Do the experimental results of the incredibly small and unusual quantum world undermine our traditional understanding of reason and the laws of logic? In part 1 of this three-part series I described a social media dialogue I had with a scientist on why the results of quantum mechanics (QM) need not be interpreted to invalidate the law of noncontradiction (LNC). Here’s a summary of what I briefly argued:

The law of noncontradiction cast metaphysically (in terms of being) states the following: “Nothing can both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect.” And light (a subatomic object) is not a particle that is also a nonparticle or a wave that is also a nonwave; rather, light under certain experimental conditions behaves as a particle and under other experimental conditions behaves like a wave. Thus, light appearing as both a particle and a wave is understood in different logical respects and does not undermine the law of noncontradiction’s statement of A cannot equal A and equal non-A.

Trying to Understand God’s Creation

My social media interaction about quantum mechanics and the laws of logic with the scientist continued into a second phase. This time the topic shifted to a person’s comprehension of the world and God.

Here is the scientist’s rejoinder:

You may be right about the relationship between QM & LNC, but I remain skeptical. I have been transparent about my doubts as I do not think faith and doubt are incompatible. I think that, given an infinite God, we should not expect, in our finitude, to fully comprehend either God or the universe he created. This notion is not without biblical precedent (Isaiah 55:8; Proverbs 3:5). Don’t get me wrong, there is much we can know (Romans 1:18–20) and I am all for pushing our understanding to its limits. But, there ARE limits and I am OK with that. Perhaps God created us in such a way to increase the likelihood we stay humble.

In my reply, I stated that I agreed that finite creatures will never fully fathom God nor the amazingly complex cosmos. I concurred that many profound mysteries remain in life and in the world. I also think reason, faith, and doubt are compatible. But affirming the laws of logic does not rule out mystery nor does it affirm a dogmatic rationalism. Rather, the laws of logic make cognitive thought possible. So a denial of the LNC would mean no knowledge is possible. I said that logicians have made a powerfully convincing case that the laws of logic are ontologically real, cognitively necessary, and irrefutable.¹

A Takeaway

In historic Christianity, “faith” has been defined as confident trust in a reliable source. Thus for the Christian, faith involves knowledge and is compatible with reason. Yet knowledge of God, including his creation, continues to include mystery because the finite creature will never fully comprehend the infinite Creator and Lord. But the laws of logic are still considered necessary and inescapable because all thought, correspondence, and action presuppose their truth and application.

Reflections: Your Turn

Christian thinkers St. Augustine (354–430) and St. Anselm (1033–1109) affirmed “faith seeking understanding.” How can faith involve knowledge and be compatible with reason? Visit Reflections on WordPress to comment with your response.

Resources

• For a brief introduction to quantum mechanics, see Robert Coolman, “What Is Quantum Mechanics?” Live Science, September 26, 2014, https://www.livescience.com/33816-quantum-mechanics-explanation.html.
• For studies in logic in the context of the Christian worldview, see Kenneth Richard Samples, A World of Difference: Putting Christian Truth-Claims to the Worldview Test(Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), chapters 3 and 4.

Having worked at science-faith apologetics organization Reasons to Believe for more than 20 years, I’ve observed that scientists and philosophers often think differently about the world. With the types of specialized training in their academic backgrounds, scientists and philosophers tend to ask different kinds of questions about reality and truth. Unfortunately, they also have a tendency to talk past one other. Recently, I had a social media interaction with a scientist about whether the findings of quantum mechanics invalidate the logical law of noncontradiction.

Here, in part 1 of 3 in this series, I’ll provide a little background on the laws of logic and the theory of physics known as quantum mechanics. Then I’ll share some of my interaction with the scientist about the relationship between the two topics.

Three Foundational Laws of Logic

The study of logic recognizes three laws of thought as bedrock principles: the law of noncontradiction, the law of excluded middle, and the law of identity. Their importance to human thought and discourse cannot be overstated. These logical anchors, so to speak, can be stated to reflect a metaphysical perspective (what is or is not—being) or an epistemological perspective (what can be true or not true—truth).¹

Here are the three logical laws stated and explained:

1. The law of noncontradiction: A thing, A, cannot at once be and not be (A cannot equal A and equal non-A at the same time and in the same way); they are mutually exclusive (not both). A dog cannot be a dog and be a non-dog.

