Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Dean Anderson · 10-11-2007, 12:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dean Anderson

It's worse than that. The previous instructions specifically pick out cattle and fowl - two types of clean animal - as animals that there are to be two of.

The apologetic Dave linked to deals with this contradiction by simply pretending it doesn't exist, and cutting off the first quote before the specifics are mentioned.

In other words, they are prepared to quote-mine their own Bible in order to make it appear inerrant.

Both of us are arguing from a position of ignorance of the culture here, so our statements are largely conjecture.

Here's another analogy for you ...

MOM: "Hubby, please go buy some groceries for me. I need 5 bags of chips and 2 cans of dip and about 4 2-liter cokes."
HUBBY: "OK. What kind of cokes do you want?"
MOM: "Oh ... let's get 2 cream sodas and 2 diet cokes."

Sounds contradictory unless you understand the culture. This culture calls all carbonated beverages cokes.

No, Dave. That's not valid analogy. Notice how in your "analogy" four is mentioned first, and then clarified into two each of two types.

That is nothing like the Genesis text. The Genesis text starts with the twos - mentioning specifics - and then moves on to sevens of those same specifics.

To use this analogy accurately, if would have to be:

MOM: Hubby, please go buy some groceries for me. I need 2 bottles of each type of Coke. 2 Normal, 2 Diet, 2 Coke-with-Lemon.

HUBBY: Okay.

MOM: Get me 7 bottles of each of the Diet varieties of Coke, and 2 of each of the rest.

Here are those Genesis verses again:

Quote:

6:19 And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.
6:20 Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.
7:2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.
7:3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

See?

It starts by saying "two of everything", and lists two examples of things to take two of.

It then says "seven of one type and two of the rest" (listing the very thing used as an example of something of which two should be taken as the thing of which seven should now be taken), followed by "and seven of these" listing the other example previously given specifically as something of which two should be taken.

Stop inventing misleading and inaccurate analogies, and explain what the text itself says. Why does it specify that cattle - clean beasts - should go in twos, then say that clean beasts should go in sevens? Why does it pick out fowl specifically as something that should go in twos, and then say that the very same fowls should go in sevens?

And remember - whatever twisted apologetics you can come up with to explain why the text apparently goes out of its way to specifically contradict itself; the very fact that those apologetics are needed in the first place are evidence that the DH is a better explanation of the text than the Tablet Theory - because in the DH, this apparent contradiction goes away without the need for apologetics; just like all the others.

Dean Anderson · 10-11-2007, 02:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave

EXCERPTS FROM "THE MOSAIC AUTHORSHIP OF THE PENTATEUCH"
BY PROFESSOR GEORGE FREDERICK WRIGHT, D. D., LL. D., OBERLIN COLLEGE, OBERLIN, OHIO
http://www.eaec.org/bookstore/fundamentals/02.htm

I would highly encourage you to read this piece in full, but I will excerpt some of the more interesting parts ...

Quote:

The Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch has until very recent times been accepted without question by both Jews and Christians. Such acceptance, coming down to us in unbroken line from the earliest times of which we have any information, gives it the support of what is called general consent, which, while perhaps not absolutely conclusive, compels those who would discredit it to produce incontrovertible opposing evidence. But the evidence which the critics produce in this case is wholly circumstantial, consisting of inferences derived from a literary analysis of the documents and from the application of a discredited evolutionary theory concerning the development of human institutions.

This is simply wrong.

Firstly, it hasn't been "accepted without question". It has been questioned for as long as we have had records (I provided many examples of this in this thread) - it is just that historically such questioning has resulted in book burning, imprisonment, and forced recantations.

Secondly, as I have repeatedly pointed out. Even if the DH were based on "a discredited evolutionary theory of human institutions" (which it isn't) then that would not matter. It doesn't matter where the theory comes from - what matters is how well it explains the evidence.

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It is an instructive commentary upon the scholarly pretensions of this whole school of critics that, without adequate examination of the facts, they have based their analysis of the Pentateuch upon the text which is found in our ordinary Hebrew Bibles. While the students of the New Testament have expended an immense amount of effort in the comparison of manuscripts, and versions, and quotations to determine the original text, these Old Testament critics have done scarcely anything in that direction. This is certainly a most unscholarly proceeding, yet it is admitted to be the fact by a higher critic of no less eminence than Principal J. Skinner of Cambridge, England, who has been compelled to write: “I do not happen to know of any work which deals exhaustively with the subject, the determination of the original Hebrew texts from the critical standpoints.”

