Events recorded in the Pentateuch: True or False

30th May 2017 by Red Johnson Leave a Comment

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_arhs.htm

Considering the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) the most extreme views are:

The Pentateuch	Common conservative religious beliefs	Common beliefs of secular archaeologists & religious liberals
Accuracy	Totally accurate, inerrant, & infallible. Contains no mistakes. Inspired by God.	Mixture of ancient myths, some valid history, & legends.
Author(s)	Moses	Documentary Hypothesis: Four unknown authors + one Redactor;
Date of writing	15th century BCE	10th to 6th century BCE *
People:
Adam, Eve, Noah, Isaac, Ishmael, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, etc.	Real people who lived their lives as described in the Bible	Mythical, legendary people who probably never existed.
Philistines	Existed in 19^th century BCE (Gen 21:32)	First entered Palestine well into the 1st millennium BCE
Early history of the Israelites	Grew from 12 men and their families into a large culture while in Egypt	Originally Canaanites; developed a separate society within Canaan
Strong military presence in Palestine, late 2^nd millennium BCE	Philistines. (Egyptian presence is not mentioned.)	Egyptians. (Philistines did not arrive until well into the 1^st millennium BCE)
Places:
Garden of Eden	Where Adam & Eve lived	Non-existent place
Mount Sinai	Where Moses received the Ten Commandments	Non-existent place
Beersheba, & other towns	Existed in 19^th century BCE (Genesis 21:14)	Did not exist until many centuries later.
Events:
Flood of Noah	Covered the world	No evidence it happened; may have been a memory of a local flood.
Jews as slaves in Egypt	Happened as described	Little or no evidence.
The Exodus	Happened as described	No evidence it happened
40 years in the desert	Happened as described	No evidence it happened

Notes:

	A few archaeologists and “minimalist” Old Testament scholars argue that the Pentateuch was completed as late as the 2nd century BCE.
	The remains of houses similar to that used by ancient Hebrews have been found in Egypt. These may have belonged to Hebrew slaves or hired workers.

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