Godless Dave

There should also be a link to the abstract of an article about number theory.

Dave Hawkins

SUMMARY OF THE DEBATE SO FAR
(Links I think are important ... Dean might include others)

DOCUMENTARY HYPOTHESIS
Book of Genesis: Written Record? Or Oral Tradition?
Dean's Evidence for the DH
Presuppositions of the Documentary Hypothesis Advocates
Evidence for Pre-Flood Written Records: "Respecting the Sacred Books"
Criticism of Dean's first post
Summary of Positive Evidence for a Tablet Theory
Dean Analyzes the Flood Story
AFDave Analyzes the Flood Story

Dean and I agree on one thing at least. We agree that the Pentateuch is a compilation, but we differ on where the divisions should be. Dean says that the presuppositions of the DH advocates are not important (I disagree) and has asked me to focus on the text itself and explain why the Tablet Theory divisions make more sense than the JEDP divisions. I have done this with the Flood Story above. I concluded my main post yesterday with this ...

We have a warrant for dividing the text in this manner based on archaelogical evidence, not based on subjective bias of 19th Century Western scholars.

When I asked ... Dean responded with ... Dean then says this ... which reveals he misunderstood me. I did not say "we cannot apply our modern concepts of style to ancient writings because the authors would not have recognised them."

I said that it is wrong to apply Occidental concepts of style to ancient Oriental writings, which is what the DH promoters have done. They have assumed certain things about the use of repetition of details, generalized description vs. specific descriptions, etc. And they have assumed these things without "putting themselves in the shoes" of ancient Near East writers. how could they have put themselves in their shoes? By observing other ancient Near Eastern writings and comparing. This they did not do partly because archaeology was in its infancy and partly because they ignored the findings of archaeology that they did have access to.

Dean continues ... Again, a misquote. I didn't say this. Of course I think consistency is important. But the Occidental concept of consistency is different from the Oriental concept of consistency. And this point was ignored by DH advocates.

Not true. Colophons are now so well known that you can find their descriptions at Wikipedia. This, therefore, is the evidence Dean is asking for. There is no question that the phrase "these are the generations of ..." repeated 11 times in Genesis resembles this "colophon" form. Whether it is actually a colophon from an ancient tablet source we will never know for sure. Evidence is scanty at best in ancient studies such as this. But this is good evidence. And at least we have some. To my knowledge there is ZERO evidence for the existence of J E D and P documents, other than the speculations of DH advocates about style and consistency, etc. And remember, the reason that they felt it necessary to speculate in the first place was because they thought there was no writing in Israel in Moses' day, Israel went from polytheism to monotheism (not the other way around), they disregarded the findings of archaeology, and they thought the patriarchal narratives were just legends.

Finally, I posted this ... http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...08#post4815308 ...

I just noticed that Dean posted this ... I have already addressed the 2 vs. 7 item. I would like to know why it is so strange for an author to write in general terms (2 of every kind), then get more specific (7 of the clean animals)? What's the problem here? I'm quite sure we could find many examples of this in other literature.

I think Dean nailed the key word in the entire DH ... SPECULATION ... That's what the DH authors have done. Speculate. Nothing more.

Finally, Dean concludes with Again, speculation. As some scholars have pointed out, this was a very appealing theory BEFORE much was known from the findings of archaeology. But since we now know much more, the DH is without support (except the assertion that it is a compilation ... this is the one thing the DH got right).

I close this post with the words of the Jewish scholar Yehezkel Kaufmann ... **********************************

I am out of town until Monday with limited online access ... when I return, I can discuss the various Tablet Theories in more detail.

angelo

Can't wait.

Jack the Bodiless

No, you did NOT.

After all this waiting, all this anticipation... you thought you could get away with a fictional claim to have "already addressed" it?

But at least you go on to say:
So now you're saying that the 7 clean animals are a subset of the 2? So 7 < 2 in your Universe?

I'm sure we'd all be fascinated to see the "many examples of this in other literature".

fanucon

Its proven that the Bible was written 3 to 5 generations after Jesus had Died

Jesus and all the apostles were illiterate except (i beleive) Paul(who was severely sidetracked) which is why i dont trust the validity of the bible but i accept the moral positions that are involved with following Jesus.

i highly doubt Jesus spent his whole life preaching God and then died came back and now says He is God. **** DOES NOT COMPUTE***

Lucretius

Regarding the DH

We have a warrant for dividing the text in this manner based on the evidence of literary and textual analysis,which removes any contradictions in the text itself and any inconsistences in the style of writing, not based on subjective bias of 20th/ 21st Century Western Fundamentalist Christians whose latest speculative artifical division methods,in fact make a complete mess of the actual text of Genesis.

spin

In the end having looked at the total lack of evidence for the umm tablet theory, it's a useless pill, that neither reflects the text nor explains anything about it. It doesn't explain the two flood stories that are obvious and which I have presented in parallel in this thread. If the Noah story were written by the one person, that had to do it twice, then combine them with their differences. This does not normally reflect the actions of a single writer, but of at least two writers and a redactor. These two accounts combined clearly contradict the notion that Genesis was an originally oral tradition, as of course do earlier precursors of creation events found in other cultures.

