spin

The following dialogue is culled from successive posts:
Rather obviously you have yourself confused. We were talking about when the monotheistic viewpoint entered the Hebrew tradition. At this point you went off about Israel and Judah, which relates to matters long before the period but aboiut which we know nothing that could help us understand when a monotheistic viewpoint was entrenched in central Jewish thought. There is no debate that the texts contain old material, but that is in itself irrelevant to when the monotheistic viewpoint hit the text.

You then call my statement "It could be five minutes before for all you know" "flippant". You are however simply wrong. This is a problem you have to face. You can assume nothing beyond the earliest version of the text you have as to when a particular element made it into the text tradition. You have been blithely existing without considering your epistemological responsibilities. What is interesting is that you proceed to palm them off onto me with

I, of course, didn't claim that the monotheistic viewpoint was introduced five minutes before the documents went to Qumran. I attempted to bring you up to your epistemological problem. You have no way of knowing anything about when the monotheistic viewpoint was absorbed by the tradition.

1. You remember the complaint in the prophets about doing naughty things "under every green tree", lurid worship of the goddess Asherah, one of whose symbols was the tree, while the male god's symbol was the massabah MCBH, ie a "pillar", found throughout the Levant. When Joshua sets up a pillar under the oak in the sanctuary of the Lord 24:26, he is acknowledging the religion of Kuntillet Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom, the pillar and the tree being the divine couple.
2. When Jacob sets up a pillar after his famous dream, Genesis doesn't preserve the exact location, but Jubilees does (27:21), for Jacob slept under a tree, very fertile place for a dream, so Jacob also sets up his pillar under a tree and we again have the divine couple. (Jubilees is a strongly monotheistic text and has no signs of knowledge of the polytheistic past of the tree, but the inclusion of the tree indicates that it is part of the tradition.)
3. When Rachel steals the household gods of Laban, she is acknowledging them.
4. Moses gives the now famous speech in Dt 32 which talks about Elyon, the sons of El and Yahweh in the category of sons of El.

At some later time in the tradition when henotheism was the fashion, one can understand the repudiation of overt polytheism, so of course much of it would have been suppressed. A fine example is Dt 16:21-22,

You shall not plant yourself an Asherah of any kind of tree beside the altar of the LORD thy God, which you shall make for yourself. Nor shall you set up a pillar, which the LORD your God hates.



I see no qualitative difference between that which you claim and that which the schizophrenic claims. I guess while the schizophrenic is unable to deal with the epistemological responsibility, you have abnegated it.

You can happily say this because of your epistemological irresponsibility. How you know something is just as important as what you know, for what you know is worthless unless the how is valid. This is why I make the unhappy comparison with the schizophrenic who has the what but not the how (or at least not a functional how).

(I am passing no qualitative judgments on schizophrenics: the few I have known have been interesting people, but very frustrating to deal with.)

Well, hopefully it means that you have bliss.


spin

Sheshbazzar

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sheshbazzar
Another 'little problem' with our dialog here has came to my attention upon a re-reading the entire contents of this thread.

My request to you was specific;
"IS THE QUMRAN MSS. OLDER THAN THE LXX ?"
Everything in my paragraph was pertinent to THE LXX,- NO mention, NOR question was tendered pertaining to the MT or the age of the MT (and as I do not accept the MTs substitution of "sons of Israel", all of your preceeding arguments on that tangent were proving nothing to me anyway)
Your reply was entirely inappropriate to the actual question being posed.
Refraining from a longer observation that I had composed, I'll simply say, you missed the point.

