RUmike

PHF... You obviously bring up a very legitimate point. But to me, it is still far more reasonable that the entire account was written after the existence of Dan. There are still several other very good examples that make it all together more reasonable Moses did not author any of the five books, from that link posted earlier. Additionally, it is my understanding that shekels were not even used in the time of Moses, yet they are mentioned frequently.

spin

Originally a shekel was a weight.

The existence of Dan, hmm. What about when the Sea Peoples group, the Phillistines, arrived (as in Isaac and Abimelek) post 1170 BCE? Oh wait, Dan... Not the group of Sea Peoples who came along with the Philistines, called the Denyen by the Egyptians (see also 2 Sam 24:6)? For some reason this Dan found itself with ships on the coast in Jdg 5:17 despite the fact that they had just entered Canaan from the other side of the Jordan, before moving to their commonly understood home in the far north (see Jdg 18).

But then let's look a bit more... what about the Chaldeans of Ur of the Chaldeans (Gen 11:28) fame? Or the Medes (Madai) of Gen 10:2? Or among the sons of Cush (Gen 10:7), where we find the name of a Nubian king of Egypt, Shabtaka (c. 700 BCE)? When did they start writing such genealogies of the world's nations? (Try starting with Greece.)

When exactly could Moses have written all this stuff?


spin

rlogan

How they got so skilled at working iron before everyone else is a bit a a mystery too. (Genesis 4:22) I think they needed it though to build all the rail lines to the site where noah was constructing the ark.

spin

Eeek, how silly!

First, was there a Judah before 730 BCE? How does anyone know? They don't.

Jeremiah we are told went off in self-exile to Egypt. Who would really wants to claim that Jeremiah write any of Kings, other than the fact that a bit of Kings is in the book of Jeremiah? The last part of 2 Kings tells of the 37th year of exile of Jehoiachin, ie circa 560 BCE, in Babylon. Do we really have an old Jeremiah trapsing off to Babylon? Naa.

Whoa! But then a bit of Kings is in Isaiah as well. Perhaps Isaiah actually wrote part of Kings?

And who really wants to believe that any literature was taken into Babylonian exile when the Babylonians were prodding them off at spear point? Remember that people, such as the high priest, were killed on the way. Were they also able to take a cut lunch?

Yeah, alright, there were some sources and a lot of redaction, but we can forget these funny dates, OK?


spin

gregor

I've been sucked into the well-crafted prose and apparent logic of Friedman's argument - It could of course, be wrong.

If there wasn't a Judah before 730 BCE, who did the Assyrians invade in 722? Where did the Israelites flee to?

Oh, Elohim . . . I mean, Yahweh . . I mean El - one of you guys help me our here.

gregor

I think I recall that Friedman's thesis on this point is:

1. Deu was written by a Levite priest.
2. Deu was written from an anti-Aaronite standpoint.
3. Deu was written just before the high-priest "found" it and gave it to Josiah (something linke 687 BCE).
4. Deu was written by someone tracing his authority from Israel before the Assyrian destruction in 722 BCE
5. The best fit to Deu was Jeremiah

He's also the best fit for the next five books.

Multiple later redactors come along thereafter and influence many of these books.

Doctor X

Curses! I would have posted it first if it was not for that meddlesome Gregor and his pesky dog!

Anyways, Friedman is a great introduction. Spin and I have been around on this issue of the Documentary Hypothesis and it seems the only "argument" is whether or not one redactor put things together or if the text underwent a continued process of redaction. I frankly think both processes happened.

I have asked around and the one criticism of Friedman is his dating of the authors. He places many of them as "pre-exilic" where other scholars, noting the Bablyonian mythic influences, argue for "post." One could argue that the previous Assyrian squishing brought the myths or there was some other diffusion of the stories. He does not address this point however.

Friedman's book does demolish Moses as an author. In fact, scholars have known for centuries that Moses could not have written the texts. Some posters seem to live in the Dark Ages, methinks.

--J.D.