The Naked Archaeologist - 124 - Who Wrote the Bible?

[Music] I'm going on an adventure there's only one way to figure it all that unzip the archeology make it naked [Music] [Music] 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're believers or not so have you ever thought about you notice who wrote the Bible God God wrote the Bible lots of people yet some scholars in the ancient times this is a tough one God gave the the Torah it's emotion on Mount Sinai do you always 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 a 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 19th century scholars come and say let's get serious that's not what happened Moses and then write it and God didn't dictate it and in fact there is no single author of the Bible there are different authors 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 too 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 and need to understand what this many author theory is all about in Jerusalem I spoke with Franciscan monk on their hobby 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 a 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 or very few people would say that it means to take that you don't believe God dictated the first five books to Moses no you don't has there ever been a time when father hobby could have been burnt at the stake for what he thinks actually probably not [Music] Christians have been debating this Moses authorship for 500 years and then in 1943 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 nineteenth 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 Baroque Alton biblical scholar to see if he can convince me that the Bible is a product of many authors I've been sitting here and I've been wondering I said I stand I sleep wonder who wrote the Bible a bunch of different people I read the five books of Moses the Torah and I never get the feeling that Joe wrote book number one and Sam or book number two 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 fresh I just read it I know your friend 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 in Genesis there seemed to be two versions of the creation of Adam and Eve in one God creates animals first and humans later and the other God places man in the Garden of Eden man is lonely so God creates animals first and women later it wouldn't take much to reconcile the 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 9th century BC now Leviticus and numbers are so full of laws that scholar said they had to have been written by a priest maybe in the 7th century BC to teach people that sleeping with the Canaanite girls just wasn't cool a little later some dude definitely not Moses wrote Deuteronomy that included the story of Moses death then in the sixth century BC and interior stitched all the scrolls together to make judaism look like one unified front voila the documentary hypothesis the thing is not all scholars agree on four authors some say there were just three and the 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 two documentary hypothesis theories that actually agree with each other isn't it by nature of if this is a scientific step forward that someone should be able to agree with somebody else in the humanities scholars make a business of disagreeing with each other now this is science no its history history is fiction with an attempt to get to some historical kernel exactly 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 I'm on a mission to prove this one author more 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 now I'm going to prove it now whether that author is God is a matter of faith which leads me to insane Minsk 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 10 men to be present I'm interviewing Rabbi spero in Chinatown this is via 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 is out in the street pulling people out of cafes to create a Jewish quorum of 10 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 so who's the author of the document that you read from today the Torah that we have here originates in what Moses wrote down as given by God to my god how accurate is this for your point of view this transmission process like if you're reading and suddenly you find a letter missing we open the ark and we use another Torah scroll which means in you the reading you mean the whole thing grinds to a halt I think yeah you have to take out 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 the transmission process is credible how can the rabbi be so confident that what we read today is the Divine Word given to Moses 3500 years ago and not a document that has been tampered with game of broken telephone I decided to me to ascribe to ask him what method he uses to ensure precise copy the modern Torah scribe follows age-old techniques to ensure the Torah strands scribed 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 3500 years ago I asked rabbi Fleischer to describe for me how a scroll is made this is the height of an animal parchment you're turning it in now into a Torah into a bible scroll by writing the text of the Bible on it the scribe who writes it sanctifies his work by saying I'm writing this to create a Holy Bible do you have any kind of failsafe that makes you feel that the transmission process is actually accurate the name alone tells you something we were called a counter a Sofer what are you counting let's see this has 250 letters in it when the fellow was done writing it he would count 1 2 3 4 5 every every letter and he would count yes this is one level on one aspect of checking for accuracy I think most people don't realize that if one letter is missing it invalidates the entire circle well it's it's even finer than that in most cases even if two letters are touching each other the Torah scrolls are not valid I mean today we already have computer scans where they check on a master that 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 a secretary and he wrote it down he was the scribe even the scribes extreme attention to detail why would scholars come up with contradictory theories about a variety of unknown authors over time I put this question to borrow Halperin 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 the 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 apostle that's absolutely correct okay 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 3500 years ago can archaeology really resolve this debate thanks to an accidental discovery of Scrolls from 2,000 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 1947 and by accident made the discovery of the millennium he found hundreds of holy writings from 2,000 years ago which included a Bible 1000 years older than any Bible known to modern man we have 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 she wouldn't make it up there I revised my opinion was a goat went in there the the kid didn't want to follow the goat threw in a stone crack there was pottery in there when the shepherd went in there found if a fragment after fragment after fragment of Scrolls thousands