English Bible

Biblical Criticism Study (3) The authorship of The Torah YouTube - Vinesong Music - Isaiah 35

2009-12-16T23:55:00.020+02:00

bible011.blogspot.com The Arabic Translation

The Image is for ostracon found in Oct,2008 about 20 miles of Jerusalem at Elah Fortress in Khirbet Qeiyafa. Hebrew inscription in Proto- Canaanite script , Carbon - 14 dated it between 1000 year BC and 975 BC during the reign of David
                Wellhausen told us about the conception of Israel in concern of God and how did this conception was developed along many stages due to the theory of evolution.,He suggested that there were three stages as follows:- ,
The animism 1* it was the4 first stage , this term was taken from the theory of 2*Sir E.B.Tylor in his book 3*" Premative Culture" , where he told us about the simple beginnings of the religion which were as a logical understanding about the existence of God by the help of his premative senses4*,Stahl added to the theory that the animism reflects also the vital active bases in the universe , which accompanied by the inner senses of the human , so Wellhausen used that t6erm to access many terms that in that stage The Polythism5* which were the stage of thinking about a group of numbers of gods during the days of the fathers and after that date due to Wellhausen's thoughts , came the stage of Henothism 6*this term expressed the transcending power of one of the gods to create the doctrine of God's transcending over his people and over all the gods the word henethism consists of two parts heis 7*which means "over" and theos8* which means God in the Greek language.
              So, Wellhausen thought that the Israelite community have reached to that stage during the days of the Moses , at last the third stage which was the Monothism 9*, or the stage of worshiping one God , was after eight centuries after the establishing of the existence of God , during the date of writing chapter sixty in the book of Isiah due to his opinion when the doctrine of God who has the authority and the exaltation sovereign.
The reason of that development due to wellhausen's point of view was related to his conception about the history of the old Israelite history, on contrast to our point of view because our opinion is the " Nomos " or the law was the bases of the history. his opinion was that the events was the bases of the laws , it reflected the culture of the society and the traditions so it created the principles and corrected the religion bases of the Israelite , so the prophet books have not influenced with the book of the law . because it were written after the book of law and he said that it is not acceptable to think that the book of the law was before the books of the prophets
               To understand his thoughts, let's examine another example where Wellhausen have spoken about the development of the worship[ conception , in the new testament where the Bible recorded that the Jewish has established a central place for worship in contrast with the Samerian who established another one , so the importance of establishing a central place for worshiping God has begun at that time .              But when we read in the Old testament we find that the idea of the central place for worship was not in the mind of the old Israelite due to his accuses , and he said that it was not one alter before building the temple but there were many alters , these alters were taken from the Canaanite traditions and the Israelite practiced it after returning to the promised lands , they were offering their sacrifices over the mountains as the Canaanites did , the proof was that after the war of Michmash Saul built an alter ( I Sam 13:33 ), so , David also built an alter after that ( II Sam 24:25 ), also Solomon built his alter after that . but the central worship was settled after the exile.
So, Wellhausen suggested that the book of kings reflected a false image about the beliefs of that period by condemning the free worship because it was not true that it was condemned during that period
                    At the fall of Samaria the criticizing for the different places for worship has begun especially after the withdrawal of Sennacherib ,because Jerusalem became the center of worship
                     Wellhausen denied the historical values of the stories of the Torah in spite of he used it to prove that the worship during the patriarchal age was not a center place although he denied the historical value of the story of the tabernacle to avoid the idea of the central worship before the temple
                   His denying for that event destroyed his theory because it proved that he was just a man who try to prove that the evolution theory of Darwin was right in concern of the historical events
                  We observe some influences of his thoughts in the opinions of some modern writers although his theory has been destroyed .
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The Picture is the copy of Leipzig that survived after the Holocaust of the Nazi and contains the TORAH

