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  • From: Brian Roberts <formoria AT carolina.rr.com>
  • To: Karl Randolph <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • Cc: Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] exodus, dating of linguistics
  • Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 16:51:05 -0400

Karl,

Your position seems intellectually fair and honest to me.

There are several points last Fall during my read of Richard Eliott Friedman's "Who Wrote the Bible?" where I was overcome with incredulity. It was my first in-depth introduction to the DH (beyond Tullock's "The Old Testament Story" back in college), and I'm certain that there are many more explanations available than he was able to fit in those pages. Yet, as highly regarded a scholar as he is, I imagine that his summaries are accurate. Reading Friedman's history of the DH, I was struck by a sense of artificial convenience. Identifying the "Book of the Law" with Deuteronomy feels like an artifice. So does the idea of separating the texts into YHWH and Elohim threads. Further splitting those threads into Priestly and Redactor sub-threads (as Friedman did) seems impossibly hypothetical and impossible to verify.

A convenient artifice upon which to refute any theory which purports to take the Hebrew Bible at more or less face value.

Best Salaams,

Brian Roberts


On Thursday, June 3, 2004, at 04:24 PM, Karl Randolph wrote:

Brian:

By the time Wellhausen or whomever made the claim that the book of the law that was found in the temple was Deuteronomy, he was working on seven decades (assuming this was the 1870s) of development on what became known as the JEPD theory.

I don’t see how it is defendable that it was the book of Deuteronomy. Why not another book? Why a book at all, having the story of the book of the law being found a later gloss to authenticate a recent composition as ancient by the same authors who penned Deuteronomy in the fifth century BC? When one has taken the à priori decision that Tanakh as a historical document is less trustworthy than the admittedly untrustworthy Egyptian records, then anything goes.

I am one of those who reject the JEPD theory. I view it as hopelessly compromised by its theological presuppositions. I get an impression of more than a whiff of anti-Semitism in its treating of ancient Jewish credulity in believing the accuracy of Tanakh’s historical claims, and in their simplicity of calling God by one term only until fairly late in their history when disparate elements were fused together to make what we have today.

By the time of Wellhausen and his collegues, the rather open admission of evolutionary presuppositions of the early 1800s had been replaced by supposed lines of cultural and linguistic development (Gesenius was a major figure here), though still based on the same presuppositions.

Who doubts the historicity of Thucidites record of the Peloponesian Wars? There is no archeological evidence to back his record up. It is the only record of those wars that we have. He did not write it as a history, rather as an analysis of what went on in their heads as the various parties fought the war. Or how about Xenephon’s Anabasis? That was published as a rollicking good tale.

So, unless there is good evidence that the records are untrustworthy (such as the ancient Egyptian practice of rewriting history to aggrandize the present ruling pharaoh, internal inconsistancies and/or conflicting reports from other sources), I tend within reason to assume that ancient records are basically trustworthy. That includes Tanakh. Philosophical presuppositions are not a valid reason to reject the historicity of the documents.

Furthermore, I percieve a pattern of linguistic development consistent with the claimed dates.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: Brian Roberts <formoria AT carolina.rr.com>

Absolutely not all agree with the Documentary Hypothesis.

I've always been puzzled by the identification by JEDP backers of the
book of Deuteronomy as the "book of the law" found in the temple
disrepair. It hinges such a tremendously significant portion of an
already extremely hypothetical theory on an offhand remark in the
account of Josiah's reforms. And it does so without providing any real
reason to make that leap. It's as though someone (Wellshausen or
whomever) saw the verse and theorized that this "book of the law" could
be the very book I'm reading. Well, yes it could, but let's see how he
got from hypothesis to conclusion without anything in between.

Can anyone offer any insight?

Best Salaams,

Brian Roberts


On Wednesday, June 2, 2004, at 08:46 PM, George F. Somsel wrote:

Harold,

At the risk of opening a can of worms, I think Peter and Uri were
referring to JEDP and the Documentary Hypothesis. According to this
Deuteronomy was "found" in the temple and was the impetus for the
Josianic reforms. It was, shall I say, an "occassional piece", i.e.
written for the occassion. The histories were then written upon the
program of Deuteronomy with the centralized sanctuary, etc.

What some say may not have been so that Uri referenced is that not all
agree to the Documentary Hypothesis.

As regards your "the Bible tells me so" approach --

"Things are not always as they seem.
Skim milk oft masquerades as cream."

gfsomsel
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