This is just bluster, and is 90 years out of date. The texts (including many that have been discovered in the 90 years since this written) have been thoroughly and repeatedly examined.

Quote:

Now the original critical division into documents was made on the supposition that several hundred years later than Moses there arose two schools of writers, one of which, in Judah, used the word “Jehovah” when they spoke of the deity, and the other, in the Northern Kingdom, “Elohim.” And so the critics came to designate one set of passages as belonging to the J document and the other to the E document. These they supposed had been cut up and pieced together by a later editor so as to make the existing continuous narrative. But when, as frequently occurred, one of these words is found in passages where it is thought the other word should have been used, it is supposed, wholly on theoretical grounds, that a mistake had been made by the editor, or, as they call him, the “redactor,” and so with no further ceremony the objection is arbitrarily removed without consulting the direct textual evidence.

Nope. This is not true. This is just repeating the same strawman that apologists still repeat. That this is a strawman has been repeatedly explained to you. the DH does not assume that one author used YHVH and the other used Elohim.

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But upon comparing the early texts, versions, and quotations it appears that the words, “Jehovah” and “Elohim,” were so nearly synonymous that there was originally little uniformity in their use. Jehovah is the Jewish name of the deity, and Elohim the title. The use of the words is precisely like that of the English in referring to their king or the Americans to their president. In ordinary usage, “George V.”, “the king,” and “King George” are synonymous in their meaning. Similarly “Taft,” “the president,” and “President Taft” are used by Americans during his term of office to indicate an identical concept. So it was with the Hebrews. “Jehovah” was the name, “Elohim” the title, and “Jehovah Elohim” Lord God — signified nothing more. Now on consulting the evidence, it appears that while in Genesis and the first three chapters of Exodus (where this clue was supposed to be most decisive) Jehovah occurs in the Hebrew text 148 times, in 118 of these places other texts have either Elohim or Jehovah Elohim. In the same section, while Elohim alone occurs 179 times in the Hebrew, in 49 of the passages one or the other designation takes its place; and in the second and third chapters of Genesis where the Hebrew text has Jehovah Elohim (LORD God) 23 times, there is only one passage in which all the texts are unanimous on this point.

Irrelevant, since it is arguing against something that is not part of the DH.

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These facts, which are now amply verified, utterly destroy the value of the clue which the higher critics have all along ostentatiously put forward to justify their division of the Pentateuch into conflicting E and J documents, and this the critics themselves are now compelled to admit.

No, it only destroys the strawman. The evidence for the actual DH - which doesn't include this claim stands.

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On further examination, in the light of present knowledge (as Wiener and Dahse abundantly show), legitimate criticism removes a large number of the alleged difficulties which are put forward by higher critics and renders of no value many of the supposed clues to the various documents. We have space to notice but one or two of these. In the Massoretic text of Exodus 18:6 we read that Jethro says to Moses, “I thy father-in-law Jethro am come,” while in the seventh verse it is said that Moses goes out to meet his father-in-law and that they exchange greetings and then come into the tent. But how could Jethro speak to Moses before they had had a meeting? The critics say that this confusion arises from the bungling patchwork of an editor who put two discordant accounts together without attempting to cover up the discrepancy. But scientific textual criticism completely removes the difficulty. The Septuagint, the old Syriac version, and a copy of the Samaritan Pentateuch, instead of “I thy father-in-law Jethro am come”, read, “And one said unto Moses, behold thy father-in-law Jethro” comes. Here the corruption of a single letter in the Hebrew gives us “behold” in place of “I”. When this is observed the objection disappears entirely.

This is incorrect. By the DH, the entire of chapter 18 is by the same author (except for one small addition in 18:2), as is most of the preceeding chapter.

This is doing two things:

1) Picking an alleged contradiction that is easy to resolve, and therefore falsely implying that therefore all such contradictions are easy to resolve.
2) Making a false claim that the DH attributes this alleged contradiction to the "bungling patchwork of an editor" - when the DH actually attributes the whole chapter to a single author.

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Again, in Genesis 39:20-22 Joseph is said to have been put into the prison “where the king’s prisoners were bound. . . . And the keeper of the prison” promoted him. But in 40:2-4,7 it is said that he was “in ward of the house of the captain of the guard... and the captain of the guard” promoted Joseph. But this discrepancy disappears as soon as an effort is made to determine the original text. In Hebrew, “keeper of the prison” and “captain of the guard” both begin with the same word and in the passages where the “captain of the guard” causes trouble by its appearance, the Septuagint either omitted the phrase or read “keeper of the prison,” in one case being supported also by the Vulgate. In many other instances also, attention to the original text removes the difficulties which have been manufactured from apparent discrepancies in the narrative.

