In response to my article "Not Wholly Moses" in the issue of TSR cited above, Roger Hutchinson has written a "reply" entitled "A King over Israel." I had presented a wealth of information that seriously undermined any claim of Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, both in my article and in a personal follow-up to Mr. Hutchinson. His article addressed only one of my points, the one where he apparently felt he had found a loophole and had a decent chance to do some damage to my premise. Even if Hutchinson could demonstrate that I was in error on this one point, that would hardly disprove my case, let alone prove the orthodox claim of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Hutchinson would have to refute each point I made, for if one textual anachronism is allowed to stand, that would call the entire notion of Mosaic authorship into question, not even to mention that of divine inspiration. We will see that it is dangerous to put all of your eggs into one basket as Hutchinson has done.
His counterargument is rather simple: When Genesis 36 refers to the kings who had reigned over Edom before any king had reigned over Israel, "Moses" intended "kings reign[ing] over Israel" to refer to the pharaohs, and so the kings who reigned over Edom would have been both prior to these pharaohs and therefore knowable to Moses. Hence, this would not have been a blatant anachronism. The value of this argument depends upon two facts: (1) whether the author of Genesis did actually intend a reference to the pharaohs rather than to Israelite kings reigning over an established Israelite nation, and (2) whether the kings of Edom named in Genesis 36 had reigned in the time period prior to the Egyptian captivity.
As far as number 1 is concerned, that Moses was referring to the pharaohs is a matter of pure conjecture that receives woefully insufficient support from the text. That "king" was used to refer to the pharaohs elsewhere is not conclusive proof that it was referring to pharaohs in Genesis 36:21. Citing passages from the Pentateuch that claimed Mosaic authorship is without value, for if indeed the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, these are explainable as intentional deceptions by the true author. Citing reference to "the law of Moses" in Joshua is likewise of no value, for Joshua might have been written much later than the time of Joshua (which is the consensus of objective scholars), and later than the latest estimate for the composition of the law. Indeed, many scholars use the term "Hexateuch," rather than Pentateuch, to group Joshua in with the first five books of the Bible and attributing it to the same late (post-Mosaic) author. Stylistically, Joshua reads much the same as the first five and more like would-be edifying fiction rather than a verifiable historical record.
As far as number 2 is concerned, Hutchinson presented no evidence, biblical or otherwise, that Edomite kings ruled in the period prior to the beginning of the Egyptian captivity. He merely assumed that this must have been the case, because it neatly eliminates the problem of anachronism, but it turns out that his assumption is probably not the case. I pulled Smith's Bible Dictionary from my shelf and looked up Bela, the first Edomite king in the list of names. This highly conservative and apologetic reference source reports the following about Bela:
Son of Beor, who reigned over Edom in the city of Dinhabah, eight generations before Saul, king of Israel, or about the time of the Exodus. He is supposed by some to be the same as Balaam. It is not improbable that he was a Chaldean by birth, and reigned in Edom by conquest. He may have been contemporary with Moses.
If Smith's is right and Bela, the first king of Edom, was a contemporary of Moses, then Hutchinson will have to take his "resolution" of this problem back to the drawing board, because Moses lived during the final 80 years of the 430-year bondage in Egypt, which would have been well after Hutchinson's perception of when "kings" began to reign over Israel. The text in Genesis 36 listed seven Edomite kings who followed Bela, but if Bela was a contemporary of Moses, then Bela could not have reigned in Edom before the kings (pharaohs) of Egypt had "reigned" over the children of Israel, and, certainly, if Bela was a contemporary of Moses, the seven kings of Edom listed after Bela could not have reigned over Edom before the kings (pharaohs) of Egypt had "reigned" over the children of Israel. As I mentioned in my initial article, this passage in Genesis is not presented as a prophecy, so there goes that possible quibble. Hutchinson even agreed that it's history, but, unfortunately for his inerrantist agenda, the evidence indicates that it is history that occurred after the time of Moses and, therefore, must have been written by someone else.
Rather than a listing of Edomite kings prior to the captivity, the best information we have indicates that it was a listing of Edomite kings from the time of the exodus to the abolition of the Edomite monarchy after the arrival of the Israelites in Canaan. I acknowledge that actual historical evidence for the Edomites is very hard to come by. But even if I were wrong on this one point and the Edomite kings in the list did reign before the kings (pharaohs) of Egypt "reigned" over the Israelites, disproving this one claim of anachronism would merely show that I had one invalid point in my article. Proving me wrong on this one point would certainly not prove that the Pentateuch was the actual product of Moses.
My initial article included a number of points that refuted Mosaic authorship, and unless all of them are successfully refuted, the claim of Mosaic authorship will continue to be dubious in the extreme. Hutchinson did not even attempt to refute these other points, so one can only suspect that they must be awfully difficult to refute. His one choice item of contention was easy enough to counter, so if that's his best shot, I feel confident in my rejection of the whole Moses fable. I hope Hutchinson will one day find the strength to reject it as well.
(Stephen Van Eck, RR 1, Box 61, Rushville, PA 18839-9702)
Editor's Note: More comments on Hutchinson's latest article
follow in my continuing reply ("Hoisted with His Own Petard") to his
attempts to exonerate the Bible of all blame in acts of religious
intolerance.
