spin

Cohesion is a general linguistic study. I'm sure however that studies in Hebrew cohesion have been done.

I can only hold your hand for so long, sport.

In linguistics you start small and work your way up. In this case we work from the immediate context which you still haven't dealt with. Your avoidance principle starts seeming unprincipled.

Now look at the problem text, the part which we are dealing with first is who is the subject of the very "wrote" in 34:28. You can't look at verse 34:1 to answer that quetion because it is simply too fucking far away. I'd hate to see you driving down a street -- you'd be all over the road. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid. Yes, folks avoid this driver.

There is in fact no pronoun in the Hebrew. It reads just "and wrote to the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments."

The previous subject was Moses. This is the first important clue from a cohesive point of view. If you don't know the subject of a verb, look for the previous one in narrative discourse, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred it will be the subject (or an intervening object). Try it with any normal narrative passage. Do try it. Don't avoid it. You need to learn about what you want to talk about. Now, try doing this a few times: go back two paragraphs from any passage you are looking to resolve the subject for and select a specific subject from there and tell me if you usually get the correct subject. You may be lucky once or twice, especially if there are very few characters in the narrative, but usually you will be wrong. Hopefully, you are focusing on the basic linguistic problem now. It is the specific context which will resolve the unstated subjects of your verbs.

Next, if there is still doubt, what linguistic pointers are there? Are there any linguistic clues such as repetition. Ahh, yes, in this case there is a narrative repetition. The Lord tells Moses to write the words. Then, funnily enough, we are told a few clauses afterwards that someone wrote the words.

Now go back to my original statement, which includes these words:"specific text". We are not dealing with 34:1 as the specific text, are we? We are looking at 34:27-28. So, is it clearer what I mean by specific text? ie that one which we are looking at. And this specific text makes it clear to anyone who reads it that the subject of "wrote" is the subject of the previous clauses, ie Moses. (And this is a fundamental idea: if you can see no direct way for a reader to get your interpretation of the specific text it is almost certainly wrong.)

If I am wrong from this specific text, GakuseiDon -- now that it is clear what the simple terminology refers to --, would you like to tell me where I am wrong?

Bible Study Guides often don't know *hit about what the text really says because they are too busy with a priori commitments regarding what the text should say. To get a serious analysis of a text for the possible variations in significance you need to go to scholarly commentaries. (To distinguish such a beast on the shelves of a library, you'll probably have to look for a serious publisher, say a university press, or for a well-known university scholar -- others may produce good commentaries but mostly not, and when you don't have the necessary training to make a choice in the field by recognizing expertise, go for the qualifications and hope.)

If we are dealing with an addition to the text, there is no reason why the scribe would have left out the subject which is different from the previous one.


spin

Kosh

Borders Books? Down under?

Has "Generica" spread down there too?

Please accept our apologies. I have this funny pic of me and my collegues standing in front of the Walmart/McDonalds in Frankfurt Germany. We felt the need to stand there and apologize to everyone for that.....

gregor

GD

Just so I'm following this . . .

Do I undestand correctly that you're now discussing a second purported contradiction - not the content of the lists, but whether Moses or God re-wrote the second set? <Although it's related to your explanation of why there is no contradiction - it's not the same list>

So, your position is that the listing in Ex. 34 is something written by Moses that is NOT the ten commandments, and in 34:28 we have God writing the official ten commandments that would have included a number of those listings from earlier in 34, and would have been identical to Ex. 20.

So, if the listing was to be the ten commandments, there is a contradiction.

And if the second list was written by Moses, rather than God, there'd be a second contradiction.


It seems counter-intuitive for an author to list 10-15 items through verse 26, then have God write a list in verse 28 that includes most, but not all, of the items from the prior few verses.

You have to assume that God writes a list [the text of which we are not told of] and to avoid any contradiction, you are just assuming that it includes items 1, 2, 4, and 6-9 from the list just above it, and items 3, 5, and 10 from Ex. 20. [I know the numbers may not match up]

Anyway, thanks for your courtesies to me in this thread.

ceb

This is just too much of a stretch:

"He" is obviously Moses, or the author(s)/translator(s) purposely tried to trick their audience with terrible and incorrect grammar.

