Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Dear Ken,

I don't think there is much point in doing the sort of compartmentalizing
that seems to be implied in your post. My job is to do history. I can't see
what you really want to do by divorcing the documents from any possible
contextualisation of them. You date the writing of texts by comparing them
with what is known of the era they relate to. You date manuscripts by other
criteria. Dating manuscripts will only ever tell you when they were copied,
unless you can find a way to show that a manuscript is an autograph. The
problem them comes to how you relate the manuscript to the time it refers
to. How do you date the Wadi ed-Daliyeh manuscripts? How do you date the
Elephantine papyri? It is these that reflect history. They are autographs.

You may have wanted to deal with one particular thing. I commented on that
as an effort that had little purpose. Your subject line mentioned
historiography. All I found was Scriptures of Israel. I talked about the
interrelationship between archaeological and epigraphic sources on the one
hand and literary sources on the other. It is through a strict comparison
between them that we can ascertain the veracity of a literary source for
history.

Now read this: you continue to *misrepresent* my views and position by
stating things like this:

>Since
>you assgined virually all the Scri[ptures of Israel to the 2nd cenruy
>BC, I'd like to know your crieria for doing so.

The following is what I said in my previous post and despite it you wrote
the above. Why?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have asserted that we don't know when most of the OT/HB books were
written (though I have argued a late date for a few specific examples).
There is also very little in the archaeological and epigraphic remains to
lend credibility to them as usable witnesses. As credibility seems
unavailable to them, they have little place in historical analyses. The
best we can do is to show that most of the places mentioned existed and
there were people called Omri, Hezekiah and Sanballat attested to in the
epigraphic sources. The conflict between the archaeological record and the
biblical accounts (regarding, for example, the ) doesn't help their case
for credibility.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Did you see any sign of my assigning "virually all the Scriptures of Israel
to the 2nd century BC"? Naturally not. So what were you thinking?


Ian


At 15.48 14/02/99 -0800, Ken Litwak wrote:
>Ian, your reply to me quoted something I didn't write and hadnothing
>to do with the specific issue I am addressing.  I will get to
>archaeological and epigraphic data, but that is not the topic I raised. 
>Please deal with the topic instead of going to some other topic, if you
>wish to discuss it.  All the archeaological evidence in the world does
>not say anything about what should be criteria for dating texts.  Let us
>focus on just ONE thing at a time please.  Do you have any suggestiojns
>for criteria for establishing the likely dates of compositions oa any
>texts?  No evidence that you cited in your post has anything to do with
>establishing when Aristotle's Rhetorica or Thucydides War was written. 
>I'd like to deal with this one issue of dating texts without going off
>in other directins and not really discussing the issue at hand.  Since
>you assgined virually all the Scri[ptures of Israel to the 2nd cenruy
>BC, I'd like to know your crieria for doing so.  I've suggesed that
>basing it on MSS dates is not valid in light of other texts.  Let's deal
>with tha specific issue.  
>
>
>Ken Litwak
>
>