ForgotPassword?
Sign Up
Search this Topic:
Forum Jump
Posts: 20720
Mon, 8-Jan-07 15:12:04
Moderator
Quote:To eliminate any chance of human error, the Talmud enumerates more than 20 factors mandatory for a Torah scroll to be considered "kosher." This is the Torah's built-in security system. Should any one of these factors be lacking, it does not possess the sanctity of a Torah scroll, and is not to be used for a public Torah reading. The meticulous process of hand-copying a scroll takes about 2,000 hours (a full-time job for one year).
Quote:But how impressive is this (Tora accuracy) compared to other similar documents, such as the Chrstian Bible? (Both books contain approximately the same number of words.) First of all, which would you expect to be more successful in preserving the accuracy of a text? The Chrstian Bible. For several reasons. First, the Chrstian Bible is about 1,700 years younger than the Torah. Second, the Christians haven't gone through nearly as much exile and dislocation as the Jews. Third, Christianity has always had a central authority (the Vatican) to ensure the accuracy of their text. What are the results? The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, a book written to prove the validity of the New Testament, says: " A study of 150 Greek [manu*****s] of the Gospel of Luke has revealed more than 30,000 different readings... It is safe to say that there is not one sentence in the New Testament in which the [manu*****] is wholly uniform." Other scholars report there are some 200,000 variants in the existing manu*****s of the New Testament, representing about 400 variant readings which cause doubt about textual meaning; 50 of these are of great significance. The Torah has nine spelling variants -- with absolutely no effect on the meaning of the words. The Chrstian Bible has over 200,000 variants and in 400 instances the variants change the meaning of the text. The point of course is not to denigrate Chrstianity. Rather, this comparison demonstrates the remarkable accuracy of the Jewish transmission of Torah.
Quote:Moshe Ki'bel Torah M'Sinai: MOSHE RECEIVED (ki'bel) TORAH FROM SINAI AND TRANSMITTED IT (u'm'sa-ra) TO JOSHUA, AND JOSHUA TO THE ELDERS, AND THE ELDERS TO THE PROPHETS, AND THE PROPHETS TRANSMITTED IT TO THE MEN OF THE GREAT ASSEMBLY.
Quote:We will work backwards in time. Let's first prove that the Bible is two thousand years old, and work backwards from there. Quote:1,800 Years Ago The Chrstians I think there is little question that 1,800 years ago the Torah already existed. The Chrstians have been using their confused mistranslations of the Tanach at least since the second century C. E., and even trying to prove their mistaken beliefs from the Torah. So the Torah is certainly already in existence for about 1,800 years. 2,000 Years Ago Josephus and Philo But it certainly existed before then as well. Josephus lived almost two thousand years ago, around the first century C.E., and wrote his works probably around 75 C.E. Josephus mentions the Torah numerous times, and clearly refers to it as something that had been around a long time. In his work called Contra Apion, he writes: For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, as the Greeks have, but only twenty-four books, which contain the records of all things past; which are justly believed to be divine; and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. (Book 1, Chapter 1, Number There you have a clear reference to the Books of the Bible, and explicit mention of the Five Books of Moses. This is just one reference of many. Josephus mentions the Torah throughout many of his works. (See, for example, Antiquities of the Jews 4:8:3 and 2:16:5.) Josephus is very clear that by his time there already existed a book of Laws written by Moses, and that it tells of the stories that Josephus himself tells in his Antiquities. But was Josephus speaking of something new, or something that was already very old? Josephus was speaking of something that was already considered very old in his time. How do I know? Because he says so. In Contra Apion, Josephus writes that our Sacred Books are very old, and he asserts that no one has ever added to them or changed them in all the years since they were created. ...and how firmly we have given credit to these books of our own nation is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add any thing to them, to take any thing from them, or to make any change in them; but it is become natural to all Jews immediately, and from their very birth, to esteem these books to contain Divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be willing to die for them. It is no new thing for our captives, many of them in number, and frequently in time, to be seen to endure racks and deaths of all kinds upon the theaters, that they may not be obliged to say one word against our laws and the records that contain them; whereas there are none at all among the Greeks who would undergo the least harm on that account [i.e., for their own books].... (1:1: So it is quite clear that the Jews had these books, and believed in them, long before Josephus, who lived almost two thousand years ago. The Jews of his time, almost 2,000 years ago, already had all the Written Torah we have today, and believed them to be the originals, just as we believe today. Let's go back a little further. Philo (around 20 B.C.E. to around 50 C.E.) also talks about the Books of the Torah, in his work The Life of Moses (II:288-91). He also says that the books of the Torah are very old. The writings of Josephus and Philo both prove that the Written Torah was already composed by the first century of the Common Era. 2,200 Years Ago The Septuagint, Sadducees, and Ben Sira Let's go back a little more. The Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Torah first written by Rabbis and later changed dozens of times by numerous people), is claimed by the Gentiles to date back to 275 B.C.E. (Our Tradition dates it a bit later, at 245 B.C.E., according to Rabbi Fendel, in Legacy of Sinai, page 136.) So the Written Torah already existed at that time. Also around that time, the emergence of the Sadducee and Boethusian sects took place. The Sadducees took