2. The law of excluded middle: A thing, A, is or it is not, but not both or neither (either A or non-A), they are jointly exhaustive—one of them must be true. There is no middle ground between a dog and a non-dog.

3. The law of identity: A thing, A, is what it is (A is A). A dog is a dog.

Law of Noncontradiction (LNC)

To help explain further, here is an example of a logical contradiction from the claims of two world religions:

A. Jesus Christ is God incarnate (Christianity).

B. Jesus Christ is not God incarnate (Islam).

According to the LNC, these two statements (represented as A and B) negate or deny one another. In other words, if statement A is true, then statement B is false, and conversely. Thus, logically, both of these statements cannot be true. So contradictory relationships reflect a “not both true” status.

Quantum Mechanics (QM)

For a basic understanding of quantum mechanics, Live Science defines it this way:

Quantum mechanics is the branch of physics relating to the very small.

It results in what may appear to be some very strange conclusions about the physical world. At the scale of atoms and electrons, many of the equations of classical mechanics, which describe how things move at everyday sizes and speeds, cease to be useful. In classical mechanics, objects exist in a specific place at a specific time. However, in quantum mechanics, objects instead exist in a haze of probability; they have a certain chance of being at point A, another chance of being at point B and so on.²

The challenge of QM in the context of the LNC is that light (a subatomic object) seems to be both a wave and a particle simultaneously, thus A and non-A.

Logical Interaction

Here is what a scientist said to me on social media:

The law of noncontradiction is violated by solid empirical science. At the quantum level, a subatomic particle can be in multiple locations at the same time. A particle can be both a wave and a particle. At the quantum level, cause may occur after effect. If this is true at the molecular base of our reality, how strongly can we hold on to the law of noncontradiction?

I responded by thanking the scientist and saying that philosophers and scientists need to dialogue with each other more on these kinds of topics. I then offered my brief take on the issue.

The LNC cast metaphysically (in terms of being) states the following: “Nothing can both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect.” I don’t think quantum mechanics actually denies the law of noncontradiction. What we can say is that under certain experimental conditions, light (a subatomic object) appears as a wave. But under other experimental conditions, light appears as a particle. So subatomic objects are not particles that are also nonparticles or waves that are also nonwaves; they are objects that behave sometimes like particles and sometimes like waves. Light behaves as a wave and a particle in different experimental conditions and, thus, in different logical respects. Hence, the experimental results of QM do not invalidate the LNC (A cannot equal A and equal non-A at the same time and in the same relationship).

The fundamental problem with any denial of the LNC is that the laws of logic make rational thought possible. In this very case, both a scientist and a philosopher exchanged ideas under the assumption of existing laws of logic. Thus, philosophers need input from scientists just as scientists need input from philosophers. And Christians would do well to populate both critical disciplines.

Summary

If I were to summarize the issue so you can use it on social media, I would say that quantum mechanics is counterintuitive to our ordinary notion of how larger objects react, but it is not a genuine violation of the law of noncontradiction. The laws of logic are considered necessary and inescapable because all thought, correspondence, and action presuppose their truth and application.

Reflections: Your Turn

Can you concisely state and explain the three laws of logic? Have you used them in your interactions? Visit Reflections on WordPress to comment with your response.

Resources

For studies in logic in the context of the Christian worldview, see Kenneth Richard Samples, A World of Difference: Putting Christian Truth-Claims to the Worldview Test (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), chapters 3 and 4.

When defenders of naturalistic evolution state their case, they frequently begin with the claim that their theory is “scientific.” Alternative views, especially those that would invoke supernatural causation, are pejoratively dismissed as “pseudoscience,” pseudo because they falsely claim to have scientific legitimacy. Given science’s respected status, this becomes a powerful rhetorical device to marginalize Christian claims that life on Earth involved the supernatural intervention of God.

This view played a critically important role in the 2005 case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.¹ Attempts to require the teaching of “Intelligent Design” (ID) were opposed by many parents who claimed it was a subterfuge for bringing religious teachings into the classroom. Ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, Judge John E. Jones of the District Court in the Middle District of Pennsylvania concluded that ID should not be taught in the public schools because, among other reasons, “ID is not science.” Why? Because it “violates the age-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation.”

But are there any such “age-old ground rules”? Can science not legitimately consider the possibility of supernatural causation? It turns out this so-called “age-old rule” has been discredited, leaving science no basis for excluding supernatural causation.

