Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Jack the Bodiless · 07-20-2006, 07:04 AM

aChristian:

OK, I've just read the Wilson article at http://www.heartoftn.net/users/gary27/wilson.htm

Some observations:

Firstly, the article drones on and on about Wilson's "scholarship". This fawning lacks substance: indeed, from my perspective, it merely damns Wilson further. If he's studied so MUCH, then why is he so wrong?

Quote:

What Robert Dick Wilson then believed, and now believes with all his heart is this: that textual and historical Biblical controversies should be taken out of the region of subjective personal opinion, into the region of objective, clearly attested fact. It was to this task that he set himself, and no labor was to be too long or tedious or exacting to enable him to reach that goal.

He could not at that time learn Babylonian in America, so he went to Heidelberg, determined to learn every language that would enable him the better to understand the Scriptures, and to make his investigations in original documents.

So to Babylonian he added Ethiopic, Phoenician, all the Aramaic dialects, and Egyptian, Coptic, Persian, and Armenian. He studied in Berlin with Schrader, who was Delitzsch's teacher, called the father of Assyriology. He studied his Arabic and Syriac under Sachau, and Arabic under Jahn and Dieterichi; Hebrew under Dillmann and Strack, and Egyptian under Brugsch. He became conversant with some twenty-six languages in these years devoted to language acquisition.

For Professor Wilson had a plan, carefully worked out during his student days in Germany, under which he proposed to spend fifteen years in language study, fifteen years in Biblical textual study in the light of the findings of his studies in philology, and then, God willing, fifteen years of writing out his findings, so that others might share them with him. And now it is our privilege in this booklet to read, in terms that we can all understand, some of the gloriously reassuring facts that he has found in his long pilgrimage through ancient days.

I see that he never bothered to study paleontology, geology, astronomy and so forth: scientific disciplines that would have allowed him to discover that much of Genesis, at least, is bunk (regardless of what the Bible says).

Quote:

But not only do we know that there was a script in which to write; we know, also, that the Hebrew language was used in Palestine before the time of Moses. This is clear not merely from more that a hundred common words embedded in the Amarna letters but from the fact that the names of the places mentioned in them are largely Hebrew. In the geographical lists of the Egyptian king, Thothmes III, and of other kings of Egypt we find more than thirty good Hebrew words as names of the cities of Palestine and Syria that they conquered. From these facts we conclude that books may have been written in Hebrew at that early period. Further, we see that the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob may have been called by Hebrew names, as the Biblical record assures us.

Good grief! Continuity in place-names doesn't mean that the Hebrew language existed! The Romans called London "Londinium", which the English left largely unchanged: so we should conclude that the English language existed then?

Quote:

Having found, then, that writing and the Hebrew language were in existence long before the time of Moses, we turn next to the documents of the Old testament which purport to give a history, more or less connected, of the period from Abraham (circa 2000 B. C.) to Darius II (circa 400 B. C.), in order to find out, if possible, whether the general scheme of chronology and geography presented to us in the Hebrew records corresponds with what we can learn from other documents of the same period. And here we find, first, that the nations mentioned in the Scriptures as having flourished at one time or another are exactly the same as those that profane history reveals to us. Thus in the period from Abraham to David we find in both Biblical and profane sources that Egypt is recognized as already in 2000 B. C. a great and predominant power, and that she continued to the time of Solomon to be looked upon as the great enemy of the Israelites. In the same period, we see Elam and Babylon occupying the first place in the far East, and the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Sidonians, Moabites, Edomites, and Damascus in the intervening section, the "debatable ground" between Egypt and Babylon.

So, legends originating in ancient times mention nations that existed in ancient times. Gosh, what a surprise...

Quote:

Now, into this framework of world history, the history of Israel fits exactly. The bible records in succession the relations of Israel with Babylon, Elam, Egypt, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians; and the smaller nations, or powers, appear in their proper relation to these successively great powers. These are facts that cannot be denied and they afford a foundation for reliance upon the statements of the biblical documents.

So when, exactly, did the Hebrews rule an empire that stretched "from the Nile to the Euphrates"?

Quote:

This foundation is strengthened when we observe that the kings of these various countries whose names are mentioned in the Old Testament are all named in the order and in the synchronism required by the documents of the kings themselves. Thus, Chedorlaomer, possibly, and certainly Hammurapi (the Amraphel of Genesis 14) and Arioch lived at about 2000 B. C.; Sishack, Zerah, So, Tirhakeh, Necho, and Hophra, kings of Assyria; Merodach-Baladan, Nebuchadnezzar, Evil-Merodach and Belshazzar, kings of Babylon; and Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes, kings of Persia, all appear in the Scriptures in their correct order as attested by their own records, or by other contemporaneous evidence. The same is true, also, of the kings of Damascus, Tyre, and Moab.

Is this the "Belshazzar" who WASN'T King of Babylon? And where in this sequence is Daniel's "Darius the Mede" who never actually existed?

Quote:

Will Objectors Please Answer a Few Questions?

Before leaving the matter of the law, it may be well to propose for the consideration of the objectors to the Biblical account of the origin of the laws of Moses a few questions that, it seems to me, require an answer before we can accept their theory of its origin, unsupported as it is by any direct evidence.