I mean, come on! "The Lord said to Moses: Write these words... And he wrote on the tablets". It can't be any more clear.

GakuseiDon

Oh. In that case, you have misunderstood me in the same way that Doc X did. I'd hoped cohesion may have been something to do with how ancient Hebrew indicated diety, say, through the use of verb forms (as for example Japanese uses different verb forms to indicate respect).

I'll give two examples of what I mean:

Example 1: In Genesis, God says "Let Us make man in Our image". Now, this is used to pose some problems for monotheists.

The standard Christian inerrantist answer is that God uses the plural form here because this is the Trinity talking.

A VALID response to this is: this conflicts with passage such-and-such in the Bible, and thus forms a contradiction or error.

INVALID responses are:
(1) There is no God, so He couldn't have made us in His image.
(2) Zeus is the True God, and mankind was formed from the lightning- blasted bodies of the Titans, so He couldn't have made us in His image.
(3) It is just a myth. God used evolution to create us.
(4) This shows us that the ancient Hebrews were polytheists/henotheists, who believed there were other gods at the time that myth was created.

One or more of the 4 points above may well be true, but they are invalid in trying to decide whether there is a contradiction in the Bible for that situation.

Example 2: In a hypothetical book there is this sentence.

Rocky pulled out his gun, and pointed it at Bobby. He fired his gun.

From the context of that sentence alone, we would assume that Rocky fired the gun. But if, from the context before AND after, the book stated that Bobby had a gun as well, and he was the one who fired, then (in the absence of other context) we would assume that the "he" in the second sentence refers to Bobby.

Now, we could say that the sentence structure shows that the author originally had Rocky firing the gun, but changed his mind; or that the editor decided to switch things around before publication. If the question is "Was the story changed before publication?" then it would be relevant. If the question is "Does this contradict any other passages in the book?" then the author's previous intentions are irrelevant. It shows evidence of sloppy editting, yes, but that in itself is a contradiction.

And the reason Ex 34:28 can't be the 100th case is?

What you are talking about is a "rule of thumb" - it isn't a hard and fast grammatical rule, like for example the use of pronouns according to gender.

From what I understand, the ancient Hebrews were a high context society. Things weren't spelled out because it didn't need to be. As Doc said, the P writer didn't bother to clear up problems with his editting because he didn't have to. The meaning was accommodated.

Have a look at Ex 31:18, which is about the first set of tablets. Is there any indication that the 10 Commandments were on them? No - in fact, the implication seems to be that the previous 600 or so commands are on it.

Now, in the same way as Ex 34, you could make an argument that the original author intended it to be understood that there were 600 commands on the tablets. You could talk about cohesion, sentence structure, and the JEDP hypothesis to show this - but, as in Ex 34, it would be irrelevant. The traditional teaching is that the 10 Commandments were on the first set of tablets. You could say Ex 31:18 is sloppy, and even question why an omniscient God would allow sloppiness, but there is nothing there to contradict anything else in the Bible. It is simply understood that "the two tablets of the Testimony" refers to God.

I'm arguing the exact same thing for Ex 34. Whatever the historical reasons for Ex 34:28 to be written that way, the "he" has always been taught to be "He". You could say "that's wrong", but if all you have is a rule-of-thumb supporting you, then clear evidence the other way would trump it.

Sure, but again you are confusing "What was in the original text?" with "How was the final text understood?" That's what I've been arguing from the start.

The Study Guides, as well as the traditional Torah teachings, say that the last "He" in Ex 34:28 refers to God. There are clear statements supporting this in Ex 34:1 and Deut 10. While the immediate context suggests otherwise, as you admit it can't always be relied upon to be definitive, esp in relation to old texts.

So we have clear statements on one side, and a suggestive statement on the other. The fact that the suggestive statement is evidence of an underlying revision of the text is not relevant to how the passage is understood in the final version of the Bible.

Some final examples: in the NT, we have two statements. One says that the rooster crowed once before Peter denied Christ 3 times, the other says it crowed twice. This is a clear contradiction.

