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  • From: belaga AT math.u-strasbg.fr
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Wellhausen JEPD Theory re Patriarchal Narratives
  • Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2007 07:26:11 +0100

Your previous statement on the subject: "It is nice to see that many
people on this
b-Hebrew list do not accept the majority view of today's secular
academic scholars
that the Patriarchal narratives are a myth created by multiple
southern Hebrew authors
in the mid-1st millennium BCE," was more reasonable. Take out
"southern", "mid-",
"secular", and replace "are a myth" by "were", and you have an
accurate statement.
................
Yitzhak Sapir

Dear Yitzhak,

Thus, the accurate statement should be, according to you:

"The Patriarchal narratives were created by multiple Hebrew authors in the 1st millennium BCE."

What really troubles me in this "accurate" -- and correct? -- according to you claim, is the term "created". Why not just to say "were written down»?

My proposal does not reflect my opinion on the subject, but it is still looks sufficiently reasonable for me and potentially amendable for corrections, in the case of new discoveries, to be passed by without too much objections.

It is just because the authoritative majority of learned Jewish "academics" of this early epoch, to which even the Documentary Hypothesis is obliged to assign the "creation" of the narratives in question, were deeply religious people, for whom "the spirit" and "the letter" were not yet divorced, or worse still, for whom "the spirit" was nonexistent and only "the letter" was real, as to many of us, that we can be absolutely sure that these academics(whom I admire for their scientific and spiritual perseverance in the time when all books were written and when wars were destroying libraries forever) have written down something known to even children for many centuries with the most great accuracy. Oral precedes written and the written, in its beginnings, faithfully reproduces the oral (see, for example, the articles of Frank Polak, of the Tel Aviv University).

This said, personally, I do believe ? for historical, psychological, and, yes, spiritual reasons outlined above (which does not mean ?fundamentalist? and even "religious", as this word is spelled out by unbelievers, -- your original unfortunate, discriminatory terms which have the potential to destroy the very climate of the academic objectivity that you are so much promoting) -- that the Patriarchal Narratives were written down much earlier than the 1st Millennium BC.

Edward G. Belaga
******************************************************
Institut de Recherche en Mathématique Avancée
Universite Louis Pasteur
7, rue René Descartes, 67084 Strasbourg Cedex, FRANCE
tel.: 333 90 24 02 35, FAX: 333 90 24 03 28
e-mail : edward.belaga AT math.u-strasbg.fr
******************************************************


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