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  • From: "Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>
  • To: "Heard, Christopher" <Christopher.Heard AT pepperdine.edu>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Author of the Torah
  • Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 04:02:05 +0100


Not even remotely parrallel!

-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org on behalf of Heard, Christopher
Sent: Sat 7/30/2005 3:59 AM
To: b-hebrew
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Author of the Torah

On Jul 29, 2005, at 7:12 PM, Read, James C wrote:
[James]


I am interested in hearing your model that would explain how the nation
of isreal was duped into believing the scroll was authored by Moshe'.

I don't think anybody was "duped." I think that the fact that the Torah
itself says that Moses wrote *some* law books, combined with the fact
that both Torah and tradition depict Moses as Israel's great lawgiver
(well, mediator of laws from YHWH), were over the course of many years
of tradition "generalized" in popular thinking so that Moses came to be
regarded as the author of the entire Torah, even though the Torah itself
makes that claim for only parts of it.

A very similar thing happens even today to my students. Many of them
come into class with the presupposition that because David was
remembered in the Bible as a harpist, and because David's name appears
at the top of some of the psalms, therefore King David wrote the book of
Psalms. Yet that is not what the text attests. My students are taking
part of the data and generalizing it beyond what is warranted. I think
the same thing happened in the traditional reception of the Torah.

Chris

--
R. Christopher Heard
Assistant Professor of Religion
Pepperdine University
Malibu, California 90263-4352
http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard
<http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard>
http://www.iTanakh.org <http://www.iTanakh.org>
http://www.semioticsandexegesis.info
<http://www.semioticsandexegesis.info>

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>From kwrandolph AT email.com Fri Jul 29 23:47:23 2005
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From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
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Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 22:47:22 -0500
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Author of the torah
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This is a perfect example of a faith claim. We have no
historical references, no list of the materials used (e.g.
was it papyrus, or vellum, that he wrote on??) so there is
no way either to verify or falsify below claim. Exodus claims
that Moses was brought up in a royal household, so was
presumably literate, but there is no proof either way.

I personally do not accept Documentary Hypothesis precisely
because of its lack of documentation. I find the internal
claims stronger than the scholarly reconstructions. But with
the lack of historical documents other than copies of copies
of copies, centuries after the authorship of the originals,
neither side can convince the other. Therefore it is best not
to use inflamatory statements as below unless done in jest.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim West" <jwest AT highland.net>

>
> ... Moses, if he existed
> at all, cannot be credited with authorship in any comprehensible way.
>
> Jim
>
> --
> D. Jim West
>
> Biblical Studies Resources - http://web.infoave.net/~jwest
> Biblical Theology Weblog - http://biblical-studies.blogspot.com

--
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