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  • From: "Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>
  • To: "Heard, Christopher" <Christopher.Heard AT pepperdine.edu>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Author of the Torah
  • Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 03:56:56 +0100

Chris wrote:
[James]


Why was Yehoshua referring to the entire Torah when he said that Moshe
spoke
of him?

He was referring to prophecies regarding Abram's seed which would bless
all
mankind. These prophecies are to be found in Genesis *NOT* in
Deuteronomy.


[/James]

James, please specify what passages you think you're interpreting or
paraphrasing here. As far as I can tell, Jesus only said that "Moses" or
"the law of Moses" spoke about him on two occasions: Luke 24:44 and John
5:46. Both are quite generic and do not cite any particular passages. In
fact, I cannot find any place where Jesus speaks about himself in the
terms you do above (although Paul does so in Galatians 3).

In any event, I do not think these phrases can be appropriately used as
"authorship claims" for the canonical Torah. They are conventional ways
of introducing Torah quotations and allusions.
end quote.

compare
Luke2:22 with Lev12:2
Luke5:14 with Lev13:49, Lev14:2, Lev14:10, Lev14:20
Luke20:28 with Deu25:5, Gen38:8
and especially Luke20:37 with Exo3:2, Exo3:6, Ex6:3
Luke24:27 with Gen3:16, Gen22:18, Gen49:10, Num21:9
John1:45 with "" "" "" ""
John3:14 with Num21:9
John5:45 with Gen3:16 etc.
John7:51 with Deu1:16
John8:17 with Deu17:6,19:15
Matt8:4 with Lev14:4,20
Matt19:7 with Deu24:1
Matt19:8 with Gen2:24
Matt22:24 with Gen38:8
Mark1:44 with Lev 13:49,Lev14:3
Mark7:10 with Exo20:12, Deu5:16, Exo21:17, Lev20:9
Mark10:3,4 with Deu24:1
Mark12:19 with Gen38:8
and especially Mark12:26 with Exo3:2

Whether a person accepts that Yehoshua was the Messiah or not and
is therefore humble enough to accept as the Messiah he would know
better, it is still clear regardless that he and his followers held
Moshe' to be the author of the Torah.
It is highly noted that many accusations were brought against the
group but it is never claimed that they wrongfully attributed the
Torah to Moshe'.

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Security System.
>From Christopher.Heard AT pepperdine.edu Fri Jul 29 22:59:16 2005
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Author of the Torah
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On Jul 29, 2005, at 7:12 PM, Read, James C wrote:
[James]


I am interested in hearing your model that would explain how the nation
of isreal was duped into believing the scroll was authored by Moshe'.

I don't think anybody was "duped." I think that the fact that the Torah
itself says that Moses wrote *some* law books, combined with the fact
that both Torah and tradition depict Moses as Israel's great lawgiver
(well, mediator of laws from YHWH), were over the course of many years
of tradition "generalized" in popular thinking so that Moses came to be
regarded as the author of the entire Torah, even though the Torah itself
makes that claim for only parts of it.

A very similar thing happens even today to my students. Many of them
come into class with the presupposition that because David was
remembered in the Bible as a harpist, and because David's name appears
at the top of some of the psalms, therefore King David wrote the book of
Psalms. Yet that is not what the text attests. My students are taking
part of the data and generalizing it beyond what is warranted. I think
the same thing happened in the traditional reception of the Torah.

Chris

--
R. Christopher Heard
Assistant Professor of Religion
Pepperdine University
Malibu, California 90263-4352
http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard
<http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard>
http://www.iTanakh.org <http://www.iTanakh.org>
http://www.semioticsandexegesis.info
<http://www.semioticsandexegesis.info>





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