Biblical Hebrew Forum

["B. M. Rocine" <brocine AT twcny.rr.com>]

harold, harold, harold,

gathered wrong.

i most certainly did not write "(3) Issues of Biblical Hist..."  you 
respond to below.  yitzhak did.  please, please, please.

i get three lengthy responses now. 

i am not a moderator at this time.

you have no idea what my involvement has been on this list in the past 
ten plus years.

bryan


Harold Holmyard wrote:
> Dear Bryan,
>
> I gather from Yitzhak that you wrote the following.
>   
> > (3) Issues of Biblical history.  Anyone who brings up a claim that
> > raises the possibility that the Bible is errant will be target to a
> > discussion of whether the Bible is historically correct, whether
> > the Documentary Hypothesis is founded on solid foundations,
> > etc.  A scholar who has to debate the documentary hypothesis
> > which is generally accepted for a century now, or who has to
> > debate whether the Patriarchal Narratives are historical, now
> > discredited for decades, will find this list not a hospitable place
> > to discuss these issues.
> >     
>
> HH: It is really a battle tactic, not neutral moderating, to claim that 
> scholars should hospitably accept the documentary hypothesis. There are 
> many scholars who do not accept the documentary hypothesis. Here is a 
> sampling of thought from a Wikipedia article:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis
>
>
> Most Orthodox Jews and many conservative Christians reject the 
> documentary hypothesis entirely and accept the traditional view that 
> Moses essentially produced the whole Torah. Jewish sources predating the 
> emergence of the documentary hypothesis offer alternative explanations 
> for the stylistic differences and alternative Divine names from which 
> the hypothesis originated. For instance, some regard the Tetragrammaton 
> as an expression of mercifulness (middath ha-rachamim) while Elohim 
> refers to strict judgement (middath ha-din); traditional Jewish 
> literature cites this concept (first found in Mechilta section 
> Beshalach) copiously.
>
> Most Orthodox Jews and many conservative Christians accept the divine 
> origin of the Pentateuch in its entirety as a given. They usually reject 
> the documentary hypothesis as incompatible with their religious view of 
> the Bible. Some religious conservatives believe that Moses wrote much of 
> the text and edited or compiled the rest. Others who reject the 
> hypothesis allow for considerable post-Mosaic editing of the Pentateuch, 
> though not along J.E.D.P. lines. Many conservative scholars argue for 
> the literary unity of the books[1].
> Over the last century, an entire literature has developed within 
> conservative scholarship and religious communities dedicated to the 
> refutation of higher biblical criticism in general and of the 
> documentary hypothesis in particular.
>
> R. N. Whybray's The Making of the Pentateuch offers a critique of the 
> hypothesis from a critical perspective.
>
> Biblical archaeologist W.F. Albright stated that even the most ardent 
> proponents of the documentary hypothesis must admit that, like the Book 
> of Jasher, and the Book of the Wars of the Lord, no tangible, external 
> evidence for the existence of the hypothesized J, E, D, P sources exists.
>
> The late Dr. Yohanan Aharoni, in his work Canaanite Israel during the 
> Period of Israeli Occupation (referenced from simpletoremember.com) 
> states that "[r]ecent archaeological discoveries have decisively changed 
> the entire approach of Bible critics" and that later authors or editors 
> could not have put together or invented these stories hundreds of years 
> after they happened.
>
> Some studies claim to show a literary consistency throughout the 
> Pentateuch. For instance, a 1980 computer-based study at Hebrew 
> University in Israel (as summarised at simpletoremember.com) concluded 
> that a single author most likely wrote the Pentateuch. Some Bible 
> scholars have rejected this study for a number of reasons, including the 
> fact that a single later editor can rewrite a text in a uniform voice 
> (see simpletoremember.com).
>
> On the other hand, say critics like James Orr, if one admits that the 
> texts speak with a uniform voice, much of the initial plausibility of 
> the hypothesis evaporates.
>
> Some, perhaps most notably Gleason Archer, have proposed harmonisations 
> of the Torah which allegedly resolve the discrepancies.
>
> Other criticisms arise from several sources:
> ▪ Axel Olrik's Principles for Oral Narrative Research states that 
> preserving various versions of the same material without regularizing it 
> signals accuracy in transmitting an oral tradition, not a failure of 
> editorship. (§15)
> ▪ Umberto Cassuto points out an instance of "emendation" which, in 
> modern scientific terms, equates to falsifying the data so that it 
> supports an assertion.[5]
> ▪ Rabbi Dr. Dovid Gottlieb points out at simpletoremember.com that 
> according to the Documentary Hypothesis, "the editor is supposed to have 
> composed the Torah out of fragmentary documents possessed by a variety 
> of different group, each with its own conception of G-d and its 
> traditions of history, laws etc. the editor somehow convinced all the 
> groups to replace their fragments with his one composite. This occurred 
> at a time when there were Jewish communities in Israel, Babylon, 
> Alexandria, Egypt and elsewhere. Yet this event – the unification of the 
> text – left no historical record at all. No opposition, no hold-outs 
> retaining their fragments, no celebration of the editor and the event of 
> finally achieving the authentic divine text…."
>
> Yours,
> Harold Holmyard
>
>
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B.M. Rocine
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