The Bible: I. Authenticity II. Credibility III. Morality

by John E. Remsburg

The names and dates given in the foregoing table are, with a few exceptions, paraded as established facts. And yet the greater portion of them are mere assumptions, without even the shadow of proof upon which to base them. Many of them are self-evidently false—are contradicted by the contents of the books themselves. The authorship of at least fifty books of the Bible—thirty in the Old Testament and twenty in the New—is unknown.

These books are not as old as claimed. The books of the Old Testament, instead of having been written from 1520 to 420 B.C., were probably written from 1000 to 100 B.C. The books of the New Testament, instead of having all been written in the first century, were, many of them, not written until the second century.

In regard to this subject, Prof. George T. Ladd of Yale College writes: “The authorship and date of most of the Old Testament writings, and of some of the New Testament, will never be known with certainty” (What Is the Bible? p. 294).

The following six chapters will be devoted to an examination of the question of the authenticity of the books of the Bible. I shall attempt to show that the greater portion of these books, including the most important ones, are not authentic—were not written by the authors claimed, nor at the time claimed; that they are anonymous documents, written or compiled for the most part at a later age than that in which their reputed authors are supposed to have lived.

CHAPTER VI.

THE PENTATEUCH.

The first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—collectively called the Pentateuch—are the most important books of the Old Testament. The three great Semitic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism, are all, to a great extent, based upon them.

These books, orthodox Christians affirm, were written by Moses at least 1,450 years before the Christian era. “This sacred code,” says Dr. Adam Clarke, “Moses delivered complete to the Hebrews sometime before his death.” In modern versions of the Bible, Genesis is styled the First Book of Moses; Exodus, the Second Book of Moses; Leviticus, the Third Book of Moses; Numbers, the Fourth Book of Moses, and Deuteronomy, the Fifth Book of Moses. Their very high authority rests upon the supposed fact of their Mosaic authorship and great antiquity. To disprove these—to show that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, nor at this early age, but centuries later by unknown writers—is to largely impair, if not entirely destroy, its authority as a religious oracle. And this is what modern criticism has done.