01x24 - Who Wrote the Bible?

[bunniefuu]

[music]

I'm going on an adventure.

There's only one way to figure it all out.

Unzip the archeology. Make it naked.

[music]

[SIMCHA] What is the most famous book of all time?

You guessed it: the Holy Bible.

Most of us have a copy of it in our home,

whether we are believers or not.

So have you ever thought about who wrote it?

Who wrote the Bible? -God.

God wrote the Bible?

Lot's of people. -Lot's of people?

Yeah.

Some scholars in the ancient times.

This is a tough one.

God gave the Torah to Moshe on Mount Sinai.

Did you ever think about who wrote the Bible?

I never thought about it.

The Bible. When people say the Bible...

...they actually mean different things.

The Koran, the New Testament, the Old Testament.

But one thing that Jews, Christians,

and Muslims agree on is that from religious point of view,

there was a revelation on Mount Sinai to Moses.

God dictated, God lectured, Moses wrote it down.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

But in th century, scholars come and say, let's get serious.

That's not what happened.

Moses didn't write this and God didn't dictate it.

And in fact there is no single author of the Bible.

There are different authors.

[SIMCHA] The Books of Moses...

...are the foundation of Western civilization.

For thousands of years Jews and Christians believed...

...that after Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt,

he climbed Mount Sinai where God spoke to him,

and Moses wrote down every word.

But today, many religious people are siding with the scholars...

...who say there were many authors,

and not one was actually Moses.

So, who wrote them? Was it one author or many?

Maybe archaeology can help us answer that question.

Before I start digging around,

I need to understand what this many author theory is all about.

In Jerusalem, I spoke with Franciscan Monk, Father Hoppe.

From your perspective who wrote the Bible?

Well, the Bible is an anonymous work for the most part.

It doesn't say "This was written by Moses."

Do you believe it's divine or human?

These books are religiously authoritative.

That is, they guide a person's beliefs and practices.

But what exactly inspiration means, does it mean "dictation?"

Well, very few people would say that it means dictation.

So, you don't believe...

...God dictated the first five books to Moses?

No. -You don't?

No.

[SIMCHA] Has there ever been a time...

...when Father Hoppe could have been burnt at the stake...

...for what he thinks? Actually, probably not.

Christians have been debating this Moses authorship...

...for years.

And then, in ,

the Catholic Church decided to weigh in on the argument.

It sent out a memo:

Moses probably didn't write the Bible.

The church had now bought into an academic theory...

...begun in the th century,

that the Bible is composed of texts by many ancient authors.

Must be one convincing argument.

Let's hear what the scholars have to say.

I spoke with Baruch Halpern, biblical scholar,

to see if he can convince me...

...that the Bible is a product of many authors.

I've been sitting and I've been wondering.

I sit, I stand, I sleep, I wonder, who wrote the Bible?

A bunch of different people.

I've read the Five Books of Moses, The Torah.

And I never get the feeling that Joe wrote book number ,

and Sam wrote book number .

I don't get that impression.

That's because you're coming at it...

...from the perspective of the tradition,

rather than from a fresh unbiased view.

I'm fresh. I just read it. -I know you're fresh.

I'm fresh, I read it and nowhere do I get the feeling...

...that there's different authors

The basic argument is that you have a series of doublets,

that is pairs of identical or nearly identical stories...

...with slight variation.

[SIMCHA] In Genesis,

there seems to be two versions of the creation of Adam and Eve.

In one, God creates animals first, and humans later.

In the other. God places man in the Garden of Eden.

Man was lonely, so God creates animals first and woman later.

It wouldn't take much to reconcile these stories,

but scholars say the two versions demonstrate...

...that these biblical stories were written by two groups of Jews.

One group called God, Jehovah.

The other group called God, Elohim.

This was sometime in the th century BC.

Now Leviticus and Numbers are so full of laws...

..that scholars said they had to have been written by a priest,

maybe in the th century,

to teach people that sleeping with the Canaanite girls...

...just wasn't cool.

A little while later, some dude, definitely not Moses,

wrote Deuteronomy that included the story of Moses' death.

Then, in the th century,

an editor stiched all the scrolls together...

...to make Judaism look like one united front.

The thing is, not all scholars agree on four authors.

Some say there were just ,

and others say there were more than five.

Where is the logic to this mad science?

