Question: "Is
there any evidence that the Bible is more than two thousand
years old?"
Answer: Yes, in fact there's plenty of evidence of
that. We have had the Torah for at least 3,313 years, when
God gave it to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. Can we prove
that the Torah is really that old? Yes, we can. Let us trace
the existence of the Torah back through history, and see that
that it existed during the time of Moses and Joshua, and was
not created later. First, a brief rundown of the periods of
Jewish History, so we can understand all this better:
From Leader to Leader.
Each generation 
had
its own leader. After Moses died, Joshua became leader. During
the next four hundred years the Jewish people had a succession
of Prophet-Judges leading the Jewish people. That was called
the period of the Judges. Each leader was a Judge. You might
recognize some of the names: Boaz, Samson, and Gideon, to
name just a few of the many.
The
last Judge was the Prophet Samuel. The next leader was King
David. After King David passed away, his son King Solomon
became leader. Some call this the Era of the Kings.
When
King Solomon passed away, the kingdom was split into two.
Ten Tribes left and created their own kingdom. They called
it the kingdom of Israel. One of the later kings of Israel
bought some land from a man named Shemer, and so he called
the area "Shomron." You may have heard of it as
"Samaria." Samaria became the capital of the kingdom
of Israel.
The
Tribes of Judah and Benjamin, along with some of the members
of the Tribe of Levi and some of their priests , remained
faithful to the Royal Family of David. They remained subjects
of King Rehoboam, whose father had been King Solomon. They
became the kingdom of Judah (the Romans later called them
the Kingdom of Judea), and their capital was still in Jerusalem.
Most Jews alive today are descendants of the people of the
kingdom of Judah.
When
the Ten Tribes rebelled against the rightful king, Rehoboam,
they rejected the House of David entirely. They therefore
decided to reject any Holy Book that mentioned King David,
and any Holy Book written by a Prophet who supported King
David.
Which Holy Books were in existence then?
The Five Books of Moses, Joshua,
Judges, Samuel, Ruth, Kings, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs,
and Ecclesiastics. The Ten Tribes rejected the Book of Judges,
because it had been written by the Prophet Samuel, who had
anointed and supported King David. They rejected the Books
of Samuel and Kings because those Books supported King David,
and because they were written by the Prophets Samuel, Nathan,
and Gad, who strongly supported King David.
They
rejected the Book of Ruth because it told of the ancestry
of King David. They rejected Psalms because it was written
(and collected from other Prophets) by King David. They rejected
Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastics, because those
were written by King Solomon.
So
all they kept were the Five Books of Moses, and Joshua. The
Book of Joshua tells of their capturing the land of Israel,
so they felt it supported them.
All
the other Holy Books of the Tanach were written after the
break up (and for the most part also supported King David),
so the Ten Tribes never had those Books at all.
So
now there were two kings at once: one in Judah and one in
Israel. However, the leaders of Judaism were the Prophets.
The Prophets traveled to both Israel and Judah, and were seen
in both kingdoms of the country. So while we call this period
the era of the kings, we also call it the era of the Later
Prophets.
The Samaritans
About
two hundred and fifty years later (in the year 555 B.C.E.)
the king of Assyria conquered the kingdom of Israel, and took
most of the people into exile. We do not know where he sent
them. Those are the Ten Lost Tribes, and we will not see them
again until the Messiah comes.
Assyria
was, at that time, a world power, having conquered many countries.
Shalmanesser, King of Assyria, had the practice of relocating
entire nations, in order to better subjugate and control them.
When he took the Ten Tribes of Israel away from Samaria, he
brought the people called the Cuthites to replace them. We
don't know where the Cuthites came from. Since the Cuthites
settled in the area known as Samaria (Shomron), they later
became known as the Samaritans (Shomronim).
When
the Cuthites were first relocated into Samaria, they were
being killed by plagues of lions, and they did not know what
to do about it. So they sent a message to the king of Assyria,
asking for help. The king of Assyria did not know what to
do about this either, so he asked advice from some priests
of Israel, those people he had exiled from the land of Samaria
and relocated elsewhere. They told him that it is dangerous
to live in Gods Holy Land and not obey the Torah.
The
king of Assyria therefore decided to send some Priest of Israel
to teach the Cuthites how to keep the Torah. The Cuthites,
because of the plagues, decided to accept some of the Torah.
They began to worship God, but it was soon discovered that
they had not stopped worshiping their idols as well. They
were doing some odd combination of both. Nevertheless, the
lions went away. (You can read about all this in II Kings,
Chapter 17.)
Since
the Samaritans still worshiped their idols, their conversion
was not proper, and it was unacceptable. The Jews could therefore
not accept the Samaritans as Jews. For this, the Samaritans
developed a deep and terrible hatred for the Jews. They did
whatever they could to destroy the Jews. They would send messages
to the enemy overlord, claiming that the Jews were planning
to revolt. They tried many times to get the Jews killed.
They
also built their own temple on Mount Gerizim, and there they
worshiped an odd combination of religions, which includes
their distorted version of the 5 books of Moses, and idolatry.
Their temple was dedicated to both God and to their own pagan
idols.
The
Samaritans also decided to accept the Sacred Book of the country
(i.e., the Torah). However, they did not adopt all the Books
of the Torah. They adopted some of what the Priest of the
Kingdom of Israel taught them about. The Priest of the Ten
Tribes had only the Five Books of Moses, and the Book of Joshua.
So that's what they taught to the Samaritans. The Samaritans
accepted the 5 books of Moses, with some distortions of their
own, but they refused to accept the Book of Joshua, because
it excluded their ownership of the land they occupied. So
they created their own book, which they call Joshua. Today,
the small number of Samaritans on Mount Gerizim still have
a distorted version of the 5 books of Moses, and their own
book that they call Joshua.
