Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

But seriously. I always imagine that intellectuals in previous ages refrained from embracing atheism (at least publicly) because of the recognition that (a) most of the world were ignorant brutes, (2) ignorant brutes are dangerous to the social order and (3) organized religion helps prevent ignorant...

outhouse is a car salesman in northern California named John. He is not the moderator of the forum. Many Americans occupy the position of the stupidest, least sophisticated people living on the earth. The irrational hatred being directed against Islam is purpose-driven. They want to have a war with ...

God created the world for the sake of the Torah But the Pentateuch says that the world was created with a set numbers of days, even before the sun was created. How were there days before the creation of the sun? How was a '24 hour' period measured as a 'day' without the star used to measure such th...

Your points aren't based on rational thought or exegesis. They are statements of belief in a particular doctrine and applying that to the text of the Pentateuch.

Better yet, read this, read what the Sadducees certainly believed: https://www.academia.edu/7368474/Was_Moses_the_mudawwin_of_the_Torah_The_Question_of_Authorship_of_the_Pentateuch_According_to_Yefet_ben_Eli very often the exegete limits himself to a statement that Moses “wrote down” the Torah (or t...

There are so many. Let's start with Genesis. Who wrote this God or a human narrator?:

“And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart” (Genesis 6:6)

Early Karaite exegesis recognized the human narrator of the Pentateuch and identified him narrating for instance the first chapters of Genesis.

I even suspect the Ten Commandments as preserved in Exodus and Deuteronomy are inaccurate or not reflective of the more ancient inscriptions known to Philo and others

Ummm. The Pentateuch was written with mistakes (i.e. it wasn't proofed properly). Hardly a divine text.

This is NOT of course what I meant or was hoping to direct people to when I made the post. Instead I merely point to the PRACTICALITY of myth-making. Human beings are a species of animals. Some animals like bees can organize themselves with hundreds of societal members. Yet as civilization grows and...