Are you speculating that because Josephus the Jew did his own translating, the LXX must not have been available? if you are, it is not a very solid argument.
I, (and you, and others) have a variety of translations readily available but still prefer to do our own translating directly, and the 'learned' Jews (such as Josephus) have always taken the greatest pride in their ability to read from and to translate directly from the Hebrew Sacred text. (I almost never resort to the employment of the LXX, and if I believe a rendering is better represented in the LXX, I'll translate it into Hebrew first before employing it. unlike most Greek lovers, I use a Hebrew version of the NT also,preferring even the very worst Hebrew to the best Greek.)
Having a choice between Hebrew documents and the Greek translations, I would never choose to base my work on the Greek, and I highly doubt that Josephus the Jew would either.
The common attempt to determine the dating of the composition of the LXX by Josephus's non-employment of it is only based in speculation and theory.
So, just so we have no further misunderstanding regarding your above reference to Josephus, make it clear, as you have not provided any sources for this assertion, are you "doing" history, or are you speculating?
The LXX has always been a compilation of books, the lack of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah from that compilation, does NOT indicate that the major portions of the LXX "must post date that period, by perhaps as little as five minutes, but post date Josephus".
Further, ("IF Ezra and Nehemiah...) IF Josephus was doing his own translating directly from individual Hebrew scrolls there would be no actual compilation to which he would be conforming to, and he would use whatever scrolls were commonly available, even his lack of employment of Esra and Nehemiah cannot be taken as any absolute proof that these scrolls did not exist at that time, only that they are not referenced within his works.

Sheshbazzar

And I asked you the straightforward and unambiguous question;
"IS THE QUMRAN MSS. OLDER THAN THE LXX ?" nothing in any previous post gives any valid reason for not properly answering the question asked, but you replied with a list pertaining to a previous and different subject, the problems with the MT which you were so focused upon, but were a subject as irrelevant to me then as it is now. I had never asked you anything in this thread about your ideas about the Masoretic text, the subject was when the monotheistic viewpoint entered the Hebrew tradition , The time of the placement of the DSS into the Qumran caves , and the relation of the LXX to the DSS mss. that were found at Qumran.
You brought in your monologue on the MT in your attempt prove a change that I had never even disputed.
Good for you. but you did write what you chose to write, and that was its indication. To qoute one of your earlier bits of wisdom "Doh!" Yeah, perhaps it was that Tooth Fariy that you are so fond of, that slipped into the Qumran caves and left those monotheistic scrolls, as we certainly shouldn't be so foolish as to reason that they were simply artifacts produced by human hands over many generations, and derived from the religion and culture that produced them;
NO! Heaven forbid! such a thing would create an "epistemological problem" !!! they MUST have arrived in that location at that time by some unexplainable supernatural agency like tooth fairies, as we certainly are not allowed to consider that the religious beliefs of the Jews could have had any hand in the matter, "because we have no way of knowing anything about when the monotheistic viewpoint was absorbed by the tradition".
A tooth fariy magically inserting full-blown monotheism into the Qumran documents is preferable to a having a "epistemological problem".

spin

If that makes you happy to think so.

Unlike you Josephus did resort to the LXX when he had the opportunity.

Qumran gives credence to the LXX form of the text at times, indicating that it can be more trustworthy every now and then. The LXX is a witness to an earlier Hebrew text than what has come down to us in the MT and to a different one, for in Qumran there is evidence of a Hebrew Vorlage to the LXX. You shouldn't let your biases cloud your judgment.

Josephus is an early witness to the state of text traditions of his time. He had no qualms about using LXX. There are studies on the subject, if you're interested.

Josephus happily used the LXX when available to him. He did not use it for the histories. He says that he translated the historical material. I trust him. Go figure.

I must admit that he's only one piece of evidence for dating parts of the Hebrew bible late and therefore the LXX translation of those parts later. It's a complicated affair.

You wouldn't know.

Your premise is based on erroneous logic. Josephus didn't have a thing for translating directly. It's normal for people to trust translators. That's what most people have always done. Josephus's material on Nehemiah though has no direct connection to either LXX or MT.

By histories though, I had more in mind Kings and Chronicles. I've got lots of reasons for thinking Chronicles was Pharisaic, but the only context I can find for the writing of Kings is the Hasmonean dynasty. (This of course doesn't mean that there was no Vorlage to these "histories". I think they share a common original, not one derived from the other.)

Returning to Ezra, there was an earlier form of the text from that which we have, and it was used as the source for the Greek text 1 Esdras, which Josephus used. This earlier Ezra text was used with the compilation of Nehemiah and it provided Ezra's reading of the law in Neh 8. Neh also has material which also made it into Chronicles.

