The Song Of Moses

[Neon Genesis]

I just noticed a contradiction I hadn't noticed before recently. In The Song Of Moses in Exodus 15:14-15, Moses says this

The peoples heard, they trembled;

pangs seized the inhabitants of Philistia.

15Then the chiefs of Edom were dismayed;

trembling seized the leaders of Moab;

all the inhabitants of Canaan melted away.

Moses is narrating the conquest of Canaan in a past tense as if it already happened but this song takes place just after they crossed the Red Sea long before they even enter the Promised Land. Furthermore, Moses was banned from the Promise Land, so it can't be Moses writing about something that happened out of continuity in a story he couldn't have been involved in, so how do Christians get around this contradiction?

[dagnarus]

It would be pretty easy actually. They'd just have to say that he had already received God's promise, and he trusted in it. So as far as Moses was concerned even though it hadn't happened yet, it already had.

[Dagan]

Because it was written down long after it had already happened. The author put words in Moses' mouth, duh

[Shyone]

Because it was written down long after it had already happened. The author put words in Moses' mouth, duh

That's no fun! The challenge is to see how one can twist reality to conform to dogma, not to just disprove dogma.

 

You must describe, in painstaking detail, the King's garments, and show why they are better tnan those of anyone else in the kingdom. It just won't do to say, "The king doesn't have any clothes on."

 

Religion is the art of making the fanciful seem reasonable.

[Guest Davka]

He's prophesying the future by writing about it in the past tense with his Magic Scribe^TM ball-point quill pen.

[mwc]

Furthermore, Moses was banned from the Promise Land, so it can't be Moses writing about something that happened out of continuity in a story he couldn't have been involved in, so how do Christians get around this contradiction?

That's an anachronism not a contradiction.

 

mwc

[Dagan]

Because it was written down long after it had already happened. The author put words in Moses' mouth, duh

That's no fun! The challenge is to see how one can twist reality to conform to dogma, not to just disprove dogma.

 

You must describe, in painstaking detail, the King's garments, and show why they are better tnan those of anyone else in the kingdom. It just won't do to say, "The king doesn't have any clothes on."

 

Religion is the art of making the fanciful seem reasonable.

 

Sorry, epic fail on my part!

 

I don't know how to play the game

[dagnarus]

Because it was written down long after it had already happened. The author put words in Moses' mouth, duh

That's no fun! The challenge is to see how one can twist reality to conform to dogma, not to just disprove dogma.

 

You must describe, in painstaking detail, the King's garments, and show why they are better tnan those of anyone else in the kingdom. It just won't do to say, "The king doesn't have any clothes on."

 

Religion is the art of making the fanciful seem reasonable.

 

From my point of view, if this was the only thing which I was confronted with to question the authenticity of the Pentateuch, then it wouldn't be much of a twisting to suggest that Moses was speaking in the past tense in the song as a sign of supreme confidence. It could very well just be a kind of propaganda to boost the Israelites moral, "our god is so much greater than those guys that we've already won". As it stands there are so many other obvious historical inconsistencies and absurdities in the Pentateuch that require real twisting.

[Shyone]

Because it was written down long after it had already happened. The author put words in Moses' mouth, duh

That's no fun! The challenge is to see how one can twist reality to conform to dogma, not to just disprove dogma.

 

You must describe, in painstaking detail, the King's garments, and show why they are better tnan those of anyone else in the kingdom. It just won't do to say, "The king doesn't have any clothes on."

 

Religion is the art of making the fanciful seem reasonable.

 

From my point of view, if this was the only thing which I was confronted with to question the authenticity of the Pentateuch, then it wouldn't be much of a twisting to suggest that Moses was speaking in the past tense in the song as a sign of supreme confidence. It could very well just be a kind of propaganda to boost the Israelites moral, "our god is so much greater than those guys that we've already won". As it stands there are so many other obvious historical inconsistencies and absurdities in the Pentateuch that require real twisting.

As someone else wrote, each little "apology" seems almost reasonable. It is the cumulative realization that more and more apologies are necessary to keep the whole thing from falling apart - and then it does anyway.

 

I gave up trying to make sense of either the new testament or the old. The excuses just seem to get sillier and sillier. "He is all good, but he made the devil which is evil, but he doesn't really make evil ......"

[dagnarus]

Because it was written down long after it had already happened. The author put words in Moses' mouth, duh

That's no fun! The challenge is to see how one can twist reality to conform to dogma, not to just disprove dogma.

 

You must describe, in painstaking detail, the King's garments, and show why they are better tnan those of anyone else in the kingdom. It just won't do to say, "The king doesn't have any clothes on."

 

Religion is the art of making the fanciful seem reasonable.

 

From my point of view, if this was the only thing which I was confronted with to question the authenticity of the Pentateuch, then it wouldn't be much of a twisting to suggest that Moses was speaking in the past tense in the song as a sign of supreme confidence. It could very well just be a kind of propaganda to boost the Israelites moral, "our god is so much greater than those guys that we've already won". As it stands there are so many other obvious historical inconsistencies and absurdities in the Pentateuch that require real twisting.

As someone else wrote, each little "apology" seems almost reasonable. It is the cumulative realization that more and more apologies are necessary to keep the whole thing from falling apart - and then it does anyway.

 

I gave up trying to make sense of either the new testament or the old. The excuses just seem to get sillier and sillier. "He is all good, but he made the devil which is evil, but he doesn't really make evil ......"

 

Yeah but personally I would consider this ones explanation to be completely reasonable. I was indoctrinated that after you pray you should believe you've already received it, so it would make perfect sense that Moses would speak of their victory over the Canaanites as if it had already happened, my study bible in fact points this out in a footnote on the above verses, to strengthen this very idea. So if you brought this up to me as a problem in the bible when I was still a Christian, I would have thought you'd just failed to see the spiritual significance of it.

 

If you'd have come up to me and told me that during the time of the supposed exodus and subsequent invasion of Canaan, Canaan happened to be a part of Egyptian empire and continued to be so for at least 200 years after this supposed event I would have been shaken, however.

 

The two different ten commandments is another good one.

 

The point is why talk about small problems with reasonable explanations when there are so many large problems. The simple fact of the matter is that if you bring up the small ones, they'll just try and use them to divert attention away from the large ones.