Development of Science’s “Ground Rules”

When thinker Francis Bacon conceived of what we now call the scientific method in his Novum Organon (1620), it is correct to say he believed any testable hypothesis must be derived from our physical sense experience. This is what we call the method of induction. One starts with data and generalizes toward a hypothesis from the data, then tests the hypothesis. It is a methodology that would, indeed, seem to exclude supernatural causation.

During the next two centuries the notion grew that science, grounded in this methodology, could purge humanity from the distortions of religion and superstition. In the nineteenth century, this idea took the form of positivism, a view vigorously embraced by a group of like-minded scientists and philosophers in the early twentieth century known as the Vienna Circle. Positivism is based on the claim, following Bacon, that the only source of positive knowledge of the world is information we derive from our physical senses. No scientific hypothesis is valid, on this view, unless it is derived from data that can be directly observed, measured, or reproduced. These ideas, having been stirred through much of the nineteenth century, were influential enough that as they spread during the early twentieth century, “an intellectual hegemony of positivism was beginning to be established” in American universities.²

By the mid-twentieth century, however, it became clear that the positivist model was running into problems. It was neither defensible philosophically, nor did it accurately describe how scientists function in practice. As philosopher Richard Bernstein wrote in 1976: “There is not a single major thesis advanced by either nineteenth-century positivists or the Vienna Circle that has not been devastatingly criticized when measured by the positivist’s own standards for philosophical argument.”³ In commenting on Berstein’s remarks, Donald Schon observes “[a]mong philosophers of science no one wants any longer to be called a positivist.”⁴

The underlying problem goes back to Bacon’s assumption that science operates exclusively on the principle of induction, the idea that any testable hypothesis must be derived from our sense experience. It doesn’t. Induction is certainly one way to form a hypothesis, but it is not exclusive. In practice there is no prescribed method scientists use for developing hypotheses—they are often products of our imaginative and creative minds.

The alternative to induction is the method of deduction. Here one starts with a generalized hypothesis and works toward specifics. Philosopher Karl Popper, a critic of induction, argued “[t]here is no logical method of having new ideas . . . every discovery contains an ‘irrational element’, or a ‘creative intuition.’” He reinforced his argument with quotes from Einstein: “There is no logical path leading to these . . . laws. They can only be reached by intuition, based upon something like an intellectual love of the objects of experience.”⁵ Popper’s assertion is that the hypotheses scientists test are not products of some disciplined method of organizing data, but rather products of the creative human mind.

Bertrand Russell expressed the issue more pointedly:

Bacon’s inductive method is faulty through insufficient emphasis on hypothesis. He hoped that mere orderly arrangement of data would make the right hypothesis obvious, but this is seldom the case . . . so far no method has been found which would make it possible to invent hypothesis by rule.⁶

The Essence of Science Is Testing Hypotheses

Science does not really care about the source of the hypothesis. It is concerned about testing ideas once they take the form of a hypothesis. The hypothesis is then tested by the rigid standards of science to determine if it fits what we observe in the surrounding universe. These methods cannot always prove the hypothesis is true—science cannot prove God, for example. But testing can determine if a particular hypothesis is false.

Yet old ideas die hard. In his historical review of positivism, the late German philosopher Oswald Hanfling writes:

… even if the parent plant is dead, many of its seeds are alive and active in one form or another. In an interview in 1979, A.J. Ayer, a leading philosopher of our time, who had been an advocate of logical positivism in the 1930s, was asked what he now saw as its main defects. He replied: ‘I suppose the most important . . . was that nearly all of it was false.’ Yet this did not prevent him from admitting shortly afterwards that he still believed in ‘the same general approach.’⁷

Thus positivism remains a foil, if a flawed one, used by defenders of naturalistic evolution to discredit Christian views of creation.⁸

When Reasons to Believe offers its testable creation model, the “test” is a scientific one: is the model consistent with that which we observe in the universe? If it is not, the model can be said to be falsified. If it is, it does not mean the model is proven (verified), but it does mean it cannot be discarded as inconsistent with that which we observe through legitimate science. The more tests the model passes, the more one can say it is grounded in good science.

When advocates of naturalistic evolution offer their model, they too are operating in this realm. They propose a hypothesis then test it by comparing its predictions with that which we observe in the universe. Both approaches employ sound science in the way we want science to operate—as a tool for finding truth and testing truth claims against observations of the natural realm. To be sure, that process itself is fraught with its own complications as philosophers of science debate what ultimate truths can or cannot be asserted once one forms a hypothesis.⁹ But the starting point is always the hypothesis.