The attackers did not shut up their mouth after the collapse of the thoughts of the serious giant of the criticism " Wellhausen " but a new line of criticism for the Torah began based on the ruins of his thoughts
Their Scholars amid a bunch of the opposing views which became their issue in turn
" Rudolf Semend " in 1912 found among the ruins of the thoughts , some views of " Karl Otto" that was in 1883 , He revive Otto's theory about the sources E & J , and divided the source E into two sections D&P suggested that they were subjected to adds many times , also the source J is divided by him to J1 & J2
As for J1 " Otto Eisfeldt" had assumed to call it the source "L" because it is t6he first letter of the alphabetical of the term " Lay - Source " which was exist and revised by many writers , later , depending on other sources like J2....etc., according to his view .
After that " Julian Morgensters " came to add to these4 sources another source called "K" which contained the Mosaic opinion in concern of the practices that was close similarity of the ritual Canaanite practices , so the source "K" i9s belonged to the argument abouyt the similarity & differences which mentioned in the contents of the Torah , about the Mosaic religion compared with the other existing religions of the peoples of the region " HUCA,IV,1927 "
But "Fever " added another source , called "S" as a symbol letter of the word "South" in English , he meant that its contents came from the thoughts of the people of the southern part of the Israelite kingdom during the days of the kin gs after the division of the3 kingdom , it has the hale contents of the document which "Eisffeldt" called "L". " ZAW,XLVIII,1930,pp66-73 .
It would be interesting to announce that one of these critics who was called " B.Baentsch" , has divided the source "P" to seven sources , in his published book " The Leviticus ", 1900 , all these critics have not any idea about what the future researches , which corrected their thoughts through the Archeological discoveries by the modern scientists , for example , while " C.A.Sempson " , the critic , tried to analyze the tendencies of the critics to divide the original Torah into different sources , they disagree with each other about the number of it , and the contents that these sources had included . " The Early Traditions of Israel , Critical Analysis of The Pre-Deuteronomic Narrative of Hexateuch ,1948 .

oyed after the modern archeological discoveries which proved the trusted historical events of the stories of the Torah , and after the theories and the studies of the modern schools of history which emptied the Wellhausen's theory from its content .
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Dr, Rev. Joseph

