Mr. Lundahl Needs to Provide Evidence that Moses Existed. He Has the Burden of Evidence.
Kevin R. Henke
November 21, 2022
In Henke (2022bn), I said the following:
“Lundahl (2022k) makes the following comments about point #5 in Henke (2022b) about who wrote Genesis 3 and when:
“First known audience considered it to have been written by Moses, and considered Genesis 1 to be based on a vision granted him on Sinai. They are not known to have made a parallel claim of prophecy for the parts that could be historically transmitted. This means, Genesis was finished as book after the Exodus event, and by Moses, who had access to revelation for a limited part of it and historic traditions and documents for the rest.”
“Here, Mr. Lundahl is again making groundless proclamations that have no evidential support whatsoever. So, where’s the archeological evidence that Moses ever lived? If he did happen to exist, how do we know that he wrote anything? How do we know when Moses lived, if he lived at all? Why should we trust the traditions of ancient Israelites? How can we trust the beliefs of individuals that lived about a thousand years after Moses supposedly lived and many more thousands of years after Adam supposedly lived? To be exact, the archaeological results in Finkelstein and Silberman (2001) and other 21st century sources provide good evidence on the origin of ancient Israel and the Moses story is baseless. Lundahl (2022k) needs to look at the evidence and not just blindly trust groundless Hebrew speculation and myths. Finkelstein and Silberman (2001, pp. 10-24) and many other experts also present good evidence that the Pentateuch was written by multiple authors and not all at once. Various individuals, including conservative Christians and secular archeologists (e.g., Finkelstein and Silberman 2001), have thrown out dates on when the Pentateuch or various parts of it were written. None of these dates are well verified.” [my emphasis]
Lundahl (2022x) then responds to my bolded statements with a series of useless Bible quotations:
“I'm not claiming much archaeological evidence Moses lived (he is one option for the empty tombed pharao coruling with his father Amememhet IV). I am claiming historic evidence as per first known audience for Exodus. Let's say people alive when the book of Joshua was written since they accepted this:
Now it came to pass after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, that the Lord spoke to Josue the son of Nun, the minister of Moses, and said to him:
[Josue (Joshua) 1:1]
Or you could pretend that audience as not being a known one, and then we have a reference in Judges, a book probably written as a chronicle or combination of chronicles and finished a few centuries after Moses:
And he left them, that he might try Israel by them, whether they would hear the commandments of the Lord, which he had commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses, or not.
[Judges 3:4]
Or you could claim Samuel's contemporaries:
And Samuel said to the people: It is the Lord, who made Moses and Aaron, and brought our fathers out of the land of Egypt.
[1 Kings (1 Samuel) 12:6]
Or if you think that was written much later, you can take the contemporaries of King Solomon or so:
And keep the charge of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, and observe his ceremonies, and his precepts, and judgments, and testimonies, as it is written in the law of Moses: that thou mayest understand all thou dost, and whithersoever thou shalt turn thyself:
[3 Kings (1 Kings) 2:3]
Or if that's too early for you, how about the times after Elisha or Elisaeus as we Catholics like to call him:
But the children of the murderers he did not put to death, according to that which is written in the book of the law of Moses, wherein the Lord commanded, saying: The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: but every man shall die for his own sins.
[4 Kings (2 Kings) 14:6]
The later you put the presumed (on the alternative view) "invention of Moses" the more inexplicable it is. Because all of these references, Moses is featured simply as history, and not as "lost and spectacularily recovered history" which is another thing.”
So, how do we know that Moses, Joshua and the other characters mentioned in Mr. Lundahl’s Bible quotations actually lived and accomplished the feats mentioned in these quotations? We don’t. Mr. Lundahl also continues to ignore the archeological evidence in Finkelstein and Silberman (2001) and other 21st century sources that completely undermine that the Exodus and other Old Testament events ever occurred. As I explained many times before, Mr. Lundahl’s “first audience” approach is a worthless scam (e.g., Henke 2022fL, Henke 2022jt, and Henke 2022ju). There’s no evidence that Moses ever existed and Mr. Lundahl has the burden of evidence. That is, Mr. Lundahl needs to present archeological or other external evidence that Moses actually did live and accomplish the feats that the Bible says about him. Just quoting the Bible to support the Bible is a circular reasoning fallacy (Henke 2022ab along with Henke 2022fs and Henke 2022ki). Now, of course, the ancient Israelites were going to believe that their folk heroes existed and they certainly believed the stories associated with Moses and disseminated them. Again, that does not mean that Moses actually existed, anymore than Hercules or William Tell (Henke 2022ek). We simply don’t know who wrote the Pentateuch and when (Henke 2022dw). It may have been written centuries or even a 1,000 years after Moses supposed lived. We don’t know. We also can’t assume that Joshua existed either or that he wrote anything in the book of Joshua. These stories could have been made up. Mr. Lundahl has the burden to present external evidence that Joshua and Moses actually lived. Otherwise, the default position is skepticism and not accepting what is written about Moses, Joshua and these other unconfirmed characters in the Old Testament (Henke 2022cg). Mr. Lundahl is also ignoring the serious knowledge gap between whenever the Pentateuch was written and our earliest known copies in the Dead Sea Scrolls (e.g., Henke 2022iL and Henke 2022in). Even if Moses existed and wrote some sort of Pentateuch, because of this knowledge gap, we don’t know how the manuscripts may have been altered between the time that they were written and our earliest known copies. There is no complete chain of custody for the Pentateuch. The evidence indicates that the Pentateuch had multiple authors and was not well copied and preserved until the much later Soferim and Masoretes handled them (Tov 2001, p. 9; Finkelstein and Silberman 2001, pp. 10-24). The external evidence must actually be independent of the Bible. The evidence must be archeological or contemporary writings by Egyptians or other opponents that actually knew Moses.
References:
Finkelstein, I. and N.A. Silberman. 2001. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts: The Free Press: New York, USA, 385pp.
Tov, E. 2001. Textural Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 2nd revised ed., Fortress Press: Minneapolis, MN, USA, 456pp.