Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Lucretius · 10-16-2007, 06:35 AM

Dave do you ever actually read what you post here ?

Quote:

The purpose of such structures, in the context of the biblical world, was to make the stories easier to remember: typically, ninety to ninety-five percent of people in the ancient world were illiterate, so information had to be transmitted orally, and for the average person, it was necessary to make a story easy to remember by telling it in familiar and memorable patterns—often requiring the elimination, streamlining, or summarization of details that members of a literate, writing-based society would typically include.4 The JEDP theory was composed under the premise of a graphocentric (a prejudice in favour of writing) view, and thus the artifacts of oral transmission were either completely unknown or were misread as signals of ‘inefficient and careless’ literary practice (p. 40).

This bit actually contradicts your "Tablet Theory" does it not ?

Lucretius · 10-16-2007, 06:44 AM

Quote:

. I'll admit that DH advocates have changed the splits somewhat in light of discoveries. HOWEVER ... and this is a big HOWEVER ... you fail to admit the very obvious fact that the DH never would have seen the light of day if it had been floated 50 years later, thanks to all the archaeological finds. If you never admit this, then there's not much point in arguing the DH longer

This is yet again mere assertion on the part of supporters of ther "Tablet Theory"
ONCE AGAIN the fact that there are SOME tablets with writing on them does not necessarily mean that the Pentateuch MUST have likewise been written in this form.
You have still not addressed the primary problem that colophons are NOT toledoths and vice versa
Dave you cannot use "archaeology" to "prove" the Tablet Theory without actually having archaeological examples of these very tablets.
Why can't you see that ?

Dave Hawkins · 10-16-2007, 06:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keith&Co.

Quote:

Now some have criticized me for quoting Wright to refute the DH, but this criticism is naive. We must remember that it was Wellhausen who popularized the theory, not Friedman or other later writers. So we must understand Wellhausen's thinking in order to truly understand the development of the DH.

I think this is the same mentality that keeps attacking evolution by criticizing Darwin. What people thought up or thought of a hundred years ago is interesting, but if you're criticizing a theory that is currently active (as opposed to, say, the 'balance of humours' theory of human temperment), then wouldn't it be best to criticize the current thinking? Current research? Current writings? The current state of the theory, no matter how old?

Sure, the theory developed then, but what, in the last decade, has been offered as disproof of the theory?

Well it seems that the only things that have changed since then are ...

1) a few split points
2) a distancing from the erroneous views of early DH advocates

Now if there had been some great new discoveries which strengthen the DH, OK, then I'm all ears and we should consider it. But that's not the situation at all.

Dave Hawkins · 10-16-2007, 06:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lucretius

Quote:

. I'll admit that DH advocates have changed the splits somewhat in light of discoveries. HOWEVER ... and this is a big HOWEVER ... you fail to admit the very obvious fact that the DH never would have seen the light of day if it had been floated 50 years later, thanks to all the archaeological finds. If you never admit this, then there's not much point in arguing the DH longer

This is yet again mere assertion on the part of supporters of ther "Tablet Theory"
ONCE AGAIN the fact that there are SOME tablets with writing on them does not necessarily mean that the Pentateuch MUST have likewise been written in this form.
You have still not addressed the primary problem that colophons are NOT toledoths and vice versa
Dave you cannot use "archaeology" to "prove" the Tablet Theory without actually having archaeological examples of these very tablets.
Why can't you see that ?

No it's not either. It includes scholars who have no love at all for the Tablet Theories.

Lucretius · 10-16-2007, 06:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keith&Co.

I think this is the same mentality that keeps attacking evolution by criticizing Darwin. What people thought up or thought of a hundred years ago is interesting, but if you're criticizing a theory that is currently active (as opposed to, say, the 'balance of humours' theory of human temperment), then wouldn't it be best to criticize the current thinking? Current research? Current writings? The current state of the theory, no matter how old?

Sure, the theory developed then, but what, in the last decade, has been offered as disproof of the theory?

Well it seems that the only things that have changed since then are ...

1) a few split points
2) a distancing from the erroneous views of early DH advocates

Now if there had been some great new discoveries which strengthen the DH, OK, then I'm all ears and we should consider it. But that's not the situation at all.

Dave the very fact that there have been very few "minor" alterations to the DH in fact proves how right it was in the first place rather than the opposite.
It is the very correctness of the original DH that leads to the possibility of only making a few minor changes .

