Steven Avery

Oh, I would offer that my posts and research are acceptable to many here, even some who disagree with me 95%+, as being generally consistent and understandable and backed-up with references and scholarship. There are others of course who don't have that view, and perhaps they have a little chip on their shoulder, a bit of a tude ....

As to the question here, JEPD etc, multiple research and discussions can get rather time-consuming, so one does things step by step. I started to put together an overview, and my afternoon went in other directions. This stuff is really low priority to me anyway, since I view it as more humorous and absurd than something that requires earnest attention (example: attacks on Petrine and Pauline authorship).

Anyway, here is one article that I would say is readable, a reasonable balance between scholarly and web-accessible, and is close to my view.

http://www.biblicaldefense.org/Resea...eliability.htm
OLD TESTAMENT RELIABILITY by Dr. Phil Fernandes

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

RUmike

Thanks, prax. Now, was that so difficult?

Steven Avery

Not at all.
And for some of the posters .. salvanoot s'il vous plait.

There are limitations to how deeply a person decides to jump into a conversation. Even finding one article that is a reasonably comfortable representation can take a little time and effort (of course I could always check Holding's site:grin and sometimes a person may even do things like work on a Sunday, and enjoy a beautiful blizzard.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Apikorus

Oh puhleeze, Steven. This work by "Dr." Phil Fernandes is supposed to be a chapter from his dissertation? Virtually every single reference is to a single book by Gleason Archer, and an introductory text at that. This is a parody of scholarship! A number of points:

• There is no proof that any book of the Hebrew Bible was written in 2000 BCE. This is a fantasy.
• The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls most certainly casts the MT in a new light. We now have pre-Christian, Hebrew scrolls which agree with the LXX over the MT in several instances. In many cases scholars believe that the MT is corrupt or reflects an interpolation later than the LXX exemplar.
• The Masoretes were active c. 200 CE - 800 CE. The consonantal proto-MT seems to have stabilized by the time of bar Kokhba, as the Wadi Muraba'at texts show. From that point on, the Masoretes took exceptional care of the text, but the text they inherited was corrupt in many places.
• "Higher criticism has been abused by liberal scholars" -- LOL! The author is correct, though, in that dispassionate modern scholars analyze the Bible using the same preconceptions they bring to the analysis of Homer, the Epic of Gilgamesh, etc. And why not?
• Nowhere in the Torah does it say that Moses wrote the entire text.
• "The author at times is so precise in his details that he lists the exact number of fountains (twelve) and palm trees (seventy) in Exodus 15:27. The author even describes the appearance and taste of the manna from heaven for future generations (Numbers 11:7-8). These precise details make it unlikely that the author was other than an eyewitness of the events he recorded." This laughable. The author of The Iliad was even more precise in many instances. I guess that means it is all true.
• "Moses was qualified to be the author of the Pentateuch. He was educated in Egypt, grew up there, and spent much of his later life in the Sinai desert (Acts 7:22)." Why on earth should anyone believe that Acts contains historically valid information on the life of Moses? We can use this approach to prove the historicity of the Arthurian legends. Since Guinevere put an end to Morgan La Fay's affair with Guiomar, it is only natural that Morgan should have sent the Green Knight to frighten her. Is there any real proof that Moses was an historical figure? Is Moses more historical than Odysseus and Achilles?
• The "second millenium BCE customs" crap has been thoroughly discredited by the work of Thompson, van Seters, and others. Of course, "Dr." Fernandes' only source seems to be a 1974 introductory text by Gleason Archer, so it is understandible that he might have missed what went on in the past 30 years of biblical studies.

I could go on and on but I have to teach the grad students this morning.

Diogenes the Cynic

Praxeus, I asked this question before but maybe you didn't see it.

How did Moses write the Torah in a language that didn't exist yet?

