-Jay-

The development of the DH, while having obvious bearing on the modern DH, is not the same as the modern DH. No one argues that Wellhausen was the one who popularized the theory. However a critique of Wellhausen can’t be arbitrarily extended to the modern hypothesis. Wellhausen’s thinking, while perhaps interesting, has little relevance to the accuracy or lack thereof of the modern DH.

Dean’s point is that Mosaic authorship had been questioned for centuries (at risk of personal peril or censorship) prior to Wellhausen’s publication. Wright’s implication is that Jews and Christians had never questioned Mosaic authorship, which is patently false. You’re hairsplitting here. Furthermore, the extent to which Mosaic authorship was or was not questioned prior to Wellhausen’s publication does not bear on the validity of the modern DH.

Dave, your statement (bolded by me) above is specious nonsense. Precisely which archaeological finds between 1878 and 1928 would have obviated the DH? The DH was consilient with the state of archaeology when it was formulated, and it’s consilient with the state of archaeology now.

Please. What would you expect? Our oldest exemplars of the Pentateuch text are from the Dead Sea Scrolls, IIRC, which date to several centuries after the source documents would have been assembled. That we don’t have ancient writings specifically mentioning what would later be thought of as J, E, P, and D sources is neither surprising nor particularly interesting. Your statement suggests you don’t really understand the methodologies of textual criticism in general and linguistic analysis specifically.

Well, not with a blank piece of paper, but with a very large text sample with a statistically relevant spread of words, phrases, and themes, you most assuredly can.

The presuppositions you’ve claimed have been effectively eviscerated by Dean here.
What findings of archaeology? Rohl?


Dave, despite your assertions to the contrary, we need to be concerned with the modern understanding of the divisions. Apart from historical curiosity, Wellhausen’s divisions aren’t as relevant to the discussion as the modern divisions. Of course picking apart Wellhausen’s divisions might allow you to make the semantically honest claim that you’ve made some successful attacks on “Wellhausen’s DH”…

You really need to move past Wellhausen. He’s dead. He couldn’t defend his position even if he wanted to, and moreover the DH that is being discussed in this thread isn’t strictly Wellhausen’s formulation of the DH.

Wellhausen’s scholarship and thought processes, while interesting, aren’t the DH as it is understood today. In 1904, Sir Joseph John Thompson proposed what became known as the Plum Pudding Modelof atomic structure after his discovery of the electron in 1897. While we’ve long since discarded the Plum Pudding Model, it was a very useful construct at the time it was proposed. This doesn’t mean that all understanding of atomic theory that grew out of experiments based on the Plum Pudding Model is based on a “house built of sand”. It does mean that you use a theory as long as it is useful, and then you add, revise, or discard the theory once new information becomes available. Dave, you’re attempting to say that anything based on a theory that later proved to be less than perfect is inherently useless. This argument is very poor indeed, and suggests a lack of understanding of the scientific process. Why are you so worried about the academia of 1878 was convinced by? It’s the academia of 2007 and beyond that’s relevant.

You’re inordinately hung up on the existence of the specific documents. Analysis of the text at hand (in this case the Pentateuch) depends on the text at hand. Obviously, finding a scroll with the J text on it and nothing else would be very strong evidence in favor of the DH, the fact that we don’t have that scroll is irrelevant. You’ve made a very sloppy sleight of hand here in that you’ve switched from discussing the DH, which is based on internal textual considerations to discussing something that you’re calling the DH, that you want to base on external considerations.

And Dave, learn the difference between “assumption” and “presupposition”.


All that’s really established here is that there was a careful editor involved. There is nothing intrinsic to a chiastic structure that requires it to be written by a single author. You’re vastly overplaying the significance of chiastic structures in this case.
You (more specifically your CMI source) ignore that when you look at this in the Hebrew rather than the English, the Flood account is very much a linguistic chimera (in this case J and P). The DH is reliant upon the Hebrew version of the text, and not the English. English translations mask many of the linguistic markers that the DH is based on.