Cege · 10-16-2007, 07:04 AM

afdave, I didn't have to read far to see this in support of your claims:

Quote:

The JEDP theory was composed under the premise of a graphocentric (a prejudice in favour of writing) view, and thus the artifacts of oral transmission were either completely unknown or were misread as signals of ‘inefficient and careless’ literary practice.

You've been arguing exactly the opposite for the past 34 pages.

I would guess that chiasms found in biblical text would be the result of English translations, but I'll have to research that and come back to it.

Lucretius · 10-16-2007, 07:08 AM

Dave you also use this as "proof " that the DH does not work

Quote:

One of the largest chiasms in Scripture, Phelan notes (p. 114) occurs between Genesis 6:1–9:19, the account of the Flood:

-A - Noah and his family: the only righteous people on earth (6:9–10)
--B - God promises to destroy the earth and its inhabitants by a global Flood (6:11–22)
---C - God instructs Noah, his family and the animals to enter the Ark (7:1–10)
----D - The floodwaters come upon the earth (7:11–16)
-----E - The floodwaters rise and cover the earth (7:17–24)
------F - God remembers Noah (8:1a)
-----E' - The floodwaters recede from the earth (8:1b–5)
----D' - The floodwaters disappear and the earth is dry (8:6–14)
---C' - God instructs Noah, his family and the animals to leave the Ark and fill the earth (8:15–9:7)
--B' - God promises to never again destroy the earth and its inhabitants by a global flood (9:8–17)
-A' - Noah and his family: the only people on earth (9:18–19)5

While Documentary Hypothesists chop and dice this story into portions as small as alternating half-verses, dividing it between the J and P authors, the chiastic structure points to a single author.

However in less than 20 minutes I managed to come up with this "split " (I have retained the original lettering to enable a better comparison one is in italics and the second is highlighted to differentiate them)

Quote:

-A - Noah and his family: the only righteous people on earth (6:9–10)

---C - God instructs Noah, his family and the animals to enter the Ark (7:1–10)

-----E - The floodwaters rise and cover the earth (7:17–24)

(------F - God remembers Noah (8:1a) ?)

-----E' - The floodwaters recede from the earth (8:1b–5)

---C' - God instructs Noah, his family and the animals to leave the Ark and fill the earth (8:15–9:7)

-A' - Noah and his family: the only people on earth (9:18–19)5

--B - God promises to destroy the earth and its inhabitants by a global Flood (6:11–22)

----D - The floodwaters come upon the earth (7:11–16)

(------F - God remembers Noah (8:1a) ?)

----D' - The floodwaters disappear and the earth is dry (8:6–14)

--B' - God promises to never again destroy the earth and its inhabitants by a global flood (9:8–17)

The F - God remembers Noah (8:1a), could I accept equally belong in the first split now I look at it but that does not in my opinion destroy this split fatally .

Dean Anderson · 10-16-2007, 08:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afdave

WELLHAUSEN'S "COMPOSITION OF THE HEXATEUCH" POPULARIZED THE 4 SOURCE THEORY
Dean's main source for DH information is Richard Friedman, but Wellhausen was the original popularizer of the theory ...

Now some have criticized me for quoting Wright to refute the DH, but this criticism is naive. We must remember that it was Wellhausen who popularized the theory, not Friedman or other later writers. So we must understand Wellhausen's thinking in order to truly understand the development of the DH.

You still don't get it, do you?

Wellhausen could have seen a vision of the DH after hitting his head on the toilet bowl after slipping whilst hanging a clock.

It doesn't matter

What matters is whether the DH fits the evidence - which it does - not what assumptions the person who popularised it (at least you are no longer asserting that he invented it from whole cloth, so that's some progress) may or may not have had.

If you wish to show that there is a problem with the DH, then show that there is a problem with the DH. Don't keep attacking the assumptions of the person who popularised it. Even if your assertions about their assumptions were correct, it wouldn't matter why they popularised it.

Quote:

WAS WRIGHT WRONG (no pun intended) AS DEAN ASSERTS?
(Please refer to Dean's post here ... http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...67#post4857667)
First, Wright was not saying that no one has ever questioned the DH ... he merely said "The Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch has until very recent times been accepted without question by both Jews and Christians." That's true. The vast majority of Christian and Jewish scholars did accept Mosaic authorship without question.

