Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Mike PSS · 10-05-2007, 08:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dean Anderson

A summary of my position (as promised in my last post):

1) There are multiple criteria we can differentiate between parts of the Torah - by age of writing, style of writing, interests of author, vocabulary used, and so on. The results that we arrive at when we split the Torah using each of these criteria are consilient with each other. I have provided evidence and examples of this in this thread.

1) What are your bases for these criteria? You have only given me the splits for the Flood Story. Nothing else. Most of the Torah (last part of Genesis plus Exodus through Deut. less last portion of Deut.) is consistent with the writing style of Moses. The differences in style, age, interests, vocabulary used in the non-Mosaic portions of Genesis is better explained by the Tablet Theory. I don't think there are any major differences within the parts attributed to Moses by the Tablet Theory.

Well, Dave is very consistent, and consiliant, here.

I think in another couple pages the requests for information about the DH, which are freely available either online or in past posters links, will reach a crecendo with Dave. The semantic arguments about the actual age of some sample Hebrew words will become the point of contention.

Ignoring the consiliant nature of the DH and hand-waving it away because "anyone can slice up a book with a Ronco Book Slicer©" is Dave's lot in life.

Keep going Dave. I'm learning a lot....... in how NOT to debate.

VoxRat · 10-05-2007, 08:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave

Quote:

By the way, most of the people on this thread don't seem to think you have successfully addressed the Flood story. You might want to revisit it and address their criticisms...

I'm not debating them. I'm debating you.

In case you hadn't noticed, Dave, this is a public forum. Whether you like it or not, those of us reading the thread constitute the "jury" in your "debate". Now, you can always claim that your failure to convince one opponent is due to that one opponent's intractability. But when you assert that you have proven this, or given references to that, and the "jury" unanimously disagrees... You lose.

Quote:

So you want me to judge if the DH is true without any consideration of the existence or non-existence of Moses, even though you yourself said

Quote:

(Note: The biggest piece of evidence that Moses did not write the Torah is the archaeological evidence that there was no Exodus or Conquest, and therefore that it is incredibly unlikely that Moses ever existed.

Ummm, Dave? Are you under the impression that DH = the theory that Moses did not write the Torah ? Because after >600 posts in the thread, that seems like an awfully basic point to be unclear on.

Quote:

... Er ... OK. I guess I can try.

Quote:

The existence of Moses is crucial to the Tablet Theory in that if he did not exist then Tablet Theory cannot be true.

If the existence of Moses doesn't matter for your theory, why should it matter for my theory? (I think it does, but why do YOU think it does?)

:huh: Probably for the same reason you do: because your "theory" IS that the alleged "tablets" were written by the alleged "patriarchs" - especially the alleged "Moses".:huh:

Mike PSS · 10-05-2007, 08:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lucretius

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave

Consilience with contrived ideas is pretty easy. We could perform similar butcher work on other literature and achieve consilience for pretty much anything we want. What would be convincing is if you could provide some actual evidence that there really were 4 documents which were merged according to your labyrinthine scheme, then provide some explanation as to why on earth some Jewish scribes would do such a thing. Is there any precedent for this type of thing in any other literature anywhere?

That's the thing Dave you can't do that to just any literature and get consilience or a readable text.
UNLESS the literature is a compilation and only then if it is compiled in a certain way.
And that is precisely the way in which the Pentateuch was compiled, so we can for the purposes of the DH do precisely that.
It appears you know as little about stylistic /linguistic analysis as you do about scientific subjects

Version 1: Portuguese = French + Spanish
Version 2: Portuguese = French + Spanish (+Other Factors)

:Cheeky: :devil3: :grin:

:frown: :banghead:

Magdlyn · 10-05-2007, 08:57 AM

It seems Dave is under the impression that this is a formal debate between him and Dean, and the rest of the posts here are the Peanut Gallery, and he is mostly acting as if they didn't exist.

How odd. How disingenuous.

Pappy Jack · 10-05-2007, 09:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave

..........3) Getting a nice narrative flow by butchering text does not prove that the text was butchered along claimed lines in it's original. When the butchering criteria is subjective, we can achieve any result we want.....