This merely points out that one discrepancy in the text can be resolved. The DH is not based on any single "issue". It is based on the consilience between a variety of ways of splitting the text.

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The absurdity of the claims of the higher critics to having established the existence of different documents in the Pentateuch by a literary analysis has been shown by a variety of examples. The late Professor C. M. Mead, the most influential of the American revisers of the translation of the Old Testament, in order to exhibit the fallacy of their procedure, took the Book of Romans and arbitrarily divided it into three parts, according as the words “Christ Jesus,” “Jesus,” or “God” were used; and then by analysis showed that the lists of peculiar words characteristic of these three passages were even more remarkable than those drawn up by the destructive critics of the Pentateuch from the three leading fragments into which they had divided it. The argument from literary analysis after the methods of these critics would prove the composite character of the Epistle to the Romans as fully as that of the critics would prove the composite character of the Pentateuch. A distinguished scholar, Dr. Hayman, formerly head-master of Rugby, by a similar analysis demonstrated the composite character of Robert Burns’ little poem addressed to a mouse, half of which is in the purest English and the other half in the broadest Scotch dialect. By the same process it would be easy to prove three Macaulays and three Miltons by selecting lists of words from the documents prepared by them when holding high political offices and from their various prose and poetical writings.

Yes, we know that a text can be arbitrarily split to match any single criterion. We also know that - with effort - a short text can be split with a couple of matching criteria.

What none of these examples show is that a text the length of the Torah can be split with so many criteria and achieve such statistically unlikely consilience between them.

In short, none of these arguments hold water. Some are simply factually false, and even those that are true are not relevant.

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Before proceeding to give in conclusion a brief summary of the circumstantial evidence supporting the ordinary belief in the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch it is important to define the term. By it we do not mean that Moses wrote all the Pentateuch with his own hand, or that there were no editorial additions made after his death. Moses was the author of the Pentateuchal Code, as Napoleon was of the code which goes under his name. Apparently the Book of Genesis is largely made up from existing documents, of which the history of the expedition of Amraphel in chapter 14 is a noted specimen; while the account of Moses’ death, and a few other passages are evidently later editorial additions. But these are not enough to affect the general proposition. The Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is supported by the following, among other weighty considerations:

1. The Mosaic era was a literary epoch in the world’s history when such Codes were common. It would have been strange if such a leader had not produced a code of laws. The Tel-el-Amarna tablets and the Code of Hammurabi testify to the literary habits of the time.

No-one is saying that the codes are not old. This is not evidence that they were written by Moses. Indeed, that such codes were common is evidence against Mosaic authorship - if the codes are not unique then anyone could have written them.

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2. The Pentateuch so perfectly reflects the conditions in Egypt at the period assigned to it that it is difficult to believe that it was a literary product of a later age.

Simply factually incorrect.

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3. Its representation of life in the wilderness is so perfect and so many of its laws are adapted only to that life that it is incredible that literary men a thousand years later should have imagined it.

Again, simply factually incorrect.

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4. The laws themselves bear indubitable marks of adaptation to the stage of national development to which they are ascribed. It was the study of Maine’s works on ancient law that set Mr. Wiener out upon his re-investigation of the subject.

This assumes that the stories are correct. If the nation developed later than the stories suggest, then the laws would therefore bear the hallmarks of the later period in which they were written retrojected into the story. In other words, this is evidence of nothing.

Quote:

5. The little use that is made of the sanctions of a future life is, as Bishop Warburton ably argued, evidence of an early date and of a peculiar Divine effort to guard the Israelites against the contamination of Egyptian ideas upon the subject.

Again, this is not even remotely evidence that Moses wrote the Torah.

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6. The omission of the hen from the lists of clean and unclean birds is incredible if these lists were made late in the nation’s history after that domestic fowl had been introduced from India.

Again, this is not even remotely evidence that Moses wrote the Torah.

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7. As A. C. Robinson showed in Volume VII of this series it is incredible that there should have been no intimation in the Pentateuch of the existence of Jerusalem, or of the use of music in the liturgy, nor any use of the phrase, “Lord Of Hosts,” unless the compilation had been completed before the time of David.

Again, this is not even remotely evidence that Moses wrote the Torah.

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8. The subordination of the miraculous elements in the Pentateuch to the critical junctures in the nation’s development is such as could be obtained only in genuine history.