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave OTHER OBJECTIONS PUT FORTH BY DEAN

I'm sure that Dean will (or already has) address these himself.

Dave, about all you've proven here is that you've mastered the non sequiter, the argumentum ad verecundiam, and several variations of circular reasoning. You've had several posters state that despite having come to the thread with zero knowledge of the DH, they found the arguments for the DH much more persuasive than anything you presented.

There was no victory for you here, Dave.

regards,

NinJay

(Dean, blast you and your much more rapid typing abilities...)

-Jay-

Chiasms can be at the level of individual words or at the level of themes within the text. Dave's source showed a not unreasonable chiasmatic breakdown of the flood story, but they overstated its significance by saying it pointed to a single author.

regards,

NinJay

Cege

Thank you. It was a bad guess on my part, as I've learned already from a short research. Chiasms as literacy devices are something new to me.

Cege

Thanks for the reply. I'm finding out about individual words and themes used in chiasms. I see, as you point out, the overstating afdave's source brought to the discussion.

-Jay-

I've grown to doubt that afdave reads and understands his sources very well. His style suggests that he's googling lists of phrases and grabbing hits that look promising to him.

That said, his approach is pretty typical of the apologists around here. Just watching the comments from folks, you've gotta believe that people like afdave are driving more people away from the particular flavor of faith they're selling.

regards,

NinJay

gregor

Dean,

Super job and the patience of a saint. It reminds me of the electronic trees killed while Lee Merrill argued that the City of Tyre is not the City of Tyre for page, after page, after page . . .

If anyone it thinking about starting a poll for lurkers on the results of this discussion, put me down as:

Credible arguments made by AFD for the tablet theory: 0

Reasonable arguments made by AFD that the DH does not explain the text: 0

Reasonable explanations of the DH and the OT texts by Dean: many

Dean Anderson

Hmmm...

I can't get Dave's link to work, so I can't get the full reference for this "quote".

Can someone who can get the link to work give me the full reference, please?

Coleslaw

It links to "Exodus (or via: amazon.co.uk) By Carol L. Meyers" as part of a Google Book Search on "exodus division documentary hypothesis". I see a footnote referring to Friedman, "The Bible With Sources Revealed; A New View into the Five Books of Moses" pp 1-31.

ETA: According to Amazon, "The Bible With Sources Revealed" is referenced on Page 17 and page 70 of the Meyers book. Looking at both those pages in the Google book search preview, I don't see a quote from Friedman, just footnotes identifying him as a source.

Toto

I have recently become aware that Google Books links are not generally available on Dean's side of the pond.

A fuller quote from Meyers: "Virtually no one doubts that there are layers of material produced by multiple authors in Exodus, but identifying them and dating them and suggesting how and why they were organized into a coherent whole is an ongoing process that may never achieve results as generally accpeted as was the documentary hypothesis. Meanwhile, J,E,D, and P remain convenient symbols for some of the components of Exodus. ..."

Dean Anderson

Thanks guys.

I've had a look through my copy of Friedman's book (specifically pages 1-31, which form the introduction) - and the text "quoted" by Dave and attributed to Friedman is definitely not there.

From Toto's quote, it looks like Dave has seen something that actually says that the sources that Wellhausen proposed have been "seriously revised" by modern DH scholars - and cites Friedman as an example of a modern DH scholar who has done such revision.

That is not controversial, of course. One of my main points in the last few pages of this thread has been that attacking Wellhausen is pointless since the modern DH has come a long way since his tentative "documentary hypothesis" proposals.

In other words, Dave has found a quote by someone who cites Friedman generally, treated it as if it were actually a quote of Friedman, and taken it out of context as if it supports him; whereas the actual context, of course, is - as can be seen from Toto's fuller quote - that "virtually no-one doubts that there are layers of material produced by multiple authors in Exodus".

Exactly the opposite of what Dave's Tablet Theory claims!