Send us your church administration and theology related questions. In this column the Ministerial Association Staff will answer as many of them as space permits.
Question:
I have been told that the art of writing was not known until long after the time of Moses. How, then, could Moses have written the first five books of the Bible?
Answer:
Ponderous volumes have been written to prove that Moses could not have written any books, because, it was thought, the art of writing was not known in his day. Recent discoveries have exploded all of these theories.
In the British Museum in London are 81 of the hundreds of famous Tel el Amarna tablets, which were discovered at a place by that name in Egypt. They were written in cuneiform characters, and date from about the time of Moses and Joshua. They are letters written from officials in Palestine to the government of Egypt.
In the same museum may be seen a replica of the Black Stele, more than seven feet high, discovered by J. de Morgan at Susa in December, 1901. It contains the written laws of King Hammurabi, who lived several centuries before Moses and may have been a contemporary of Abraham. We read in Genesis 14:9 of a king named Amraphel, who is thought by some to be Hammurabi.
Jesus, speaking of Moses, said, "He wrote you this precept," (Mark 10:5), and "He wrote of me." (John 5:46). Now we know that the art of writing was known not only at the time of Moses, but centuries before. The books ridiculing the Bible are now relegated to the dustbin of false theories. The Bible has been scientifically vindicated, and we can say with the Psalmist: "Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth forever" (Psalm 119:160).
