How can I be certain there is a God? It’s all documented in the Bible. The Bible tells us everything we need to know about God. How do we know the Bible is correct? That’s easy. It’s the word of God. How did his word get into the Bible you ask. He didn’t sit down and write it himself. He didn’t dictate it to a secretary who was sitting there with a pen and ink and a pad. God caused Moses to write it. We know that because the Bible tells us so.
Ignoring some other parts of the Bible to keep this simple I would think we should start with just considering the five books of Moses.—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, also called the Torah (Hebrew, “instruction,” “law”) and the Pentateuch (from a Greek phrase meaning “five books”).
Jewish, Christian and Muslim tradition all hold that the Torah was written by Moses. What God told Moses he wrote. He did not write anything God did not have him write.
Exodus 24:4: “And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD. And he rose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars according to the twelve tribes of Israel.”
Exodus 34:27-28 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write these words, for according to the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” So he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. And He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.” I
The books of Genesis, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, are separate units which collectively are called the Pentateuch penta, “five;” teuchos, “a tool” or “implement,” the five-fold book.
Not only does the internal evidence of the Scriptures make it clear that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, but other Old Testament books make Mosaic authorship clear. Joshua 8:31 refers to “the book of the law of Moses” Joshua 8:32 calls it “the law of Moses, which he had written.” Other Old Testament references are I Kings 2:3, II Kings 14:6, and Joshua 23:6, which attribute to Moses the authorship of the Pentateuch.
Then we have testimony of the New Testament. The apostles said that ‘Moses wrote unto us’ (Mark 12:19) as did the apostle Paul, who when speaking of a passage in the Pentateuch said, ‘Moses describeth’ (Romans 10:5).
The issue as to the authorship of the first five books is also enforced by the testimony of the Jesus Christ. Jesus made it clear that Moses wrote these books (Mark 7:10; 10:3–5; 12:26; Luke 2:22,5:14; 16:29–31; 24:27, 44; John 7:19, 23). Jesus Christ quoted from every part of the Pentateuch (5 books) and attributed the authorship to Moses: Genesis (Mt. 19:4-6; 24:37-39); Exodus (Mk. 12:26 citing Ex. 3:6); Leviticus (Mt. 8:4 citing Lev. 14:1-32); Numbers (Jn. 3:14-15 citing Num. 21:8,9 and Jn. 6:31-32 citing Num. 11:6-9); Deuteronomy (Mk. 10:4-5 citing Deut. 24:1).
This creates a problem. Without the Bible the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religions (collectively referred to as Abrahamic religions, a term derived from a figure in the Bible known as Abraham) would have no basis to exist. The major Abrahamic religions in chronological order of founding are Judaism in the 7th century BCE, Christianity in the 1st century CE, and Islam in the 7th century CE. Without Moses and God somehow being co-authors of the Torah portion, the whole rest of the Bible becomes no more than a collection of folk tales and myths no different than the collections of the Brothers Grimm fairytales or Aesop’s fables.
The growth and very existence of these Abrahamic religions was understandable in centuries past when people believed the Bible to be the word of God. Now, however, current research by eminent archaeologists and historians informs us that Moses, much less the entire story of Exodus in the Bible, never even existed. To date, archaeological research by the countries of Egypt and Israel, both with a great personal interest in the story, have not been able to find any artifacts or evidence substantiating the existence of an actual Exodus of Jewish slaves from Egypt into Israel.
Some comments from experts in the field are as follows.
British archaeologist Philip Davies said, “Moses himself has about as much historic reality as King Arthur.”
Cyprian Broodbank, a professor of archaeology at Cambridge University said, “The Exodus was at best a refracted folk memory of earlier expulsions of Levantine people of the Nile Delta by the Egyptian king Ahmose around 1530 BC.”
Thomas Holland, well-known British writer of classical and medieval history books said, “The likelihood that the biblical story records an actual event is fairly small.”
I’m not saying that Jews should stop celebrating the holiday of Passover. It’s one of the most important holidays for Jews. It’s steeped in tradition and is a time for families to gather and reaffirm their family and ethnic traditions. The fact that it celebrates an event that never happened doesn’t make it any less a satisfying experience than the one Christians derive from celebrating Christmas, another holiday about an event that never happened.