The 10 Commandments

No one does, so I'm hardly an example of any sort.

So, got a point here?

Again, so what? I'm not doing as the Bible-beaters are doing and condemning in God's name, nor am I trying to take any right from anyone else that I claim for my own.

You have too many negatives in this sentence for it to make sense. All consenting adults should have access to marry the consenting adult of their choice. What's your problem with my position?

Equality is a religion? Okay, if you say so. Too bad more Christrians aren't members.

Unlike the NT which was written on paper or vellum the OT was written on papyrus which is very unstable. The OT scrolls were copied and a copy was kept in every single synagogue no matter how small. When the copy became damaged in even the slightest way it was ceromonially destroyed. But if there were a million synagogues and each one was copying the scrolls before they destroyed them then we would have a million lines of descent going back to the original. Any errors that crept into a copy would be noticed soon since it could easily be compared to the copy at any other synagogue. The process of copying them was painstaking and if a scribe made a single error during the process he would then destroy the damaged copy ceromonially again.

We actually have older parts of the NT than we have of the Hebrew OT.

But not knowing the amount of time that has elapsed since the penning of the first copy and the penning of the last copy in no way makes it more or less likely that the first copy is the result of an oral tradition. Moses could have written the book and then it was copied many times resulting in todays copies. Or Moses could have written the book and then it was copied less times resulting in the copy that we have today.

What we would expect if the OT were a result of an oral tradition is that there would be different versions that were written down in different places based on errors that crept into the oral stories.

If you want to say that Moses wrote down what he heard then we need some evidence of that. (other than him saying when he wrote it that he was writing down what was told to him by God. THAT certainly was an oral origin. If you can prove there is no God then you can prove that it was not written as it claims to be. If you are going to assume there is no God then the proof is circular)

The greatest evidence we have is that when one looks at the words used in the OT the stories seem to contain four different narratives that are intertwined together as if there were once four different text that were combined. (still not oral but some would say that maybe those alleged narratives were oral first). The problem is that the alleged existence of four narratives is completely hypothetical based on interpretations of stylistic differences. Having looked into the matter I could easily see a bias in the desire for some to want their to be four different narratives and absolutely no reason to presume that the four narratives were not the result of Moses writing four different narratives himself. If there were four narratives (that is a pretty big "if") and if they were not all penned by Moses then we still need some evidence that they were the result of an oral tradition before they were written down.

Moses gave 10 commandments to Israelite because they did not have common sense. The person who has common sense does not need them. Please read the 10 commandment again and you would know what I mean.

Your talking about judaic law. Clearly, most of them were dispensed with by christianity. Otherwise, it would be judaism, not christianity, no?

I believe the pentatuech, the first 5 books of the ot, was estimated to have been written some 1,200-1,500 BCE. The fact is, nobody knows when it was written or by whom.

The fact about law, or any logical conception for that matter, is that you need to state it -- no matter how intuitive or self-evidently true they are. For instance -- the basic axioms of mathematics (simple commutation: if a=b and b=c, then a=c) are so absurdly simple, you wonder why they bothered to write it in the first place.

You would be amazed how from something as simple as the above axiom, you get differential geometry -- one theorem built on top of another by the logical operations of deduction and induction.

True that we don't know that. But when the text itself claims to have been written by Moses that is a pretty big clue.

In all our other approaches to historical material we accept the testimony of the author about authorship unless there is some solid reason to doubt it. Consider the Iliad. There are less manuscripts and no older mss than there are for the bible yet, outside of academics, no one seriously doubts that Homer wrote it. And I am not even aware of the Iliad ever making a claim to have been written by Homer. So here we have a book that actually was once just an oral tradition, that does not claim to have been written by Homer, that only has a weak tradition supporting the idea that Homer wrote it, and all over the world laypeople alike accept without question that Homer wrote it.

More than any overt claim of authorship, I think that the style of writing would be a better standard in determining authorship. As for the pentatuech, I have read somewhere that, more likely, they were not written by a single author nor were they written in the immediate vicinity of the events they were portraying.

What interests me more than authorship is the estimated date of writing since it would provide some independent verification from other archeological sources.

