Commemorating a real event.
And if Moses never went up the mountain and received the Law, if it was a gradual divinely-inspired work, then when did God and the Israelites make their covenant?
Are we using the same definition of "divinely-inspired"? Aside from the original tablets of the Law which Moses broke, everything else was given by God to Moses through revelation. I see no reason to believe that God dictated this word-for-word, and that Moses served only as a scribe. Doesn't the Catholic church understand divine revelation in basically the same way? That the words of scripture are divinely inspired, but are written down by the prophets in their own style?
OK. So there is some basis in a miraculous event to this central act of the religion, right? (Which was the original point.)
Are we using the same definition of "divinely-inspired"?
I doubt it. :-)
Aside from the original tablets of the Law which Moses broke, everything else was given by God to Moses through revelation.
I think I was thinking these original tablets was the whole of the Law.
I see no reason to believe that God dictated this word-for-word, and that Moses served only as a scribe. Doesn't the Catholic church understand divine revelation in basically the same way? That the words of scripture are divinely inspired, but are written down by the prophets in their own style?
Yes. I hadn't thought of it like that, tending to see the entire thing given more like a fait accompli, written in stone, as it were.
SD