Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT sil.org]

Thank you for making explicit here the underlying philosophical 
difference between those who date the Hebrew Bible in Hasmonean or 
later times and those who support earlier datings. You are explicitly 
presupposing that there is no such thing as genuine predictive 
prophecy, which (to over-simplify a major philosophical divide) goes 
along with atheism or perhaps deism. But your arguments will never be 
convincing to theists who reject your presupposition.

So I am surprised to see a devout Christian like John Burnett showing 
an interest in these late dating theories.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
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Subject: Hasmonean Bible
Author:  mattfeld AT mail.pjsnet.com at internet 
Date:    20/06/1999 00:47


As the readers of this list are well aware, the last 25 years has seen 
new paradigms advanced, positing that the OT is a Post-Exilic creation 
dating anywhere from the 6th through 1st centuries BCE, by scholars like 
Phillip R. Davies, Niels Peter Lemche, Frederick Cryer, and Thomas L. 
Thompson.

I am now offering to those who may have an interest, the latest revision 
and expansion of my paper titled Fulfilled Prophecy and the Old 
Testament, Clue's to the Bible's Hasmonean and Herodian Origins. The 
first draft of this paper (28pp., 18 Apr. 1999) was offered earlier on 
this list and it is now some 47 pages. In this work I argue that the 
writers of the OT are using 'prophecy-after-the fact' to portray God as 
the only god who can predict the future hundreds of years in advance and 
then bring the prophecies into realization. My research suggests that 
many of these prophecies are realized by the Hasmoneans (BCE 164-64), 
thus dating the OT to this period of time. Furthermore, some prophecies 
are realized as late as 23 BCE indicating Herodian redactions within the 
OT. I thus understand the Qumranic Dead Sea Scrolls to be the original 
drafts of what was to become our Bible.

<snip>