Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 08/07/2005 22:11, Stoney Breyer wrote:

> ...
>
> SBL OK, I confess to (and apologize for) being a little elliptical (and
> possibly a little frivolous) here - but the equation of poetic truth and
> prosaic fact pretty much disappeared with the Renaissance (Sidney is
> only the most readable critic on the subject). In that context the
> notion of "fraud" simply evaporates.
>
>  
Stoney, I wonder what the reaction in a court of law would be to someone 
who told a lie to the court and then tried to justify himself by saying 
that he was only speaking poetically? The trouble with your argument 
from Sidney and others is that it is a very quick way towards the 
complete loss of the concept of absolute truth and truthfulness. Of 
course in certain genres it is accepted that people can say certain 
things which are not literally true - but only some things, but not 
other things. Indeed I would even accept that that might be true of the 
*content* of an apocalyptic work, but that doesn't mean it is true also 
of attributions of authorship. If I write a novel and say things within 
the novel which are not perfectly true, that is expected (although it is 
interesting that Dan Brown has got into a lot of trouble for saying 
things in the *introduction* to his novel The Da Vinci Code which are 
supposed to be untrue - because he is explicitly claiming that they are 
true). But if I put on the cover "by Charles Dickens" and passed off my 
composition as a genuine work of Dickens, then I would be rightly 
condemned as a forger (that is, in the unlikely event that I did a good 
enough job that anyone took my claim seriously!). That is the point 
here. A claim is made, within the book of Daniel, that parts of the book 
are the words of Daniel. If that claim is untrue, then the book is 
unreliable, whatever its genre.

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



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