Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

Dear James and Karl,

Your latest posts show some claims of logical fallacies,
but a closer look will show that there is no logical fallacy
involved.

For example, Karl wrote:
> You are making an assumption of borrowing that has no evidence to back
> up your assumption. Just because surviving copies of Enuma Elish are
> older than surviving copies of accounts of Genesis Flood, does not
> make it the older account.

I am not dealing here with the issue of borrowing from
Enuma Elish, since this is not the position I hold or have
suggested on list.  However, the second sentence presents
a logical fallacy.  If we have two documents, and we can
definitely date one a thousand years earlier than the second,
this provides evidence that the first one is the older account
or document.  We may argue that the two are copies
themselves of older documents and it is possible that the
second one is older than the first.  However, that argument
would be made on pure speculative grounds.  We have no
evidence those documents are copies, nor evidence that
they are accurate copies, nor evidence that one is older
than the second.  Some evidence could be brought to
support this claim on linguistic grounds.  For example, we
can argue on linguistic grounds that although our copies of
the Zoroastrian Gathas are late, they predate the Old
Persian inscriptions.  However, absent linguistic grounds or
any other grounds, such a claim is absent any evidence.
The first claim -- the one that says that the older-dated
document is the older account and the later-dated document
the newer account -- is supported by some evidence, the
physical dating of the documents.

James made a few more:

> JCR: Your whole line of reasoning is based on your
> interpretation of Isaiah 51 is correct and this in itself
> lies on the assumption that your assumptions about the
> Tehom/Tiamat relationship are correct. Surely you must
> see how this is circular reasoning at its most evident.
> There is absolutely no internal unambiguous references
> that divinise Tehom whatsoever in the Tanakh. Reading
> the text at face value could only ever lead the reader
> to believe that Tehom is referring to the body of
> water which the context evidently points to.

There is no circularity.  Even without knowing that Yam
was a chaotic sea god in Ugarit and that Tehom is
"divinized" or "mythologized" in Ugarit as well, and even
without recognizing that Yam is used in the name
Abiyam in a context that suggests Yam is a deity, we
would be justified in suggesting that Isaiah 51:9-10
is refering to Yam and Tehom in a mythologic and divine
context.  The parallelisms in Isa 51:9-10 are not just
Rahab = Tanin and Yam = Tehom Rabbah, but also
Rahab = Yam.  The Rahab = Yam suggests that Yam
is a name of some type of "sea dragon" just like Rahab
or Tanin.  It is definitely helpful that we know that Yam
is a diety in Ugarit and that Tehom is divinized in Ugarit.
They provide additional, external, non-circular support to
the argument.  But that is not part of any circular
argument here.

Unlike George, I happen to believe that circular arguments
are always bad.  Pretty much, all they show is that the
scenario at hand may be consistent.  (There may be
inconsistencies that have not been investigated in the
logic and therefore unnoticed).  If the scenario is internally
consistent, that scenario is a possibility.  It is not
necessarily, though, the only scenario possible.  A non-
circular argument has the power to go beyond this and
show that the scenario is not simply possible but is
very likely.  Since this is not math, there are always
tiny possibilities along the way that certain conclusions
won't hold, and therefore "very likely" is the best you
can get.  A circular argument would best be phrased
differently, as an argument that the scenario is simply
internally consistent.  When phrased as a circular
argument, the author is attempting to suggest that
this scenario is likely when all he can show is that the
scenario is at best internally consistent, and even that
is not certain.  This is why a circular argument is faulty
logic.

An example of a circular argument would go something
like "All instances of the word Yam in the Bible speak
of the sea as an element of nature, and nothing more.
Therefore, the few instances that may be suggested
through parallelism etc to be otherwise are also the
use of the sea as an element of nature and nothing
more."

> Yitzhak:
> Again, I am not saying the reference is to the Babylonian
> Tiamat, but rather to the Canaanite counterpart Tehom.
> END QUOTE
>
> JCR: Do you have any evidence of a Canaanite goddess
> named Tehom? If not, this is merely speculation based
> on non verifiable assumptions.

While the above is technically correct, because we have
relatively few religious literary texts from Canaan and
Phoenician sources themselves, we do have sources from
Ugarit which is relatively similar.  But even without such
evidence, we would simply not know whether or not there
was a Canaanite god or goddess Tehom.  Saying there
was such a god or goddess is as much speculation as
saying there was not.  So where I have to prove there
was such a god, James to proceed in his argument has
to show there was not.  Given that Tiamat is represented
in the Babylonian pantheon, that Ugaritic "thm" is
sometimes divinized as in Akkadian, and that Tehom
appears in contexts like Isaiah 51 in Hebrew, it is
reasonable to argue that Tehom was a god or goddess in
Canaan whose mythic folklore and legends were used by
the Israelites.  Without Isaiah 51, it would still be possible
to make a strong case for Tehom being part of the
wider pantheon at Canaan, using the Ugaritic and
Akkadian evidence.

Another problem with responding to Karl and James is arguments
such as the following:

> > Gen 49:25 The parallelism $mym/thwm immediately
> > follows )l )byk/$dy, which is clearly a divine
> >
> ...not!

I don't know where or how to start?  Shaday and )el )abika are
definitely divine.  At least, I think so.  So how do I respond?
"..is too!"?  This may be seen as an extreme case of arguing
without specific evidence.  For example, Karl argued that in
all other cases, Tehom is used in non-divine contexts.  But
until George provided specific examples, I could not relate to
the arguments.  After George provided the examples, I was
able to argue a counter-example (Isa 51) as well as an
example where his argument of comparison to Shamayim
seems to fail (Job 26).  I also considered whether Shamayim
was indeed a reference to a diety.  While we do know of Ba(l
Shamayin, I concluded that there was no evidence for such.
The Ba(l Shamayin example also seems to be working the
wrong way, identifying Shamayin with Ba(l, not with the
enemy of Ba(l that is defeated.  So, in that point, I agreed with
George.  Given a specific example, I can conclude that the
argument is valid, and I am wrong on some issue.  Without
a specific example, the argument is in the air and relates only
to general evidence.  It cannot be refuted or supported because
the evidence is too general.  In effect, it has no real evidence
behind it.

James' reply, the one where he accuses me of circularity etc.,
is one that has very little specific evidence throughout the post.
I found myself at a loss because not only do I have to argue
why his points (those to which I can relate) are wrong, I also
have to explain why other points fail on rather technical issues
of logic.

I am going to split up the discussion into separate issues of
Rahab, Leviathan and Tehom, and maybe also a general review
of the concept of the Sea Monster/God in antiquity, as well as a
post noting the Phoenician evidence for a Canaanite Creation
narrative, which is also small but still is better than nothing.
But that will not come today.

Yitzhak Sapir
http://toldot.blogspot.com