How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words? - John 5:44-47 (KJV)
I've been to school, I've been in the "higher education" classroom studying the Pentateuch and Wellhousen, the "Synoptic Gospels" and Tillich, and higher textual criticism all pushing the students NOT to believe Moses wrote what he did and NOT to believe what was written, either. I could regurgitate it like any other student.
To them there was no Adam and Eve. To them there was no crossing the Red Sea, no serpent image on a pole bringing healing to those bitten, no water from the rock, no cloud by day and no fire by night - all stories and myths to have their layers peeled back like an onion until the truth could be discovered. And after the peeling, where is the onion, how much should be peeled?
They do the same with the stories of Jesus, trying to determine who really wrote the gospels and letters, and what really happend with the feeding of the 5,000, the raising from the dead, the virgin birth - continually doing more and more peeling.
Jesus said from the start, "If you don't believe Moses, you won't believe me".
There are a lot of books documenting the evidence for biblical authenticity - the issue is NOT one of evidence, but of desire.
As Samuel Clements (Mark Twain) said, "It is not the parts of the Bible I don't understand that bother me, it is the parts I do understand"
- Fritz.
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