Naturalistic evolution and the RTB creation model are two competing hypotheses that differ in many fundamentals. Science, functioning properly, can and should be willing to test both hypotheses against our observations of the universe in an effort to understand which model better explains the whole of reality. To discard the RTB model because it permits supernatural causation is both irrational and “unscientific” in that it excludes possible answers to big questions with no justification in science for doing so. Perhaps it’s time to discard the “age-old ground rules” of science in favor of a new ground rule for testing all hypotheses.

Christian apologist Walter Martin used to say that the real death rate is one per person, meaning that each person’s death is a matter of when, not if. Therefore, because we are mortal creatures and thus stalked by death, if Jesus Christ actually conquered death through his resurrection, then this is the most important news for all human beings to hear and to reflectively consider. The inevitability of death should motivate Christians to share the message of the resurrection.

In part 1 of this series, I briefly addressed two evidences for Jesus’s resurrection. In this article I’ll present one more reason in our series of 12 evidences for believing that Jesus Christ’s bodily resurrection from the dead actually happened.

3. Short Time Frame between Actual Events and Eyewitness Claims

Support for the factual nature of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead comes from eyewitness testimonies that were reported soon after the events happened. The apostle Paul claims both that he saw the resurrected Christ (Acts 9:1–19; 22:6–16; 26:12–23) and that others witnessed the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3) prior to his personal encounter. Paul asserts in his writings that he received the firsthand testimony from Jesus’s original apostles who were witnesses of Jesus’s resurrection even before him.

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he employs a creedal statement about the resurrection that dates to the earliest period of Christianity.¹ This creed is believed, even by critical scholars (those who doubt the supernatural), to be part of the original Christian kerygma (“proclamation”—representing the earliest preaching and teaching message of Christianity). This early statement of faith that Paul relays mentions by name two of Jesus’s apostles who said they had seen the resurrected Christ. These two apostles are Peter (one of the original 12 apostles and principal spokesperson of primitive Christianity) and James (the brother of Jesus who was also an early apostolic leader).

Here is that early creedal statement as the apostle Paul weaved it into his first Corinthian epistle:

Paul’s statement gives us a fourfold formula of the primitive Christian proclamation as it relates to Jesus’s death and resurrection:

1. Christ died.
2. He was buried.
3. He was raised.
4. He appeared.

This time frame evidenced in the early creed places the original proclamation by the first apostles about Jesus’s resurrection very near to the time of Jesus’s death and resurrection. This development has led even critical New Testament scholars to be amazed at the early and reliable testimony evident in Paul’s writings. In fact, distinguished New Testament scholar James D. G. Dunn states, “This tradition [of Jesus’s resurrection and appearances], we can be entirely confident, was formulated as tradition within months of Jesus’s death.”^₂

Therefore, given the short interval of time between the early eyewitness testimonies about Jesus’s resurrection and the actual event itself (a mere matter of months), these accounts must be considered historically credible. There was clearly no time for myth, legend, or embellishment to accrue around the initial resurrection reports.

Watch for the next article in this series as we continue briefly considering 12 evidences for the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Reflections: Your Turn

Since death is one of the big questions of life, doesn’t that make the message of Jesus’s resurrection a topic relevant to all people? Is this a probative philosophical way of approaching evangelism? Visit Reflections on WordPress to comment with your response.

Resources

• I address the resurrection of Jesus in two of my books, Without a Doubt: Answering the 20 Toughest Faith Questions (see chapter 10) and 7 Truths That Changed the World: Discovering Christianity’s Most Dangerous Ideas (see chapters 1 and 2).
• I also recommend The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona and Knowing the Truth about the Resurrection: Our Response to the Empty Tomb by William Lane Craig.
• A further recommended source is N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God.

Jesus’s resurrection is at the very heart of historic Christianity. In fact, the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is both a central doctrinal belief of the faith and the primary evidence for the truth of the religion itself. Given the importance of Easter for Christians, it is appropriate for us to consider 12 evidences for the resurrection of Jesus. For greater depth on these points, see the recommended resources at the end of the article.

