Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter_Kirk AT SIL.ORG]

Dear Ian,

Sorry if I misrepresented your opinions. I thought I was summarising 
what you had said in various postings, but I don't want to go through 
hundreds of them to argue the point! Anyway, you have the right to 
clarify your own datings, as you have just done.

You wrote:

"There does seem to have been a general breakdown in our communications.

>Ian wrote to Lloyd:
>
>"Do I understand correctly that despite your acceptance of some form of 
>documentary hypothesis that the sources involved are fundamentally a 
>reflection of the epoch they refer to rather than of the epoch they were 
>written in?"
>
>Perhaps he should allow Lloyd the option of believing both of these, 
>because the epoch they refer to is, or at least is close to, the epoch 
>they were written in.

Are you implying that the redaction of texts that went towards the making 
of an biblical book reflected the opinions and theological viewpoints of a
period several generations if not several hundred years before that 
redaction?"

No, I am talking, as I thought Lloyd was, about the opinions and 
theological viewpoints of the original writers of the source 
documents, and pointing out that (in my view and perhaps also in 
Lloyd's) these (or at least much of them) were written close to the 
times described in them and accurately reflect those times. I was not 
referring to the opinions and theological viewpoints of a hypothetical 
redactor; if he had any, for he doesn't seem to have been interested 
in harmonising alleged theological contradictions between his sources.

Peter