Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Lisbeth S. Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jones, Brian [mailto:JBJONES AT stoel.com]
> Sent: Mon, June 03, 2002 6:08 PM
> To: Biblical Hebrew
> Subject: RE: The daughter of Jeftah died?
>
>
> I accept Liz's statement that we all have assumptions, often
> unrecognized, that we need to examine closer.  However, Daniel's
> assumptions in this argument, that the biblical text is based on
> historical events and should be accepted as historical
> barring evidence
> to the contrary, have always been explicit and cannot be refuted by
> simply asserting that this assumption is wrong.
What are the assumptions that this is based on?
Is it that Moses wrote everything down, how, what language?
or Samuel? How? to whom?
When did writing begin, who wrote, who went to school?
When did Samuel live, when did Jeptha?
Did stories get passed from person to person around a campfire?
Someone wrote me that Samuel is the author.  Is Samuel the
narrator then? What about the conversations reported? How
did Samuel know them, were they reported to him word for word?
Did he overhear them?

On the other
> hand, Liz
> seems to have based her comments on the "assumption" that barring
> supporting evidence or a detailed (perhaps provable)
> explanation for the
> source and transmission of a text, the text should be regarded as
> lacking historicity.  This is an argument from absence and a logical
> fallacy.
No, I'm not saying this at all.
I'm saying that when a text is assumed to be historical, that
the people who make those assumptions have (whether they
know it or not) a theory of transmission in their mind, which upon
closer examination they will find to be untenable.
Now this doesn't affect the hitoricity of the story one way or another.
But it does foster a more critical approach, which is my only aim
here actually, not to debunk everything willy-nilly.

Liz