Doctor X

Spin:

Well I cannot very well sit down and copy out Friedman. That would be plagerism. There are other "summaries" of the Documentary Hypothesis, but his is probably the easiest.

I am not quite sure what that demonstrates. It certainly does not call into question the JEPD sources which do not require a "myriad of necessary refinements." I am aware people dream up J1, J2, to J1347 much like dividing Q into various groups. Not everyone sees the need for that.

Well, according to Friedman, D is anti-P which would explain him expunging Aaron from the story. Now, understand, Friedman has his argument for D using P as a source. Other scholars, while agreeing with a separate D source--actually two--may not agree with his argument for dating. Friedman would certainly argue against a "long development" of the P section. I must admit most of the scholars I have read consider P a coherent source probably written by one person. Anyways, to argue his position, I would have to post his chapter on D, for example.

Well, D does this to P in other places--reversing the order of P's creation for example. He even "insults" the written torah in one passage. It makes perfect sense if he disagrees with P.

Again, I would have to sit down and copy out Friedman's analysis of D. Now you may not agree with it of course.

Anyways, however one slices it we are arguing the same thing with respect to the opening post methinks: different sources for the various commandments. If someone wants to argue that P depends on D, for example, then you have one writer or "school of writers"rewriting another.

--J.D.

spin

This is of course just damned silly. These religious texts including Deuteronomy, being preserved by the priesthood (would anyone dispute this?), are not going to have the father of the priesthood, Aaron, expunged from any of them. That would be like Americans expunging Washington from their history. Can you understand the stupidity of this? Apparently because of the writer's belief in the alphabet soup.

If P was the priestly school of writing and Deuteronomy was written after P, who could have written Deut with its anti-P attitude and when, given that the production of literature was in the hands of the scribes of the temple?



spin

Doctor X

Not the same priesthood of the P school. I would really recommend checking Friedman's argument directly and his sources.

Non-Aaronid priests would just as the Aaronid P school diminished Moses--and by extension, the Mosaic priesthood.

Since the analogy fails, of course not. However, a better analogy would be comparison of a pro-Confederate military history with a pro-Union history. Neither can radically change the known stories--cannot have Gen. Lee flee the battlefield at Fredricksburg leading to a major Union victory--but they can raise and diminish responsibilities. Indeed, pro-Lee historians blamed Gettysburg on Longstreet while vice a versa.

If Friedman was a minority opinion this might prove relevant. However, I have been yet to be given a better explanation of the doublets, consistent use of divine names for certain texts, the consistent political opinions that match these texts, and, frankly, a response to over two hundred years of scholarship on the matter.

As noted, repeatedly, above, D was not of the same school as P. Similarly P writes against a J and E.

--J.D.

Gawen

This is also another very interesting thread. But one thing I've noticed is that the arguments all come down to what are 'most-likelys'. Dr. X and a few others seem to be going with a general consensus of a couple hundred years scholarly studies, whereas Spin has problems with a few areas?
My questions are: How is Spin's calculations more 'wrong' than everyone elses? Is not the entire subject matter conjecture, hypothesis and speculation? Can't Spin, sort of...caught on to something else...a different line of reasoning?

spin

I can't.

From the Persian period down to the second century, Judea was basically the area around Jerusalem.

I get the idea nobody, but nobody contemplates analogies for what they are, so I'll have to try to stop using them. There is not even any point in trying to discuss it.

I don't totally discount the basic underlying logic of alphabet soup. And I don't have much respect for recourses to authorities no matter how many of them there are. This is why it's always better to deal with the people who know what they are talking about, so that there will be no recourse to authority and the person has to provide his or her own reasoning.

Probably not. It was around before the institutionalization represented by the priestly materials in the rest of the pentateuch.

I get the idea that with all these source layers that the writers don't consider the literacy rate at the time. There are always these expansive ideas of many different sources implying many different scribal schools -- and who is going to support them? Different priesthoods in the one city? or some in the city and some in the country? I might be able to imagine a factional split within the one priesthood or a development within the priesthood but not the two distinct schools theory posited here which doesn't seem to reflect what we know of the post-exilic period.


spin

spin

The fellow who started the documentary hypothesis was Julius Wellhausen who wrote his Prolegomena late in the 19th century, so it's just over 100 years that it's been part of the consensus. He started it off and all that has been happening over the last 100 years is a bit of tweaking to cover some of the blatant problems. But don't get me wrong, Wellhausen started something critically important by providing observations on a literature once thought to have been monumental which lead to the obvious conclusion that it was not monumental after all. We had to start dealing with such things as inconsistent use of divine names and parallel reports and intertwined reports. These were telltale signs of multiple fingers in the pie. Forced to face the evidence the conservative scholars tend to "give away as little as possible" and so we have a few literary sources each of which gets dated as early as possible. This "possible" is becoming a shifting scale.

I'm not putting forward anything very new. A number of scholars accept the precedence of Deuteronomy and that the "book of the law" mentioned in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls is Deuteronomy which says early in the first chapter that it contains what God commanded, ie the law.


spin

Gawen

as opposed to liberal scholars "giving to much"?
I'm just waiting to see if you guys can find some middle ground....if possible....to agree on. I am no biblical scholar by any means, but I catch most of what you all are saying.

spin

As opposed to those who are trying to do historically based analyses.

How do you give too much in this sort of situation?

There's not much to agree on. Doctor X accepts his authority, Friedman. I don't have access to the book. While I could deal with Friedman if he were to discuss it, it's alittle difficult to do so with Doctor X.


spin

Doctor X

Gang:

Well, I feel a bit like a plagerist. If asked why I agree that, for example, you have two different priestly schools--P and D, I could grab Friedman and post the chapter. It is not my idea; I did not come up with it. Another example is he shows E has a lot of material referable to one area and one branch whilst J has another.

I recommend the book because it is very a accessible introduction.

Spin and I are not that far off, actually. I cannot really stand in for Friedman or any other Hebrew scholar.

Somewhere in this thread or the other I mentioned a mentor who summarized that one of the problems Friedman has is his dating of the authors. In his book he gives his justification, but one thing I find lacking is an explanation of how all of the Babylonian/Sumerian stuff got in. Many scholars felt that this made those texts "post-exilic." Friedman dates these text pre to "just" exilic.

One thing Spin brings up--which Friedman agrees with--is the tendency to "create authors" and schools--hence "layers of J" or J1, J2, et cetera. One can consider this, but sometimes a scholar can start looking for a "J2" and go full-circle to "create" him. Friedman even admits a "mistake" in a previous edition.

Recognition of "multiauthorship" started centuries before Wellhausen. Wellhausen brought a lot of things together.

--J.D.

Gawen

Spin,
Since Friedman isn't exactly available, perhaps upon reading his book may help anyway? Then at least you and Dr. X would be on the same page...so-to-speak.
What the problem here is, I think is any scholar giving away any evidence, whether too little, false, misconstrued, mistaken or biased. Where do you find that middle ground? Where is the happy medium? Who decides? What is it about Friedman's work that you don't agree with? Even Dr. X has a few problems with Friedman. But it seems that Friedman is the best to go on for the moment.

Dr X: As long as you give credit to Friedman, there's no plagerism involved.

As I said, I am no biblical scholar. And that's why I'm here reading you guys that do all the leg-work. Many of us learn from people like you, even if you disagree on certain issues. And even if there are two or more schools of thought on a debated issue, that doesn't make any one of them right or wrong. Just which one is more plausible in one's view.