Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 19/09/2004 20:08, Michael Banyai wrote:

> Dear Peter,
>
> it has little sense what you are doing. You are creating a religious rule out 
> of something what is clearly a problematic exception, namely the interdiction 
> at the Sinai.
>  

Well, which interdiction do you mean? Wearing jewellery? Worshipping 
golden calves? The former is indeed an exception. The latter may be a 
religious rule, though I didn't say so, just that there is no evidence 
that calf worship happened between this incident and the time of Jeroboam.

> This interdiction was apparently so widely unknown, that the highpriest at 
> the idolatric temple of Dan was according to the book of Judges a descendent 
> of Moses. I suppose that the Sinai story was so little known even within the 
> family of Moses, that it remained secret till well after the time of Solomon 
> as it resurfaced.
>  

This reminds me of the argument that a report of a murder implies that 
there is no law against murder. That is as fallacious as the argument 
that a law against murder implies that murders do not take place.

> Now to your objection, it would be no need to the Sinai story to contain 
> historical even if in deformated form. I must contradict you since the Bible 
> in its Judahite version was not created in the desert but indeed in 
> contradiction to the traditions of the northern kingdom. So should a judahite 
> redactor have intended to push his theological view through, than it had to 
> use the same rough material and pre-emptively accuse the Israelites of 
> manipulating facts and divine oracles, like the one quoted at Sinai.
>  

You continue to make assertions without proper evidence. And in any case 
none of this contradicts what the position I have put forward, that the 
Exodus account is coherent but possibly fictional. Maybe it was written 
by a Judahite author pushing a theological view. That isn't my preferred 
position, but I deliberately left this issue open. But if it was, we can 
expect that author to have written a text which makes sense. While it is 
possible that he or she copied passages from very different stories, the 
chance of being able to reconstruct those stories reliably is minimal - 
unless basically they were the same story in a different form.

> This would have been the usual quid pro quod: an invention out of nihil would 
> have only discredited the judahite version. The best manipulations are those 
> which use at large pieces of truth.
>  

Indeed. So you agree that there are large pieces of truth in the Exodus 
story of the golden calf?

> But probably your reluctance to follow is rather your personal disinterest in history. Should one wish to extract history out of the biblical material, one would have to make a decision, what the material he is working with is or has to say. 
>  

I have made a decision that the Exodus story is coherent narrative, and 
that there is no good evidence not to accept it as a generally 
historical narrative in the same way as most other ancient documents 
which purport to narrate events are understood as generally historical. 
But I accept some later redaction.

> You are not taking any decision but this is your own particular choice since the material available is plenty enough to support a hypothesis in my direction. My hypothesis makes the happening at Sinai not to be a premonition by 500 years of things which have to realy happen only that much later. 
>
> And this makes sense so.
>  

Well, you have made a different decision. But I don't think you have 
good evidence to support that decision.


--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/