Biblical Criticism Study (2) The authorship of The Torah

2009-11-09T02:15:00.018+02:00

bible011.blogspot.com The Arabic Translation by the same author . The Picture is for the Tabernacle which the Torah has described
    All the ideas of the critics ,were not familiar among the Christians, at the end of the eighteenth century ,until "J.G.Echhorn1*" published his book "Einleitung",1780-1783. At first he adopted the idea of "Astruc" ,about the authorship of the Torah by "Moses" , but he refused that idea later ,and denied any relation between "Moses" and the authorship of the "Torah" , but he adopted also the idea of the the two Elohitic origins E1,E2 ,and the Yahoatic origin J, he denied the Mosaic authorship especially in concern of the book of Exodus , because ( in his point of view ) it was impossible to "Moses" to record some events before his birth at Ch1 and Ch2 .
      At the end of the eighteenth century "Karl David Ilgen 2*" published his book "Die Urkunden des Jerusalemischen Templarchivs"in 1798, and adopted the idea of the last two critics about the different origin of the book of Genesis,and added that the origins were 17 documents , and the writers were three persons, he called them J,E1,E2, so the Elohitic document referred to two writers, thus he paved the way ,in the future, to "H.Hupfeld 3*".
        It was famous at that time ,the arguments between those who accepted "Moses" as the author of the Torah, and those who denied that idea .
        "Alexander Gaddes 4*" was a Scotch priest who wrote at 1792-1800 , to defeat against the "Memoirs" of "Astruc" and against the bad results of the "Documentary hypothesis Theories" ,and who denied the Mosaic authorship.
         Two German writers attacked him, the first one was "J.S.Voter 5*"who published his book "Commentar uber den Pentateuch,3Vol,1802-1805"to proclaim that there were 30document which were used as references to the Torah and that those documents were used by the old cultural societies .
          The second man was "De Wette 6*" who published his book "Beitrage zur Einleitung in das Alts Testament",1807 comparing between the legal texts of the Torah and the legal texts which were familiar among the old nations , to assure later while he was preparing his message to the Doctorate degree ,1805 that the Torah reflected a modern ages than "Moses times, perhaps during ,or after the reign of "Joshia" 622 B.C ,he was influenced by the opinion of "Jerome" who said that idea 1400 years before him ,So, he divided the Torah into three sections J,E,D (D was the same section which was called by "Elgen" E2 ) .
           At the middle of the nineteenth century the critics began to try to find which origin was the oldest one , and which origin was the newest , "H .Ewald 7*" ,1831, suggested that the oldest one was E , but the newest one was J , it was a kind of a folkloric writings (from his point of view) which were modernized from time to time using the contents of J to help them in creating a revised editions .
            "F.Bleek 8*" in his book "de libiri Genesis origine",1836, also "F.Tush 9*"1838, in his book "Genesis" paved the way for "H.Hubfeld" at 1853 who began a new age of the documentary hypothesis age when he wrtote his book " 10*Die Qullen der Genesis undrie Artihrer Zusammensetzung" to revive the theory of "Ilgen" and developed it , he accepted the idea of "Ilgen" in concern of the three origins E1,E2,J ,suggesting that the oldest one was E1 and the newest one was J , but E2 was between them in date and it was recent to the two origins , but he added D as a fourth origin ( which was called by other critics E , or P according to it priestly contents) .
             "E.Riehm 11*" adopted the same idea about the three origins E1-E2,J,D and recorded it in his book 12* "Die Gesetzgebung Mosis in Land Moab ", 1854 .
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The Image is for Qumran Caves where some old testament manuscripts were found
             "K.H.Graf" 1*has collected the total of the late critics views and added some of the views of "E.G.Reuss" 2*,"J.F.L.George 3*" and "W.Votke 4*" and published his thoughts without adding any ideas from his owns except his view about P as the oldest origin instead of E1 , paving the way for "A.Kuenen 5*" 1869,followed by "Julius Van Weellhausen 6*" the most dangerous critics in the history of the Biblical Criticism.
              at the late period of the 19th century "Julius Van Wellhausen " has published his book "Die Komposition des Hexateuchs" his style was bold and explicit in criticize the matirials of the Torah.
              The title Komposition told us how he was bold and explicit in his criticism , he based his theory upon the unity of the six books Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers , Deuteronomy and Joshuah were in one book at a non specific point of the old history ,before it was divided after that date into six books, but during the period of their unity there were many sources , have been employed to revise that book ,using these documents E, J , D , P , these four letters are the symbols of his suggested sources, and some writers ( R ) added from these documents some of its contents to that book along a definite date.
                He suggested that , J, was the oldest document at 850 B.C ( according to his assumption).
                At 750 B.C it was E some writer R dealt with it and added some from its contents to the document J so it changed to be 1RJE
              At 621 B.C it was D another writer dealt with it and added some of its contents to the composed book to change it to be 2RJED ,that book was settled at 550 B.C .
At last between 500 - 450 B.C another writer found the document P and added some of its contents to 2RJED to be 3RJEDP .
   Thus, the contents of his book contains a serious claims, he was affected by Matching between the Jewish religion history which has been recorded in the Torah,with what he thought it was the real history as the available data which was between his hands at his times, also he was influenced with the evolution theory of Charles Darwin at his days.
This assumption have influenced with another assumption which was the Wellhausen's views about the sort of thinking along the various periods of the history while we think that the periods were influenced with the Torah commandments.
   As for example he said that at a certain period the worship were central so the parts which recorde4d the central worship as it was belonged to that period was related to that period as if he thought that the commandments has written to report the actual happened events not what would happen in the future
               The summary of his view is :- While the worship was based on a single sacrifice during the patriarchal ages in a family atmosphere without observance of rites and priestly duties, but the situation was developed to offer the sacrifice by priests due to the priestly duties, on a private alter, any person had not authority to change it's place, or it's rites , that was due to his opinion at a later period after the exile, so these parts have been related to that period.
              The theory of Wellhausen tended to divide every thing up for different periods of growth for the thoughts as the successive assumed theory of Darwin.
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leave a comment .                                                  Dr, Rev.Joseph.

