Is it just me, or does it seem like atheists, agnostics and free thinkers in general have read and know much more about the Bible than the average Christian?
I could give many examples of why this seems to be the case, but one of most compelling to me is the case of the 10 Commandments as pointed out in a recent pamphlet by M. Lee Dietz.
As he correctly pointed out, most all Christians, including politicians who want them prominently displayed in government buildings, seem to think the 10 Commandments that God supposedly etched in stone tablets and gave to Moses are as follows...
1.Thou shall have no other gods before me.
2.Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image.
3.Thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy god in vain.
4.Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy.
5.Honor thy father and mother.
6.Thou shall not kill.
7.Thou shall not commit adultery.
8.Thou shall not steal.
9.Thou shall not bear false witness...
10. Thou shall not covet..
I'm always seeing things like sketches, recreations and artists' renderings of the stone tablets that God gave to Moses. And 100% of the time, the above "charges" will be on them. But these were just verbal charges that God gave to Moses in Exodus 20 and told him to verbally communicate them to the people of Israel. They were never etched in stone and the Bible is very clear about this.
The commandments that were actually supposed to have been carved in stone by the finger of God, not once but twice, didn't appear until Exodus 34 and were as follows...
1. Thou shall worship no other god, for the Lord whose name is Jealous, is a jealous god.
2. Thou shall make thee no molten gods.
3. The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep
4. Six days thou shall work, but on the seventh day, thou shall rest
5. Thou shall observe the feast of weeks
6. Thrice a year your men children shall appear before the Lord, the God of Israel.
7. Thou shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven
8. Thou shall not leave the feast of the passover unto the morning
9. The first of the fruits of the land thou shall bring into the house of the Lord thy God
10. Thou shall not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.
As anyone can see, there is very little resemblance to the 10 charges that most Christians believe to be the commandments that were etched on those stone tablets. Its bad enough that they believe in a book of fairy tales, but it doesn't even look like most of them have even read it to begin with.
And don't forget, there's an entirely DIFFERENT set of "commandments", in the New Testament "sermon on the mount".
ReplyDeleteAs Richard Dawkins likes to ask (paraphrasing), "Do these people never open the book they put so much belief in?"
Hm. I guess that's what ministurds are for.....
Hmmm... While there are many who claim Christianity without reading the Bible (and particularly the Old Testament), such ignorance would be surprising. Fortunately, it's also wrong. If you read from Deuteronomy you will find:
ReplyDeleteDeuteronomy 5:22 (ESV) 22 “These words the LORD spoke to all your assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice; and he added no more. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me.
So the original ten commandments on the original tablets of stone were those spoken on the mountain (and listed again in Deuteronomy 5). They were not just the verbal communications of Moses. If we read further in Deuteronomy we find:
Deuteronomy 10:1-5 (ESV) 1 “At that time the LORD said to me, ‘Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to me on the mountain and make an ark of wood. 2 And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets that you broke, and you shall put them in the ark.’ 3 So I made an ark of acacia wood, and cut two tablets of stone like the first, and went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hand. 4 And he wrote on the tablets, in the same writing as before, the Ten Commandments that the LORD had spoken to you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. And the LORD gave them to me. 5 Then I turned and came down from the mountain and put the tablets in the ark that I had made. And there they are, as the LORD commanded me.”
God wrote the second tablets with the Ten Commandments with the same words that were on the first tablets of stone, and they were the Ten Commandments that God spoke on the mountain in the midst of the fire.
It all seems to add up to the traditional interpretation being correct. Exodus 34 is certainly interesting, but if you read it carefully you find that these words were for Moses to give to the people and written by Moses, while the stone with the Ten Commandments was said to be written by God. The way I reconcile these is to assume that the two are different, which harmonises with the clear statements of Deuteronomy that give the words to the people on Mount Sinai as the Ten Commandments.
You are of course welcome to invoke any documentary hypothesis you choose or discount the testimony of Deuteronomy, but I accept both it and Exodus which together show clearly that the Ten Commandments were those revealed on Mount Sinai in fire to the people, not those given to Moses personally in Exodus 34.
It is true that Christ gave new commandments, and that these replace the law given to Israel. However, to say that they are entirely different is misleading. Christ fulfilled the law and replaced it, and it is noticable that some of his sayings are of the form "You have heard it said ... But I tell you ..." actually giving a harder command (for example, replacing "Do not kill" with not being angry).
So Jon, you are saying we have 2 sets of ten commandments engraved in stone? Or, does Deut. make it 3 sets?
