Biblical Hebrew Forum

[kdlitwak <kdlitwak AT concentric.net>]

Niels Peter Lemche wrote:

>         [Niels Peter Lemche]  Again the web created by several classical
> authors makes it possible to date persons like Thucydides or Herodotus to a
> specific time. The alternative would be to say that this web has been
> constructed by a circle (quite an extensive one) of authors from a much
> later period. That would exclude Western Europe because of lack of knowledge
> of Greek in that part of the world. As to Byzans, they would know Greek in
> its late Byzantine form, but should in order to create this web be able to
> write in Ionian Greek (Gerodotus), clear Attic Greek (several otgher
> authors), place Pindar in the right place and do his dialect as well. The
> literary data from classical sourcs do fit together and seem also to go well
> with external evidence as well. It is probably time for Ken Litwak to stop
> this ridiculous discussion about classical analogies.

It would seem to me this is precisely the argument being made by Jim West, 
Ian, you,
Thomas Thompson, etc.  All the relationships among the biblical books were 
invented by
a circle of authors who created the web of relationships themselves.  I'm 
afraid that
I don't consider a "web of relationships" evidence of anything.  You kept 
talking
about hard evidence.  To me that means that I can go to the battle field 
where the
battle of Waterloo or QarQar or the Pelopenesian War and find bodies dressed 
in
appropriate clothes, weapons, supplies, etc, which can be dated fairly 
precisely to
the correct date for the battle.  If literary testimony from the Bible is 
irrelevant,
than it is inconsistent to treat data from other literary sources, simply 
because they
exhibit a web of relationships which could have been created in a number of 
ways, as
important.  You're privileging one set of texts and dismissing another without
warrant.

Ken Litwak