I am sure that if we analyzed the writings of, say, Abraham Lincoln we would find that sometimes he chose one style of writing and at other times he chose another style of writing. But in all instances he signed only one name to what he wrote. I would make the claim that the claim of authorship would be better than the style.

More dan dat, meh dona tink da word demselves make mucha diff. Dat broad Hillary was fame for talkin' dif to dif peeps.

I bet all of us are able to choose to write in different styles. sometimes we might write in legalese (like when submitting a legal brief), sometimes formally (like when submitting a term paper) sometimes simply (like when writing to a child) sometimes in prose (like when writing a love letter), etc.

I would submit that when Moses wrote he used four different styles depending on the audience and the tone he wanted to strike. If he were writing about the grandness of God he could have written in a different style than if he were writing an historical account of an event. It might even be that he had a scribe write what he wrote and that each of four different scribes added their own style to his words. Or it might be that he wrote the four styles at different times in his life or in different geographic regions which could account for the different styles. Or just maybe some combination of audience, tone, scribe, geography, and age, etc. work together to account for the different styles we can see.

That is certainly interesting but it seems more credible to believe that the different styles of writing in the pentatuech, more likely, is because of different authorship.

From a legalistic viewpoint, the way jews view the torah, I can certainly imagine why such an issue is crucial. But for christians, I don't think it is pertinent at all.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs. The Iliad is not billed as the "word of God". If you were to read Julian Jaynes book THE ORIGINS OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BI-CAMERAL MIND you would discover how someone could have written a text and truthfully believed that it was God talking to them when in fact it was the right side of the brain dictating to the left. The right/left brain connection that we take for granted is a relatively new addition to our brains and one of the reasons that the Voice of God doesn't speak to us like we used to think that it did.

Actually no.

Sufficient proof would be, well - sufficient. Proof is proof, it is absolute, it is or it is not. A thing cannot be half proved.

As an example, you believe there to be a God. That is an extraordinary cliam - so what is your extraordinary proof? I bet you have no more than some others.

But there is no proof for anything really - only evidence of all sorts that needs to be sifted and weighed.

The evidence for Christianity is out there. So sift it and weigh it.

The bible claims to be inspired. That is not proven. But compared to a book that does not make the claim it offers a whole lot more evidence. the Illyad offers absolutely no evidence whatsoever so we don't even consider the question. With the bible it does make the claim so we do consider the evidence.

I said I believe it, I didn't say I could prove it. Unlike you I don't use my beliefs as weapons to hurt other people, unlike you I don't claim to speak for God.

The Koran claims to be inspired, as do many other religious texts (the Book of Mormon comes to mind). You have no proof, as you note, a thing cannot be half proved, the Bible cannot be proved or even half proved. So hating and hurting others on the basis of the Bible is not justifiable, especially when you claim to follow Jesus' commandments.

right - you believe things you cannot prove.

Yet whenever I believe something I cannot prove to you your argument is that it is not proven - well big deal. If things that cannot be proven are beleiveable thent it really does not matter what is unproven or not.

The difference is that I don't try to pass my beliefs off as being the Word of God, and you do. I don't try to deny people equality on the basis of my beliefs, and you do.

All religion is baseless belief without a shred of proof. The difference is that I know that, I acknowledge that, and I don't claim to have any proof. No one is disenfranchised by my beliefs, I don't claim for myself privileges that I deny to others on the basis of my beliefs, you can't truthfully say those things.

OK after all these many pages... that is WITHOUT DOUBT the perfect (and very simple) explanation of the difference.

The difference is that I don't try to pass my beliefs off as being the Word of God, and you do. I don't try to deny people equality on the basis of my beliefs, and you do.

If someone wants to believe that a lamp posts is God because it faithfully comes on every single night... that's fine.

But when someone tries to force others to believe it by saying the fact the light comes on every single night is PROOF... that's a problem.

I am afraid that you do not understand the meaning of the word "force".

When a government official takes money directly from your paycheck and if you resist you can be thrown in jail by a sheriff who carries a gun - that is force.

When someone makes an argument, any argument good or poor, that is in no way force, that is an attempt at persuasion.