capnkirk

Did the TV show think to mention that Baruch, son of Neriyah, was Jeremiah's scribe?

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Marduk

Yes, but they seemed to imply he was more than just scribe, that he wrote most everything.

capnkirk

The passage in Jer 36 notwithstanding, I tend to concur that Baruch was not just Jeremiah's stenographer. If it is true that Baruch wrote much (if not all of) Jeremiah, then he would also presumably be the author of Deuteronomy. So, for the purpose of placing the time of the creation of the Deuteronomistic history, it doesn't make much difference difference whether Jeremiah was the author's name or his pseudonym.

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Tyler Durden

Thanks. And the scholars? Do they agree with Friedman's conclusion or is there a different position on who wrote the Book of Deuteronomy?

capnkirk

"The scholars" are anything but a monolithic block, as you would expect when the subject is as emotionally potent as one's personal religion, so one can expect Xtians to quote "scholars" that are still convinced that Moses wrote the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the Hebrew bible), but nonetheless most modern scholars date the Deuteronomist History to no earlier than the 8th century BCE.

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spin

What these show is that one was acquainted with the other. When for example Ezekiel (22:26-28) expanded on Zephaniah (3:3-4) would anyone complain that they were written by the same person? Exegetical use of biblical literature within the bible is quite common. When Hosea 1:10 refers to Israel being like the sand of the sea (in the future) is the writer borrowing from Jeremiah 33:22? Or is Jeremiah borrowing from Genesis 32:12 and its predecessors back to the promise to Abraham? A good book to read on the subject of bible reading bible is Michael Fishbane: Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford, 1989). What we have in the list cited above is respect shown toward the venerable book of Deuteronomy by the writers of Jeremiah.

Whole sentences, paragraphs and even passages get borrowed. Isaiah contains a large piece of text also found in 2 Kings. Psalm 14 is almost the same as Psalm 53 which has but one extra verse. Is it surprising that Jeremiah should borrow from Deuteronomy? When earlier writings were venerated it is only logical that they should be drawn upon in later writings.


spin

BATERBOY

Here is a site on this subject, I think it is very informitive.

http://www.bibleorigins.net/YahwehYawUgarit.html

Tyler Durden

That's not much of a response.

Do christians make up the majority of bible scholars? Who do they generally think wrote Deuteronomy?

The only bible scholar i have met up close was my Dead Sea Scrolls Professor Eisenman, and he seemed every inch the secular thinker a bible scholar oughta be. I don't know how his Jewish background could possibly serve as a bias in his theories on James being Jesus....

capnkirk

The point I am trying to make is that while some Biblical scholars are objective, others clearly are not, which puts a clearly different complexion on an apparent lack of consensus. Why do you think that the theist always has "scholars" to back up his theist interpretation? There are enough tendentious scholars out there that one can always find some that support positions that betray their personal biases (either for or against theist interpretations). Rather than that not being much of a response, I am saying that appealing to the authority of "scholars" (more or less generically) isn't as much of a claim as it appears to be.

Yes, I think that a majority of bible scholars are at least nominal Xtians. Among OT scholars, perhaps not, in that there are a lot of Israeli scholars also involved. To paraphrase Dominick Crossan's comment in the intro to his Excavating Jesus, with regard to biblical scholars and theologians, he said, "But such research is never as straightforward as it would seem; there were those historians who said it could not be done because of historical problems. There were also theologians who said it should not be done because of theological objections. And there were those scholars who said the former when they meant the latter."

My caveat was not meant to be a blanket indictment of biblical scholars. It was meant to remind us that every author has a POV, and that POV must be at least considered when reading his work, and the more the potential for emotional investment, the more due diligence is necessary before accepting it at face value. At the same time, the reader must also guard against his own emotional investment coloring his objectivity.

Personally, I find it significant that the archaeological record only begins to support the historicity of the bible from about the early 8th century forward, and that is the filter that for me gives most everything that the bible says happened before then a distinctly mythical flavor.

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Celsus

Eisenman is great, but it's not true that his theories are about James being Jesus ("Whatever James was, so was Jesus" are his last words in his voluminous James the Brother of Jesus IIRC). Where his bias may seem to come in is his interpretation of words used in texts... for example he makes great play of words like zdk and sdk (from memory, I'm not digging his book out just to look clever) by which he draws a continuity between David's priest Zadok and the much later Saduccees and trace out the Jewish bloodline (what if those books are fictions?). All in, his book is a fascinating world, but just seems to read like an alternate history rather than an actual scholarly treatise because of the disjointedness between his (overconvincingly complete) picture, and everyone else's.
Well actually, all modern scholars, Christian and non-Christian alike, date the DtrH to no earlier than the 8th century, seeing as it culminates with the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE.
Name one.

Joel