Lucretius

Yes maybe I should have said

"Those who produced the Childrens story of the Ark said Noah took two of each animal ...let's leave the next bit out when we publish this story ...and it rained a lot "

Dean Anderson

INCORRECT - I have concentrated on textual arguments in this thread. I have not said that the only support for the DH is textual.

If and when you ever get round to addressing this textual support, then we may be able to move on to something else.

INCORRECT - I have demonstrated that Mosaic authorship has been questioned for nearly a millennium rather than being started by the people you claim started it for the reasons you claim. I have demonstrated repeatedly that these alleged "presuppositions" are not in fact presuppositions. And I have demonstrated repeatedly that even if they were, they would not affect the strength or veracity of the DH.

To characterise this as me being "not interested" (with the implication that I am ignoring evidence against my position) is bordering on the dishonest.

Which is, of course, equally true of your beloved Tablets - yet you keep bringing it up as if it is the only argument you actually have against the DH.

INCORRECT - I have never said that the archaeological evidence against the Exodus/Conquest (and it is actual archaeological evidence against them, not just a lack of archaeological evidence for them) does not matter.

What I have said that even if I grant - for the sake of argument - that Moses did exist, then the rest of the evidence still makes it clear that he did not write the Torah.

INCORRECT - I have said no such thing, and I cannot even think of anything I might have said that could be misinterpreted as meaning anything similar to this.

It is quite clear from the above that you either do not understand my position or are willfully misrepresenting it.

That seems a reasonable summary of your position.

Now all you need to do is:

1) Provide some evidence that the assertions that make up your position are anything other than simply assertions.

2) Provide an actual argument against the DH itself, rather than simply making inaccurate ad-hominem arguments against the people who you inaccurately claim invented the DH.

3) Show how Tablet Theory explains the consilience between different ways of splitting the Torah text better than the DH does.

Not even remotely fair or accurate, I'm afraid. I'll follow up this post with an actual summary of my position for you.

If by "covered", you mean that I have provided evidence for my arguments which you have failed to address, and you have provided no evidence for your arguments - then I agree that we have "covered" most of the arguments.

In other words - just like your discussions on dating systems - you would like us to avoid all talk of consilience between multiple different strands of evidence (which your theory cannot explain but the mainstream theory explains beautifully) so that we can instead nit-pick individual strands.

Your question makes no sense - since the DH does not assert that there was no such person as Moses, and it does not assert that the four written sources came from various oral traditions.

My burning question #1 for Dave:

How do you account for the fact that the DH explains the consilience between the results of splitting the Torah by various different criteria, yet the Tablet Theory doesn't?

Codec

I don't think it is, but I'll let Dean answer.
I don't think the DH necessarily denies the existence of Moses. It just says that Moses didn't write the Pentateuch. It might be possible that one of J E or P was Moses although the evidence is generally against this, but some person called Moses may have existed without causing the DH to fall. In deed I believe Friedman believes in some of the story of the Exodus as historic and he is a big advocate - so the two are not exclusive.

Oral tradition is also not required - though it would seem most likely. The DH still works if there were ancient writings that were redacted together into J and E for instance.

judge

Hi Dave, apologies if you have done this and I missd it.
Can you show us in what precise way these toledoths are similar to excavated tablets?

Thanks

VoxRat

Have you noticed, Dave, that this tactic doesn't work very well in this forum?
Or in any arena where the audience consists of people outside the gullible fundie fold?

Lucretius

The existence of Moses is irrelevant to the DH,the Pentateuch was compiled even under the Tablet "Theory" and whether it was by a man called Moses or several people over time makes NO DIFFERENCE at all to the DH ,it WORKS either way .
You have NOT shown that colophons and toledoths are the same or even similar.
You have NOT shown that colophons and toledoths are the same or even similar
Ancient of course but "very ancient" what do you mean by that?
The whole use of words in different languages has been covered here but you have as yet failed to address any of the points made by others here

Magdlyn

Of course, Deuteronomy (and deuteronomistic additions in other books) was written by the political party of Josiah. It was new then, it was not an "oral tradition," of anyone.

Dave, you've entirely misrepresented Dean's position, ie: what the Doc. Hypothesis actually is, throughout this thread. :frown: Your entire argument is a large and bloated straw man. It's like you're not even reading his posts.

The appearance of "Babylonian words" in Genesis would indicate to me, a late composition. During or after the Babylonian captivity, ie: the 6th cent BCE! Exactly opposite of the point you are ineptly trying to prove. The theory runs that the Tanakh was finally compiled to preserve Judean culture after the exile and destruction of the temple.

Lucretius

Dave the two writers that McDowell quotes are Wellhausen and as has already been pointed out to you Wellhausen DOES NOT say that there was no writing at all merely that only certain things were put into writing .
READ what he says in McDowells quote you used AGAIN.
Both you and McDowell are completley misrepresenting what Wellhausen actually said Dave
The other writer Hermann Schultz,as I have already pointed out Dave was a PROTESTANT THEOLOGY PROFESSOR and yes he was was wrong about the existence of writing at that time.
In addition there is no evidence at all that Hermann Schultz was in fact a "DH advocate" or believed the polytheism to montheism idea or even that "the patriarchal narratives are mere legends"

And yet again Dave even IF by some fluke you (& McDowell )were right it doesn't make the slightest difference to the DH.
It works Dave and the Tablet"theory " does not as has been repeatedly shown to you

spin

For those of you who don't know, William F. Albright was the greatest exponent of that monumental failure and vast waste of money, "biblical archaeology". Quite a conundrum that term, almost an oxymoron. Let's sink big bucks into giving christianity some modern semblance of seriousness and the more cash that went down the crapper the less biblically palatable facts were found. One could say that biblical archaeology died along with Albright, although the corpse still twitched for a decade or so afterwards. Now the only people who bring it up are certainly not archaeologists, nor do they know anything about archaeology.

As for the great man's comments on the table of nations, suffice it to say that archaeology has exposed the table's errors. See, for example, this post in this thread. But some more, Japheth is the Indo-European branch of Noah's family, yet Kittim (Gen 10:4) we know was founded by Sidon, a Phoenician, therefore not Indo-European, city. Then there are the deliberate errors, moving those groups one didn't like into Ham: Nineveh, and Calah the Assyrian cities are somehow spirited into Ham's family. The Philistines, an Indo-European group, in Ham. The biggest is the Canaanites, an obviously Semitic group, in Ham. (If the identification of the Hivites as Achaeans is correct then another Indo-European group in Ham.)

Biblical archaeology was an entertaining pursuit: watching otherwise intelligent people do backflips to justify their religious beliefs.

But it's no wonder that the Josh McDowells of the world cite Albright: of scholars he's one of the last biblical archaeologists and thus a straw for an inerrantist to hang onto. After that they have to settle for the Ron Wyatt squad.


spin

judge

Dave I don't think you are giving Dean his due here.
I did myself a couple of times in the past three or four years bring this exact same topic up on this forum, here and again here

You can probably see from my comments that I am quite open to many things you would hold to.

But I think you can also see from Deans comments that he tried to openmindedly consider the proposition of Wiseman on it's merits.

I think though,at the end of the day the evidence for the DH is actually very very good.
Have you read Who wrote the bible (or via: amazon.co.uk).
It is an excellent book if you have not, I would recommend it.