In the OT, we have God called both "Elohim" and "YHWH". This is NOT a contradiction, as traditionally it has been taught that they are the same God. That's not to say that some people haven't speculated that they are referring to different gods - just that no-one (not even the SAB!) would try to present it as a contradiction.

GakuseiDon

I think it would be clear, if you'd come into Ex 34:28 after reading from Ex 20.

Here is a challenge for you.

Reread Ex 34, keeping these two points in mind:

(1) God promises in Ex 34:1 to write on the second set of stone tablets that which was on the first set, the 10 Commandments.

(2) Previous to Ex 34, Moses had been writing down every command given by God into the Book of the Covenant (Ex 24:4), which forms the covenant between God and the Israelites "according to these words" (Ex 24:8).

Below is Ex 34. Can you point out the problem?

GakuseiDon

On behalf of Australia(!):
(1) No need to apologise about Borders Books - a good bookstore! (though a bit of a pity about the smaller bookstores) I haven't heard of "Generica" though.
(2) Apology accepted about McDonalds!
(3) We haven't been colonised by Walmart yet, unless it is under another name. But I think it is only a matter of time...

Strangely enough, we've had a couple of German megastores opening up shop here in the last year or two.

Australia's answer, "Koala Blue" seems to have died a nice death, thankfully. At this stage we tend to be exporting more actors than products though.

spin

All you are saying here is that the writer could have been totally inadequate and that you know better what his intentions were than he was able to express. Cohesion is what holds discourse together and the writer of our example seems to me to show his intentions without any doubt.

Our example is: And the Lord said to Moses, "Write the words..." and he was with the Lord for 40 days... and he neither ate... nor drank... and he wrote the words..."

This is embarrassing for you, GakuseiDon. You are contravening all logic to back yourself into a reading that you must have.

Do you doubt that Moses is the subject of the previous three verbs?

I gather from the wording above that you accept that the first reading should be that Moses is the subject of "and he wrote the words..." So at least the linguistics of the passage has been agreed upon by you.

Did you ignore the part of the post in which I wrote the following or did you simply not understand it?

Next, if there is still doubt, what linguistic pointers are there? Are there any linguistic clues such as repetition. Ahh, yes, in this case there is a narrative repetition. The Lord tells Moses to write the words. Then, funnily enough, we are told a few clauses afterwards that someone wrote the words.

Nevertheless, despite your exaggerated contortions so as not to see what is obvious to a disinvolved reader, which I was at the time you were already going through the hoops and garters, you still surprise me that you will not read a text for what it says, even though you are now aware of what it says -- as your example two above indicates.

This is why I mentioned other indicators in the specific text.

Now what followed in your post stops being any attempt at a linguistic discussion of the problem and is now you attempting to say why the apparent linguistic simplicity of the statements is wrong. This doesn't interest me because it is now you playing with the text because you don't like what the linguistics plainly indicates.

What you are doing undermines the text and allows you to say whatever you like about it. This is only wasting time to me -- I don't see that you are prepared to read the text for what it indicates --, so I think you understand what I've said and you can live with what you are doing, but I won't.

Your recourse to the writer being a blithering idiot is not a sound one.


spin

Asha'man

I've noticed this trend alot in apologetics. In a significant number of cases, the apologist wants to convince us that the plain meaning of the text is not the intended meaning of the author. There always seems to be some form of alternate interpretation, very speculative and imaginative, that can resolve the problem.

However, this line of reasoning only confirms to me that the writer was a poor communicator, if not utterly incompetent. Since the apologist is usually arguing for the inerrancy of the Bible, having such a poor communicator as the author is exactly as harmful to the apologist’s position as the original problem.

Why is it that apologists are unable to see this gaping hole in their argument?

Amaleq13

I consider the prime suspect to be a powerful mental beastie called "Cognitive dissonance".

"Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon which refers to the discomfort felt at a discrepancy between what you_already know or believe, and new information or interpretation."

"...if someone is called upon to learn something which contradicts what they already think they know — particularly if they are committed to that prior knowledge_— they are likely to resist the new learning."

From http://www.dmu.ac.uk/~jamesa/learning/dissonance.htm