Again, this is not even remotely evidence that Moses wrote the Torah.

Quote:

9. The whole representation conforms to the true law of historical development. Nations do not rise by virtue of inherent resident forces, but through the struggles of great leaders enlightened directly from on high or by contact with others who have already been enlightened.

Laughably outdated Imperialist dialectic, which - even if it were true - would not even remotely be evidence that Moses wrote the Torah.

None of these points are even remotely evidence for Mosaic authorship.

Dave, next time to address the actual points I have made about the DH, rather than relying on copy/pasting from strawman-bashing arguments of apologists written nearly a century ago. Amusing though this page was, it was totally irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

Dean Anderson · 10-11-2007, 02:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpaghettiSawUs

Quote:

Originally Posted by AFdave

MOM: "Hubby, please go buy some groceries for me. I need 5 bags of chips and 2 cans of dip and about 4 2-liter cokes."
HUBBY: "OK. What kind of cokes do you want?"
MOM: "Oh ... let's get 2 cream sodas and 2 diet cokes."

Am I the only person to find this convention (MOM/HUBBY rather than MOM/DAD or WIFE/HUBBY) to be rather insightful.
The best insights into the workings of Dave's mind always come when he puts all his "research" aside and tries to think for himself. The results are always intriguing and this is no exception.
Sorry for the OT, but as this thread is mainly about textual criticism it is tangentially relevant, no?
Regards
Spags

I'm more worried about what the grocery list says about his diet...

-Jay- · 10-11-2007, 05:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dean Anderson

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpaghettiSawUs

Am I the only person to find this convention (MOM/HUBBY rather than MOM/DAD or WIFE/HUBBY) to be rather insightful.
The best insights into the workings of Dave's mind always come when he puts all his "research" aside and tries to think for himself. The results are always intriguing and this is no exception.
Sorry for the OT, but as this thread is mainly about textual criticism it is tangentially relevant, no?
Regards
Spags

I'm more worried about what the grocery list says about his diet...

I'm curious, Dave. Do you believe that women must keep silent in church?

regards,

NinJay

Lucretius · 10-11-2007, 05:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave

Uh ... Wright was talking about things he was very close to in time. As in ... the rise of the DH. We're talking about the DH for those of us ... er ... who might not realize it. Also, for those <ahem> who might not realize it ... Dean does not claim that archaeology helps the DH. So claiming that there has been an immense amount of archaeological research done since Wright was alive is an ... er ... irrelevant thing to say. Eric, I'd leave it to Dean if I were you.

I am a bit puzzled here Dave on the one hand you appear to be so excited by Wiseman's "new " idea of the Tablet "Theory" even though it was as has been pointed out first proposed in 1935 so is hardly all that "new",(but is is I suppose 20th century, which is a sort of improvement on most of your sources even if it has been shown to be wrong ,wrong, wrong ),yet on the other hand you seem to be claiming (once again ) that the older (and therefore closer in time to some alleged event ) the better as far as scholarship goes.
Are you honestly saying that 19th Century scholarship is by definition better than anything since ?
If so does that apply to all types of scholarship including the sciences or is Biblical scholarship/theology somehow different ?
As has been pointed out Wellhausen pre-dates Wright so by your "logic" must be more accurate.
And what is so special about the 19th Century if that is what you believe?
Why isn't 18th century stuff even better or 17th better than that etc etc ?
In that case as Ussher was even closer to the alleged events, why do you not accept his dating of Creation ?
Just like to thank Dean and others for the work in demolishing Wright's arguments by the way

-Jay- · 10-11-2007, 06:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lucretius

Are you honestly saying that 19th Century scholarship is by definition better than anything since ?
If so does that apply to types of scholarship including the sciences or is Biblical scholarship/theology somehow different ?
As has been pointed out Wellhausen pre-dates Wright so by your "logic" must be more accurate.
And what is so special about the 19th Century if that is what you believe?
Why isn't 18th century stuff even better or 17th better than that etc etc ?
In that case as Ussher was even closer to the alleged events, why do you not accept his dating of Creation ?

It's not just Dave, though. Look through some Bob Jones or A Beka textbooks (especially biology, at risk of straying off-topic). Many of the quotes they mine (and the distinction between quote-mining and quoting/citation is completely intentional) are from 18th-19th Century sources, with a few early 20th Century sources. Anything later than that is fairly uncommon.

Naturalists who died before Darwin published are cited as being "not evolutionists" (Linnaeus, for example), even though such a label is meaningless.