1. Jesus’s Empty Tomb

According to the Gospels,¹ after Jesus succumbed to death through crucifixion, some of his followers prepared his lifeless body for burial and placed it in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb. Three days later the tomb was discovered empty, for Jesus’s body had vanished. The empty tomb is a critical part of the resurrection account, for if Jesus’s body had been recovered, then Christianity would have been falsified right as it had just begun. Since Jesus predicted his resurrection (Mark 8:31; Luke 9:22), if he didn’t rise from the dead, he would be a false prophet.

The report of Jesus’s empty tomb rings true, for the account emerges very early from a number of sources, and there is no good reason to doubt any of the people mentioned in the story. Furthermore, the tomb was owned by a particular person, so there is no good reason to think that Jesus’s followers had mistakenly gone to the wrong tomb. Also, the Jewish and Roman authorities had the resources to search thoroughly for the actual burial place had the empty tomb been a mere problem of mistaken identity.

It should also be recognized that the first alternative naturalistic explanation for the resurrection presupposed the truth of the vacated tomb. The Jewish authorities insisted that the tomb was empty because they planned to tell people that Jesus’s followers had come in the night and stolen the body (Matthew 28:13).

2. Jesus’s Postmortem Appearances

According to the apostle Paul’s letters as well as the four Gospel accounts,² Jesus appeared alive after his death on numerous occasions. These appearances of Jesus were reported to be both physical and bodily in nature (he was seen, heard, and touched³) and not purely spiritual or ghostlike. The resurrection appearances were also diverse and varied in that Jesus appeared to men and women, to friends and enemies, to single individuals as well as to small and large groups of people, to some persons on a single occasion and to others more than once, during the day and the night, as well as indoors and outdoors.

It is this diverse and varied nature of the appearances that makes it extremely improbable, if not impossible, to account for these encounters in terms of hallucinations. It may have been possible that the women who first encountered Jesus at the tomb succumbed to immense grief and experienced some kind of purely subjective and thus false vision of Jesus. But a purely psychological explanation is extremely implausible in the case of James the brother of Jesus who was highly suspicious of his brother’s claims and even thought that Jesus suffered from mental delusion. And in the case of Saul of Tarsus, the hallucination theory is flatly impossible. Saul was an enemy of primitive Christianity and sought to imprison and even execute Christians. Acting in a dismissive and violent manner against the early Christians and their beliefs, there is no way that Saul was susceptible to a false psychological experience.

It is also important to note that if one rejects the miraculous explanation of Jesus’s appearances, then two naturalistic alternative explanations are required—one to explain the empty tomb and another to explain the numerous appearances. But the more complex these alternative theories are, the less likely they are to be true and viable.

Stay tuned for the next article in this series as we continue briefly considering 12 evidences for the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Reflections: Your Turn

Why is the resurrection of Jesus so critically important to the truth of Christianity? Visit Reflectionson WordPress to comment with your response.

Resources

• I address the resurrection of Jesus in two of my books, Without a Doubt: Answering the 20 Toughest Faith Questions (see chapter 10) and 7 Truths That Changed the World: Discovering Christianity’s Most Dangerous Ideas (see chapters 1 and 2).
• I also recommend The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona and Knowing the Truth about the Resurrection: Our Response to the Empty Tomb by William Lane Craig.

Today’s skeptics of Jesus’s resurrection sometimes state that religious people are too quick to accept reports about miracles. Those who doubt the miraculous often insist that miracle claims aren’t usually sufficiently questioned. But was this the case among Jesus’s apostles concerning the resurrection?

In part 1 and part 2 of this series, I briefly addressed three evidences for Jesus’s resurrection. In this article I’ll present one more reason in our series of 12 evidences for believing in the truth of the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

4. Extraordinary Transformation of the Apostles

The New Testament describes a remarkable and enduring transformation of 11 of Jesus’s disciples. These frightened, defeated cowards after Jesus’s crucifixion soon became bold preachers and, in some cases, martyrs. They grew courageous enough to stand against hostile Jews and Romans even in the face of torture and martyrdom. Such amazing transformation deserves an adequate explanation, for human character and conduct does not change easily or often. Because the apostles fled and denied knowing Jesus after he was arrested, their courage in the face of persecution seems even more astonishing. The disciples attributed the strength of their newfound character to their direct, personal encounter with the resurrected Jesus. In Jesus Christ’s resurrection, the apostles found their existential reason to live—and die.