And I have given numerous examples showing the Mosaic authorship has not been accepted "without question". It is just that those scholars who have openly questioned it have been censored or worse. I gave many examples stretching back over a period of about a millennium.

Quote:

you fail to admit the very obvious fact that the DH never would have seen the light of day if it had been floated 50 years later, thanks to all the archaeological finds. If you never admit this, then there's not much point in arguing the DH longer.

There is nothing to admit. The DH is compatible with all the archaeological finds we have today. You are yet to produce any archaeological evidence that conflicts with it.

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The only way Wellhausen was able to sell his goods so successfully was because academia had been convinced of his ERRONEOUS PRESUPPOSITIONS involving what he supposed to be external evidence, which, as I have shown, was later discredited by the findings of archaeology.

No, Dave. You have shown no such thing. As appears usual for you, you have gone straight from "I will show..." to "As I have shown..." without actually doing the oh-so-important showing bit that is supposed to come in the middle.

Quote:

HOW DID WELLHAUSEN DIVIDE THE TEXT?
Here is an English language compilation of the original scholarship of Kuenen, Wellhausen and Dillman prepared by the Society of Historical Theology at Oxford, entitled (following Wellhausen's title) The Composition of the Hexateuch, written in 1902. http://books.google.com/books?id=sb9...uch+wellhausen
In addition to providing a handy reference for the DH Divisions as popularized by Wellhausen and those close to him, it shows that Dean's assertion that Wright made a false claim is itself false. Click HERE and you will see that Exodus 18 was indeed counted a patchwork by critics, just as Wright asserts.

I didn't say that it wasn't considered a patchwork by Wellhausen. I said that it isn't considered a patchwork by the modern DH.

Again, you are attacking what one past populiser of the the theory has claimed rather than attacking what current proponents of the theory claim.

I'll repeat this key fact for you, since you seem to have missed it the last twenty or so times I have mentioned it.

It does not matter what Wellhausen believed or what Wellhausen claimed. He could have been completely barking mad. All that matters when considering whether the modern DH fits the evidence or not is whether the modern DH fits the evidence or not.

Quote:

IS IT STATISTICALLY UNLIKELY THAT A LONG TEXT CAN BE SPLIT TO ACHIEVE CONSILIENCE?
No. It is not. And Dean has not shown this.

The task is simple.

If you think it can be done, then do it. Choose a text of comparable size and split it. No matter how many texts I choose and show that such splits fail, you would always simply say that it fails on those texts but could succeed on others.

Quote:

CHIASTIC PATTERNS: A GLARING EXAMPLE OF THINGS THEY IGNORE
Creation Ministries International explains these patterns here ...

The Chiastic pattern you indicate is clearly visible in the P flood text when taken in isolation. It is also clearly visible in the J flood text when taken in isolation.

I guess that's more evidence that the split does indeed represent the works of separate authors. After all, what are the odds that splitting up a text by other factors would produce two fragments that both just happen to both end up containing the Chiasms?

Quote:

Well, sorry, but yes they do at least in general. How else do you explain this statement from Chapter 5, entitled "The Clue to the Documents", of the Oxford work described above ? ...
That's pretty clear, Dean. I don't know how it can get much clearer.

I'm having trouble myself trying to make things clearer...

This is very simple:

1) People (before Wellhausen) noticed that when there were doublets in the Torah, one version tended to use one name for God and the other tended to use the other name for God.

2) This (along with other factors) led them to investigate the idea that the doublets might be evidence of separate sources.

3) Although the above is what led people to investigate, it does not form part of their conclusions. The DH itself does not simply split by name-of-God. Each source uses both Yahweh and Elohim at various points - and each source is consistent in its usage of both.

Quote:

Regarding the numbered points which Dean critiques ... Point 1
Oh, but they WERE saying that the codes are not old.

Once again - what people were saying is irrelevant. You put forward the codes being old as evidence for Mosaic authorship. I pointed out that:

a) We are not saying that they are not old.
b) Their being old is not evidence against Mosaic authorship.

That someone over a hundred years ago thought that they were not old is utterly irrelevant.

Quote:

I already gave support as to why Wright is correct on these points.

No, you haven't Dave. Repeating assertions does not constitute "giving support" for them.

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Point 4. Yes, it assumes the stories are correct. But why should we NOT assume they are correct? Is there any reason to doubt them?

