Lucretius

Dave in any field of human knowledge it is NOT automatically correct that "the older the work the better " even in historical subjects IF that were the case then there would be no point in having universities anymore as everything that could possibly be written on a subject already has been written .
There is "no evidence whatsoever of the Tablet Theory" not even scatny evidence sic
You claim that the "Tablet Hypothesis" is better because it is "new" elsewhere on this thread ,yet following your own twisted logic as it is not "old" therefore it should be treated as a poorer hypothesis than the "Moses as sole author hypothesis" that has a much longer tradition.
Yet again another example of you wanting it both ways
"OLD" is best EXCEPT when the "NEW" supports my pre-concieved ideas .
Edited to add my reference to "old books" was not in any way a reference to any real eyewitness acounts of historical events but rather the Faber's unusual book referred to by Dave previously.

Barbarian

Nevermind, preempted.

VoxRat

"Refute Faber's info"?

You think that no one can deem Adam fictional without considering "Faber's info"?

"Faber's info" doesn't change anything about the following very basic fact:

The "Adam" described in Genesis simply couldn't have existed, because his existence would violate just about every known natural law.

End of story.

So stories that depend on the existence of "Adam" are fiction.

shirley knott

dave, how is the 'adam story' different from the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings story presented on the previous page?
Can you explain why we believe that this comparison of the Bible and the LoTR casts considerable doubt on any textual claims the Bible might make?
I don't ask if you agree, I ask if you understand our point?
Can you reflect that understanding back to us in your own words?

I strongly doubt it, but hope springs infernal...

no hugs for thugs,
Shirley Knott

Jack the Bodiless

Quite apart from the actual, real-world nonexistence of Adam...

...What do you imagine "Faber's info" is, regarding the supposed existence of Adam?

How do you get from "Faber says that various ancient cultures knew of writings older than their own"... to "Adam existed"?

Why do you imagine there is anything to refute, Dave?

Are you going to give us something first?

Lucretius

Just re-reading Dave's posts on this subject really makes me despair.
It appears that Dave's knowledge of literary analysis is as bad as his knowledge of evolution ,biology,geology , history,archaeology or any other academic discipline, if that were not bad enough his knowledge of the Bible itself seems remarkably scanty.
Thanks again for that "chopping up " of Genesis, as no doubt Dave would call it Dean. (I did worry that I would have to do it myself to show Dave how this all works )

Dave Hawkins

Like what? Name ONE law his existence would violate.

Lucretius

Created from dust

ericmurphy

Dave, this might come as a surprise to you, but no one here doubts that there are written records extending back in time before 2,750 B.C. This isn't even an issue. Why are you laboring to find evidence for an assertion that isn't even in controversy?

Given that you believe Adam lived 6,000 years ago, and that there is evidence of written records at least in China dating back that far, that's not even controversial. What is controversial, and what you have no evidence for, is that anything written by some bloke named "Adam" actually ever existed, or became part of the Torah.

What? Are you high? This, for you, is "positive evidence"? The fact that some tablets—not the tablets you believe existed at some point, but other tablets—internally claim to be written by someone, with no extrinsic evidence to support those assertions—that, for you, is "positive evidence"?

No wonder you're a biblical literalist, with evidentiary standards like that.

Where, Dave? Where is this "much evidence"? You don't even have any evidence that Moses actually existed, let alone that he ever compiled anything together. And if he did, then he did virtually no editing at all, given the clear textual and stylistic differences between various parts of the Pentateuch.

JFC, Dave, before you "pile on more evidence"? What freaking evidence? You haven't presented any evidence. You've claimed there is such evidence; where is it? You've presented no evidence:

• for the existence of any "tablets" which were the original sources for the Pentateuch;
• that any purported "tablets" were written by any particular individual;
• that Moses ever existed;
• that he had anything whatsoever to do with compiling the Pentateuch

Why would he? Have you provided any evidence that they were?
Certainly someone was keeping written records in the fifth millennium B.C.E. Were those someones the aforementioned "Adam, Seth, etc."? Did such personages actually exist? Well, you haven't provided any evidence that they did.

"More" evidence? You haven't supplied any evidence that they ever existed! We already know that the J, E, D, and P documents exist, because they're in the freaking Bible.

No, they were not. The motivations for the DH are irrelevant in any case, but they were surely motivated by the characteristics of the text in question itself.

But it's nice to know that, eight pages into this thread, Dave has finally, sort of, more or less, at least figured out what the DH even is. Prior to today, I couldn't find any evidence that Dave even knew what the DH's claims are.

Dave Hawkins

Dean (or anyone) ... do you have a link to a site which shows ALL the divisions of the DH? The divisions you gave for the Flood story segment are very helpful.