VoxRat

Well said.

These tactics of Dave's are extremely annoying and distressingly consistent.

Let me highlight a couple of points in his screed that he has not been explicitly called on above.

First Dave has produced literally thousands of posts criticizing Darwin and evolution, and has never read a single book on the subject by a recognized scholar in the field. That's beyond hypocrisy; that's into a whole new dimension.

Second, this habit of Dave's of claiming to be the arbiter of logic, and of what defines this, that or the other "fallacy". He's already been called on "ad populum". He's also recycling his misconceptions of "appeal to authority", on which he's been schooled before (but apparently it didn't take).

Dave "has discovered" a lot of things that are just flat wrong.

Wikipedia is sufficient to this task:
See that? It doesn't matter whether the appeal is to Bozo the Clown or to Stephen Hawking. It doesn't even matter whether the point you're trying to bolster is correct or incorrect. If all you have to back it up is "so and so agrees with me" - that's an "appeal to authority"

shirley knott

Does not seem unlikely.
But I would very much like to hear what dave thinks he is up to with this thread. What is his point?
Does *dave* believe what you are suggesting?
Do you suppose he'll ever tell us?

How about it dave? Just what is the point of this thread, i.e., assuming you make a successful argument and the DH is 'refuted', what then?
Where does that leave us?
How is it different from a civil war buff arguing that Gone With the Wind is an actual factual narrative?

no hugs for thugs,
Shirley Knott

BWE

HA! A famous expert who is a real expert says you are wrong. Show me your proof for your claims. If I go to Wikipedia I don't even FIND "literary artefacts". But if I did find it in Wiki it would just be an example of bias.

Chris Weimer

Who's your expert? Wikipedia? This has got to be a joke. Take any introductory class on the Old Testament and you'll realize that you're full of shit and wikipedia is a joke.

Chris Weimer

Considering that there's no evidence for any supernatural powers, I think your doubt is more than valid. Do realize that arguing against the existence of something and arguing against the powers in that very thing are two totally different creatures.

Dave Hawkins

THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF THE DOCUMENTARIANS

McDowell gives them as follows ... but as I said, prior to this, he writes a whole chapter entitled "The Presupposition of Anti-Supernaturalism." So we really have 5.

So let me put samplings of McDowell's support for these points in this post ...

1) Priority of source analysis over archaeology
As I said, it seems to me that Dean makes McDowell's point for him with his opening sentence ... "The Documentary Hypothesis is derived from the text of the Torah ..." Dean adds later that "There is no part of the DH that asserts that archaeology disagrees with the text and therefore archaeology is wrong - which is what McDowell's claim is." But this is not McDowell's claim. McDowell claims exactly what I have written, nothing more. That PRIORITY is given to the text, not archaeology. A detailed study of the critics own words reveal their bias toward textual analysis and their relative indifference toward the rather new findings of archaeology. I will give one example from McDowell quoting J. Pederson, a Swedish scholar and one of the pioneers of the oral tradition school ... One of the greatest archaeologists of the 20th century, William F. Albright, the man responsible for verifying the authenticity of the Dead Sea Scrolls wrote Why? Because he did not consider the findings of archaeology as one of his quotes below reveals. But as all now agree, in general historical studies, archaeological findings should be very important. Albright says ... And from the pen of one of the radical critics himself, Gunkel says that he... Yes, it must. And it has begun. So to summarize this point, the DH advocates based their hypothesis on the document itself and ignored the findings of archaeology. This was a huge mistake.

2) Natural view of Israel's religion and history
I think Dean agrees with me now on this point. If not, I can provide numerous examples of this viewpoint being expressed by the Documentary critics. I'll just give a couple for now ... To summarize this point, the Documentarians assumed a Hegelian view and assumed that Israel's religion began in the way that they assumed all religion began. Now that the evidence is in, this view has been refuted. Monotheism has been shown by the findings of archaeology to be older than polytheism in Egypt, in Babylonia, in China and in other nations. There is thus no basis for assuming the so called "natural view" of Israel's religion and history.