You are supposed to be presenting evidence to support the Mosaic authorship. This piece of evidence is circular because it relies on its own truth for support.

Therefore, it is not evidence.

Do you understand this? What you are saying is that Bilbo Baggins must have written There And Back Again because the book reflects the time in which he lived.

It is circular - and we do not need to digress into an argument about what reason we have to doubt Bilbo's veracity to see that circularity.

Quote:

There is ample support from archaeology establishing the veracity of the stories, but you don't want to look it. I think I may understand why. Archaeology is very destructive to your position.

Utter Bullshit

My position is perfectly compatible with archaeology, and you have provided NO archaeological evidence which contradicts it.

Quote:

Points 5-8. Dean repeats the same objection for all these points ... Actually all these points by Wright ARE evidence of Mosaic authorship. Why? Because they are evidence of authorship of SOMEONE who lived close to the events described, not some author who lived a thousand years later.

And they are not at all evidence that that person was Moses which was what your claim was.

Quote:

And Dean doesn't provide any such excellent reasons because he doesn't want to look at archaeology to support his alternate view, so he has no reasons at all to deny Mosaic authorship.

STOP MAKING THIS FALSE ASSERTION ABOUT ME AVOIDING ARCHAEOLOGY BECAUSE IT DOES NOT SUPPORT MY VIEW.

Quote:

1) I agree that we can use various criteria to determine the different authors, but there must be EXTERNAL JUSTIFICATION for these criteria, otherwise, you are just bringing nothing more than your modern opinion up against a very heavy weight of tradition and external evidence. You are unwilling to do this, so I suppose you will persist in your erroneous view.

No, Dave. There is no external evidence against the DH. If there were then you would have presented it by now instead of having to rely on apologetics (and mostly century-old apologetics at that).

Quote:

2) It proposes it yes. But it does not present a convincing case that this is actually the way things occurred. It would be much more convincing if there was a host of external evidence which justified such divisions. But there is not. In fact, Dean does not even want to look at this. Perhaps he realizes how destructive such evidence is to his case.

You have NOT presented any external evidence that contradicts the DH. Stop falsely accusing my of wishing to avoid such evidence. There is NOTHING for me to avoid.

Quote:

3) The division into JEDP DOES NOT result in narrative harmony unless you ignore ancient literary practices, such as CHIASTIC PATTERNS, which of course DH advocates do. How convenient to simply ignore evidence that you don't like! I could pretty much prove any hypothesis I want if I take that approach.

Rubbish. As anyone who reads the separated sources can see, the chiasms are still present in them.

This supports the DH, rather than being a point against it.

Quote:

4) It's nonsensical to say "the DH makes no claims about whether or not the stories within the sources (about Moses, the Flood, and so on) are true." There is no "Official DH" sitting around in some official book. There are simply authors such as Wellhausen or Friedman who assert things. The important point - which Dean continues to deny - is that DH advocates such as Friedman and Wellhausen deny these stories.

I have never denied such. Stop making false accusations.

What I have said is that what some DH advocates believe in addition to the DH is irrelevant when discussing whether the DH itself fits the evidence or not.

Quote:

5) The Tablet Theory is by no means a finished product. But it is a much better starting point for further scholarship than the DH simply because it considers external evidence as well as internal. The DH does not.

Rubbish. The Tablet Theory actively requires Biblical stories to be true in spite of the external evidence. The DH is compatible with all external evidence - and you have yet to provide any evidence against it.

Quote:

6) This is false. Why do you disregard the reasons I have given for the differences?

Far from "giving reasons" for the differences, you deny that such differences even exist outside of Genesis.

Quote:

7) I already refuted your claims against Mosaic authorship. Your biggest one was your belief that the events of Exodus are unhistorical. When I showed you evidence that they ARE historical, you weren't interested.

Everyone else reading this thread understands that far from an unhistorical Exodus being my "biggest" claim against Mosaic authorship, it was a claim that I went out of my way to specifically not make. I was willing to hypothetically grant that there was an historical Exodus. That is why I was uninterested in your "evidence" (such as it was). It was irrelevant.

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8) Wrong. They do show similarity. True, they are not identical, but they show similarity.

By now we have seen multiple example of both on this thread. You can keep claiming similarity if you like - but no-one will believe you.

