Originally posted by standingfirminChrist:
Also, 2 Peter speaks of the flood that lifted Noah off of the earth.
The truth is that we have today an old document commonly known as “The Book of Genesis.” We know for a fact that God did NOT write it because God is neither a grammar school dropout nor a liar, but we do not know who did write it. We know that the authorship of it is commonly attributed by the unlearned to Moses based upon ancient legends, but what could possibly be more ludicrous and lacking in any sense whatsoever than to believe that a dead man wrote about his own death! Am I replying in this thread to hopelessly ill 18th century patients in Saint Mary’s of Bethlehem or am I writing to sane people in the 21st century? (That is, of course, a rhetorical question because the answer to it could not be more obvious!). It is true, of course, that traditional Jews and uneducated first century Christians were under the absurd notion that Moses wrote it, but none of them were so insane as to believe that God wrote it.
Contrary to the misconception of many on this message that Jesus was a grammar school dropout who believed that God put a pencil in the right hand of Moses and a pencil sharpener in the other and dictated to Moses the Pentateuch, I believe that Jesus was the Son of God and that he had enough sense and knowledge to know better than to believe such absolutely ludicrous nonsense. But, of course, both Jesus and Peter were familiar with the beliefs regarding the authorship of the Pentateuch and, rather than start an argument with the masses over the authorship of it, they spoke of it in the language of the day as being “the writings of Moses.” Needless to say, this neither implies nor suggests that either Jesus or
Peter expected anyone living in the 21st century to make fools of themselves by grossly distorting the meaning of their words but expected them to recognize them as a very common form of rhetoric found in the Bible and other writings. Paul, a gifted writer who used many literary devises to express the truths revealed to him by the Holy Spirit, wrote,
1 Cor. 1529. Otherwise, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them? (NASB, 1995)
Paul is using here precisely the same literary devise used by both Jesus and Peter regarding the authorship of the Pentateuch. Paul did not believe in or advocate Baptizing Christians on behalf of their dead, unsaved relatives, but he knew that that was a common practice in the Corinthian Church, and rather that get into a futile and vain argument over that harmless issue, he used that belief to show the Corinthians that deep in their hearts they knew that the resurrection was a reality.
There is, therefore, absolutely no Biblical reason to attribute the authorship of Genesis to Moses, and only a hopelessly ill 18th century patients in Saint Mary’s of Bethlehem could possibly come to the conclusion, contrary to both the Bible and the most basic common sense, that God put a pencil and a pencil sharpener into the hands of Moses and dictated the Pentateuch to him.
