Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

 >We know a good deal more now about who (for example)  >King Arthur was and was not than people who lived in the  >Middle Ages did. Why shouldit be different with the Bible? 

This is assumption #1.

>Historical research has come a long way - but it has to be  >applied without preconceived dogmas, like any other  >scientific exercise. 

Assumption #2, and frankly, an impossibility.

>After all, the Exodus account was itself written several  >hundred years after the date at which the eventsare  >recounted as taking place. 

Assumption #3.  We don't know for sure one way or the  other.

>The political and national motives for embellishment are  >self-evident.

Assumption #4.  This is only one way of reading it, and is  built on several other assumptions.

>Historians noware a priori more likely than people writing  >under the monarchy or in Babylonian exile to be able to  >look at the evidence dispassionately. 

Assumption #5.  Not only is this statement riddled with  unwarranted pride in ourselves, the whole idea of lookin at  history "dispassionately" is essence of garden fertilizer.

>But when we desperately WANT the "evidence" to  >corroboratesomething close to our hearts, we cloud our  >scientific objectivity.

Assumption #6 and #7.  Anybody who disagrees must want  something; there is such a thing as "scientific objectivity."

>This isa critical, scientific List.

Assumption #8.  This list is about biblical Hebrew and all the  various ways of coming at it.  Trying to narrow its scope in this  way is not only artificial, it excludes certain approaches a priori,  which is not scientific.

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"No study of probabilities inside a given frame can ever
tell us how probable it is that the frame itself can be
violated."  C. S. Lewis