3) No writing in Israel at Moses' time
Wellhausen himself assumed this and so did many other scholars of the day ... Anyone who studies the development of the DH honestly has to admit that this presupposition had an enormous effect on the DH. If you subscribe to the erroneous view that writing did not exist in Israel in Moses' day, of course you would have no choice but to hypothesize that the Pentateuch was a much later creation. Which is exactly what the Documentarians did. And they were wrong about writing in Moses' day.

4) Legendary view of the patriarchal narratives
According to the Documentarians, there was no such real person as Abraham and other patriarchs. Wellhausen wrote ... McDowell continues ... I wrote in my recent Genesis debate (and footnoted appropriately so you can examine my sources) ... To summarize this point, the Documentary critics assumed that the patriarchal narratives were legendary, even mythical. But archaeology has shown this to be a naive view.

5) The Presupposition of Anti-Supernaturalism
I think Dean and I now agree on this. The Documentarians did not believe the supernatural elements in the Pentateuch, for example ... This is a philosophical viewpoint and there is not much that one can say, other than this viewpoint certainly causes a general skepticism toward the text. How does one prove that supernatural events DO occur? Whole books have been written on this, for example, C.S. Lewis in Miracles. I have written extensively on this as well, but it seems that if people do not want to believe in the supernatural, they WILL NOT believe in it, no matter what evidence you give.

******************************************

So what have I done so far? I have stated the 5 major presuppostions of the Documentarians and shown that they have been refuted. Many more examples are cited by McDowell in support of this.

And I hope you can see what a powerful influence these false presuppositions would have had on the formation of the Documentary Hypothesis.

That's all the heavy typing I'm up for today. Next, I will post evidence of written records prior to the Flood. And while we are waiting for that, I wonder if Dean can produce evidence for the existence of the J, E, D, and P documents. Even a shred. Are any of these documents ever mentioned in other ancient documents? Ever?

spin

You need to know something about the subject.

Ray Moscow

Wow. Dave has overturned not only biology, geology and several other entire sciences -- now, with a little help from Josh McDowell, he has destroyed modern scholarship of the Hebrew Bible, too.

That is impressive.

However, to quibble with just one point:

How about offering the slightest bit of evidence in favour of the miraculous, just to humour us?

Ray

ericmurphy

Not one of these "errors" in any way refutes or even calls into question the DH, Dave. You've still given not the slightest hint that you even understand what the DH even is. Where is your evidence that the DH is incorrect even in detail, let alone in generality?

Dean Anderson

The DH is a purely textual theory, but one which makes no claim that textual analysis can trump (or even should be given higher priority than) archaeology.

The DH makes no claims about whether or not there are supernatural elements in Israel's religion and history, only claims about when the texts describing the religion and history were written and compiled.

Whether or not there was writing in "Moses's time" (assuming he even existed) has no bearing on the DH.

Whether or not the patriarchal narratives are legendary or truly historical accounts has no bearing on the DH. It is only concerned with when those narratives were written down and compiled.

Whether or not the stories about supernatural elements in the Torah stories are accurate has no bearing on the DH, which is only concerned with when those stories were written down and compiled.

No, you have simply re-stated the same five strawman presuppositions that you wrote earlier.

And they still have no bearing on whether the DH is true or not.

You have still not addressed any of the actual claims of the DH, as laid out in my long post.

NO!

Not just "written records prior to the Flood". No-one here is doubting that there were written records prior to the date at which the Bible claims there was a flood.

You need to specifically provide evidence that there were a series of tablets containing the various sections of the Torah that are currently separated by Toledoths.

That is what your claim is. You are not simply claiming that there was writing before ~2,500 BCE. You are claiming that there is evidence that the Torah was originally a set of tablets, each one containing the text that now lies between two toledoths.

You haven't addressed any of the evidence I have provided so far...