Part of science is that it's replicable meaning...

...I've never seen documentary hypothesis theories...

...that actually agree with each other.

Isn't it by nature if this is a scientific step forward...

...then someone should be able to agree with somebody else?

In the humanities,

scholars make a business of disagreeing with each other.

So this isn't science?

No it's history. History is fiction.

It really is, I mean it's a form of fiction.

With an attempt to get to some historical kernel.

Exactly.

[SIMCHA] In my opinion,

the multi-author theory is not convincing.

When I read the Books of Moses, I hear one voice.

Even though the scholars oppose me, I'm no chicken.

[making chicken noises]

I'm on a mission to prove there's one author, not more.

[SIMCHA] A lot of people think...

...the Books of Moses are the product of several authors.

I believe those books are written by one author,

at one point in history, and I'm going to prove it.

Now, whether that author is God, is a matter of faith.

Which leads me to Anshei Minks Synagogue in downtown Toronto,

where I spoke with Rabbi Spero.

It was Thursday morning after the traditional reading...

...from the Jewish Bible known as The Torah.

A reading, which requires at least men to be present.

I'm interviewing Rabbi Spero in Chinatown

This used to be the Jewish area. now it's the Chinese area.

But this synagogue goes on,

and the rabbi when he's not here,

he's out in the street pulling people out of cafés...

...to create Jewish quorum of men.

And when he does that,

the Torah is read,

and that's exactly what I'm here to talk to the rabbi about.

The Torah.

That's a subject that's near and dear to your heart isn't it?

Yeah.

Who is the author of the document...

...that you read from today?

The Torah we have here...

...originates with what Moses wrote down.

As given by God to Moses.

As given by God, yeah.

How accurate is this, from your point of view,

this transmission process?

Like if you're reading and suddenly...

...you find a letter missing.

We open the arch,

and we use another Torah scroll to continue the reading.

You mean the whole thing grinds to a halt?

Yeah, you have to take another Torah scroll...

...and you use that meanwhile,

and that one is taken to the scribe who then corrects it.

There is a tremendous respect for the word,

for the letter in the Torah.

he transmission process is credible.

[SIMCHA] How can the Rabbi be so confident...

...that what we read today is the divine word...

...given to Moses years ago,

and not a document that has been tampered with,

like some game of broken telephone?

I decided to meet with the scribe to ask him...

...what method he uses to ensure precise copying.

The modern Torah scribe follows age-old techniques...

...to ensure the torah is transcribed letter perfect.

The Hebrew word for scribe is Sofer,

which means, "the counter".

This word implies that his work is so precise,

that he must count the number of letters in each paragraph...

...to make sure there aren't more, or less,

than God gave Moses years ago.

I asked Rabbi Fleisher to describe for me...

...how a scroll is made.

What am I-? What is this?

This is the hide of an animal. It's parchment.

You're turning it now into a Torah, into a Bible scroll.

By writing a text of the Bible on it.

The scribe, who writes it sanctifies his work...

...by saying:

"I am writing this to create a Holy Bible."

Do you have any kind of fail-safes...

...that makes you feel that the transmission process...

...is actually accurate?

The name alone tells you something.

You're called a counter, a Sofer?

What are you counting?

Let's say this has letters.

When the Sofer is done writing it,

he would count , , , , -

Every letter he would count.

Yeah, this is one level,

and one aspect of checking for accuracy.

I think most people don't realize...

...that if one letter is missing,

it invalidates the entire scroll.

Well, its even finer than that,

in most cases even if letters are touching each other...

...that Torah scroll is not valid.

I mean today, we already have computer scans...

..where they check on the master highlights any inaccuracies.

This is accurate to the last letter,

with no deviation from the torah that Moses wrote.

So you believe God dictated this text,

and Moses was the secretary and he wrote it down.

He was the scribe.

[SIMCHA] Given the Scribe's extreme attention to detail,

why would scholars come up with...

...these contradictory theories about...

...a variety of unknown authors over time?

I put this question to Baruch Halpern.

The point is that unless you have a reason...

...to go to the fantastical,

why shouldn't you just accept the simple...

...which is you know it's not two traditions...

...or three or four, it's one tradition.

There's nothing fantastic about the idea...

...that tradition grows over time...

...and that various parties contribute to a tradition.

In fact, that's what we see...

...in every other religious tradition that we have.