of them they're still being studied and that's where they were found 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's I wanted to see what the scribes were up to 2,000 years ago on this day I happened to be lucky to get special dispensation and bypass the scroll copies on display of the museum I went straight to the sacred vault where the original scrolls are resting the vault where the Dead Sea Scrolls rest there are many professor Flint and professor Alaric they normally study the scroll fragments using infrared photos in the comfort of their own homes and then they come here to double-check what they've read I wanted to know if this 2,000 year old scrolls are looking at is word for word the same as the Bible we have today you don't see the original you see a big copy because this is so fragile we just uncovered the pot we're working on what does work constitute what we do is work on these at home with infrared photographs and then write out what we think it is but then come in to check because there are things that you cannot tell from photographs you know there various types of things that have gone wrong like you can tell that there was 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 just crap going through it then when you check it you go exactly are you checking to see whether the printed text is actually truth to thee that's right so he has an ancient scribe who may be naming some problems with these pin and we try to explain this was he changing the tick's what was he doing what have we learned the addition that's come down to us has been remarkably well preserved are there huge differences critical differences the traditional Hebrews texts that we have are very accurately transmitted from 2000 years ago historically we're 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 and because of the conservativism we do have a very carefully preserved Bible the Jewish Scriptures have been preserved almost sort of by God's grace so by God's grace we saw the Bible from 2,000 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 3,500 years ago well professor Halpern stopped me in my tracks when he told me Moses couldn't possibly have written the Bible do you think Moses wrote the Bible no I don't think Moses wrote a thing you don't think your other thing not a thing you didn't go up on the mountain I forgot to tell you these people were illiterate until basically the eighth century BC so the text meant nothing to them I think I got him on that one to prove my point I went to the Sinai desert [Music] it got a young better one to guide you 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's the oldest or second oldest alphabetic inscription ever and you can still see the chisel marks and it represents an incredible moment in human history and 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 the Egyptian hieroglyphics are and changing it into a bunch of symbols that stand for sounds rather than pictures or stories so what these writings mean Stepan 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 3500 year old Bible [Music] while pursuing my dream to find the original Bible I inadvertently found evidence that through the documentary theory out of the water I met with Professor Gabriel Barkai 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 30 years ago at this ancient burial site just outside the old city of Jerusalem okay 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 there this is a burial cave 2600 years old we have a bunch of kids were in the dangerous ages of 12 and 13 they were from an archeology Club for youth and one of those kids was especially a 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 he would ask me silly questions he was known as 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 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 a little Nathan you snuck him into the - yes 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 15 minutes I feel my shirt being pulled from behind Nathan when I turned around I see this creature Natan with almost complete pottery vessels in his hands this time I grabbed his shirt and that was against all instructions it was not supposed to move anything he made the discovery of my life not his mind [Laughter] okay let's go in there I was there already gonna come in here No is it clean in here no it's dirty it is what was the discovery in this tomb where Nathan found the pawns 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 too tightly rolled silver Scrolls the greatest discovery of Professor barça's life so far but it took them several years to realize the real value of the treasure when it was opened we found it three years after three years it was difficult to unroll it when the proper method was found we saw that if there's a plaque of approximately 10 centimeters in size and upon it was covered densely was writing on two silver Scrolls you can read a biblical passage may the Lord bless you and keep you may the Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you may the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and grant you peace these scrolls are exactly the same as the Bible today and they're 600 years older than the Dead Sea Scrolls the Torah hasn't changed the tradition is good but the greatest discovery was yet to come for 20 years to scroll sat in the Israel Museum then in the 90s professor Barca initiated tests involving new NASA imaging techniques which revealed more biblical writings this time not from the Book of Numbers at the book of Deuteronomy we discovered that there is another biblical or Torah verse on it so 25 years after you find this thing you actually find a whole new thing yes it was written there he's a great God who keeps his covenant and his grace to his lovers and the keepers of his commandments you verse this is a verse which comes from the seventh chapter of the book of Deuteronomy and this is source D D and D together for the first time remember the documentary hypothesis said the priestly writing and Deuteronomy were written at different times and weren't together and held the editor did this 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 100 years before the editor supposedly did his work so we have evidence that identifies a fatal flaw in the documentary hypothesis it's true we didn't find the 3500 year old Bible Moses wrote but give us time [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Syndicado TV

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Keywords: the naked archaeologist, the naked arc, the naked archeologist, history documentaries, history show full episodes, how the bible really happened, how archaeology works, evidence for the bible, biblical ruins, bible stories, stories from the bible, bible evidence, biblical history, fun bible study, who wrote the bible documentary, who wrote the bible must watch, bible authors, bible author name, who wrote the ten commandments in the bible, who wrote the ten commandments

Id: SyTkHbyRcko

Length: 23min 50sec (1430 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 20 2019