You are running away from the conversation's core though, making no effort to deal with your claims about the Jewish religion, nor dealing with my indications for polytheistic central characters in the Hebrew bible.


spin

spin

You are making a song and dance rather than deal with the topics in the thread. Well done. You make episemological irresponsibility an art form.

You merely read what you wanted to read. You certainly didn't read what I said in all its optative glory.

[QUOTE=Sheshbazzar]To qoute one of your earlier bits of wisdom "Doh!"
Yup, if I were you, I'd say that to myself, for your lack of logic.

Will you clean up when you've finished and turn out the lights?

You're still here and the lights are still on. Haven't you got tired of this self-flagellation? And the floor is all messy!

Oh, you want some sort of comment from me? I thought you were doing so well performing without a straight man.

It's very hard to extract useful material to comment on from this stuff. It doesn't seem to be dealing with the issues it refers to.

We have a text which has been reworked apparently a number of times. At what point does a monotheistic viewpoint enter the text? Please try to get a better grip on yourself and explain how one could date such a point.

This is more of the same. Rhetoric covering lack of content.

Elvis has left the building.


spin

Sheshbazzar

No spin it does not make me happy to think so, for your sake, because the longer you delay admitting to making a simple mistake like this, the more you are hurting your credibility, and compromising your integrity.
You could just be a man about it and admit that you missed the question.
Threads like this have repercussions, our readers may begin to doubt your skills in the reading and interpretation of difficult texts in foreign languages, if you cannot be trusted to deal with integrity even in the English language.

Its a beautiful day outside here, I do have real chores to do, and this thread has became very unwieldy, with too many tangents and disputations to answer even over the next 1260 hours, so I'm going to give it a rest for a few.
Do yourself a favor and write something that will begin to redeem your integrity, or continue to pile it on if you think that you can bury your trespass deep enough that it will be forgotten.
If you were my son, this day you would be a shame unto me, no this does not make me happy for you, or for me, think about it.
Latter, S

spin

Sheshbazzar, let's look at your little performance. Read what you said:

You'll note that the main theme in your paragraph deals with the form of the "original text", a phrase which you repeat twice, showing your interest in it. And you'll note a second question (and even a third).

Now read all my response so as not to continue getting it out of context:

If you thought about it a little bit, you'd realise that I was responding to your statement: "Thus I find it interesting that you have managed to obtained an "original text" to become so dogmatic about" and your question "what evidence do you have that the reading as given in Qumran mss. IS "The original text"?".

Did you forget about them?? Perhaps the moderator snuck them in while you weren't looking. Perhaps you're suffering from alexia. Why did you pick only the question about the LXX and not your other one? Is it because the other one was related to what I said??

The discourse was the obtainment of the "original text". You proceeded to take my first point out of context and misunderstand the whole discourse.

(And this is where the notion of "original text" got introduced by me: "The original text clearly separated Elyon from the gods and clearly separated Elyon from Yahweh. Elyon divided humankind up for the number of gods and gave the section that was Jacob to Yahweh.")

Now you may apologize for your misguided insistence above and for the following sorry display of your rhetorical skills. If you don't, happy chores.

And if I were your son, I'd wonder how I could retrain you at this late stage.


spin

Sheshbazzar

[QUOTE=spin]Sheshbazzar, let's look at your little performance. Read what you said:
Quote:
Yes, there are variations in the text of this verse, and also in many others, Thus I find it interesting that you have managed to obtained an "original text" to become so dogmatic about, is the Qumran mss. older than the LXX? and what evidence do you have that the reading as given in Qumran mss. IS "The original text"? is there no possibility remaining that it was not "the original text" but a 'copy' varying from the wording of an even earlier text? re-quoting your earlier statement "-And signs all through it of reworking."
So this is what you were having a problem with? my twice repeated -IRONIC- reference to the "original text" ? I'm truly sorry you weren't able grasp the -irony- intended in that paragraph, let me explain it to you then sentence by sentence;
"Yes, there are variations in the text of this verse, and also in many others,"
The reference here is to the scholarly accepted opinion that there were a variety of texts in circulation at that time, how many variations will always remain an unknown, and as you yourself have pointed out, a critical examination shows the LXX was translated from an undiscovered earlier text that varied from the latter MT, with the DSS agreeing in reading at many points with the LXX against the MT it provides us with evidence of the varying textual traditions.