According to the earliest reports concerning Jesus’s resurrection, three of the men Jesus appeared to were either initially highly skeptical of the truth of the resurrection or adamantly opposed to Jesus’s claims to be the messiah. Those three were Thomas, James, and Saul (who would become Paul), all of whom were predisposed to dismiss the truth of the resurrection. Since Paul’s conversion will be addressed later, let’s consider the stunning impact Jesus’s resurrection had on Thomas and James.

Thomas the Doubter

While Thomas was one of the original 12 apostles, he was not among the first of Jesus’s followers to see the risen Christ. Upon hearing the report from his fellow disciples concerning Jesus’s bodily resurrection, he doubted its truth. The Gospel of John conveys Thomas’s skepticism: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25).

Though a follower of Jesus, Thomas was highly skeptical and needed direct, empirical evidence of Jesus’s actual bodily resurrection before he would believe the claim of his fellow disciples. Thomas demanded evidence of a concrete, empirical nature. He demonstrated tough-mindedness when it came to claims of the miraculous, even when the testimony came from his close friends and associates. Yet according to John’s Gospel, Thomas soon had an encounter with the resurrected Jesus that more than satisfied his doubts:

If the resurrection was merely a concocted mythical story, it is highly unlikely that it would include the claim that one of the original 12 disciples seriously questioned Jesus’s resurrection.

James the Family Skeptic

The Gospels convey that prior to the resurrection, Jesus’s brothers were highly dismissive of his messianic claims (see Mark 6:3–4 and John 7:5). In fact, Jesus’s family viewed him as suffering from mental delusion (Mark 3:21, 31–35). Yet the early creed that Paul had been given by the apostles (which included James) reported that Jesus had appeared to his brother James (1 Corinthians 15:7). James then became one of the critical leaders of the early Christian church, even holding unique authority at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:12–21). Sources in church history convey that James was later martyred for his belief in Jesus Christ.

What accounts for James’s amazing change of heart from undoubtedly being deeply embarrassed by his brother’s claims to becoming a distinguished leader in the early church, and finally to even undergo martyrdom? The resurrection seems to best account for this radical transformation in James’s understanding and perspective. James claimed to have seen his brother alive after his public execution, and that event changed everything.

So it appears that Thomas and James seriously questioned the actual truth of Jesus’s resurrection, the way skeptics demand.

Reflections: Your Turn

Of Thomas and James, whose transformation seems more remarkable? Why? Visit Reflections on WordPress to comment with your response.

Resources

• I address the resurrection of Jesus in two of my books, Without a Doubt: Answering the 20 Toughest Faith Questions (see chapter 10) and 7 Truths That Changed the World: Discovering Christianity’s Most Dangerous Ideas (see chapters 1 and 2).
• I also recommend The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona and Knowing the Truth about the Resurrection: Our Response to the Empty Tomb by William Lane Craig.
• A further recommended source is N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God.

The notion that Moses actually lived and wrote the first five books of the Bible has long been rejected in academic circles and is now being increasingly questioned among conservative Old Testament (OT) scholars. However, since Mosaic authorship is the traditional view of the church, it would be unwise for Bible believers to reject Moses’s involvement in the production of the Torah (or Pentateuch, the first five books). Indeed, while the Torah probably did not come into its final form until the sixth century BC, there are at least five good lines of internal evidence suggesting that Moses (thought to have lived around the fifteenth century BC) authored the Torah. We will look at two of those reasons here in the first part of a two-part series.

1. Hebrew Consistency

The Hebrew of the Torah, though similar in many respects with the rest of the TaNaKh (Hebrew Bible), is consistent with the theory that Moses wrote it during the fifteenth century BC. Richard Hess, professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages, explains:

[T]he language of the Pentateuch is similar to that of the remainder of the Hebrew Bible, with the exception of the tendency to spell words with fewer vowel letters. This seems to betray a greater antiquity. However, the absence of distinctive features within the grammar of the Pentateuch, features that can definitely be recognized as possessing greater antiquity than the remainder of the Hebrew Bible, implies one of three possibilities: (1) The entire Hebrew Bible was written at about the same time; (2) there is no history to the Hebrew language so that it did not change over a period of a thousand years of usage; or (3) the Pentateuch, though written earlier, was edited or updated at a later period so that its language would conform to that of the remainder of the Bible.^₁

Hess favors the third option and suggests that evidence for an earlier dating of the Hebrew text may have been lost in the process of transmission. He also notes that scholars think some poetry would not need to be updated so as to preserve its form. Thus, some early verbal forms are used in Exodus 15 in the past narrative sense, implying a date for its writing consistent with the traditional date.

