Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Dear Peter,

>Thank you, Ian, for your description of the redaction process. 

I'm glad to at least have been a service in this respect.

>I fully 
>accept that later redactors may have made changes like making names 
>more acceptable e.g. Eshbaal to Ishbosheth, some obsolete people name 
>to Philistines etc. But that is irrelevant to the point I was making, 
>which is that it is at least possible that the original sources (or 
>some of them) were written not long after some of the events they 
>describe. 

You may claim anything unverifiable. However, you can't expect that such
claims will be meaningful.

If you can find the speck of truth in the riddle, then that's fine. It
would be finer if you could show that there were in fact some writings that
came from "not long after some of the events they describe." I don't think
it is enough to guess that there were such beasts.

You may think that it is beside the point that the texts we have are the
result of lengthy written tradition, but it does guarantee a separation of
the final product from the time referred to. It also makes it extrememly
hard to find any possible early sources, if there were any. I know that you
believe that there were, but belief is not enough in historical analyses.

As to the following, I think TLT has said all that is necessary.

>To that I would add a corrollary that at least some part of 
>the informaton in those original sources has come down to us not 
>completely corrupted - and if you deny that, you deny all of the 
>criteria for distinguishing sources and undermine the whole 
>documentary hypothesis.
>
>Peter Kirk


Ian