Dave Hawkins

I have elsewhere claimed that the Documentary Hypothesis (JEDP Theory/Oral Tradition) is receiving increasing skepticism by scholars and I have claimed that the assumptions which underpin the DH have all been refuted.

I believe that the Book of Genesis is a compilation of written records and have written about various Genesis Tablet Theories HERE , HERE and HERE (Footnote 44)

Wikipedia has an article on the Wiseman Hypothesis (Tablet Theory of Genesis) here ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiseman_hypothesis ... in which they refer to my blog article and other sources.

Dean Anderson wants to debate me on this and wants to do it formally. I said I'd love to at some point, but before I do that, I would want the time to assemble original sources which is very time consuming.

So ... for the moment, I say let's just have discussion and see what we can learn. Josh McDowell wrote an excellent critique of the Documentary Hypothesis way back in 1975 and he states that there are 4 basic assumptions upon which the DH is built:

From McDowell, Josh, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol. 2, Here's Life Publishers, 1975. Table of Contents ...

DOCUMENTARY PRESUPPOSITIONS
1) Priority of source analysis over archaeology
2) Natural view of Israel's religion and history
3) No writing in Israel at Moses' time
4) Legendary view of the patriarchal narratives

As I have time, I will quote from McDowell and his sources to explain what each of these mean and how they have been discredited. I have already written on #3 AND #4 above, so I begin with #3. Here's what I wrote over at RD.net ... Here we have Wellhausen himself revealing a belief that the Israelites did not have writing in Moses' day and another prominent scholar of the day who goes even further and says "it was a time prior to all knowledge of writing" !! He wouldn't have written that if he had been writing a mere 30 years later, thanks to all the discoveries of archaeology which showed that writing was well known in Moses' day and at least a thousand years before Moses.

So, Dean, do you need further proof that Documentary Hypothesis Presuppostion #3 has been discredited?

spin

Can anyone cite a single cuneiform tablet written in Hebrew?

Thank you.

















No? I thought not. NEXT!


spin

Ray Moscow

Dave, you are trying to overturn 3 centuries of biblical scholarship, armed only with ignorance on the topic and Josh McDowell (same thing).

Why do you bother? Most people who care enough to have read some of the relevant literature know why the DH is a well-substiated theory with loads of evidence to support it.

Ray

JEST2ASK

Do any of your "orginal source" documents include evidence that these pre- Mosiac writtings existed or eveidence that the compiled / redacted Mosiac writtings existed and were in fact handed down through the generations? I mean other than spinning biblical text?

ETA It is a cheap shot but could you post Wiseman's credentials evil:

Dave Hawkins

You mean 3 centuries of wishful thinking now discredited by the findings of archaeology. You must not be very familiar with the findings of archaeology?

Hebrew cuneiform tablets? No one is saying anything about Hebrew cuneiform tablets. We are talking about the founder of the Hebrew nation (Moses) compiling earlier written records (some of them likely from tablets) into what is now known as the Book of Genesis.

Dave Hawkins

Yes, they do. It takes a while to type it in though. I will try to get some of this typed in early next week.

The elder Wiseman was an Air Commodore in the British Army. His son, Donald J. Wiseman, was a Professor of Assyriology at the University of London.

shirley knott

Oh, you mean the findings of archaeology that disprove the Genesis account of history and pre-history pretty much in their entirety?
Seriously, dave, it *doesn't matter* whether the documentary hypothesis is true or not. Genesis is false to fact regardless.

no nugs for thugs,
Shirley Knott

Lucretius

Just one thing for the moment the British ARMY does not have Air Commodores.
That would be the RAF (Royal Air Force) as completely separate military arm.

spin

Perhaps you're proposing that Moses was tri-lingual. You know, Hebrew, Egyptian and whatever the "earlier written records" were in.

Now a little factual information about Hebrew. It is a more conservative Canaanite language than Phoenician, ie it is less changed from the core Canaanite indications gleaned from the other Canaanite languages (Moabite, Ammonite, Palmyran) than Phoenician, indicating that it was a newer language than Phoenician. (Language changes more as time passes, so fewer changes suggests shorter isolation from the others of the group.)

The earliest fragment supposed to have been written in Hebrew was the so-called "Gezer calendar" (late 10th c. BCE), a document considered by some philologists as a (southern) dialect of Phoenician. Hebrew is a younger language than Phoenician. In fact there is no sure evidence that it existed before the 10th c. BCE and even then the little evidence is equivocal. This will explain why there is no Egyptian influence in Hebrew vocabulary, despite supposedly having been in Egypt for centuries. This suggests that there was no Hebrew language for Hebrews to speak in 14th c. BCE Egypt, if they were ever there. So if they were, and there were a Moses, he is unlikely to have used Hebrew, because it probably didn't exist at the time. This would mean that someone must have translated Moses's efforts.

And I wonder, did they lug the tablets through the desert from Egypt?


spin

Lucretius

spin from the links that Dave provides via the Wikipedia page it appears that they believe that Moses or others perhaps copied these stone tablets onto vellum ,though considering that stone though heavier & less portable is far more durable I am at a loss as why this should be done.
What happened to these tablets which if written directly by Adam et al would have been the "Holiest of Holies"?
Were they simply discarded as just so much rubbish ?
Or like the Mormons "golden tablets " did they just disappear after they had been copied/translated?
From the Wiki link above.
It seems strange to me that the existence of ancient clay tablets NOT containing any parts of Genesis ,should be used as "evidence" that Genesis "must have been" written on such tablets .
Surely if tablets have survived so long then at least some should contain parts of the Bible.