From: dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: more of ...can of worms....
Date: 26 Aug 92 21:28:33 GMT
Organization: New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, N.J.

In article <BtLLvu.2pK@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>You are making the assumption that, at the time of Moses, a Sefer Torah,
>as a complete manuscript, was written down, either by God Himself, or by
>Moses, or by a team of scribes under the explicit direction of Moses.

No.  The assumption is that God gave Moses the Mitzvot.  The events
were only written down as they happened.  Even Moses wouldn't be given
knowledge of the future, such as is printed in the Torah.

>Also, if it were written by, or under the direction of, Moses, that he
>got everything right.  

What evidence do you have otherwise?  Your assumption that he got it
wrong is equally unprovable.  At least I've got over 3000 years of
tradition to back me up.

>In either of these cases, everything in the Torah must be exactly so,
>except possibly the pre-Adam part, where the timing may be off.  That
>means that, for example, Eden was located where Genesis says it is, 
>and the rivers coming out of Eden were as described, or at least that
>was the situation a few thousand years ago.  That means that the order
>of evolution of living things is reasonably accurate.  That means that
>God must have really done a major job of moving animals around after
>the flood, in a manner unknown to Noah and his descendents.  That means
>that, somehow or other, there were very large groups of humans which do
>not seem to correspond to any of the descendents of Noah listed.

It is well known that the geography changed after the Flood.  (Come
on, do you really think that two rivers are going to remain after the
entire planet is flooded out?)  As for the timing of the Creation,
it's also believed that time didn't flow in the same way before the
Flood.  This is why people lived to be 900 years old, and Creation
could take place in 6 days without contradicting what science has to
say. 

>It is not a single item which causes the questioning, but the entire
>pre-Abraham "history" "does not compute."  Even much afterwards has 
>problems.  I do not believe that there have been many copying errors
>since a final agreed-upon version of the Torah came about, but what
>about before then?  Was there even a copy of the entire Torah before
>the time of Solomon?  Some claim that Josiah only found a planted
>copy of Deuteronomy.

Some also claim that it was written about 300 years ago, and that all
of it is a fake.  But we don't believe them, either.  The written
Torah was codified in print after the last book ended, while earlier
events would have been written as they happened, or given at Sinai if
they occurred earlier.

As for the accuracy of the copying, there were large amounts of people
who made it their entire life's work to gurantee that it didn't get
copied wrong.  It's not hard to get something exactly right when you
do nothing else your entire life.

>According to our prophets, there were times when few were observant,
>especially before the return from Exile.   The project started by
>Ezra may very well have produced the first real Sefer Torah.  While
>it may have been prserved since that time, this says nothing about
>the earlier period.  This does not make it all nonsense, but it also
>strongly questions the Divine or even Mosaic authorship.

Proof?  Proof?  Who says that there was nothing written before Ezra?
It is true that the Hebrew alphabet changed drasticly with Ezra, but
that doesn't mean he changed any information.

You don't provide any examples other than "some people say...".
That's not proof.  It's only rumor.  Not even suitable for casting
reasonable doubt.
-- 
   |)  David Charlap           "I don't even represent myself
  /|_  dic5340@hertz.njit.edu   sometimes so NJIT is right out!.
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