Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Daryl F. Jefferies" <djefferi AT chorus.net>]

Well... the people who wrote these ancient scriptures may not have 
been "there"  at all... Point is: only the authors/collectors know if 
they were writing "history," retelling myth, or making the whole mess 
up.  Arrogant scholars try to evaluate the data and figure out, most 
likely, what did (or did not) happen and who wrote (or didn't write) 
what when.  Read carefully and you'll find that the "ancient 
scriptures" aren't all that clear about anything...

Sincerely,

Daryl Jefferies
A humble twenty-first century scholar : )


> Why not just believe what the ancient scriptures say? Surely the 
> people who were there and wroe it know more than arrogant, 20th 
> Century "scholars" who came along thousands of years later, no? 
> MAtthew Miller
>
> "Invariably exacerbating and complicated verbage consistently 
> effects in me repulsion of prolific proportions."
>
>
>
> > From: Bill Rea <bsr15 AT exchange.canterbury.ac.nz>
> > Reply-To: Bill Rea <bsr15 AT exchange.canterbury.ac.nz>
> > To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
> > Subject: [b-hebrew] Re: Jethro and the"The Midianite Hypothesis"
> > Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 09:27:05 +1300 (NZDT)
> >
> > Christopher wrote:-
> >
> > > Years ago, we were told a hypothesis about Jethro, Moses' father-in-law,
> > > in Exodus.  The idea was that Moses' contact with Jethro, the priest of
> > > Midian, may have formed his religious ideas. For example, Moses' first
> > > encounter with the deity occurs while sojourning with Jethro in Exodus 3.
> > > This hypothesis implies Judaism an outgrowth of the Midianite religion,
> > > which is certainly curious.
> > >
> > > Since I wasn't much of a student, perhaps this is a misunderstanding on my
> > > part.  Has anyone heard of this before?
> >
> > Yes, I have. There are problems with it, depending on your biases.  If
> > you're a maximalist the problems are that the whole of Genesis is
> > before Moses and YHWH has lots to do with people then. If you're a
> > minimalist then there was no Moses  to go visit with Jethro. Moses is
> > supposed to be a late creation to put a stop to the work of the
> > prophets.  Another widely held bias in scholarly circles is that the
> > Israelites were incapable of having an original thought, so scholars
> > are always trying to find where they borrowed their ideas from.
> >
> > A good rule of thumb is the number of hypotheses which fit the data is
> > inversely proportional to the amount of data you have. But in the
> > Biblical arena it seems quite acceptable to discard data which doesn't
> > fit your hypothesis. We have some truly excellent exponents of that
> > technique on this list, I'm sure you'll encounter them.  So if you
> > discard everything which you don't like and only accept Moses'
> > encounter with Jethro then it becomes the only theory which fits
> > your facts.
> >
> > The only evidence we have for Moses meeting Jethro is in the Hebrew
> > Scriptures. Grab a concordance and in a few minutes you can find
> > and read all the evidence we have available to us.
> >
> > I'm sure you'll detect that I'm really cynical about all this. My
> > point is that you can have any answer you want and that answer tells
> > you more about your biases than anything else. I've even read that
> > Moses and Akenaten were the same person! A different answer, but one
> > born of the same bias that the Israelite people couldn't have had
> > an original thought.
> >
> > Bill Rea, Information Technology Dept., Canterbury  University  \_
> > E-Mail bill dot rea at canterbury dot ac dot nz                 </   New
> > Phone   64-3-364-2331, Fax     64-3-364-2332                   /)  Zealand
> > Unix Systems Administrator                                    (/'
> >
> >
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