Steven Avery

I agree with the points, and I agree that it probably is not a real dissertation of substance from an accredited school. Point taken. However, it is a good summary of the problems with documentary hypothesis.

btw here is an article from one of my fav Christian authors
http://www.christiancourier.com/feature/november99.htm
Destructive Criticism and the Old Testament - Wayne Jackson

And Answers in Genesis weighs in
http://www.answersingenesis.org/crea...0/i4/moses.asp
Did Moses really write Genesis?

They, along with "Religious Tolerance" have the verses ready for quick look-see.

Helpful in understanding the modern mentality is..
http://www.winnie-the-pooh.ru/online/lib/stud.html
New Directions in Pooh Studies:

He doesn't claim proof, but he does give evidences, such as the similarities with the Hammurabi Code .

Scholars "believe" a lot of things. The most important aspects of the DSS is that it shows that even in Isaiah the Masoretic Text is a fully faithful transmission, without doctrinal textual tampering. Not even on Isaiah 7,9 and 53. Also the Penteteuch is largely simply the Masoretic Text. Other texts vary widely, even within the DSS corpus itself, indicating mostly that the DSS were not the Jerusalem Temple. Fernandes glossing over the differences is one area where I would disagree, much like I view the alexandrian NT texts as abjectly corrupt.

Whether technically fully accurate or not, I have pointed out that the textual techniques they use demand and create and even fabricate an errant text. They will choose the reading that is false and errant and wrong as a matter of faithfulness to their own "scholarly" presup. And this will not be the historic Bible. There is nothing "neutral" about a methodology that ipso facto creates errors even against the vast majority of historical manuscripts. La grande illusion.

Afaik, nobody says that Moses wasn't working with some material brought down to him, and even Fernandes does not say "the entire text", obviating a lot of your technical objections.

I don't understand your Acts rant, since the information there is essentially the same as in the Tanach. Where do you think Midian was ? Does not the Tanach say he was eductated in Egypt ? You seem to be going a bit bonkers in your attempt to find points to disagree.

The one attempt at a substantive point you make is re: the customs. You hand-wave some names, and drop it at that. If you have a cogent study of flora and fauna, or Egyptian and other ancient studies, that you think places the Penteteuch up 500-1000 years, you are welcome to share the precise points and articles that you consider pertinent.

Do you have any view on the Yehuda Radday computer study which points against a multiple authorship of Genesis ?

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Diogenes the Cynic

Dude, there WAS no Moses. There was no Exodus. The Torah was not the work of a single author and the Hebrew language did not exist in 2000 BCE (0r 1500 BCE or 1200 BCE). Absolutely nobody with any scholarly credibility believes in Mosaic authorship of the Torah.

Chris Weimer

Likewise - is the Quran written in 2000 BCE for it also shares many similiarities with Hammurabi.

Apikorus

Does not the Iliad say that Achilles was dipped in the river Styx? Does not the Epic of Gilgamesh say that Enkidu helped slay the Humbaba?

Noone really knows where "Midian" was. Exodus 3:1 places Midian in close proximity to Horeb, which Mount Sinai, the location of which is unknown. In general, the material in Exodus seems to place Midian either in or next to the Sinai desert. The most extensive biblical material on Midian, though, is contained in the Gideon pericope in Judges 6-8. Israel is oppressed by Midian for seven years (Judges 6:1) and is redeemed by Gideon. Gideon, however, was a northern hero from the tribe of Manasseh. Everything in the story of Gideon suggests that the Midianites are a northern transjordanian tribe (e.g. 7:12, which identifies Midianites as a "people of the East;" it is the northern tribes of Naphtali, Asher, and Manasseh which pursue them in 7:23). Some scholars have suggested it was a geographically shifting confederation of tribes. So where was Midian?

MiddleMan

My favorite quote from Dr. Phil F's website:

"Third, eyewitness details in the Pentateuch indicate the author was a participant in the events he was describing. The author at times is so precise in his details that he lists the exact number of fountains (twelve) and palm trees (seventy) in Exodus 15:27".

Hee hee. So, we've been able to verify these observances? Have the fountains and palm trees been found to confirm these rather remarkable eye-witness observances? :rolling: