Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Moshe Shulman <mshulman AT ix.netcom.com>]

At 06:11 AM 12/29/1999 +0100, you wrote:
>At 00.02 29/12/99 -0500, Stephen C. Carlson wrote:
>>At 05:53 AM 12/29/99 +0100, Ian Hutchesson wrote:
>>>But the obscurity of the Genesis citations (5:21-24, 6:1-4)
>>>tells you that the Enoch literature was around and used.
>>This does not follow.  The obscurity of these citations could
>>just as well have motivated the speculation we see in the Enoch
>>literature.
>Then you will have to seek elsewhere for the substance to the Gen
>citations, for they imply such substance that is not stated. Yet we have a
>written tradition in Enoch that is acknowledged elsewhere. 

Ian, your argument presupposes two things which you not only cannot prove,
but have been unable to formulate any data that would make it more
plausible then the counter approach. 1. You assume that a single tradition
cannot give rise to TWO sources, a shorter one (Genesis) and a longer one
(Enoch). 2. You assume that Enoch is the older text. The first I believe
that you could never prove, since it is false. The second has been asserted
with no methodological basis to support it. When presented with two
passages that are related one to the other, where one is shorter and the
other longer, it is a more difficult argument to say the longer gave rise
to the shorter then the opposite argument. (We in fact have many expansions
on Biblical texts found among the DSS, which indicate that in general we go
from the shorter to the longer. This is not a 'proof' but a strong
indicator that this line of resoning is the more plausible.)

moshe shulman mshulman AT NOSPAMix.netcom.com    718-436-7705
CHASSIDUS.NET - Yoshav Rosh            http://www.chassidus.net
Outreach Judaism                       http://www.outreachjudaism.org/
ICQ# 52009254