Freethought & Rationalism Archive

ericmurphy · 09-27-2007, 07:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keith&Co.

Quote:

What's the problem here? I'm quite sure we could find many examples of this in other literature.

I would buy that if the instructions were:
then we're going from general to more specific instructions. But if it's

Quote:

Get 8 animals
then later we're told
set 2 aside for sacrifice
the other 8 for repopulating the entire planet,

That's wrong.
If the first number is not big enough to account for all the dispositions later, then it's just wrong.

It's worse than that:

God: Noah, get two of every kind of animal

Noah: Okay

God: Now, of the clean animals—you know which ones those are, right?—take the 12 extra ones, and sacrifice them.

Noah: Wha–? You said to get two of each kind, So how am I going to sacrifice twelve of them? I only have two!

God: What are you talking about? I said to get two of the unclean kind and fourteen of the clean kind.

Noah: Where did you say that?

God: You callin' me a liar?

[ETA]

Noah: And besides, didn't you tell me to go round up two cattle? Now you're telling me you want fourteen cattle? Cattle are clean, right? So why did you earlier specifically tell me to get two of them, but now you want me to find fourteen of them?

God: What are you, a lawyer?

Noah: and I'm supposed to find these tens of thousands of critters, all over the world, save them on the ark, and then after all that hard work and caring for and feeding them for a year, you then want me to slaughter most of them?

God: Security! Someone call Security!

Lucretius · 09-27-2007, 07:55 AM

Apologies to Dean I have checked Dave's Blog and it appears he did pay $86 for a book you can get for $10 second hand from Amazon

ericmurphy · 09-27-2007, 07:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dean Anderson

The problem is that that is not what the text says. The text is not a general statement that then gets more specific (i.e. "two of everything - oh, and 7 of the clean ones"). The text is specific about which kinds there are to be two of (specifically mentioning Cattle - a "clean" kind - as something that there are to be 2 of), and then later follows this with being specific again that 7 of the same kind are needed.

This is quite simply contradictory.

One point, people. The inconsistency isn't between "2" and "7." It's between "two" and fourteen. Or one and seven. Let's not let Dave artificially minimize the inconsistency between the two accounts.

Dean Anderson · 09-27-2007, 07:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ericmurphy

No they do not, Dave. Dean's example of what a real colophon looks like bears no resemblance to what you are calling a "colophon."

I should point out - before Dave accuses me of it - that I did not "cherry pick" that colophon because it looks so unlike the Toledoths. It was quite literally the first one I came across when doing a search to see what the wording of them actually looks like.

VoxRat · 09-27-2007, 08:06 AM

I'd like 'bump' this question, as I still wonder if there aren't some specifics that could be brought to bear on the question:

Quote:

Originally Posted by VoxRat

Quote:

he is still left with the task of trying to explain why we should think the Tablet theory is a better explanation than the DH, when the the DH explains the consilience between different ways of differentiating the text of the Torah and the Tablet theory doesn't

Of course a big part of this whole analysis that is, unfortunately, going to be lost on me is the linguistic analysis. I don't know if there's any way to convey to a non-Hebrew speaker (let alone a non-expert in the history of the language) the kinds of style differences we're talking about here, but if anyone's tried, I'd be interested in reading about it.

I understand the general concept of using stylistic differences to detect separate authorship. But - to me, anyway - once the different styles (including different words that might have come in and out of fashion? Aside from El and YWVH) are translated into Elizabethan (or any other version) English, these clues are masked.

Any Hebrew language scholars out there who can add to this?

Keith&Co. · 09-27-2007, 08:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ericmurphy

It's worse than that:

God: Noah, get two of every kind of animal

God's stenograhers do have to spend a LOT of time covering up for his errors.

See also: http://elephanticity.250x.com/oldhex...on/dictate.htm

Keith&Co. · 09-27-2007, 08:16 AM

Quote:

Aside from El and YWVH) are translated into Elizabethan (or any other version) English, these clues are masked.

Not really. Look at the first two chapters of Genesis.

Chapter 1, god creates the world in chaos, puts people on it, tells them to multiply.
No punishment, no wroth anger, no snake. No rules to break, no broken rules. God's character is that of a distant inhuman cloud.

Chapter 2, god creates Eden, turns his back, comes back, walking through the Garden, God is an individual, with a body, has to call his children out of the trees, gets ticked, curses the snake, curses the woman, curses all humanity....

Two different treatments of god, not masked by the translation.

zagloba · 09-27-2007, 08:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dean Anderson

The answer would seem to be that the P author keeps stressing that only Aaronid priests are allowed to do sacrifices, and Noah is not an Aaronid priest.

So the difference in the two stories is consilient with the interests of the P author, and we can speculate that the P author probably dropped the references to sacrifice because they did not match his theology/agenda.

Based on this, I'd expect that DH assigns Abel's sacrifice in Genesis 4:4 to a non-P source?

Is there a place on line that shows the sources assigned to each portion of the text?

VoxRat · 09-27-2007, 08:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keith&Co.

Quote:

Aside from El and YWVH) are translated into Elizabethan (or any other version) English, these clues are masked.

Not really. Look at the first two chapters of Genesis.

Chapter 1, god creates the world in chaos, puts people on it, tells them to multiply.
No punishment, no wroth anger, no snake. No rules to break, no broken rules. God's character is that of a distant inhuman cloud.

Chapter 2, god creates Eden, turns his back, comes back, walking through the Garden, God is an individual, with a body, has to call his children out of the trees, gets ticked, curses the snake, curses the woman, curses all humanity....

Two different treatments of god, not masked by the translation.

Yes. I see that. But for all I know they might have been written in indistinguishable versions of Hebrew. But if I saw a section of text written by an Elizabethan English speaker appended to a section written by, say, a modern American, I bet I could pinpoint the sentence where the transition occurs, based on choice of words and maybe sentence structure.

Barbarian · 09-27-2007, 08:48 AM

I had a WTF? moment when I looked up DH on Wikipedia, for it says:

Quote:

Wellhausen's hypothesis [i.e. the DH - note by Barbarian] became the consensus view on the origin of the Pentateuch for much of the 20th century, but its assumptions, methodology and conclusions have been seriously questioned in recent decades and it no longer dominates the field.

I thought the DH was the dominant view. Obviously, Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, but still ... is this true or not? Did the DH lose its dominance?

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09-27-2007, 07:55 AM	#392
Lucretius Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: . Posts: 1,014	Apologies to Dean I have checked Dave's Blog and it appears he did pay $86 for a book you can get for $10 second hand from Amazon

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