Cege

Perhaps the redactor would have noticed, but maybe not.

Take the story of Noah, the ark, the animals two-by-two and consider how many average people, Christian or not, are aware that Genesis also describes animals 14-by-14 taken onto the ark?

I've never heard a sermon (that I can recall) about Noah and the ark. It's a story for children in Sunday School. Songs about, toy reproductions, and drawings of the ark show 2 of each kind, not 14 of each kind.

2-by-2 was the favored story, and the other story was probably just ignored, not read aloud, which continued to this very day.

Who knew!

-Jay-

I'm pretty sure Friedman addresses this directly, but it may have been in another source on the DH (I'm away from my books), but Codec is spot on based on my understanding of it.

The DH itself, though, is less concerned with (I'd argue not concerned with) the particular motives of any particular author, and it's really out of the scope of the hypothesis to try to explain what the authors may have been thinking. The DH, as Dean has described, is based on characteristics intrinsic to the texts, and stands or falls based on those characteristics. Extrinsic information (archaeology, other histories, etc) can enhance our understanding of the authors and their motivations, but it's not essential to the core of the DH itself.

It's also worth pointing out (I don't think Dean said this explicitly, but he may have - I'll blame early fall allergies for my poor memory...) that the DH is extensible - the framework could easily accomodate more sources should further textual analysis indicate the need. The Tablet Theory is hamstrung by it's dependency on the placement of the colophon/toledoth phrases. As theories go, the TT is very brittle.

regards,

NinJay

Codec

There have been ideas that J and E were not a single author, but a "school" of authors and similar.

A couple of the poems in the first books are thought to be down to none of JEDPR, but just ancient tradition.

You can also find things that extend beyond the pentateuch - there is a doublet story that appears in in (if I recall) deuteronomy and judges.
Friedman takes some of this up in his book of J (or via: amazon.co.uk).

VoxRat

Hey, that reminds me.
Yet another day has gone by without Dave explaining to us - like he promised he would a week ago now - why we are so silly for not seeing the solution to the 2 = 14 conundrum; why our failure to see that was so hilarious he literally fell out of his chair laughing.

Could it be he was blowing smoke?

Dean Anderson

One that Friedman talks about a lot is the splitting of D into D₁ and D₂, with D₁ being written during Josiah's reign and D₂ being written during the Exile. Indeed, in his "The Bible With Sources Revealed (or via: amazon.co.uk)", he splits it that way.

Keith&Co.

Well, if someone were to issue an Ark toy with 14 animals...and a sacrificial altar, they'd be drummed out of business rather quickly.
Imagine the press conference, as Christain Parents and PETA join together to slam the toy advertised as 'most biblically accurate' with the official 'pleasing to God' aroma generator.

Codec

True - I'd forgotten that. Josiah was basically the saviour of the race, he could do no wrong, reinstating all the old traditions, tearing down the illegal offering places and so on - after a sequence of rather poor (from the priestly perspective) kings. Then the fool went and got himself killed at Meggido - and all those stories about how he was practically divine by D₁ had to be hurriedly papered over by D₂,!

Cege

Quote from afdave:
The Babylonian words only appear in the earlier parts of Genesis but not in later parts of the Torah, which supports the view that the parts with Babylonian words date back to the time of Abraham (remember Abraham came from Ur, fairly close to Babylon) and before.


Quote from afdave:
Thirdly, there is no non-sequitur. I am not saying that the Babylonian words were in the Hebrew language. You misunderstand. I am saying that the Babylonian words were in common use by the original authors of the Genesis source material, not by the early Hebrews who Moses led out of Egypt.

I find this fascinating. God, Adam and Noah used Babylonian words because Abram originated (hundreds of years later) "fairly close" to Babylon?

-Jay-

Now it's funny you should say that...

I've noticed that when one is dealing with inerrantists, words don't always mean what you'd think they mean. The term "inspired" is a classic one - I take it to imply an influence that leads one to do something (e.g. she wrote that poem because she was inspired by the sunrise), where to an inerrantist the term may well imply that God stood over the shoulder of the writer, dictating the words, and maybe even holding the writer's hands. You can converse for quite a while before you realize you're actually talking about two completely different things...

I think part of the congnitive dissonance is managed by the preemptive redifinition of key terms.

regards,

NinJay

-Jay-

[sarcasm]
It's so obvious he probably thinks he doesn't need to explain it.

In binary, 2 = 0010.
In binary, 14 = 1110.

0010 AND 1110 = 0010, Q.E.D. 2 AND 14 = 2.

Duh. :Cheeky:

[/sarcasm]

regards,

NinJay