Dave, what part of linguistic and textual analysis to determine consistencies or inconsistencies of style, grammar, vocabulary and thus likely authorship, and then presenting those results to demonstrate the consilience of that analysis constitutes 'butchering'? (Nice choice of neutral, non-judgemental word, BTW.)

Stephen T-B · 10-05-2007, 09:39 AM

Well, at least someone is getting some responses, which makes this a more satisfactory thread to follow than afdave's other ones.
In "peanut-gallery" style, I'm wondering what he is making of the discovery that the existence/non-existence of Moses is immaterial to the DH case.
I wonder why he thought it was?
Is it possible that the point of this thread was to establish that Moses is a historical figure, which would then be a stepping stone towards the ultimate goal of establshing that Noah is, and that the global flood actually happened - though not as described, because my recollection of the story makes no mention of the tumultuous, catastrophic events which afdave & Co assert altered the world's topography. We are merely told it rained 40 days and that for 150 days all the "high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered."
(Mountains? afdave & Co. say there weren't any mountains). But never mind that.
So, if this thread can't achieve afdave's intentions for it, I wonder if he'll lose interest?

Pappy Jack · 10-05-2007, 09:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephen T-B

......if this thread can't achieve afdave's intentions for it, I wonder if he'll lose interest?

Interest seems to be lost in many such threads, although victory (or something similar) may be proclaimed elsewhere.

Barbarian · 10-05-2007, 09:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave

I'm not debating them. I'm debating you.

That's actually far from a closed case. You are either debating all of the posters who brought up counterpoints, or you are only debating with Dean and entertaining the rest of us. Make your pick.

And, dave, I would like to see how the tablet theory deals with 2=14 (then 2 again, btw, in the same chapter a few verses later). There's no toledoth to separate them; they are on the same 'tablet'.

A disclaimer: the existence of Moses, Noah, Abraham or even YHWH is irrelevant to the 2=14 question. The (lack of) similarity between the toledoth and tablet colophons is irrelevant too. No religious feelings should have been hurt during the production of this question.

FatherMithras · 10-05-2007, 11:56 AM

Quote:

5) Nonsense. It explains it quite coherently.

6) Moses DIDN'T write in a variety of Hebrew styles. That's because Moses didn't write most of Genesis.

these contradict each other. If 80 percent of the Torah is supposed to be from Moses, and the tablet theory explains why the parts he wrote "quite coherently" why does he write in different styles? Number five claims he didn't do that (factually false, even if you believe Moses existed, because we know for a fact there are different writing style) and number four claims we can coherently explain what he didn't do.

Dave, is contradicting reality fun at least? You can't simply assert that the sections you claim moses wrote don't have textual differences and variations of hebrew found in different time periods when they've been analyzed and proven to be such. That's like when you claimed in the YEC model, data points magically fail to exist.

VoxRat · 10-05-2007, 01:53 PM

Bump

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave, September 26, 2007, 09:35 AM

Are you guys trying to say that this ...

Quote:

19 And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.
20 Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.

and this ...

Quote:

2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

are contradictory?

If so, pardon me while I fall out my chair laughing. I'll explain this in my next response to Dean after I recover.

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

10-05-2007, 08:57 AM	#644
Magdlyn Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Massachusetts Posts: 2,230	It seems Dave is under the impression that this is a formal debate between him and Dean, and the rest of the posts here are the Peanut Gallery, and he is mostly acting as if they didn't exist. How odd. How disingenuous.

10-05-2007, 09:39 AM	#646
Stephen T-B Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Leeds, UK Posts: 5,878	Well, at least someone is getting some responses, which makes this a more satisfactory thread to follow than afdave's other ones. In "peanut-gallery" style, I'm wondering what he is making of the discovery that the existence/non-existence of Moses is immaterial to the DH case. I wonder why he thought it was? Is it possible that the point of this thread was to establish that Moses is a historical figure, which would then be a stepping stone towards the ultimate goal of establshing that Noah is, and that the global flood actually happened - though not as described, because my recollection of the story makes no mention of the tumultuous, catastrophic events which afdave & Co assert altered the world's topography. We are merely told it rained 40 days and that for 150 days all the "high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered." (Mountains? afdave & Co. say there weren't any mountains). But never mind that. So, if this thread can't achieve afdave's intentions for it, I wonder if he'll lose interest?

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.