You have to agree that...

...not a single archaeological shred...

...has ever been found of the existence...

...of the documentary hypothesis.

That's absolutely correct.

OK.

[SIMCHA] To prove that the Bible was written once,

by one author,

all I need is archaeology that shows...

...the text has not changed since it was first written,

some years ago.

Can archaeology really resolve this debate?

Thanks to an accidental discovery of scrolls...

...from years ago found by the shores of the Dead Sea,

I think it can.

I'm on my way to Qumran...

...where a boy went for a walk with his sheep one day in ,

and by accident, made the discovery of the millennium.

He found hundreds of holy writings from years ago...

...which included a bible years older...

...than any bible known to modern man.

We have an almost a letter perfect version of the Bible...

...from the Dead Sea Scrolls...

...that were found in that very cave.

It was found by a goat or a sheep.

Probably was a goat, a sheep wouldn't go up there.

I revise my opinion, it was a goat, it went in there.

The kid didn't want to follow the goat,

threw in a stone, cr*ck, there was pottery in there.

When the shepherd went in there,

found fragment after fragment after fragment of scrolls.

Thousands of them.

They're still being studied.

And that's where they were found.

[SIMCHA] The scrolls that were found...

...in those caves are now in Jerusalem,

in a special Museum called The Shrine of the Book.

On my trusty steed,

I decided to take the scenic route to the Museum.

I wanted to see what the Scribes were up to years ago.

On this day,

I happened to be lucky to get special dispensation,

and bypass the scroll copies on display at the Museum.

I went straight to the sacred vault...

...where the original scrolls are resting.

[SIMCHA] The vault where the Dead Sea Scrolls rest.

There I met Professor Peter Flint and Professor Ulrich.

They normally study the scroll fragments...

...using infra-red photos in the comfort of their own homes,

and then come here to double check what they've read.

I wanted to know if this -year-old book...

...he's looking at is word for word the same...

...as the Bible we have today.

This is the real thing right?

This is the real thing. -This is the real thing.

If you go to the museum,

you don't see the original...

...you see a copy because this is so fragile...

...we just uncover the part we're working on.

What does work constitute?

What we do is work on these at home...

...with infrared photographs.

And then write up what we think it is,

but then come in to check,

because there are things that you cannot tell...

...from photographs.

You know, there are various types of things...

...that have gone wrong.

You can tell there's water damage there,

it dried, and then split.

Are there letters for example,

that you might have thought it was one letter...

...because there's a cr*ck going through it,

but when you check you go, oh.

Exactly.

So you are checking to see whether the printed text...

...is actually true to the-

That's right.

So, here is an ancient scribe...

...who may have been having problems with his pen,

and we try to explain this.

Was he changing the text? What was he doing?

What have we learned?

The edition that has come down to us...

...has been remarkably well preserved,

are there huge differences, critical differences?

The traditional Hebrew texts...

...that we have are very accurately transmitted...

from years ago.

Historically we are very fortunate...

...that the ancient Jews had a tradition...

...of preserving the Bible and not changing it.

The rabbis if they felt there was an error,

they tended to put the error in the margin,

they didn't feel free to change the text.

And because of their conservatism...

...we do have a very carefully preserved Bible.

The Jewish scriptures have been preserved...

...almost sort of by god's grace.

[SIMCHA] So, by God's grace,

we saw the Bible from years ago,

and it's exactly the same Bible we have today.

Wouldn't that support the tradition...

...that says the book we read today...

...is the book Moses wrote down,

and handed to the Israelites year ago?

Well, Professor Halpern stopped me in my tracks...

...when he told me Moses couldn't have written the Bible.

Do you think Moses wrote the Bible?

No, I don't think Moses wrote a thing.

You don't think he wrote a thing.

Not a thing.

He didn't go up on the mountain.

I forgot to tell you,

these people were illiterate...

...until basically the th century BC.

So the text meant nothing to them.

I think I've got him on that one.

[SIMCHA] To prove my point,

I went to the Sinai desert.

I got a young Bedouin to guide me to the cave...

...where I read there was an inscription...

...dating back to the time of Moses.

It wasn't written by Egyptians, but by Hebrews.

Here it is, here is the oldest,

or second oldest alphabetic inscriptions ever.

You can still see the chisel marks.

And it represents an incredible moment...

...in human history.

