-Jay-

I'd venture to say that there are a fair number of folks out there who don't know the difference...

regards,

NinJay

mung bean

Simple. The difference is that the Ark of the Covenant would be structurally feasible.

-Jay-

I actually recall hearing someone draw an analogy between the Ark (boat) and the Ark (gilded box with apparently swirling ghosts and all kinds of scary stuff in it, according to a fine documentary back in the 1980's )
based on the observation that both were boxy and contained things related to a promise from God. Given some of the other stretches of interpretation, this particular one isn't that outlandish. Relatively speaking.

regards,

NinJay

-Jay-

While waiting for afdave to show up and get flensed by Dean again, I thought I'd go over here and see how Dave's arguments stack up against Mark and Chris Hoofnagle's Denialists' Deck of Cards. While strictly speaking, the Hoofnagle's focus on lobbyist tactics, many of the approaches there are very common apologetic techniques.

As an example, the 9 of Spades is Exploit Others' Ignorance. This can manifest as quote-mining, wherein the miner assumes that his reader won't (or can't) check the sources.

I highly recommend that folks who stumbled into this thread and are unfamiliar with some of the frequently employed tactics that Dave and others like him often use. Some are subtle, but once you know what to look for, you can pick them right out.

regards,

NinJay

Lucretius

Yes I think I worded that badly but as an excuse it was late in the day, I was tired and I did say that I did it all in less than 20 minutes(typing it included )......
I should have said that even when you analyse it according to the DH you still get the chiasms that Dave seems so desperately to want to have as proof of the "Tablet Theory".
The fact that a skilled editor (as has been already pointed out) managed to combine two sets of verse each with chiasms and still retained chiasms in the combined text says much about his skill but nothing about the "Tablet Theory".

gregor

I see AFD is on the board now (E&C) - please verify that the alleged quote you posted from Friedman was from him.

Dean Anderson

To be honest, it does not need that skilled an editor.

If you have a text with the structure:

A
-B
--C
---D
----E
-----F
----E'
---D'
--C'
-B'
A'

And another text with the same structure:

A
-B
--C
---D
----E
-----F
----E'
---D'
--C'
-B'
A

It doesn't take much skill to basically interleave the 'A' bits of each of the texts followed by the 'B' bits of each text and so on to get:

A (comprising of A followed by A)
-B (comprising of B followed by B)
--C (comprising of C followed by C)
---D (comprising of D followed by D)
----E (comprising of E followed by E)
-----F (comprising of F followed by F)
----E' (comprising of E' followed by E')
---D' (comprising of D' followed by D')
--C' (comprising of C' followed by C')
-B' (comprising of B' followed by B')
A' (comprising of A' followed by A')

As you can see, the chiastic structure is retained even if sometimes the corresponding bits of text are placed in one order and sometimes in the other order.

So if there were two sources each containing the chiasm, and they were combined, then we would expect to see the same chiasm in the resulting combination text - but with repetition of each point. Guess what? This is exactly what we see.

Dave is fond of pointing out how the DH splits the text into small fragments. This is, of course, not usually true. As can be seen from the split texts I provided links to earlier in this thread, the vast majority of the time whole chapters or more are taken from each source. However, in this particular story we do see small fragments of each text being interlaced - which is exactly what we would expect to see if the redactor wished to preserve the chiastic structure of the stories.

But what would we expect to see if the text were originally one source, and had been - as Dave puts it - "chopped and pureed" by splitting it up arbitrarily according to some other criterion?

We would see this original text:

A
-B
--C
---D
----E
-----F
----E'
---D'
--C'
-B'
A'

End up as something like this:

A
-D
--F
---E'
----B'

B
-C
--E
---D'
-C'
--A'

As can plainly be observed by reading the J and P texts in isolation, this is not the situation we have. We do not end up with two texts each containing only part of the story and failing to preserve the chiastic structure. Instead, we see two texts each of which tell the whole story.

To sum up:

P1) If the DH were correct, we would expect to see chiasms in the two split texts that match the chiasm in the combined text.

P2) If the DH were incorrect, we would expect to see no chiasms in the split texts, and only a chiasm in the combined text.

P3) We see chiasms in the split texts which match the chiasm in the combined text.

C4) In other words, Dave's "Chiasm" argument - which he claims is evidence of single authorship - is actually very strong evidence against single authorship and for the DH.

Cege

True. The ark of the covenant only had to be strong enough to hold 2 stone tablets. I'm curious about the poles used to carry that stone-filled ark:

II Chronicles 5:9 These poles were so long that their ends, extending from the ark, could be seen from in front of the inner sanctuary, but not from outside the Holy Place; and they are still there today.

How long would those goldcovered, acaia-wood poles have been?

-Jay-

Excellent elaboration, Dean. When I mentioned editorial skill a few posts back, I hadn't bothered to actually take the step of doing what you just did. In this instance, at least, the preservation of the structure is almost guaranteed so long as the editor kept the basic narrative flow intact - he could have done it without even being cognizant of the underlying chiasms. That said, it's more compelling as evidence in favor of the DH than I originally thought.

angelo

No, he meant Noahs ark. The magazine is called ''Creation''. They have a web site.

www.creationontheweb.com