rhutchin

Yep, that's kinda the way I understand it. Hebrew seems to be a language where people make statements of fact and context infers tense but does not require any particular tense (or something like that). Thus, when translating Hebrew into English, where people are accustomed to tense and cannot cope without it being explicitly stated, the translator often seeks to oblige.

Where is the Hebrew expert when you need him?

rhutchin

If we go by the text, there are places where we are told that God wrote something (the Ten Commandments) and gave them to Moses making Moses the source and other places where God tells Moses to write stuff down again making Moses the source.

There is no reason to conclude that Moses was not the source, unless you personally just don't want to believe that any of that stuff happened.

schriverja

You're being hypocritical here. You have claimed that Moses was given tablets, scrolls, or whatever for the stuff prior to him being around (creation account, flood, etc). Why could an editor long after Moses also have access to similar sources, also including the narrative about Moses which he/she used to compile the Pentateuch?

There is no textual evidence that any of the narrative was written by a first hand eyewitness, correct? If I'm wrong, cite it.

edit to add: A later editor solves many of the problems, such as the account of Moses death and the other anachronisms.

rhutchin

It is all Wellhausen's personal view and hypothetical.

Probably because Moses did not physically write anything. He assigned that task to his scribe/secretary/historian whose job it was to record all that happened and all that Moses told him. It was just the writing style of the day.

rhutchin

OK. I see no problem there. I vote for Ezra to have done it.

Does that change anything with regard to how we view the Torah?

schriverja

It should. Ezra was living around the time of the Babylonian exile in the 5th century BCE. Literally a millennium or more after the events described in the Pentateuch took place. How many quality sources did Ezra have access to, and what method did he use to determine what parts of those sources made the cut into the Torah and which didn't? His own theological views? With so much time passed from the (alleged) events to the time he compiled it, how much embellishment had occurred?

JonA

What is the point of anyone continuing in further discussion with you on this matter?

You've clearly already made up your mind, and you are clearly not open to the use of logic, reason, or reality to address the issue at hand.

If you want to believe your silly nonsense, then go for it; but don't try to pretend it's right, and certainly don't try to pass it off as actual textual criticism: it's nothing but fantasy, delusion, and deception.

Perhaps you'd be willing to read the text for what it actually says, rather than reading what you want the text to say? Be warned, though: Fruitful discussion may ensue from such honesty.

Jon

semiopen

Thanks for the link.

The key things about Wellhausen's work is that it was a while ago and subsequent scholarship suggests that he was too conservative. That is, there has been no movement to a more conservative, earlier origin of the bible. One would be hard pressed to find a single published scholar who believes that Moses wrote any of the bible.

The Yahwist: The Earliest Editor in the Pentateuch by Christopher Levin Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 126, No. 2 (Summer, 2007) gives a more modern view.

However P appears to be rock solid.

Genesis 1:1 to 2:3 is the priestly account which according to Mark Smith in The Priestly Vision of Genesis I (or via: amazon.co.uk). This account is clearly post-exilic, and written after the story in Genesis 2,

Regrding Ezra.

Figuring that the actual existence of this guy is at best somewhere between questionable and dubious, I would hesitate giving him credit for writing anything. In fact, if someone as recent and well documented as Ezra may not be real, one has to wonder more about the earlier figures and the peculiar assurance of many that they really lived.

Lunawalk

the last part of Deuteronomy does not say Moses was raised to life after death or god told him the manner of his death. So I guess he misinprated the passage.



Why, the city of Laish was not called Dan in the time of Abraham It was changed to Dan in the time of the judges around two hundred years after Moses' death. So that before his death how can he know the future name of the city. It implies a later time.

even the events and exact conversations in genesis about 400 before his birth

Lunawalk

so what the text uses the phrase
according to the word of the LORD Anybody could wrote it. if I say JFk is still alive according to the word of the LORD. Does that mean it true? is it that easy to prove a point.

Again the text does not speak of Moses raised to life.