In this sequel to his story on the Exodus, Tim Mahoney tries to prove that Moses wrote the Pentateuch -- Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. He's trying to counter the argument advanced by most historians that no alphabet existed at the time Moses allegedly wrote the books and that they were instead written after the Babylonian exile.
The trouble for Mahoney is that, under the basic rule of scientific inquiry, if the evidence doesn't support a theory, the theory has to be modified or discarded. Throughout the film, Tim Mahoney sticks to his assertion that Moses had an alphabet to work with and provides just enough evidence to support his position. However, just like in Exodus, he provides clips of archeologists who disagree with him, but doesn't elaborate on the evidence they would use to support their positions and go against his theory.
Mahoney's focus is on the proto-Sinaitic script found is Egypt. It was a departure from the Hieroglyphic form of writing, which had hundreds of symbols. Only fragments of have been discovered in the Sinai, the Nile valley and Israel. They date from anywhere between 1850 and 1550 BCE, during Egypt's Middle Kingdom period. Archeologists have concluded that the script was an ancestor of the proto-Canaanite alphabet, the predecessor of the Phoenician and Aramaic alphabets.
Mahoney's argument was that the proto-Sinaitic script led immediately to the Hebrew alphabet, and that it was used by Moses to write the Pentateuch in the middle 2nd millennium BCE, when Mahoney claims the Exodus occurred. The problem with this assertion is that no traces of Hebrew writing have been found that date from before 900 BCE. In fact, the earliest surviving fragments of Hebrew Bible are the Dead Sea Scrolls, most of which date from the 1st century BCE, and the Silver Scrolls, which date from the 4th century BCE. Even the proto-Canaanite alphabet didn't see widespread use until after 1200 BCE, around the time of Bronze Age collapse of many of the old Middle East cultures.
Mahoney dismisses the critics of his theory as biased towards a particular "paradigm." However, the supporters he interviews at the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville and at the MIKRA Research Laboratory are evangelicals who believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch. He relies heavily on the theories about the origins of the Hebrew language advanced by Douglas Petrovich, a professor at the Bible Seminary in Katy, Texas. Petrovich is a self-described creationist, according to his own YouTube videos.
In the end, in his quest to be a 100-percent believer in the Bible, Mahoney abandons even the smallest fringes of credibility by crediting Joseph with the development of the Hebrew alphabet and asserting it was of divine origin.
An excellent book on the origins of the Pentateuch is "Who Wrote the Bible?" by Richard Friedman. It discusses how the Pentateuch was written by at least four different authors, and that the books were written shortly before and after the Babylonian exile.
Another major problem with the notion that the Pentateuch was written by one person is its disorganization, something Mahoney doesn't touch on at all. If one person wrote it, he was a terrible writer. The books are loaded with flaws and holes that no competent writer would overlook. How did I find this out? I did something that some Bible believers never do: I read the books.
In Genesis, for instance, many stories are rather short and compact, including the Creation, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Most of them are only a chapter long. Why didn't the writer provide greater detail on these stories? Probably the longest story in Genesis is the story of Jacob's son Joseph. The filler between the stories is mostly family chronologies and how some characters lived to be over 900 years old.
There are also a few story holes and contradictions in Genesis. After Cain kills Abel, he flees to the east and eventually has a wife. But if Adam and Eve were the first humans and had no daughters, where did Mrs. Cain come from? The Flood story has two descriptions of the types of animals brought on to the ark. One is of well-known story about two of every animal being brought on to the ark, while a less-known version has seven of every "clean" animal and two of every unclean animal being brought on to the ark. How could the writer miss these contradictions? The book also provides no details of the "wickedness" that existed before the Flood.
In the other books, several stories are told more than once with many of the same details. These include the stories of Moses talking with his god at the burning bush, Aaron (Moses' brother) helping Moses, the plagues of Egypt, the Passover, the ordination of Aaron and his sons as priests, food restrictions, details on several festivals, instructions on the building of the tabernacle, the exile in the wilderness, requirements for offerings, the appointment of judges to assist Moses, rules against mixing with other peoples, and rules against making treaties with current inhabitants of Canaan. Some of them are repeated in one book (e.g. the repetitions of the stories in Egypt are in Exodus) while some stories are told in more than one book.
Some stories are out of place. The 40 years in the wilderness is mentioned in Exodus but the explanation on why the Hebrews are forced to wonder in the wilderness is not provided until Numbers.
A good writer would have organized the stories and books with better flow, more details, certainly less repetition, and probably less filler.
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