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