First, if Exodus 20-24 and Deuteronomy were written in the period of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, how can we account for the fact that the king is referred to but once (Deuteronomy 16), and that in a passage difficult to read and explain and claiming to be anticipatory? And why should this passage make no reference to the house of David, and place its emphasis on a warning against a return to Egypt?...

Why should a document written late, but purporting to be a "lost book of Moses", be written in this fashion? Well, duh, maybe because that's what the authors intended?

Also, why does Wilson imagine that the "objectors" are claiming that all the stories were concocted ex nihilo at this time? I've never heard of anyone claiming this! Why does this "scholar" have such a poor understanding of what he's criticizing? This applies to much of the rest of the article. Wilson appears to be flogging a strawman, in which the critics are claiming there simply wasn't any pre-exilic Hebrew source material of any sort.

Quote:

Of course it is obvious that music is mentioned in the books of Kings; but it is made prominent in Chronicles, and the headings of many of the Psalms attribute them to David and in three cases to Moses and Solomon. It is hardly to be supposed that the writer would have made his work absurd by making statements that his contemporaries would have known to be untrue.

Using exactly the same reasoning, would he conclude that the thirty or so non-canonical gospels must have been written by the Biblical characters they are attributed to?

Quote:

Nothing in 1800 Years of History to Invalidate the Old Testament

Last of all we must cast a glance at the history of the religion of Israel. It must be admitted that, before we can attempt such a history, we must determine two great facts; the dates of the documents on which the history is based; and, secondly, the attitude we are going to take with regard to miracle and prophesy. As to the first of these facts, I have already given a number of the reasons for holding that there is no sufficient ground for believing that the Pentateuch did not originate with Moses, or that David did not write many of the Psalms; and there is every reason in language and history for supposing that all but a few of the books were written before 500 B. C. I have not attempted to fix the exact dates of composition, or final redaction, of the books composed before that time, preferring rather to show that there is nothing in the history of the world from 2000 to 164 B. C. that militates against the possibility, nor even against the probability, of the trustworthiness of the history of Israel as recorded in the Old Testament.

Why did he pick those dates? What about pre-2000 BC (which would include the Genesis creation and Flood stories, and the Tower of Babel)? And, as he considers Daniel to be written in the 6th century BC, why the 164 BC cutoff?

Still waiting for evidence of that golden age of Solomon...

Quote:

...Looked at in the light of the whole world's history from the beginning until now, the history of the religion of the Old Testament as given in the books themselves, unrevised and fairly interpreted, is rational and worthy of trust. In this faith we live; in this faith let us die.

Whoops. Suddenly he's dragged in the pre-2000 BC stuff.

Quote:

A Parallel Monstrosity to the Denial of Old Testament History Imagined

Notwithstanding this evident plan and purpose of a divine redemption which runs through the Scriptures, there are today many professedly Christian writers who treat the Israelitish religion as if it were a purely natural development. They diligently pick out every instance of a superstitious observance, or of a departure from the law, or of a disobedience to the divine commands, as if these represented the true religion of ancient Israel. The cut up the books and doctor the documents and change the text and wrest the meaning, to suit the perverted view of their own fancy. They seem to think that they know better what the Scriptures ought to have been than the prophets and apostles and even the Lord Himself! They tell us when revelations must have been made, and how and where they must have been given, and what their contents could have been, as if they knew more about such matters than God himself. Imagine a man's writing the history of the last eighteen hundred years and denying that the New Testament had been in existence during all that time, denying that the Christian church with all its saving doctrines and benevolent institutions and beneficent social system derived from the New Testament had been active and, in a sense, triumphant for at least fifteen hundred years, simply because he could select thousands of examples of superstitious customs, and hellish deeds, and impious words, and avowed agnostics, and heaven-defying atheists, that have disgraced the pages of history during this time!

Imagine that a person might call himself a "scholar" while employing such a blatantly circular argument as this! What a monstrosity that would be!

...And where does he actually address the detailed claims of the Documentary Hypothesis? Other than whining about the dating of some psalms and suchlike: he doesn't. I see no detail of the "names of God" issue here.

Why exactly did you "recommend" this essay, aChristian?

rob117 · 07-20-2006, 09:25 PM

Quote:

But not only do we know that there was a script in which to write; we know, also, that the Hebrew language was used in Palestine before the time of Moses. This is clear not merely from more that a hundred common words embedded in the Amarna letters but from the fact that the names of the places mentioned in them are largely Hebrew. In the geographical lists of the Egyptian king, Thothmes III, and of other kings of Egypt we find more than thirty good Hebrew words as names of the cities of Palestine and Syria that they conquered. From these facts we conclude that books may have been written in Hebrew at that early period. Further, we see that the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob may have been called by Hebrew names, as the Biblical record assures us.