A Biblical Criticism Study (1) The Author of The Torah

2009-10-09T15:54:00.024+02:00

www.bible011.blogspot.com the Arabic translation for the article's contents

It was not the first time ,to find some attackers ,for the author of the "Torah" ,along the history , to deny his capacity in being a prophet of God, the Bible told us about " Mariam" the sister of "Moses ", the daughter of " Amram" or " Aumran" in the Arabic pronunciation . She was the author of the Exodus song (Exodus 15.1-20 ) , but she allowed to herself to interfere in correcting some aspects in the personal affairs of "Moses " who was a prophet of God , so, she became leprous like the snow (Number 12) , After that "Korah" , "Dathan" and "Abiram" who denied the prophetic career of "Moses" (Number16), God ordered the earth to divide and swallowed them , it is suitable to denote that the Meth of "Karon" which have known in the east , has its origin from that events , "Korah" was a rich man but the earth swallowed him and his money , the Critics neglected the events of the past , in spite of it warned the critics , they criticize the authorship of the "Torah" along different ages. One of our respectable scientists who called 1*"Young" wrote an article about the history of the criticism and recorded that " Jen Astruc" , 1553 , was the first man who criticize the "Torah", but "D.F.Payne 2*" had another opinion that the first man was "Masius" 1573 , while the great scientist "F.F.Bruce 3*" suggested that "H.B.Wetter" ,1711,was the real first man . in fact , every one of them made a definite beginning in the field of the criticism . But if we search about the post history date of Criticism we will find it referred to the "Moses" times as we saw before .It is important now to study the history of the criticism during the Christian history. There were some Church's fathers like " Irenaeus" , "Tertullian" and "Clement of Alexandria " who adopted some old stories from the old tradition , before the birth of Christ , like the story which was recorded in II Esdras 14.21,22 about "Nebuchadrezzar" ( between 602-562 B. C ) who put the "Torah" in the fire , and burned it so "Ezra" rewrite it again ( "Ezra" was about 458 B. C ) , that story did not refer to any trusted source of history , and lakes the logical bases , because"Ezra" was not in the times of "Nebeuchadrezzar", and the copy or copies which were with the Jews during the Exile , were not the only copies of the "Torah", also the Jews in the exile were not all the Jews, because some of them remained in the sacred lands, like "Jeremiah"(626-587 B.C) , the prophet who was an eye wittiness for the events of the exile in the sacred lands, and wrote his "Lamentations" , It was not logical that those pious people had not copies of the "Torah" , specially after the reformation of Josiah" (640-609 B.C) .

