Dave Hawkins

What happened to the ark of the covenant? What happened to other valuable artifacts of antiquity? Just because we don't have them doesn't mean they never existed.

Ray Moscow

As far as I can tell, there is no "wishful thinking" in the DH or other serious scholarship of the Bible.

I have read a bit of archaelogy, and the current evidence contradicts much of the Torah and Joshua. Surely you know that if you've read it, too.

Ray

spin

I'm a little confused: perhaps afdave can say whether they carried these source tablets with them, when they migrated to Egypt.

At the same time, one must know that writing wasn't the same sort of skill as it is today. One spent years in schools learning to write and even in the 2nd c. BCE very few people were able to dedicate themselves to learning and the process required a great deal of resources (see Ben Sira 38:24-39:11 for the 2nd c. BCE). This is why scribal schools tended to be housed in royal courts or wealthy temples exclusively.

It is inconceivable that shepherds ever had the opportunity in 1500 BCE to spend all day every day for years for the perfection of writing.

Like all true artists, Adam et al. just weren't appreciated in their own time.

Convincing, isn't it? Could the wandering Aramaean Abram write when he wandered down into Egypt to palm his wife off as his sister? Did he take the handed down tablets with him? He was after all the one on whose shoulders the religion rested. He was probably a polymath, right? He could not only tend his animals, he could write, wage war, knit his own clothing from the wool of his animals.

As a theory, an unsupported theory with holes everywhere, it's pretty silly.

The Philistine (in the metaphorical sense) neighbours were probably jealous of the Jewish shepherds being precociously able to write, so they destroyed all the tablets they found. The Jews, of course, as other types of surfaces were used to write on, the shepherds would also have destroyed any remaining tablets. Ummm, or some such blather.

I'll stick with the fact that someone needs at least a shred of direct evidence before proposing such apparently baseless solutions. How about some sign of a transitional writing system which moved from cuneiform style syllabic writing to Hebrew alphabetic writing. My god, why did a scholar such as DJ Wiseman ever put his name to such a poor scenario?


spin

spin

People stole them. Tablets were not of interest to thieves, only to the people who had them written.


spin

Silent Dave

Since there is a pending formal debate on this subject, why don't we close this thread and merge it into the peanut gallery thread when it opens?


Answer: Because there isn't going to be a peanut gallery thread, because Dave won't accept the debate.

The Evil One

Extremely unlikely. Josh McDowell is a tool.

Nope, sorry, you'll have to explain this. Exactly what archaeology does the DH not agree with?

Actually the DH and the archaeology cohere extremely well. The archaeology shows us that most of the pentateuch tales can't be true as written. The DH explains why we shouldn't expect them to be (because the pentateuch was written at a late date from disparate sources).

Do you mean methodological naturalism? Because, if so, duhhh.

See below.

I've noted before that you can't tell the difference between assumptions and conclusions; this seems to be another case of that.

<edit>

Here is what your first quote says:

"Ancient Israel was certainly not without God-given bases for the ordering of human life; only they were not fixed in writing."

Is there anything there that says writing did not exist at this time? No. There isn't. All he says is that "God-given bases for ordering life ... were not fixed in writing".

I'd need to see the context to know if this is true or not. But it certainly doesn't say what you are saying it says.

Here is what your secodn quote says:

"Of the legendary character of the pre-Mosaic narrators, the time of which they treat is a sufficient proof. It was a time prior to all knowledge of writing, a time separated by an interval of more than four hundred years, of which there is absolutely no history, from the nearest period of which Israel had some dim historical recollection, a time when in civilised countries writing was only beginning to be used for the most important matters of State"

In other words, this fellow is NOT saying there was no writing at the time of Moses.

He is saying that there was no writing in the time BEFORE Moses that the early "narrators" talk about - hundreds of years before Israel's known history began.

Not the time of Moses.

I'd need to see some context to be sure, but I'd guess he's talking about the time of Abraham and other very early patriarchs (and arguing that these events happened so long before the beginning of Israel's recorded history that they are self-evidently legendary - whihc is a fair point).

And he's not actually saying there was no writing at the time in question. He is saying that "in civilised countries writing was only beginning to be used for the most important matters of State".

So, in other words, (a) this may well be a quote mine (b) even if it isn't, it does not say what you say it says.

So, where are we.

In this post, dave, you tried to argue that the DH "assumes" that there was no writing at the time of Moses.

You have provided two quotations to support this idea.

Neither of them does.

You have not explained why the DH relies on there being no writing in Israel at the time of Moses. Nor have you shown why there being writing in Israel at the time of Moses poses a problem for the DH.

Since the DH is all about textual sources in the early-to-mid first millennium, not the late 2nd millennium, this seems to me like one huge red herring.

And apart from anything else, since Moses can't be shown to have existed at all, and most of the events in the Moses legend definitely didn't happen, talking about "the time of Moses" is gibberish anyway.

So, what was your point again?

ericmurphy

The documentary hypothesis does not depend on Moses being illiterate. The DH concludes (not assumes, concludes) that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, but rather by four or more individuals, based on textual clues in that written work.

Whether Moses personally was literate or not has no bearing whatsoever on the conclusions of the DH.

As far as I have seen (and I've read virtually every post AFDave has done online; thousands of them), Dave's principal objection to the DH is that it assumes Hebrews were not literate at the time of Moses. The DH has nothing to do with whether the Hebrews were literate at the time. Judging by Dave's writings about the DH, I suspect that Dave has no idea what the DH even is.

ericmurphy

Interesting that Dave cites the Wikipedia entry on the Wiseman hypothesis, which states in the first paragraph:

Once again, Dave cites evidence that completely undermines his argument. I wonder—does he do it on purpose?

Keith&Co.

Could 'increasing skepticism' be explained?

Is this growing numbers of scholars? How many? Scholars in what? Peer reviewed skepticism? Published where?

Or is it just that a few more people have been talked into a new view?

Or, is it that someone wrote a criticism of one aspect of one reference, and now it's touted as 'a theory in crisis!'??

The creationist claim is always that increasing number of scientists are rejecting evolution, making it sound like it's lost all credibility just like the brief 'cold fusion' fable, but the reality is nothing of the sort.

So when someone uses phrasing like that, i have to ask for numbers. Quantities, names, publishings, some way to get a grip on exactly what the situation is, and how many is 'increasing.'


If afDave is anything like DaFT, who does the exact same thing, it's not on purpose. It's just shoddy linking.
:devil1: Growing Numbers of creationists:devil1: have become desperate to find scholarly support for their absolute BS. They google for 'prove moses wrote genesis' and plug in the links, never quite noticing that the site really says 'does not prove moses wrote genesis.'

Wolfhound

Yeah, and the Tarnhelm, and Excalibur, and the Golden Fleece, and the Winnowing Oar, and the Aegis, and the Book of Thoth, and Gleipnir, and Palladium, and on and on and on. I'm sure of them existed, too.

You're as credulous as a three year old child whose been read bedtime stories and expects to find a fairy ring in the morning when he wakes up. What's so pathetic is that you are, presumably, an educated adult and should no longer believe in such nonsense.