"Thus I find it interesting that you have managed to obtain an "original text" to become so dogmatic about,"
The point I was wryly making is that there is no such thing as an "original text" yet found for anyone to become dogmatic about, and that it just doesn't become a atheist to be as dogmatic about the invariability of the text as some ignorant 'KJV only' Fundie preacher. Or to put it another way, I don't possess or have access any text that I can rightly declare as being "the original text" and I don't believe you do either, or anyone else for that matter -the Pope included-, with all the thousands of variations in the mss. not a single mss. can be pointed to and honestly said of; this is "the original text".
"-And signs all through it of reworking". Why would I have ended this paragraph with a statement like this except to indicate that it was ironic? It is a statement that the texts were reworked, hence cannot be "the original text".
Now I shouldn't need to explain the rest to you, that every text we have, or has been found has only been a copy we have absolutely no "original texts" to be dogmatically stating "this reading is the original".

Perhaps your adversarial stance towards me has prevented you from appreciating the fact that in this instance I was essentially agreeing with the Atheist position regarding the accuracy of the Bible, (and to which I have also allowed in various other places, -where your continued insults indicted- that fact that I was actually agreeing with you,-had flown right over you head.)
This clarified there is no point in wrangling over your further comments.

I am not your enemy, every single sentence I write need not be taken on as some kind of challenge, I freely admit that I am just one more old fool trying to cope with life's difficulties and injustices. I simply don't have enough years left within me to read of all the books that have been published, what I have read has been ambiguous, one author claiming one thing, another something else, and a third arises to disagree with both of the former, and so on and on.
If I read the works of the most respected authorities within their fields,
I come on here and suffer your scorn because you have another opinion that I have never heard of and that is contrary even to that of all these experts; and now they are wrong. All is vanity and vexation.
I acknowledge that a lot of things that I honestly believe in and take for granted for some small peace of mind are actually only errors that I'm just not yet aware of, yet I do have my integrity, and if I clearly see that I have made a mistake or have misunderstood some matter, I do my best not to repeat that error. (but the error is not always clear, one saying this, another saying that, and a third....etc.)
Though I would like to defend my honor here, with a point by point reply to the many things you have written, it is pointless as it would only continue to multiply into further futility. Some of these matters I'll address latter as they arise in other threads, but if it would please you, and we can at least agree to it, I'll turn off the lights.

andrewcriddle

IF the Septuagint translation of the historical books was later than the fall of Jerusalem then I would expect it to be closer to the MT than in fact it is.

Also (although the loose citations in the NT make certainty difficult) it would seem that the NT writers had access to a Greek form of the OT historical books similar to the Septuagint. (eg Hebrews 1:5 parallel 2 Samuel 7:14 1 Chronicles 17:13)

Andrew Criddle

spin

[QUOTE=Sheshbazzar]What a sad and sorry performance.

After bleeding like a stuck pig that you had been misunderstood and that your question hadn't been answered you pirouhette to the above. Let me quote your prima donna act:
Emmy award quality, don't you think?

You're all over the road like a person with Montezuma's revenge.

I guess when you've got god you don't have to make sense. When you try, you have problems.

The only way you could have defended your honour was to stop the histrionics, refrain from asking for further explanations that lead to side issues, cut back on the over assumption, leave off projecting your misunderstandings onto the person you are talking with, give direct clear responses rather than hedging, think about what you are reading and above all to stay on topic.

The salient topics of this thread as I understand them were:

• Establishing earlier forms of a text and their validity
• How does one get beyond the earliest preserved form of the text
• What is the relationship of monotheism to the development of the Jewish religion
• What do the texts say about the alternatives to monotheism, and more generally,
• How does one know what one knows

We didn't get very far with them.


spin