So, our respectable fathers were deceived by the story of II Esdras, some of them like "John of Damascus 4*" denied the Mosaic authorship ( J.P.Migne,PG,XCIV,688-89 ), in the "Clement Homiletics , he told us about the Satan who interfered in the writing process of the "Torah" , in order to describe "Adam" , "Noah" and the fathers in a bad figure , so "Anstasius The Sinaite" the patriarch of Antioch during the seventh century , recorded that the"Torah" has included some imaginations . (5* J.P.Migne, PG,LXXXIX, 284, 285) . Those great fathers, we respect them for what they did to handle us the sources of the Christian principles , but as we say in the Arabic parable " Every horse has a fault and every saint has a mistake", sometimes they failed because their desire to focus in the new testament advantages, so they did not care enough to follow the roots of the wrong sources about the writings between the testaments .
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- when the doom of the medieval ages came , the attackers of the Torah referred to the older history of criticizing the Torah , like what "Ibn Ezra" has done 1167 A.C , when he referred to what the "Rabbi Isac ben Jasus 1*" 1057 A.C , who mixed between "Hadad" in Genesis 36.35 who was before "Moses " times ,with "Hadad" in IKings 11.14 at the days of "Jehoshaphat" and suggested that the Genesis was written after the days of "Jehoshaphat". He did not care that there were habitual repeating of the popular names among the eastern people , for example there was "Eleazar the slave during the days of Abraham " , "Eleazar the priest during the days of Moses" and "Eleazar whom Jesus Christ has arisen him from the death" .The "Rabbi " which means " The teacher and the writer"suggested that there were some texts which were added to the Torah like Genesis 12.6, 22.14 , Deuteronomy 1.1,3.11 ...etc, He suggested that there were duplicated mentioned for the events so , the writers collected them from many sources ( but they could not comment why the mention writers neglected that double ) .
"Spinoza 2*",1670, compared those duplicated events and assured that "Ezra" was the person who collected them . When the "Renaissance 3*" began , the reformation movements began to spread out and the leaders encouraged to deal with the Holy Bible, with more free open minded, so,the opinions increased with the increasing of the reformation schools, one of these reformers who's name was "Carlsdadt 4*", 1480-1541 , he suggested that "Moses" did not write the Torah, he said that if we observed that the book of Deuteronomy for example was written by a mentioned writer who has one style of writing, then the epilogue which recorded "Moses's death " led us to the logical conclusion that, it was impossible for "Moses " to write that book ( it was clear that he did not believe in the inspiration and the prophetic abilities of the prophet) .
The criticism increased by the joining of the laymen, who were criticizing the Literature,the most famous one of them was "Andreas Masius 5*"1573,he was a Belgium lawyer , related to the Roman Catholic Church, and recorded his thoughts in a book of commentary of Joshuah, 1574 A.C , where he wrote that "Ezra"added some texts to the Torah, this proclamation was used after him by many critics, even they did not agree with him , if "Ezra" was the man who added them or any other person, the Spanish Jesuits had a similar attitude like "Masius" towards the Torah , the famous persons who helped him in that task were "Jack Bonfrere 6*" and "benedict - Pereira" 1535-1610 A.C , they were the most famous philosophers at their times, and used their journal to reveal their thoughts , thus, they published their thoughts , which were able to spread out rapidly , their thoughts were to assure that their were some added texts to the Torah, after the times of "Moses",thus, they paved the way for "Benedict Spinoza 7* " ,1632 - 1677 A.C , who deny completely the Mosaic authorship , and doubted in "Ezra's additions " , paving the way to tho open doubts to refer it to latest times ( Tractatus Theologico- politicus 8*) .
"Thomas Hobbes 9*", in 1651 A.C, published his book"Leviathan" to deny that "Moses" has written the Torah , in spite of there were some possibilities that it contained his thoughts , but he has not written it absolutely (according to his opinion).
"Richard Simon 10*", was a Roman Catholic person who gathered the criticism of the Torah along the seventeenth century paving the way for the Armenian "Jean Le Clerc 11"1985 A.C, who supported the opinions of"Richard"and added that the Torah contained man's thoughts with the divine thoughts together and the date of its authorship was later than the exile 722 B.C during the times of "Ezra" .
The beginning of using "The Documentary Hypothesis" was by "Hans Wetter 12*" ,1711,A.C,he observed that there were two chapters in the book of Genesis , the first chapter where he called God "Eloheem" and the second chapter where he called God "Yahoah", it was the beginning of the idea about the Elohist source and the Yahoist source , the most majority of the Christians refused his thoughts at the beginning of the eighteen century , until a French Phisician named "Jean Astruc 13*" ,1753 A.C , published his book about Genesis , and suggested that , there were two memories "Deux Memoires14*" in the mind of "Moses" , where he kept some information , besides 12 documents ,the two memories with the 12 documents were the real sources of the Torah .
"Astruc" did not believe in the inspiration as a source of the informations which were included in the Torah ,he could not mention to us about the "deux memoires" and the 12 documents What were the names of these sources ? ,Where they went ? or From Where did he collect them?
It was just hypothesis , he tried to prove his theory by the imagined reflections of both of these sources on the Torah's texts , he suggested that the first "memoire" contained the name of "Yahoah" as a name of God while the other "memoire" contained the name of God as "Eloheem" but the other12 documents included the story of the creation and the history of the ancestors ,so he blamed the writer ,or the author because he neglected to follow the history of some ancestors .
At last you will amaze if you know that "Astruc " attacked the critics who denied the "Mosaic Authorship " for the Torah .
The unbelievable idea of the inspiration ( from his point of view ) was responsible about his strange thoughts . Dr, Rev. Joseph

THE NAME OF THE TORAH

2009-09-24T13:17:00.035+02:00

תןראה

Torah " is one of the most famous names , among the believers of the main religions in the middle east . Some of them respect its name without trying to read it , perhaps because they believed in the critics accuses , but " The Jews " and " The Christians " have their faith in its contents , they respect it because it is the first bases of all " The Holy Bible ".The faithful men of God wrote quoting its contents from the old times and the Archeological discoveries proved the historical news and teachings which was recorded in the " Torah

" Torah " in its original language , The Hebrew , called התןראה" Ha - Torah "
. The article " Ha " is the identification article which means " The ", if we refer to " B. Davidson" , 'The Analytical Hebrew & Chaldee Lexicon" , he told us that the word " Torah " came from the Hebrew root
יראה" yarah "
a singular , feminine derivation which means the moral base,shooter ( of arrows ) , layer of foundation , the pointer out ( as the finger ) , the teacher . תןר , תארThe name " Tor " or " Tar "
כתןר האדאמwhich is in 1 Chronicles 17.17 " Ketor Ha- adam "
which means" according to the estate of a man " RSV , as we see, the translators of the RSV preferred to translate the word " Tor " to the English expression " the estate of " . in fact , every word in the classical languages, may translate by many modern words, according to their modern rich vocabulary , because they used to added more words to it , to help them along their cultural history , to find new words more precise along ages .