It is hopeful at best, given that we only have a written source to divine that there was a direct oral source behind it. I have seen no-one deal with any evidence for oral traditions so that we can see the elements in Genesis which are indicative of oral literature in general.

We have a recommended bibliography of scholarly analyses of many of the issues we regularly deal with. People who are interested in finding out substantially more about these issues will find important works there.


spin

VoxRat

"I have already addressed" is a Dave "colophon".So this is the explanation that is so obvious you fell out of your chair laughing that we didn't see it?
That 7 is "more specific" than than the "general" 2???

Really, Dave. Is that the best you can do?

And 40 = 150? There's no basis for your far-fetched excuse for this one (days of rain vs. days it took to dry out?) other than, yes, ad hoc speculation

Keith&Co.

I would buy that if the instructions were:
then we're going from general to more specific instructions. But if it's

That's wrong.
If the first number is not big enough to account for all the dispositions later, then it's just wrong.

I know when i write fiction, sometimes i change my mind after writing something. Give the character 4 doses, then later in the chapter realize that he's issued to medicine to 6 characters. But then i have to go back and FIX the ERROR.

I don't know of any literary examples where a single author hasn't realized by the time he finishes the chapter that he has to go back and make sure the first requisition was enough to complete the job.

I'd love to see a few. I'd be surprised to see even one that matches your defense of the Noah story's pee-poor math.

Dean Anderson

Actually, I've been thinking about this.

You don't think that the Torah is a compilation.

You think that The first two thirds of the first book of the Torah is a compilation - and that the rest of the five book Torah was written by Moses.

So simply saying that you agree that the Torah is a compilation seems rather disingenuous to me, as it deflects attention from the fact that you think most of it was written by a single hand - and that the hand in question was that of Moses (despite the ample textual evidence against Mosaic authorship).

That is quite simply utterly wrong.

It does not assume that "repetition of detail", and "generalised description vs. specific description" must mean different authors.

It instead points out that there is consilience between the divisions we get when we split repetitions and the divisions we get when we split the text by age of the language used, and the divisions we get when we split the text by style, and the divisions we get when we split the text by theological and historical interests of the authors.

It then further points out that these divisions which are consilient with all these different splitting methods each form a coherent and consistent narrative.

It then proposes that the best explanation for all this consilience and consistency is that each of these divisions is a separate source written by a separate author.

You keep asserting that the DH ignores the findings of archaeology but you have yet to produce a single archaeological finding that is incompatible with the DH.

The "Occidental" concept of consistency is that two pieces of text are considered consistent if they do not contradict each other.

What is the "Oriental" concept of consistency?

I have given an example of an actual colophon in this thread, and compared it to a Toledoth. There was no resemblance in either the form or the context and positioning.

You are simply asserting that "there is no question that" they are similar. You have not produced any actual evidence of similarity.

And yet again I need to remind you that these false and inaccurate assertions that you are repeating about the motives of the people who invented the DH are so irrelevant that it is not even worth correcting you on them, since to do so would be a distraction.

Once again:

The DH stands or falls purely according to whether it explains the evidence - regardless of what the assumptions of the people who first thought of it were.

The problem is that that is not what the text says. The text is not a general statement that then gets more specific (i.e. "two of everything - oh, and 7 of the clean ones"). The text is specific about which kinds there are to be two of (specifically mentioning Cattle - a "clean" kind - as something that there are to be 2 of), and then later follows this with being specific again that 7 of the same kind are needed.

This is quite simply contradictory.

But to repeat myself once again, the DH does not say "this is contradictory therefore there must have been two authors". It says "when we split the text by all the other consilient criteria, this contradiction disappears along with all the others, therefore the criterion of consistency is consilient with the other criteria, and this consilience is best explained by the products of the split being different sources by different authors".

I specifically used the word "speculation" to show that we were going beyond the basics of the evidence based DH and into speculative territory about the motives of a particular author.

Dave has, of course, yet to provide evidence of even a SINGLE archaeological finding that contradicts the DH.

Hopefully, that detail will include:

1) Evidence of similarity between colophons and Toledoths.

2) An explanation of why the DH explains the consilience between the results of splitting the text by different criteria, whereas the Tablet Theory does not.

3) Evidence of some archaeological findings that are incompatible with the DH.

4) An explanation why the only text we have that Dave has actually named as being written by an antediluvian patriarch (the Book of Enoch) is not included in the Torah text - a fact that would seem to go directly against his theory.

5) Any actual evidence whatsoever that goes against the DH itself (as opposed to innuendo about the opinions of the inventors of the DH).

Because these are all things that you have spectacularly failed to supply so far...