will talk about revelations in the days of Adam, revelations in the days of Abraham, revelations in the days of Joseph and  so forth. The truth of this is Moses wrote the whole thing. The Torah is revelation as God wanted it in the days of Moses. For us Moses wrote it, where did he get information about Adam and Eve, I don’t know. Maybe God told him. Maybe there were records. I don’t know. I know he did use some records. Maybe there were oral traditions that were passed down from his mom and dad but here’s the thing, the bible that we have, you know we are reading the Torah, whether it’s Genesis or Deuteronomy or anything in between, what we are looking at is the revelation as Moses understood it and wrote it and that’s the inspired text of scripture. Then I will even go further, before the Canon was closed, before the scriptures were completed, in the old testament, there seemed to be an editing by  someone like Ezra, because he added stuff like there’s a verse at the end of Deuteronomy 33. It says this is the blessing that Moses blesses with the children of Israel before he died. Obviously it was added after he died and then you have Deuteronomy 34 where it includes Moses death and no one remembers where he was buried. And so it does appear that there was a further editing with the additions of chapter 33 and 34 of Deuteronomy to the Pentateuch.  So a biblical writer like Ezra did that. Torah 2.0, that’s what he did.

Question from listener:

Is Job older than the Pentatech?

Answer from Dr Michael Rydelnik:

Don’t know. It does appear that Job was a character from the patriarch age, don’t know when it was written.