as their platform the statement that they believed only in the Written Torah, and rejected the Oral Torah. Evidently, at that time both the Written Law and the Oral Law already existed. So now we know that the Torah already existed by around 275 or so B.C.E. That's 2,275 years ago, as I write this. Let's go back a little more. Ben Sira (circa 400 B.C.E.) also mentions the Books of Torah, in the same number and names that we have them today. So the Tanach existed then as well, around 2,400 years ago. 2,500 Years Ago The Samaritans, and the Ten Tribes We can go yet further back. The Samaritans learned the Torah from the Ten Tribes sometime around 550 B.C.E. So, by then the Chumash and Joshua were already written. Some of the Kohanim of the Ten Tribes taught it to them. Any time after that, the Samaritans would not have accepted the Torah from the people of Judah, because of the Samaritans' hatred for them. So, since both the Jews and the Samaritans have the Chumash, we know that the Chumash had to have been written some time before 550 B.C.E., before the two groups stopped having contact with each other. This also proves that the Torah could not have been written during the time of the two kingdoms. Since the Ten Tribes taught the Chumash to the Samaritans, that means the Ten Tribes had to have had the Chumash before they split off from the other two Tribes. During all the time that they were split, neither kingdom would never have taken Torah from the other. Yet the later Books, written by Prophets among the two Tribes in Judah show numerous examples of how the Ten Tribes kept the Laws of the Torah (with occasional lapses), and that they had the Torah (see, for example, I Kings 21:13; II Kings 4:23, 7:3; Hosea 4:6; 8:1, 8:12; Amos 8:5, et. al.). So, during the time of King Solomon, before the breakup of the nation into two kingdoms, the Chumash must have already existed. But they must have already existed earlier, or the Ten Tribes would never have accepted them. They took them because before they broke off these Books had already been fully accepted by all Israel. 2,800 Years Ago King David Could the Torah have been written during the time of King Solomon, or during the reign of his father, King David? Definitely not. Consider what the Torah says about the nations of Moab. The Torah (Deut. 23:4-7) says that a man from the nation of Moab may never marry a Jewish woman, even if he converts to Judaism. Even the descendant of a convert from Moab may never marry a Jewish woman. This was because of the way they treated us when we passed near their land on the way to the Land of Israel. They did not come forward to offer us bread and water, as was their custom. The women of Moab, however, after conversion to Judaism, are not forbidden to marry a Jewish man, because it was not the custom of the Moabite women to meet travelers with bread and water, and also because they had no connection with the attempt to curse Israel. Now, you may remember that King David was a descendent from Ruth, a Moabite woman who converted to Judaism. You can imagine the trouble that must have caused. As a matter of fact, the Rabbis tells us that King David's enemies certainly tried to get a lot of mileage out of that, and tried to claim, falsely, that a converted Moabite woman was also forbidden to marry a Jew. Now, wouldn't it simply have been easier for King David, if he wrote the Torah, to leave out that Law? It does not seem at all logical that King David would have written this in the Torah, or that any of the people of his time would have done that. Therefore, that dates the Torah to at least before the time of King David, who was born in 836 B.C.E. That's already 2836 years ago. (By the way, King David and King Solomon are both mentioned in the history of the Phoenicians and the Tyrenes, according to Josephus. Both the Phoenicians and the Tyrenes did business with the Israelites during those eras.) 2,900 Years Ago The Judges Perhaps the Torah was written just before King David was born, during the era of the Judges? That, too, cannot be. The Torah says that it is forbidden to wage war against the nations of Moab and Ammon (Deuteronomy 2:19). Yet the Judges all the way from after Joshua to King David (inclusive) fought with those nations! Ammon invaded Israel during the time of Yiftach the Judge (around 970 B.C.E.), and Moab oppressed them during the time of Ehud the Judge (around 1160 B.C.E.). They had to fight with them out of self-defense, so they would never have included such a Law in the Torah had they composed it! The Israelites spent a great deal of time and energy, and lost many good people defending themselves against those nations. Would the Prophets or Judges or anyone of that time have written a Law stating that it was forbidden to attack Moab or Amon if they were inventing the Torah? So the Torah could not have been written during the time of the Judges either. Therefore the Torah predates the Judges, and come from the time of Moses and Joshua! That means that we have had the Torah for 3,313 years. And therefore, the Torah tells us that Moses told the Children of Israel: Only take heed and watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not forget the things that your eyes saw. Do not let this memory leave your hearts, all the days of your lives. Teach your children, and your children's children about the day you stood before Hashem your G-d at Horeb (Deut. 4:9-10). (Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai.) Moses wrote the Torah according to the instructions given him by Hashem. Hashem dictated the Torah to Moses, letter by letter. Moses then taught it to the Children of Israel. And we have studied the Torah ever since, for 3,313 or so years. Of course, the Torah itself is much older than that. Our Tradition tells us that Hashem created the Torah, both the Written and the Oral, 2,000 years before He created the universe. Hashem used it as a blueprint when He created the universe. And Hashem then kept it until it was time for us to receive it. (The approach of this article, as well as some of the proofs, I took primarily from the works of Rabbi Avigdor Miller, especially Sing You Righteous, paragraphs 102-121.)
Share This