The person who wrote this doesn't seem to understand a simple linguistic fact:

Hebrew, like Phoenician, Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, and Ashdodite, are all Canaanite languages. The fact that a language very similar to Hebrew was spoken in Palestine in Amarna times confirms only that the Hebrews, at least in their language, were natives of the region. The above-mentioned languages were all probably mutually intelligible with one another up until the Persian period anyway; even the the gap between the "Aramaic" and "Canaanite" sub-branches of Northwest Semitic is a fluid one until the 8th century BC. Before then we can best speak of the languages of the Levant (and Mesopotamia, since Aramaic tribes from Syria had been migrating across the Euphrates since the 12th century) as a very large dialect continuum; an analogy would be the various Germanic dialects spoken today in Germany and the Low Countries- the official standard dialects of different countries- German,and Dutch- are all mutually unintelligible, but the actual speech of the villagers in the region forms a contuum, slowly changing from "Dutch" to "German" as you go from north to south, with communities being able to understand each other less and less the farther geographically separated they are.

gregor · 07-21-2006, 11:30 AM

AChristian

I too have read Wilson’s pastiche, whose 19th Century evangelical arguments and just-so stories were not particularly impressive. You do realize that this is 90 years out of date and is not a refutation of the documentary hypothesis – but rather a global defense of the great age of the entire OT.

I suspect that I've not seen any references to him in the OT reference books I've read (albeit popular titles) because he doesn't seem to add anything to the issue. His arguments are all defensive (contra Bultmann, et al.). Many arguments are along the lines of "look the OT got some king's names correct, so it must be historical." Not ground-breaking stuff (and some references are not accurate, as mentioned by Jack).

I think the Wilson arguments in a nutshell can be summed up in his section title:

"Variations in Numbers Will be Better Understood When Israel's
Numerical Signs Are Discovered"

In other words, he couldn't think up an apologetic to deal with numerical inconsistencies, so he hopes that some future evangelical can respond to the numerous errors in the book of Chronicles.

In summary, it's marginal linguistic evidence, coupled with weak apologetics by a 19th century theologian to attempt to explain away the inconsistencies and respond to Higher Criticism. It doesn't deal with the documentary hypothesis, and it is apparently just a straw to grasp at by aChristian, who I would guess understands little from the article (hence there bare references without comment).

aChristian - please present an argument against the documentary hypothesis.

aChristian · 07-27-2006, 09:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by judge

OK lets have a look at just one of the inconsistencies mentioned in the article.

from here

Is there anything "wacko" about this explanation?

Is there a better explanation that that there were two stories merged into one?

thanks.

Since in the many copies of the only historic record that we have it is one continuous story, it is logical to assume there is only one story. As for why Saul asked about David's father, it may be because of the promise of tax exemption to the family of the man who would kill Goliath. Just because David played the harp for Saul when he was called for, does not mean that Saul was intimately acquainted with him. There are many people in a king's court and the king is not always inclined to find out every detail about all his courtiers. He would usually be too busy to be bothered with those details. This appears to be a reasonable explanation to me. However, the main point is that we have never found different documents containing only part of the story and presenting it as if it were the whole story to the exclusion of all other sections. Such a document is only a figment of the form critics imagination. The historical evidence is the documents themselves and according to the evidence there is only one story.

judge · 07-27-2006, 10:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aChristian

Since in the many copies of the only historic record that we have it is one continuous story,

But isn't this circular reasoning?

You assume that the long version is the historic version and the shorter version is not?

aChristian · 07-29-2006, 06:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by judge

But isn't this circular reasoning?

You assume that the long version is the historic version and the shorter version is not?

I assume the only version that we have is the historic version. There is no short version found anywhere in history. The actual evidence is the manuscripts and there is no manuscript with only a short version of the story.
Anyone who wants to prove there was more than one version of the story needs to provide some evidence of it. He needs to provide a manuscript with only a short version or a historical record from the time the story was written by someone who knew there were two separate stories and who wrote about it (not someone 2900 years later concocting a theory about how it was written, a theory with no history to back it up).

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07-21-2006, 11:30 AM	#103
gregor Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Texas Posts: 932	AChristian I too have read Wilson’s pastiche, whose 19th Century evangelical arguments and just-so stories were not particularly impressive. You do realize that this is 90 years out of date and is not a refutation of the documentary hypothesis – but rather a global defense of the great age of the entire OT. I suspect that I've not seen any references to him in the OT reference books I've read (albeit popular titles) because he doesn't seem to add anything to the issue. His arguments are all defensive (contra Bultmann, et al.). Many arguments are along the lines of "look the OT got some king's names correct, so it must be historical." Not ground-breaking stuff (and some references are not accurate, as mentioned by Jack). I think the Wilson arguments in a nutshell can be summed up in his section title: "Variations in Numbers Will be Better Understood When Israel's Numerical Signs Are Discovered" In other words, he couldn't think up an apologetic to deal with numerical inconsistencies, so he hopes that some future evangelical can respond to the numerous errors in the book of Chronicles. In summary, it's marginal linguistic evidence, coupled with weak apologetics by a 19th century theologian to attempt to explain away the inconsistencies and respond to Higher Criticism. It doesn't deal with the documentary hypothesis, and it is apparently just a straw to grasp at by aChristian, who I would guess understands little from the article (hence there bare references without comment). aChristian - please present an argument against the documentary hypothesis.

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