“You said there are a lot of New Testament manuscripts from the 1st Century AD. No one claims otherwise.”
Oh I see, when you said I was wrong I thought you were saying that.
“The article is discussing a claim that the first five books of the Old testament were written in the 6th century BC, not the 10th century BC as traditionally claimed. There are no Old Testament manuscripts old enough to cast any light on this issue.”
For years people have been attacking the authenticity of the NT. Now they are attacking the OT and PBS is one of the most active.
I’m not a biblical historian but I do know that thousands of bible scholars are/were involved with the Bible translations. Whom shall I trust? Someone who professes to love the same God I do, or PBS? The same PBS that says the God I love is dead. Thats when they aren’t saying God doesn’t even exist.
Parts of the Old Testament were written by Moses. The OT can be traced back to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Masoretic Text. Other sources are the Septuagint, the Vulgate, the Syriac Peshitta, Targums, and the Juxta Hebraica of Jerome.
The bible is the most documented text of all time and far more trust worthy than Obama’s birth certificate.
I am familiar with the history of the Hebrew Bible (OT to Christians), having had an extensive Jewish education in my youth. The Dead Sea scrolls, the Septuagint, the Vulgate, the Syriac Peshitta, Targums, and the Juxta Hebraica of Jerome are all at least 1000 years later than Moses. The controversy is whether the Pentateuch was actually written by Moses himself, or written in the days of Kings David and Solomon and edited in the days of Ezra. Ezra was still 500 years or so before the earliest manuscripts existing, so even the earliest manuscripts can't answer the question.
For a good discussion of the controversy, written from a Jewish perspective, you could check out this book.