Tom Holland: belief

Transcript context

…In the book of Exodus, why did there seem to be two versions of the Ten Commandments, at 20, and then at 34? The first being more legalistic, the second being more ritualistic. Why are there two? How do they fit together? Well, I think this reflects the way in which what we call today the Bible is an accretion of texts. There often seem to be two versions of stories stitched together. There are two versions of the creation of mankind, for instance. Very obviously, you have the Book of Kings and you have the Book of Chronicles. They’re essentially telling the same stories and duplicating each other. I think that the construction of what comes to be called the Pentateuch, the Torah, the first five books of the Bible — because they’re so foundational, because they’re so important doctrinally to a sense of Jews’ and Christians’ sense of themselves, they were the most rewritten and the most contested. The idea that you get in the Quran, very obviously, that this is literally the Word of God. It’s not being mediated by humans. With the Ten Commandments, you get that as well. This isn’t being mediated by Isaiah or St. Matthew or whoever — By Moses, right? The Israelites don’t get to look on the face of God.…

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