Biblical Hebrew Forum

[lorencrow AT earthling.net (Loren Crow)]

Bryan,

That was a clear, well crafted statement.  Thanks!

It is worth noting, however, that the pre-Wellhausen practitioners of
"cut-and-paste" exegesis were *not* primarily historians, but *literary*
scholars (e.g., Eichhorn, Hupfeld; the same could probably be said of most
of the later scholars as well).  Their main concerns were to make sense of
what is at times very difficult to read -- as you say -- with the
assumption of unity.  True, they understood the literature historically,
but their main concern was not to learn history to do literary criticism.
The _locus classicus_ of this sort of work is of course the Flood
narrative, which is almost impossible to read without either some sort of
redactional theory or an extraordinarily huge amount of "willingness to
suspend disbelief," as you say.

Also, I can think of no reason to study history, except that it is "alive
now," speaking to the present while retaining its historicality.  The fact
that something is an artifact does not preclude its being meaningful to the
present.  Witness, for example, Norman Gottwald's reconstruction of
Israelite history and its clear connection to Gottwald's own political
ideas.

Cheers!
Loren


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Even God cannot change the past.
               - Agathon (quoted by Aristotle, NE 6:2,1139)