Wright wrote against a version of the DH that existed in 1917, so he's an acceptable critic to quote against the modern DH, that makes use of data and analytic techniques that weren't available in 1917. That, in point of fact, much has changed in the intervening 90 years is irrelevant.

It's also worth considering that once an author is dead, he's unlikely to change his opinion in light of new information.

regards,

NinJay

gregor · 10-11-2007, 06:14 AM

Dave's thinking is both biblical and consistent with modern physics.

Since the fall, all scholarship has begun the natural decline to be less and less persuasive. Similarly, under the Second Law of Thermodynamics, scholarship goes from a more organized and accurate state to a less organized and less accurate state.

VoxRat · 10-11-2007, 06:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lucretius

I am a bit puzzled here Dave on the one hand you appear to be so excited by Wiseman's "new " idea of the Tablet "Theory" even though it was as has been pointed out first proposed in 1935 so is hardly all that "new",(but is is I suppose 20th century, which is a sort of improvement on most of your sources even if it has been shown to be wrong ,wrong, wrong ),yet on the other hand you seem to be claiming (once again ) that the older (and therefore closer in time to some alleged event ) the better as far as scholarship goes.
Are you honestly saying that 19th Century scholarship is by definition better than anything since ?
If so does that apply to all types of scholarship including the sciences or is Biblical scholarship/theology somehow different

If I might paraphrase G.F. Wright:

But the evidence which the critics afdave produces in this case is wholly circumstantial, consisting of inferences derived from a literary analysis of the documents specious arguments for ignoring advances in knowledge and from the application of a discredited [de-]evolutionary theory concerning the development of human institutions. degeneration of information over time.

Cege · 10-11-2007, 06:35 AM

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9. The whole representation conforms to the true law of historical development. Nations do not rise by virtue of inherent resident forces, but through the struggles of great leaders enlightened directly from on high or by contact with others who have already been enlightened.

Is that law of historical development the same as described here:

"...Selbst (Schuster and Holzammer's "Handbuch zur Biblischen Geschichte", 7th ed., Freiburg, 1910, II, 94, 96). The last-named writer believes that Moses left a written law-book to which Josue and Samuel added supplementary sections and regulations, while David and Solomon supplied new statutes concerning worship and priesthood, and other kings introduced certain religious reforms, until Esdras promulgated the whole law and made it the basis of Israel's restoration after the Exile. Our present Pentateuch is, therefore, an Esdrine edition of the work. Dr. Selbst feels convinced that his admission of both textual changes and material additions in the Pentateuch agrees with the law of historical development and with the results of literary criticism. Historical development adapts laws and regulations to the religious, civil, and social conditions of successive ages, while literary criticism discovers in our actual Pentateuch peculiarities of words and phrases which can hardly have been original, and also historical additions or notices, legal modifications, and signs of more recent administration of justice and of later forms of worship. But Dr. Selbst believes that these peculiarities do not offer a sufficient basis for a distinction of different sources in the Pentateuch.

As years went by, people added to/edited the text from their own historical perspective and information, which resulted in more information but also editing that inadvertently left some anachronisms and contradictions.

Also, is this theoretical explanation for David's additions and possible editing what is meant by:

Quote:

7. As A. C. Robinson showed in Volume VII of this series it is incredible that there should have been no intimation in the Pentateuch of the existence of Jerusalem, or of the use of music in the liturgy, nor any use of the phrase, “Lord Of Hosts,” unless the compilation had been completed before the time of David.

Magdlyn · 10-11-2007, 07:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cege

Is that law of historical development the same as described here:

The last-named writer believes that Moses left a written law-book to which Josue and Samuel added supplementary sections and regulations, while David and Solomon supplied new statutes concerning worship and priesthood, and other kings introduced certain religious reforms, until Esdras promulgated the whole law and made it the basis of Israel's restoration after the Exile.... peculiarities of words and phrases which can hardly have been original, and also historical additions or notices, legal modifications, and signs of more recent administration of justice and of later forms of worship. But Dr. Selbst believes that these peculiarities do not offer a sufficient basis for a distinction of different sources in the Pentateuch.

The last sentence seems to wholly contradict the first part of the paragraph! Would not Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Solomon and Ezra be "different sources?":grin:

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10-11-2007, 06:14 AM	#867
gregor Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Texas Posts: 932	Dave's thinking is both biblical and consistent with modern physics. Since the fall, all scholarship has begun the natural decline to be less and less persuasive. Similarly, under the Second Law of Thermodynamics, scholarship goes from a more organized and accurate state to a less organized and less accurate state.

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