Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Bruce,

You write:

>I, too, think that progressive redaction
>and complementary revelation are useful, cognate concepts for Christians
>to use.

I did not mention anything about progressive redaction. I think that there
was editorial work going on, but I do not accept much more than that fact.
For example, I think that Isaiah wrote all of Isaiah, Zechariah all of
Zechariah, and Daniel all of Daniel.

>But it might be better if you were not to answer for Dan Wagner, Harold,
>as his
>approach seems somewhat different from yours, being uncompromisingly
>unified. I
>may be wrong but I had the impression he was not at all in favour of
>redaction.

 Redaction is almost completely unimportant to me.

>As for no contradictions, by the way, how much did David pay for the site of
>Araunah? There, one is dealing with apparent fact, yet the two accounts are
>difficult to reconcile smoothly without an ingeniously pious speciousness.

>And when that comes in, Christians should realise that they project a smugly
>intimidating and fortified irrationalism rather than the nakedness of Christ.

The NIV Study Bible notes that the Samuel passage in 1 Samuel 24:24, which
mentions only fifty shekels of silver, refers to the threshing floor and
the oxen, while the six hundred gold shekels mentioned in 1 Chronicles
21:25 refers to the "site," which may be a larger area. In other words,
David made have made an immediate payment, recorded in Samuel, and later a
greater payment, preserved in Chronicles.

I really do not know what the answer is, but I assume that there is a good
one. I do not think that such reasoning has to considered specious
irrationalism. The Bible has demonstrated itself to me to be a wonderfully
trustworthy record. Mistakes have crept in through copying, especially in
the numbers.

                                Yours,
                                Harold Holmyard
                                Dallas, TX