                  Another scientist called " The Late J. Murry " הןראהreferred the word to " The Accadian " root " Horah "
" The Accadian Language " was the language of the people in the " Patriarchal Ages " , it was the source of the Hebrew , The Arabic and The Syrian languages , the suggested root means , " to see " , it means to see in a general sense , it has a general conception , it means definitely , to see , to regard , to know , to יראהexamine ...etc, " The Hebrew root Yarah "
وراhas the same meaning of " The Arabic root Warrah "
,the Arabic root is still used in the modern Arabic which means " to see something in order to know it and examine its details " .When the word occurs in Proverbs 4.4 and Job 24.6 , 10.8 , it reflects the meaning of " a teacher " .
The question now is , why the translators sometimes translate it , by using " The Greek " word " Nomos "νομος , which means Laws, Systems,Disciplines , or bases ? this question makes us remember some other names for " The Torah " like " The laws " or " The laws of Moses " . for example " Faust " decided to translate it " The Leader " because the word " leader " collects all the meaning of instruction,direction,precept , manner , and form .
It is The Leader so the Greek translated it "νομος Nomos " or " The Laws " in its old Greek's vast area of meaning to the word .The contents of the " Torah " helped " Faust " to find his suggested word , because " Torah " reveals " The laws of God " in a direct form , and in indirect form , inside of the historical stories which show us how " The laws of God " revealed in the behavior of " The Men of God " themselves which lead us , as " A Leader " , to the real aims of God . The name of "Torah "is - in fact - as a " Shooter of an arrow " makes me remember one of my researches , about " The Sorcery and Magic among The Old Nations ", while I was searching , I found the article of " K.A. Kitchen " about the old magician who accompanied by a follower , carried a bag full of arrows on his back ,when he reached to the people who wanted to know something about the future , he used to lead his follower , into a near area , to be watched by the people ,and to be far at the same time from the shooting arrows affections ,and he used to wrap the follower's eyes with a peace of clothes , and ordered him to shoot the arrows in anonymous directions, after that the magician examined the arrows , and spoke about the future , commenting on the color of the arrows , the shape of the arrows , the directions and the distances of the arrows , as a clue to the knowledge about the future , nowadays we have some people all over the world , who supposed that the remains of the coffee in a cup can reveal the future , using the same theory of those magicians .
The Bible itself like to describe the words of God as Arrows , and we must say that it was a very great similarity between the magic and the religion in the old ages ..God sent his word to his people, to lead them to the right way ,and assured its validity by miracles . at the second hand, was the Satan , who sent his lies in the paganism ,using his magical tricks .
But the word of God is like " A Shooting Arrows by God " to reveal the future, the real future of the man , in spite of the magician arrows tricks , which was known among the old Israelite communities ( refer to II Kings 14.13,14 to observe how the arrows were known as a method of revealing the future ) .
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-The "Torah " is " The leader " or " The Moral law " or " The Nomos " . In our attempt to follow the history of the names of the "Torah " we found that its title in the " Septuagint " L.X.X " was " Pentateuch πεντατευχ" , may be someone thought that this title is the equivalent Greek word for the name " Torah " , but in fact , it was not , this word was not an original Greek word neither was the equivalent meaning to the original name "Torah " . It consists of two parts , "Penta πεντα " which means "Five " , and "Teuchos τευχος " ( An Alexandrian local word which was used between the Alexandrian people to mean " A Book " ," A Biblos " or " A Volume as a part of a book written in volumes " The , the word means " The Five Books or Volumes " . The Fathers of the church like " Tertullian " or others , used to call this part of our Holy Bible using that name ,The history of the different names for the " Torah " , and the source of the different names also the numbers of its parts is different from one Critic to another , The Jews used to name the book , by the first word , or phrase which located in the first beginning of the book , some scientists suggested that the " Septuagint writers were the source of this new style , to name