Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ian Hutchesson" <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

>>
>> The pundits must realize that the earliest recognisable biblical text is 
>> from
>> Qumran. Was any biblical text written long before that?
>
>Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Mine was not a rhetorical question, but one asking for a revision of 
assumptions 
based on no evidence whatsoever. One cannot argue that the texts were written 
at 
a particular date without evidence. The evidence cannot come solely from 
within 
the document (unless it shows that an early date is not possible through 
anachronisms).

>The earliet manuscripts of the Classical Greek and Roman authors, poets,
>philosophers and playwrights date from the Middle Ages. Are we to conclude
>from this that the dialogues of Plato, the histories of Xenophon and
>Herodotus, and the plays of Sophocles and Aristophanes were not written long
>before that?

Jonathan, you need to look through the texts found at Tebtunis and other 
Egyptian 
sites containing ancient text troves.

>BTW, the Nash Papyrus was written long before Qumran. Isn't that a biblical
>text?

The Nash Papyrus is *still* problematical, despite analyses by people such as 
Albright and his acolytes. You'll see that it has been dated extremely widely 
on only a whiff of the finest evidence.

>> Syncretism is the equating of one god with another, or at least the 
>> absorption
>> of traits from one to another. Polytheism is visible, but is syncretism?
>
>There seems to be an artificial limitation here of the theological
>possibilities: monotheism, polytheism, syncretism. I haven't seen
>henotheism, or monolatry, mentioned. True, henotheism isn't monotheism; but
>then it isn't syncretism either.

Agreed. My original comment on this thread was about the citation in the 
subject 
line, which I thought misleading.


Ian