Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Thomas L. Thompson" <tlt AT teol.ku.dk>]

> ----------
> Fra:  Lloyd Barre[SMTP:barre AT c-zone.net]
> Sendt:        2. februar 1999 18:28
> Til:  Thomas L. Thompson
> Emne:         re: SV: The Origins of the United Monarchy
> 
> Mr. Barre asks:
> So given that the present discussion constitutes old business, what are
> the conclusions regarding the dimorphic social components presupposed by
> emergence of two monarchies in the 10th century in Palestine?  How and
> when did it originate?  Will you summarize the positions of the views
> given in the works you cited above?  That way we could discuss them
> without having to first make a trip to the library.  Will you kindly bring
> us current?
> 
> I hardly think discussion should replace reading. I have already
> epitomized the discussion with a very limited amount of reading as the
> discussion need not be as tedious as it has been. There are no such
> dimorphic social components as you suggest, and I can think of no reason
> to assume that two monarchies emerged in the 10th. cent. Who claims that?
> I have argued rather that Israel developed in the 9th. cent and Judah in
> the 8/7th. If you want to know why, read my Early History of 1992. It is a
> complex argument. Then let's discuss it. Make your trip to the library
> early in the morning.
> 
        Mr. Barrie further adds:
> I am not sure whether the use of biblical data for historical
> reconstruction is really some sort of insistence.  Certainly the biblical
> material constitutes relevant data for the task since they are textual
> artifacts no different in kind from any other writing from the ANE.  If
> you imply that one can uncritically accept the historical veracity of
> historical events reported by particular tradition, then I think that view
> died with the rise of the historical-critical method in the last century,
> a method  that ultimately descends from the Enlightenment.
> 
> Again if you go to the library, you will learn that I think no such thing,
> and have dealt with this issue ad nauseam. I was rather suggesting that if
> one wished to use the Bible in their history writing it would be first
> wise to read that Bible. Do you know the David story in I_II Samuels?
> 
> He further writes:
>   The need to understand the nature of one's historical sources is basic
> to the historical enterprise.   I see no reason why would would exclude
> any relevant data from consideration.  The fact that these stories and so
> on happen to have come down to us in the Hebrew Bible seems to me to be
> methodologically irrelevant.  Would it make on wit of difference is a
> biblical story was known from say a tomb inscription?  Would that make it!
>  more relevant for historical reconstruction somehow?  I don't see how.
> Data is data, evidence is evidence. 
>  
> One needs an argument to create evidence out of data. I would want to know
> who was buried in the tomb, who wrote the inscription and when, how it got
> into the tomb and why the inscription was written. I would also ask
> comparable questions of "traditions" I read in the Codex Leningrad from
> the 10th. cent AD. Texts tell us a great deal, as much from what they
> imply as what they say. History is not quite as simple as your discussion
> implies. But again, we aren't getting even up to the level of what had
> been already resolved nearly 15 years ago. Please, visit the library
> first.
> 
> and further:
>  A distinction between biblical and non biblical sources is without
> methodological signficance. 
> 
> That  is patent nonsense.
> 
> and further:
> I find it amazing that historian often implicitly think that Yahweh, a
> mythological creation, can affect or even dictate history.  All those
> verbs which take this god as its subject!  Yahweh exists only in the world
> of religious imagination.  It is only the idea of Yahweh that is
> historically significant.  Yahweh has no more affect upon history than say
> Ptah or Zues.
> 
> Here you might gain by reading Albrektson's History and the God's of 1967.
> 
> 
> Sincerely,
> Thomas
> 
> Thomas L. Thompson
> Professor, University of Copenhagen
>