[b-hebrew] A different generation of biblical scholarship
LM Barre
l_barre at yahoo.com
Thu Feb 5 19:30:01 EST 2009
"Pentateuch itself claims to have been written by Moses."
Where?
Lloyd Barré
--- On Wed, 2/4/09, Gabe Eisenstein <gabe at cascadeaccess.com> wrote:
From: Gabe Eisenstein <gabe at cascadeaccess.com>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] A different generation of biblical scholarship
To: l_barre at yahoo.com
Date: Wednesday, February 4, 2009, 11:16 PM
You're agreeing with me, right? Are you saying that Karl is a solipsist? Or
what?
LM Barre wrote:
> The question about the dating of the Pentateuch is not simply a matter
> of "interpretations built on pre-chosen ideologies/religious
> beliefs".
>
> This is solipcism, locked into one's subjectivity where objectivity is
denied. This is patently false. We touch the objective world, especially
through science.
> Lloyd Barré
> http://freewebs.com/lmbarre
>
>
> --- On *Wed, 2/4/09, Gabe Eisenstein /<gabe at cascadeaccess.com>/*
wrote:
>
> From: Gabe Eisenstein <gabe at cascadeaccess.com>
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] A different generation of biblical scholarship
> To: b-hebrew at lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Wednesday, February 4, 2009, 5:43 PM
>
> Karl knows a lot more Hebrew than I do, but I know a lot more about
evidence, logic and interpretation. Karl supports his idiosyncratic views
of the latter by links to kooky Christian websites. I suggest that a clearer
view of the role of interpretation in science can be found by studying books
like the following:
>
> Truth and Method -- Hans-Georg Gadamer
> Fact, Fiction and Forecast -- Nelson Goodman
> The Structure of Scientific Revolutions -- Thomas Kuhn
> Conjectures and Refutations -- Karl Popper
> The Structure of Scientific Inference -- Mary Hesse
>
> Karl will say that authors like these represent some kind of
> "bandwagon" -- which is the whole mainstream and
university world of science. It is a matter of pride for him that only
religious fundamentalists share his views. And yet his whole rhetorical
style is based on constantly using the words "evidence",
"logic", etc. in order to falsely
> suggest that he has something in common with real scientists and
philosophers of science.
>
> The question about the dating of the Pentateuch is not simply a matter
of "interpretations built on pre-chosen ideologies/religious
> beliefs". Remember that Karl also thinks that theories about
the formation of galaxies, stars and planets, or the different structures of
rocks and minerals (let alone the development of current life forms on
earth), are also a matter of religious belief. Because the events they refer
to HAPPENED IN THE PAST! But just like theories in astronomy and geology,
theories about the Pentateuch are possible because different accounts of
the past have different consequences for the present (e.g. what we find in
existing documents). Some are plausible, some are possible and some are
impossible. Some fit nicely with other plausible theories, while others do
not.
>
> To put things very simply: there are degrees of evidence and
plausibility. It's not just a binary world of "evidence" versus
"interpretation" and "religious belief". Rather,
> interpretation is absolutely necessary to scientific practice, as
we try to refine theories and sort the wheat from the chaff. This is what
George Athas was getting at by saying that Karl's talk of interpretation
raised a straw man. (And again, see the authors mentioned above.)
>
> Karl wrote:
> One example, do the different words for God refer to different sources
of
> documents, or did even the earliest documents indicate that the
people
> recognized one God, but that he had a few titles besides his name? The
> answers to that question shows how the different ideologies interpret
the
> same data. And the different ideologies / faiths predetermine the
answers to
> those questions.
>
> This paragraph utterly misrepresents the arguments of
source-criticism, as others have mentioned. It isn't a matter of
"different names for God", but of sets of texts in which, for no
apparent reason, God has one name or the other, AND the fact that these
texts correlate with geographical, ideological AND stylistic features that
also distinguish the texts. The most succinct and cogent arguments I know of
here are contained in Friedman's The Hidden Book in the Bible
(appendix). None of his arguments are based on premises that are accepted on
faith. In contrast, the explanation that "[God] had a few titles
besides his
> name" is no explanation at all.
> (Does this mean I "believe in" Friedman? No, I disagree with
several
> of his conclusions, and I think that the whole theory is subject
to revision or disconfirmation. I am also neither a maximalist nor
minimalist; my current guesses put the authorship of the bulk of the
Pentateuch in the 9th-6th centuries.)
>
> I would also like to challenge Karl's assertion that the text of
the Pentateuch itself claims to have been written by Moses. I don't know
if this has been discussed on the list before, but the evidence of verses
referring to "this book" or "this teaching" (torah) are
> extremely ambiguous. They could refer to various subtexts like
Deuteronomy or the Holiness Code, or they could refer to the entire Bible
(the book you are holding in your hands which talks of "this
book"). What, you
> don't think that Moses' death counts against the latter
hypothesis, do you? After all, Talmudists believed that everything in the
"oral Torah" was
> already stated on Mt. Sinai (including the words of rabbis from
the first century and later). As for me, I don't accept supernatural
accounts (including statements showing knowledge of the future) in the
absence of very compelling evidence. On the other hand, I do accept as
evidence against Mosaic authorship even details such as the claim that Moses
was the most humble man (a claim that the most humble man could not make
about himself). This is indeed a matter of interpretation, but also of
plausibility.
>
>
> Gabe Eisenstein
>
>
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