ReplyDeleteWhich one of the three sets is the actual, real set of ten commandments?
According to Jesus the first commandment is "thou shalt love the Lord thy God" and the second one is "like unto it" and is "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"
So there must be another set that we don't know about?
I thought my comments made it clear that I believed that there was one set of Ten Commandments, and that they were revealed to the people of Israel in fire on Mt Sinai (Ex 19, 20), and written by God twice on two different sets of two tablets, then the people of Israel were reminded of this in Deuteronomy.
ReplyDeleteJesus' comments were correct, that those two commandments summed up the whole law. That has nothing whatever to do with the Ten Commandments.
Your original contention was that Christians and Jews do not read the book they believe as well as atheists, agnostics and free thinkers and so have fundamental misunderstandings. I have (hopefully) demonstrated to the contrary that those people are equally capable of misinterpreting scripture.
I do not claim that everyone who calls themself a Christian reads the Bible or knows what they are talking about, but I hesitate to believe that many atheists, agnostics and freethinkers have read it as much as I and many of my friends have. If they have (and it was not because they read it a lot before deciding it was useless), I would quite like to know why. I read it because I believe it to be the inspired word of God.
BTW, if you want another "problem", most pictures of the tablets are one sided, while the Bible clearly says that they were written on both sides. I find it hard to consider this a serious misunderstanding like not knowing what the ten commandments are.
Then what about the ten commandments in Ex. 34 that were also written on tablets of stone?
ReplyDeleteSince they are different than the ten commandments in Ex. 20, then there must be two sets of ten commandments written in stone.
Actually, the set in Ex. 20 was not written on tablets of stone but were spoken (Ex. 20:1).
It is likely that the book of Deuteronomy was written to reconcile these and other contradictions.
ReplyDeleteMy observation is that people looking for contradictions in the Bible will generally find them, and those who believe it can generally explain them. I could find similar surface level problems in different accounts of witnesses in a court, newspapers, etc. That doesn't necessarily mean that any of them are lying (though of course they could be).
ReplyDeleteExodus 20 was definitely spoken, but the words were then written if you believe Deuteronomy (of course, if you think it was just written to explain away discrepancies then I can't help you). Exodus 34 were commandments given to Moses to write down and to give to the people, and as I read it were not written on the stone at all (and in making this interpretation I am consulting Exodus 32 & 34 and Deuteronomy). That doesn't mean my explanation is necessarily right, but what it does mean is that it has been read and thought about, unlike your assertions.
Some folks can see contradictions everywhere in the Bible but upon closer examination find that most can fairly easily be explained.
ReplyDeleteSome problems are because of transcription and then mistranslation of the poor transcription. Then, of course, there is misinterpretation . . .
As an atheist I see the whole thing as based on false premises to start with. So naturally, I view the text more objectively rather than subjectively.
I can plainly see things in the Pentatuech that could not possibly have been written by Moses in the wilderness. Therefore, I am forced to accept the "expert's" opinions that it was written by several authors and at a time when those things were possible to write about.
Everytime I see "unto this day" mentioned, I see post exile. Everytime I see Moses speak in third person, I see third person.
The wilderness did not supply Moses with writing material and a written Hebrew language had not yet been invented.
That post exilic Israel believed in those books, there's no doubt, but whoever did it knew better. Whoever did write it was highly educated (for the time) and had a political as well as a religious agenda.
There are a lot of assumptions in that argument. I'm particularly unconvinced by the statement that believing it is based on falsehood makes you objective. However, much of what you say I can't disagree with. It is clear that many of the books of the Bible have an editorial hand. While we disagree about the extent of that editing and the time of the editing, to deny it would be folly. Similarly, there are a number of places where we can observe apparent copying errors. We may disagree on the number, but to deny it would be folly. They are there. The Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls do disagree in places from the Masoretic text, and they can't all be right. Come to the NT, and the number of manuscripts and variants is highly surprising to those who have been brought up to think that the words in their Bible are clearly the word of God translated from one original and authoritative text.
ReplyDeleteYou can surely believe that I would far prefer it to be clear and obvious, with a perfectly preserved text that came down from heaven and could be viewed without doubt as the word of God (written on gold plates perhaps?) However, I think that it is part of God's purpose to leave some things that require faith and belief. There is much in the Bible that is very difficult to prove, and I'm not so sure that it is worth trying, because a record like the Bible must require some faith. I'm happy to give reasons why I believe it (though not now - I'm too busy), but to go from that to absolute proof is hard. [I will note that obtaining absolute proof for other beliefs is also difficult, and sometimes subjective].