“And the Lord said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel” (Exodus 34:27).
Now showing in movie theaters, and soon available on DVD, Patterns of Evidence: The Moses Controversy, is a 2019 documentary film by writer and director Timothy P. Mahoney, which explores an interesting question as to the authorship of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible.
A large segment of modern Biblical scholarship insists that Moses is not the author of sacred Scripture, which immediately pits many men and women in academia against the historic faith of the Christian Church, and Christ Himself. Jesus said, “For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. 47 But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?” (John 5:46-47).
The film will appeal to seminarians, biblical scholars, archaeological experts, and any concerned Christian who is questioning having faith in the Bible. In a statement to The Christian Post, Mahoney confessed,
“In my own search for the evidence, I had to ask myself if I believe the Bible because it’s true, or because it’s just what I believed because of my upbringing.” “Since the rest of the Bible is based on the writings of Moses, the credibility of the exodus and the rest of the Bible is directly connected to the question of Moses’ authorship.”
Mahoney seeks to answer a simple question: Was there an alphabetic language available for Moses to use in writing the Torah?
A large number of “mainstream” scholars insist that the alphabetic language did not exist during the time of Moses and so he could not have written his eyewitness account of the Exodus, the crossing of the Red Sea, the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai, or the construction of the Tabernacle. But if Moses did not write the Bible, who did? The “mainstream” scholars are satisfied that oral tradition created the Biblical stories which were embellished over time until written down sometime in the ninth century, if not later.
For a defense of the Mosaic authorship of the first five books of the Bible, Patterns of Evidence: The Moses Controversy is worth viewing, and can be supplemented with Tom Snyder’s book, MYTH CONCEPTIONS (pages, 182 to 185 Baker Books, 1995). See also, https://patternsofevidence.com/
It is always good when the Church supports faith based films.
At the end of the movie there is an excellent panel discussion hosted by Todd Starnes who is joined by Michael Medved, Os Guinness, A. R. Bernard, and Timothy Mahoney. Commenting on the social impact of the Bible, it is pointed out that the concept of man being made in the image of God, and the idea of freedom within a covenant relationship is rooted in Scripture. When the idea of man not being made in the image of God is taken away, and the idea that freedom is not a God given right, then society disintegrates, faith is lost, and there is nothing but despair.
One of the “mainstream” scholars interviewed in the film lost a child. Because he had lost his own faith in God through his academic studies, he had no hope of seeing his child again. That is sad. All of society will be said without believing, “in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” as Moses wrote under Divine inspiration.