The similarity in language between all sections of the Hebrew Bible, then, is explained by the updating of the Pentateuch and prophetic oracles under the direction of Ezra and the Great Synagogue around 500 BC.

2. Non-Palestinian Perspective

The Torah was written from a Non-Palestinian point of view, to an audience more familiar with Egypt and Sinai than the land of Canaan, suggesting a date for the writing of the Torah long before the sixth or even tenth century BC. As an example, we offer the following text:

Lot lifted up his eyes and saw all the valley of the Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere—this was before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah—like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt as you go to Zoar. (Genesis 13:10, NASB)

This passage implies that its author and his readers/hearers knew what Egypt was like, but were not very familiar with Palestine. It is difficult to see how or why a tenth century BC (or later) author, living in Palestine and writing to an audience born and raised in the land of Israel, would want to express himself in this way. However, this text makes sense if Moses wrote to a primarily Egyptian-born audience. In this connection, the author of Genesis tells his readers about “the city of Shechem in Canaan” (Genesis 33:18). Why would a postexilic (after 538 BC) writer, or even a writer living in tenth century (BC) Palestine, feel the need to explain what Shechem—one of the most prominent cities north of Jerusalem—was? Note also that, as far as the geographical point of view of the narrator of the Exodus story is concerned, “The seasons and the weather referred to in the narrative are Egyptian, not Palestinian.”²

Counterevidence?

Of course, some scholars have argued that the Egyptian evidence we are citing is a double-edged sword. Since the late nineteenth century scholars have insisted that, had a contemporary of the exodus generation written this material, he would have given us the names of the various kings mentioned in Genesis and Exodus. However, this phenomenon actually favors the Mosaic theory; for as long as the Hebrews lived in Egypt, they would naturally follow the ordinary custom of the New Kingdom by referring to the king of Egypt as “Pharaoh.”

It is not until long after the Israelites are settled in their land, during the reign of Solomon and thereafter, that they adopt the practice of giving the names of the Egyptian pharaohs (cf. 1 Kings 11:40; 2 Kings 23:29; Jeremiah 44:30). “Hence instead of being an evidence of lateness, this conformity to Eighteenth Dynasty Egyptian usage turns out to be strong evidence of an authentic Mosaic date of composition.”³

In fact, no author of the OT utilized Egyptian loanwords more than the writer of the Pentateuch. For example, “. . . the expression ’abrēk (Gen 41:43—translated ‘bow the knee’) is apparently the Egyptian ’b rk (‘O heart, bow down!’), although many other explanations have been offered for this; weights and measures, such as zeret (‘a span’) from drt—‘hand’; ’ ēphah (tenth of a homer) from ’pt; hīn (about five quarts volume) from hnw; gōme’ (‘papyrus’) from ḳmyt; qemahi (‘flour’) from ḳm ḥw (a type of bread); . . . y^e’ōr (‘Nile, river’) from ’trw—‘river’ (which becomes eioor in Coptic).”⁴

Hence, it is reasonable to accept the conclusions of respected researcher Garrow Duncan, who wrote, “Thus we cannot but admit that the writer of these two narratives [i.e., of Joseph and of the Exodus] . . . was thoroughly well acquainted with the Egyptian language, customs, belief, court life, etiquette and officialdom; and not only so, but the readers must have been just as familiar with things Egyptian.”⁴

Summarizing the Evidence

If the author and readers of the Pentateuch were Hebrews who were thoroughly acquainted with all things Egyptian, we must ask—which generation of Hebrews fits this description? The only answer, of course, is Moses and the Exodus generation. And this, indeed, provides us with strong circumstantial evidence for the Mosaic theory.

So far, we have seen two strong reasons to think Moses wrote the Torah. Defense of the traditional view becomes especially significant when we consider that Jesus himself affirmed Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch (see Matthew 19:1–12, for example). In part two, we will look at several more lines of evidence for this traditional viewpoint.

If you ever watched Tim Allen on Tool Time, the handyman show within the television show Home Improvement, you saw a man who always expressed joy in using some tool or set of tools to fix or solve a problem. Allen (as Tim “The Toolman” Taylor) portrayed what is inherent in us all. All human beings find satisfaction and fulfillment when we successfully use a tool—or better yet, several tools—to fix or solve something that has stumped or vexed us. Research affirms that this fulfillment in humans and some animals appears to result from a Creator’s endowment.

