[metmom]

Fascinating. I thought that God provided two stone tablets, and their backup when the first ones got smashed. Which book did God provide? And who did He give it to?

Exodus 17:14 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”

Exodus 34:1 The Lord said to Moses, “Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.

Exodus 34:27 And the Lord said to Moses, “Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”

Deuteronomy 6:9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Deuteronomy 17:18 “And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests.

Deuteronomy 27:8 And you shall write on the stones all the words of this law very plainly.”

Isaiah 30:8 And now, go, write it before them on a tablet and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever.

Here's a link to the keyword *write*.

http://www.biblegateway.com/keyword/?search=write&version1=ESV&searchtype=all&bookset=1

God LOVES the written word. He did it Himself and commanded men to do it.

[MarkBsnr]

God did not provide the Torah as such. Moses had to write it down. He did not provide any of the rest of the OT and none of the New.

My point is that most of the word is written by men.

[boatbums]

God LOVES the written word. He did it Himself and commanded men to do it.

God loves the spoken word as well as the remembered word. What better way for the spoken word to be remembered AND followed for the rest of time than the written word? It obviously took some time before mankind figured out HOW to write the spoken words, but God had a hand in that, too. There is no better method of preserving exactly what God said than the written word. We have the sacred Scriptures because GOD intended us to have them. Man cannot claim the credit for that either.

[MarkBsnr]

Umm, the Jewish oral tradition is among the best in the world. In a world only two percent of people (at best) were literate - and in the world of Exodus, that was less than a quarter of a percent - the oral tradition was the best and only way of communicating to more than 99% of the people.

You cannot apply contemporary American culture to Genesis and Exodus era Jews.