Who Really Wrote the Bible? Rabbi Singer Exposes the Truth

Neoablonian Empire was destroyed, but the Jews did not yet return because it'll be another 20 years. Make their mind. You would be very alarmed at that. That would be of enormous concern to you and you would scream to heaven and say, "What went wrong?" It's funny. Okay, we got Okay, we have Jacob from Toronto, Canada. welcome to the show. Go ahead and present your question to Rabbi, please. >> Hi, Rabbi. Um, I have a question. I I noticed that um when we talk about the New Testament, you use the um the scholarly interpretation of the dating of the books, but you don't use a scholarly dating of the the Tanakh, which I also accept. >> I'll tell you honestly, I I started to lose you. Like first Corinthians is written during the 50s. I just like keep it simple because I'm I find myself following you down a a rabbit hole. Just the question is why do I date like Daniel when I do and why do I date the Gospels when I do? Is that your basic question? >> We we talked about it before. He's he's he basically said that you you're um your viewing of rejecting scholarly dating from Tanakh which he agrees on. He says, "But you don't reject the scholarly dating from the New Testament, which puts Paul's writings way earlier than the Gospels." >> My view of Paul's letters, the dating of Paul's letters that are written during the 50s, everybody holds that view. I don't know anyone. The only thing the only question is there are six letters of Paul which um are disputed over whether Paul actually wrote them or not. And this is going to u surprise you. So you have the pastoral epistles first and second Timothy and Titus. So those there's really a somewhat of consensus those were not written by Paul but that falsely ascribed to him and they're really really late and probably that's why Marcion 2 century didn't even include them in his letters of poly possibly didn't know about them. So there's there's they were certainly written by the same person. If someone wants to believe that it was rewritten again, whatever. That's somewhat the consensus. You don't have to believe that. I can buy it. As far as my belief about Paul's the other three letters like Colossians, like Ephesians, and 2 Thessalonians, the scholarly consensus is that Paul didn't write them, but they are in fact a also falsely um ascribed to Paul. I do not think that's a very strong argument because as it turns out all of Paul's letters this is a consensus went through an editing process in the first century and therefore the fact that the language used in Ephesians 2 Thessalonians and Colossians this is not the only reason that but this is one of the chief reasons that differs from the seven letters that Paul wrote could easily be ascribed to the fact that they went through some editing process which virtually everyone knows they did. As an example, I'm just going to give you really simple example and I'm going to move on from this. I mean 2 Corinthians is no doubt multiple letters. It's not one letter. It's multiple letters. Okay? 1-9 is a different letter than 10 through13. It I think it's written by more. That means they're all written. Second Thessalonians, excuse me, second Corinthians was written by Paul. No question about it. However, how many letters were pasted together to produce second uh Corinthians? Quite a few. There's a difference. So therefore, it obviously went through a a redaction process. And therefore, I believe personally that the argument used by sec I think the evangelicals or the conservative Christians are right on that. So I judge texts based on the evidence I have and I I now this is the humanities. So in the humanities it's just a sense of how confident are you. This is not a hard science. We can never there's no bulletproof way to know and everyone will tell you that. But in my view I feel a a certain level of confidence that Colossians was written by Paul and just went through some editing process. I don't want to get more complicated than that. Leave that alone. Moving on to the gospels. So the gospels, my view is, so I used to hold that Mark was written about 70, which is the the standard scholarly view. I think it probably written a little later. I think about this all the time. But given Mark 13 where we have destruction of the temple in view or Luke 21 or Matthew 24 alvet discourse therefore it's written after the destruction of second temple. We'll leave it there. Go all the way there. Now as far as Tanakh goes well here first of all the massive number of scholars of Tanakh are not found in academic circles. The vast vast bulk of people who are schol are I'm going to say it and if I offend people so so be it are orthodox Jews the if you take punovich if you go to the mirha that's where you have scholars of that could blow away the academic world so this making a big mistake that means there's no question that the and I'm saying orthodox and I if you're a former conservative and you're a former conservative rabbi and watching me. I thank you. Please don't be offended. But it this is transparent. The massive volume of scholars of the Torah today, people who could there's nothing to say. There's no in the academic world. The academic world are reading what the rabbis are saying and quoting it and trying to figure it out. They understand who the scholars are. But let's leave that all alone. As it turns out, the Torah tells us who authored it. You could clearly not believe it, but at least the text says it. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John does not say who wrote it. That's a later invention. Do you understand the mass difference in that? When a book says like I don't want to say it out of my mouth. God forgive me. Laabdul, the fact that letters of Paul at least Paul whoever wrote it says Paul wrote it. So that's enormous. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John have no inscription to it. They don't claim to be written by them. And the early church fathers that means early second century did not quote Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. They quoted the text. So it's there. But they people like Justin doesn't doesn't refer to them as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John because that's in Justin is mid 2nd century. Okay? He's written in the mid-second. At the end of the second century, it's the bishop of Leon that ascribes Matthew, Mark, and Luke and John to those names. Okay? So, so you do not have early early church fathers like the bishop of Antioch. We have a lot of his he doesn't refer to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Drop that. Now, as far as Tanak goes, you could use your brains more. For example, I just want to I want to steal man this and there's not enough time to go through all this, but say Daniel. Okay, Daniel, we have incredible evidence for Daniel's authorship during the Babylonian exile than any other book in Tanakh. Meaning, we have an eyewitness account of Daniel in the book of Ezekiel. Three times Daniel was mentioned passingly. The book of the book of Daniel describes the destruction of the second tamuel in Daniel 9:26. Not the abominations of of Kaneka. It's not true. It's the destruction of Jerusalem, destruction of the temple. And I show you this antio did not destroy his temple. He defiled it. He did grotesque things. But he didn't want to destroy temple and he didn't want to destroy Jerusalem. On the contrary, he was going to use that as a center for his idolatry. Moreover, we have eyewitness accounts during the time of Kaneka. That means during the time of Antioch's epiphanies that Daniel was an ancient book. So what I'm doing is I want to steal men. I want to take the most controversial and I want to use that. So we have Ezekiel lived at the same time as Daniel and we have Ezekiel test. You know how hard that is to find. We have Ezekiel speaking about Daniel in passing. He's not even making a He's just saying, "Do you think you're as smart as Daniel?" It's there. We have the book of Mcabes. The first vi Mcabes 1 was written around the time of Kaneka in biblical Hebrew. It did not survive in biblical, but we know it was written biblical Hebrew and it's written during time of Kaneka. Everybody admits this means happened at the time of the event. The key point is chapter two. verse 50- 60. 50- 55. Pretty sure that's correct. Explicitly when enumerating the great miracles of the past, comparing them to the current miracles, the author, whoever it is, looks back to the children of Israel going out of Egypt, looks back to the great miracles when the Jews were saved, and looks back to the time that the companions of Daniel was saved from the fire and the and the den of lions. So we have an eyewitness account during the time of Kaneka that Daniel was an ancient book. I I'll do one last thing and then we'll cut it up because this is really a long long. So I'm thinking very critically here. I I just share something with you that's very important again. We are discussing a topic of the humanities. So, but how do scholars look doesn't matter if they believe how when looking at an ancient text, how do they know like when it was written? Like h how do you know? So there of course you have eyewitness people who wrote about it. We don't want to talk about there is another methodology that's fairly rigorous and the methodology goes is simply like this. The author is expressing concerns in the text. Do those concerns identify when he lived? The answer is of course it does. In fact, in fact, the Ipologist searching back and forth. The New Testament scholars that say that the disputed letters of Paul were not written by Paul. There are a number of reasons why they assigned to it. One of them is that the author is addressing issues that would not have related to someone writing during the 50s but much later. This is really a none of these are bulletproof but these are all our methodologies and these are like the the really strong methodology. So a meth if the author of Daniel is expressing a concern about something a crisis and that would not be a Babylonian exile person well that would be very significant. Conversely if it was an issue that if only if you were alive at the time when the Persian Empire emerged that means during the time of the Babylon exile that would be a massive proof massive. Do you understand now? Daniel 9, how does it begin? Daniel is writing in the first year of Darius the me. Stop. And what is he concerned about? Stop. He's concerned about two prophecies in Jeremiah. I'm just going to tell you, I'm not going through it. Jeremiah 25:12. Jeremiah 29:10. His problem was 25:12 was filled, meaning the Babylonian Empire collapsed. And 29:10 was not filled. Meaning that the Jews did not return back to the land of Israel. not going further. Okay, he is alarmed by that. You understand? That means Darius/ Cyrus emerged a half a century after the first temple was destroyed. If the neoablonian Empire was destroyed, but the Jews did not yet return because it'll be another 20 years. Make their mind. You would be very alarmed at that. That would be of enormous concern to you and you would scream to heaven and say what went wrong. You follow the fact that Daniel is concerned that the Babylonian Empire has been destroyed but the Jews have not returned is explosive that it could have only been written by someone who was concerned about this. It couldn't have been written in the second century BC during time of Khaneka. The time of Khaneka that was not a concern. This is to say that somebody I just want to say this and I'm going to go. To say that somebody during time of Kaneka would have been concerned about the Jews not returning back from Bavville would be like saying that Mahm Abbas is the chief rabbi of Israel. It's not even wrong. It's so detached from reality. It you can't even use the word wrong. Can't even apply to it. So therefore, we can use the rigorous methodology. I'm not saying there's no faith involved. So all this talk of scholar which scholar oh only the scholars that you believe that it's all silly look at the text the rigorous methodologas are all there and incidentally that's why in the gospels you have the destruction of the temple and the book of Hebrews whoever wrote it we don't know whoever wrote the epistle to the Hebrews did not know that the temple was destroyed why didn't he know it because he didn't know because it didn't happen yet why didn't that's why Paul doesn't know anything about destruction of temple why doesn't he mention it he doesn't mention it cuz he didn't know anything about it. So Paul's written before the book of Hebrews written in ' 64 before even the war and therefore doesn't know it. This is all very transparent stuff. Thank you very much for your question. If you enjoyed this program, please like and subscribe.