For humans, tools can be tangible, like screwdrivers and crowbars, or abstract, like mathematical equations or computer software. People who use tools and are consistently successful in their tool use tend to be happier and more optimistic than people who are not.

Successful tool use ranks as just one example of how performing certain complex behaviors improves the mental state of humans. (Others that have been scientifically tested and affirmed include altruistic giving,¹ playing sports,² and working to achieve concrete goals.³) Interestingly, animals have been shown to benefit from tool use as well.

Environmental Effects on the Mental States of Birds and Mammals
Many experiments have demonstrated that for birds and mammals environmental enrichment generates optimistic responses whereas environmental deprivation brings on pessimistic responses. Experiments performed on rats, pigs, and starlings establish that when these animals are housed with environmental enrichment they show strong tendencies toward optimistic behavior, but when housed with environmental deprivation they show strong tendencies toward pessimistic behavior.⁴

Behavioral Effects on Tool-Using Crows
A few weeks ago researchers addressed the question of whether the emotional state of nonhuman animals is positively influenced by willingly initiated complex behaviors like tool use. A team of six zoologists and psychologists led by Harvard University’s Dakota McCoy conducted experiments on fifteen temporarily captured wild New Caledonian crows to test this hypothesis.⁵ They only experimented on crows that had no previous experience in an aviary or laboratory. Each crow was presented with four different circumstances:

1. where it could get a food treat out of a box by just using its beak
2. where it needed to use a tool to get the treat
3. where little physical effort was needed to get the treat with or without a tool
4. where much physical effort was needed to get the treat with or without a tool

McCoy’s team noted that the “crows approached the ambiguous stimulus significantly faster in tool use condition trials, where they used a tool to extract a meat block from an apparatus, then in no tool trials.”⁶ The stimulus was ambiguous in that the crows did not know ahead of time whether there would be a food reward. The team claimed that “measuring approach speed, in this spatial paradigm specifically reveals the ‘wanting’ component, from which we can infer affective ‘liking.’”⁷ McCoy and her collaborators therefore concluded that “wild New Caledonian crows are optimistic after tool use”⁸ and that their finding “cannot be explained by the crows needing to put more effort into gaining food.”⁹

McCoy’s team limited their experiments to wild crows that had no previous laboratory experience or any kind of developed relationship with human beings. As I explain in Hidden Treasures in the Book of Job,¹⁰ we see an even more dramatic mental health outcome for crows and ravens that are emotionally bonded to a human being. They especially enjoy showing off their tool-using skills to humans with whom they possess a strong emotional bond.

When my father was a young man, he had a pet raven. (Ravens, both biologically and mentally, are very similar to New Caledonian crows.) He built a large cage for the raven and equipped it with several different locks. The raven would hop into the cage, wait for my father to lock it inside, and then proceed to use different metal slivers that my father placed inside the cage to pick the lock, open the cage door, and hop out. The raven would then wait for my father to change out the lock with a more challenging lock, then hop back inside the cage, wait for my father to lock it in, and proceed to pick the second lock, open the cage door, and hop out.

My father told me that his pet raven was happiest when it was picking his locks but that his raven only wanted to pick the locks if he was close by and observing its lock-picking talents. My father also noted that his raven’s joy was most pronounced when it had successfully picked the most challenging of the locks. Apparently, his raven especially loved to show off its intelligence and skills to the human with whom it had a strong emotional bond.

Theological Implications
These observations seem consistent with conclusions drawn from Genesis 1, which describes God creating three different kinds of life:

1. purely physical life-forms (such as plants)
2. nephesh life-forms (life-forms that are not just physical but also soulish in that they possess mind, will, and emotions, the capability of forming emotionally bonded relationships with human beings, and an innate desire to serve and please human beings)
3. a spiritual species (human beings endowed with the capacity to form a relationship with God and an innate desire to serve and please God)

In other words, the Bible teaches that among all Earth’s life the nephesh species (including crows) are exceptional, and that among all nephesh species human beings are exceptional. The experiments performed by McCoy’s team provide additional scientific evidence for both nephesh exceptionalism and human exceptionalism. Their experiments also yield insights into improving the mental health of both nephesh animals and human beings. Regularly employing all the gifts and talents God has given us really does make a difference in our well-being.