It's the oldest alphabetic inscription.

Here you see the inscription going this way,

and going this way.

That was the real revolution of taking cartoons,

or pictures, or pictographic writing system,

which is what Egyptian hieroglyphics are,

and changing it into a bunch of symbols...

that stand for sounds rather than pictures of stories.

[SIMCHA] So what these writings mean...

...is that when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt,

there was an alphabet and he knew how to use it.

Now what we need is the archaeology...

...that proves Moses wrote the Bible.

But where am I going to dig up a year old Bible?

[SIMCHA] While pursuing my dream...

...to find the original Bible,

I inadvertently found evidence...

...that blew the documentary theory out of the water.

I met with Professor Gabriel Barkay,

the archaeologist who has discovered...

...the oldest biblical inscription ever found,

an inscription much older than the Dead Sea Scrolls.

He told me the story of how he found it...

...while excavating years ago at this ancient burial site

just outside the Old City of Jerusalem.

Ok. Now to the untrained eye, mind you that's not me.

To the untrained eye,

these look like a bunch of holes in the ground.

What are we looking at here?

This is a burial cave, years old.

We had a bunch of kids...

...who were in the dangerous ages of and .

They were from an archeology club for youth.

And one of those kids was an especially nagging type.

I didn't know what to do with this little Nathan,

who always had a very ugly habit...

...of pulling my shirt from behind,

and whenever I would turn around,

would ask me silly questions.

He was known as Nathan the Unbearable.

I don't know his surname.

When I saw the entrance there to the repository,

I looked into it,

I saw that there was kind of a rock surface visible.

Well I thought this is also looted,

as are the other caves...

...which we previously excavated in the vicinity,

I said to myself, this is the place to put little Nathan.

You stuck him into the tomb?

I thought that I'm not going to see him for a while.

So, I put him into this place...

...and told him that he has to prepare it for photography.

After about minutes,

I feel my shirt being pulled from behind.

Nathan.

When I turned around, I see this creature, Nathan,

with almost complete pottery vessels in his hands.

This time I grabbed his shirt.

And that was against all instructions.

He was not supposed to move anything.

He made the discovery of my life, not his, mine.

That's right. Ok lets go in there.

I was there already.

Want to come in here?

No. -Is it clean in here?

No.

It's dirty? -It is.

[SIMCHA] What was the discovery?

In this tomb where Nathan found the pots,

Gaby's crew found amongst the bones...

...of the ancient people buried here...

...something that appeared to be a cigarette butt.

This apparent trash turned out to be...

...two tightly rolled silver scrolls.

The greatest discovery of Professor Barkay's life so far.

What's this green mould on the wall?

Green mould.

[SIMCHA] But it took them several years...

...to realize the real value of this treasure.

When it was opened. We found it is a-

It took you three years?

About after three years, it was difficult to unroll it.

When the proper method was found,

we saw that it is a plaque of approximately...

...cms in size,

and upon it was covered densely with writing.

[SIMCHA] On two silver scrolls...

...you can read from a biblical passage:

These scrolls are exactly the same...

...as the Bible today,

and they're years older than the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Torah still hasn't changed.

The tradition is good.

But the greatest discovery was yet to come.

For twenty years the scrolls sat in the Israel Museum.

Then in the s,

Professor Barkay initiated tests...

...involving new NASA imaging techniques,

which revealed more biblical writings.

This time, not from the Book of Numbers,

but the Book of Deuteronomy.

We discovered that there is another...

...Biblical or Torah verse on it.

For years after you find this thing,

you actually find a whole new thing...

...right before your eyes. Wow.

Yes. It was written there The Great God...

...who keeps His Covenant and His Grace...

...to His lovers and the Keepers of His Commandments.

Beautiful.

This is a verse, which comes from the th chapter...

...of the book of Deuteronomy.

And this is Source D.

P and D together for the first time.

[SIMCHA] Remember the documentary hypothesis...

...said the Priestly writings and Deuteronomy...

...were written at different times,

and weren't together until the editor did his stitching?

Here on one tiny silver scroll,

with the help of cutting edge technology,

we found two quotes from separate Books of Moses,

at least years...

...before the editor supposedly did his work.

So we have evidence that identifies a fatal flaw...

...in the Documentary Hypothesis.

Its true we didn't find the year old Bible Moses wrote,