the books according to the summary of its contents ,but we see that the "Samaritan Text " , precedes the " Septuagint " in using that tradition before the " Septuagint ". Some researchers thought that the "Torah " with its five parts , were a parallel style to the five books of "Psalms " , and the five books of " Megalloth " [ Song of Songs , Ruth , lamentations , Ecclesiastes , Esther ] , therefore " N. H. Snaith " said in his book " Hymns of the Temple " that the beginning of that tradition was made by the Rabbis to suit the worshiping practice. But the Rabbis have not done the five parts , as what "Snaith " proclaimed , but they divided it into 365 parts ,every part contained 248 parts , called "the sedreem " ,to read in the synagogues , as a circulatory system ended every three years , in spite of they were reading it using that system once every year at the exile times as they do now ,We will discuss the different names ,when we discuss the views of the critics about the "Author of The Torah " ,but it is enough now to tell you that some critics had a strange ideas about some fragments which collected together to create The Torah , as one book ,which was divided later , they were "the critics of the higher criticism " , and "the formal criticism " and others . They who said that it was one book , and divided later to five books [ Genesis - Exodus -Leviticus -Numbers ], and some one later , perhaps " Joshua" or any one else have commented on the four books , creating the fifth and called it"Deuteronomy " ,while some other of them said that the book of "Joshua ", was among them , but some others said that "Joshua " , "Judges" ,"I,II Samuel ".. etc, were among that collection .
They who thought that the source were one book and divided into five books , put their theory upon the name of the "Torah " ,which was used by the prophets ( see , Deuteronomy 28.61 , 29.21 , 30. 10 , 31. 26 where they call it "The book of law " , also in Joshua 23.6 , Nehemiah 8.1 , Ezra 7.6 where they called it "The book of Moses law) , added to that the different names in the Bible for The Torah like , " Moses Law " ," Moses ' Nomos " , " The Book of Moses " or "Moses " only . But they who said that the book was collected from many sources ,and were divided later ,were two kinds of scholars ,The first kind who had a view that it divided into six parts ( Genesis - Exodus - Leviticus - Numbers - Deuteronomy - Joshua ) Like 1" Alexander Geddes " , 1800 . and "J . Wellhausen " , " Die Composition des Hexateuch " ,1876 . therefore they called it Hexateuch or the six books, But the second type of critics Who called it "Tetrateuch τετρατευχος " or the four books like 3"Engnell " , " Gamla Testamentat " ., Vol I .
" The Torah is the book which collected all what we know now about the old communities , its law and its history , of all the events which faced the people of God , during its first establishing point , it contains a moral law and a simple local law , which reflected an live figure , about their historical law and the history of activating it , along that period of the history . That book is the real first base of all the next holy books , which ended by the book of Revelation . It contained the beginning of the understanding of the people of God , about God himself , and the light which lightened along the ages , to lead the people of God , and paves the way to accept the next prophesies and the next events , this book is the book of the law , or the divine law for all the ages , it was directed from God , to direct his people and lead them , educating them , and piloting them to the way of the life , and to "Shilon " ( one of the names of Jesus Christ inn Genesis 49. 10 ) , and to the "Seed of the woman " (another name for Jesus Christ in Genesis 3.15 ) , to the promised Canaan ,which is an example , for The heavenly Canaan . -

   . Dr Rev. Joseph Elmenshaoi .

Welcom visitors

2009-09-24T00:52:00.001+02:00

I welcome you my visitor,to my blog , which has an Arabic parallel blog;called Arabic Bible bible011.blogspot.com The subject of the two blogs is :- Bible Criticism , it is necessary to study some sciences to be able to react with this subject like:-The History and The Geography of The Bible,The Hebrew Language,The Greek Language,The History of The Christian Thought ,The Introduction of The Bible,The Biblical Archeology ,The Bible Studies, The Christian Apologetics . My dear,I have a full confidence in your abilities to use all these sciences as a tools to enable you to overcome the guesses of the critics,this confidence persuaded me to discus their theories academically with the Christian faithful reaction ,Welcome again . We wish to know your comment .
thank you . Dr Rev. Joseph