Readers Reply

Letters Good, Replies Even Better

The first thing I do with each issue is turn to Reader’s Reply. There I see the extreme religious variation of those who read BR. It is even more enjoyable to read authors’ replies (defenses?) to letters about articles they have written. Keep up the good work.

Mount Sinai

Documentary Hypothesis Saps Faith

The article “What Really Happened at Mount Sinai,” BR 13:05, by Baruch Schwartz, aptly shows the liberal, subjective philosophy of the documentary hypothesis and the trap those proffering it fall into.

Either the word of God is inspired and is true, or it is not. The documentary hypothesis theorizes that the Pentateuch had several authors and a redactor edited it. This implies the Bible is not inspired.

There are no contradictions in the text of the Bible, and the only ones pointed out by the author are within his imagination. His statement “that the canonical Torah…is made up of four independent documents that have been combined” cannot be proven. The entire article rests on two assumptions. First, we must assume that the documentary hypothesis is true, and two, we must assume that the author, through his subjective feelings about the text, can identify the three documents that, he says, have been pasted into one narrative. No proof exists for either assumption.