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9) Therefore, since the DH is purely speculative and relies only upon internal, textual evidence (and does a poor job even at that ... see chiastic pattern discussion above), and since the Tablet Theory is based upon both external AND internal evidence and does a much better job of explaining various phenomena (though not near perfect), scholars should pursue further studies on various Tablet Theories and reject the DH once and for all.

Utter bullshit from start to finish.

Quote:

In my research this morning, I ran across an interesting statement HERE. Notice the first paragraph on the page and in particular ...

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What was once taken for granted by all has now been discarded by some and seriously revised by others.

and WHO this statement is attributed to (footnote 54) ... that's right ... Richard Friedman, the book Dean gets his information from. Maybe Dean could provide the context from Friedman's book.

That looks like a quote-mine to me. I'll give people the context later, when I get home and have my books in front of me.

Quote:

And with this post, I'm probably pretty much done with this thread, unless Dean has a convincing case to proceed further.

Since you appear to be reduced to claiming to have shown things that you have not in fact shown, and misrepresenting my opinions in such an egregious manner - I'll assume you are done too.

Quote:

I have achieved my goal, not of proving the Tablet Theory to be 100% true and 100% trouble free, but of shedding light upon the DH and it's fatal problems and hopefully giving you good reasons to consider some form of the Tablet Theory.

On the contrary. Your flailing attacks at anything but what the DH actually says show that you have no actual arguments or evidence against it.

On the other hand, you have done an excellent job of showing the arguments for the Tablet Theory - too good a job, in fact. We can see now all see precisely how weak those arguments are, whereas before we might have thought it actually had some credibility.

Dean Anderson · 10-16-2007, 08:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lucretius

Dave you also use this as "proof " that the DH does not work

Quote:

One of the largest chiasms in Scripture, Phelan notes (p. 114) occurs between Genesis 6:1–9:19, the account of the Flood:

-A - Noah and his family: the only righteous people on earth (6:9–10)
--B - God promises to destroy the earth and its inhabitants by a global Flood (6:11–22)
---C - God instructs Noah, his family and the animals to enter the Ark (7:1–10)
----D - The floodwaters come upon the earth (7:11–16)
-----E - The floodwaters rise and cover the earth (7:17–24)
------F - God remembers Noah (8:1a)
-----E' - The floodwaters recede from the earth (8:1b–5)
----D' - The floodwaters disappear and the earth is dry (8:6–14)
---C' - God instructs Noah, his family and the animals to leave the Ark and fill the earth (8:15–9:7)
--B' - God promises to never again destroy the earth and its inhabitants by a global flood (9:8–17)
-A' - Noah and his family: the only people on earth (9:18–19)5

While Documentary Hypothesists chop and dice this story into portions as small as alternating half-verses, dividing it between the J and P authors, the chiastic structure points to a single author.

However in less than 20 minutes I managed to come up with this "split " (I have retained the original lettering to enable a better comparison one is in italics and the second is highlighted to differentiate them)

Quote:

-A - Noah and his family: the only righteous people on earth (6:9–10)

---C - God instructs Noah, his family and the animals to enter the Ark (7:1–10)

-----E - The floodwaters rise and cover the earth (7:17–24)

(------F - God remembers Noah (8:1a) ?)

-----E' - The floodwaters recede from the earth (8:1b–5)

---C' - God instructs Noah, his family and the animals to leave the Ark and fill the earth (8:15–9:7)

-A' - Noah and his family: the only people on earth (9:18–19)5

--B - God promises to destroy the earth and its inhabitants by a global Flood (6:11–22)

----D - The floodwaters come upon the earth (7:11–16)

(------F - God remembers Noah (8:1a) ?)

----D' - The floodwaters disappear and the earth is dry (8:6–14)

--B' - God promises to never again destroy the earth and its inhabitants by a global flood (9:8–17)

The F - God remembers Noah (8:1a), could I accept equally belong in the first split now I look at it but that does not in my opinion destroy this split fatally .

It does not need splitting. All the elements of the Chiasm are repeated in both DH sources (J and P). This is excellent evidence for the DH - since it shows that the results of the split both conform to Hebrew narrative structure.

Dean Anderson · 10-16-2007, 08:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cege

I would guess that chiasms found in biblical text would be the result of English translations, but I'll have to research that and come back to it.

No, they are standard in ancient texts (although translation normally doesn't mangle them - so they are still present in English translations).

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