So,
during the sixth and fifth century BCE there was the kingdom
of Judah, and the Samaritans, both living in the land of Israel,
not all that far away from each other.
The Babylonians
Then, 130 or so years later,
in 422 BCE, the Babylonians conquered the kingdom of Judah.
The people of Judah were taken into exile. The Holy Temple
was destroyed. The Jews were exiled to a number of places.
Most were taken to Babylon, but there were many sent to such
faraway places as Yemen. The Jews in Yemen today are descendants
of those Jews who were sent there when the First Holy Temple
was destroyed.
The
Samaritans stayed in their land, and were under the rule of
the enemy conquerors.
The
Babylonians finally lost their ascendancy over the world,
and the Persians and Medes came into power. The Persians eventually
gave the Jews permission to rebuild the Holy Temple. So some
Jews returned to Israel, the part of it called Judea, and
began to rebuild the city and the Holy Temple.
Most
Jews, however, stayed where they were, but some Jews left
Babylon to return to Israel, to resettle the area of Judah
and to rebuild the Holy Temple. (Jews in or from Iraq and
Iran this century are descendants of those Jews who stayed
in Babylon and did not return for the resettling of Judah
and the building of the Second Holy Temple.)
The
returning Jews encountered many hardships in their endeavor,
not the least of which was the Samaritans, who often waged
war against them. The Samaritans also attempted to sabotage
the building of the Holy Temple. At one point they tried to
turn the Holy Temple into a pagan temple for their own religion.
Among
the tricks they tried was pretending to be interested in helping
the rebuilding. The Jews had already had too much negative
experience with the Samaritans to be fooled by this trick,
so the Jews refused to allow the Samaritans to join.
The
Samaritans did not like the competition, so they decided to
prevent the rebuilding of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. They
told the king of Persia that the Jews were only pretending
to rebuild the Holy Temple, but were really planning a revolt
(which was not true). Persia put an immediate stop to the
rebuilding of the Holy Temple.
Then
a Jewish woman became queen of Persia. Her name was Esther.
She could not convince her husband King Ahasueraus to allow
the rebuilding of Holy Temple, but when her husband died she
convinced her son Cyrus to let the Jews rebuild the Holy Temple.
Finally,
in 352 BCE, the Holy Temple was rebuilt and rededicated. Around
that time, prophecy came to an end. There are still other
means of Divine Inspiration, but these are all of lesser levels.
The
Samaritans continued to make trouble. When the Persians knuckled
under the Macedonians, and Alexander the Great created the
Greek empire, they tried to get Alexander to destroy the Holy
Temple and kill all the Jews, and they almost succeeded. Even
as late as the end of the first century C.E., the Samaritans
were still ambushing and murdering Jews. The "good Samaritan"
of the Christian bible is not only a myth, it is also a horrible
false accusation against the Jews.
The
Holy Temple stood from 352 BCE until 68 CE, a total of 420
years. In 68 CE, the Romans (who were now the most powerful
rulers of the world,) destroyed the Holy Temple.
They
captured and enslaved most of the Jews who were in Judah,
and sent them in exile to many parts of the world, including
Italy and Spain.
We
are still in the midst of that exile, and we await the coming
of the Messiah, who will bring us -- all twelve Tribes --
back to the land of Israel, and will rule us with wisdom and
benevolence.
So,
let's recap. The Periods of Jewish History are, basically:
-
Moses
- Joshua
- the Judges
- the Kings (also known as the Later Prophets)
- Destruction of the First Holy Temple
- the Babylonian Exile
- Second Holy Temple Era (also known as the Second Commonwealth)
- Destruction of the Second Holy Temple
- Roman Exile until today.
- Tracing the Torah Back to Moses
We
will show, with God's help, that during all that time, the
Torah already existed. We will show that it was not created
during the time of the Judges and the Early Prophets, nor
during the time of the Kings, nor when the kingdom was divided
into two, nor during the period of the two kingdoms, nor during
the time of the Second Holy Temple, nor since then.
We will work backwards in time. Let's first prove that the
Bible is two thousand years old, and work backwards from there.
1,800 Years Ago
The Christians have been using
the Tanach at least since the second century C. E., 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 CE, and wrote his works probably
around 75 CE 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 8)
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]....
(1:1:8)
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 BCE to around 50 CE)
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 BCE (Our Tradition dates it a bit later,
at 245 BCE, 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 BCE That's 2,275 years ago, as I write this.
Let's go back a little more.
Ben Sira (circa 400 BCE) 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 BCE So, by then the
5 books of Moses and Joshua were already written. Some of
the Priest 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
5 books of Moses, we know that the 5 books of Moses had to
have been written some time before 550 BCE, 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 5 books of Moses to the Samaritans, that means the Ten
Tribes had to have had the 5 books of Moses 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 5 books of Moses 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 BCE 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 BCE), and Moab oppressed them during the time
of Ehud the Judge (around 1160 BCE). 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 God your God at Horeb (Deut. 4:9-10).
(Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai.)
Moses
wrote the Torah according to the instructions given him by
God, God 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 God created the Torah, both the Written and
the Oral, 2,000 years before He created the universe. God
used the Torah as a blueprint when He created the universe.
And God then kept it until it was time for us to receive it.
(at Mount Sinai.)
Today - 1995
In the 19th century
academicians did a worldwide research of the Old Testament
(The Torah). They traveled across the globe to various libraries,
Tempels and houses for worship, and compared the text with
oneanother. They were astounded by the conclusion. There was
only Bible from Yemen, which had one word that ended with
a different letter
