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  • From: Gabe Eisenstein <gabe AT cascadeaccess.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] A different generation of biblical scholarship
  • Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2009 09:43:00 -0800

Karl knows a lot more Hebrew than I do, but I know a lot more about evidence, logic and interpretation. Karl supports his idiosyncratic views of the latter by links to kooky Christian websites. I suggest that a clearer view of the role of interpretation in science can be found by studying books like the following:

Truth and Method -- Hans-Georg Gadamer
Fact, Fiction and Forecast -- Nelson Goodman
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions -- Thomas Kuhn
Conjectures and Refutations -- Karl Popper
The Structure of Scientific Inference -- Mary Hesse

Karl will say that authors like these represent some kind of "bandwagon" -- which is the whole mainstream and university world of science. It is a matter of pride for him that only religious fundamentalists share his views. And yet his whole rhetorical style is based on constantly using the words "evidence", "logic", etc. in order to falsely suggest that he has something in common with real scientists and philosophers of science.

The question about the dating of the Pentateuch is not simply a matter of "interpretations built on pre-chosen ideologies/religious beliefs". Remember that Karl also thinks that theories about the formation of galaxies, stars and planets, or the different structures of rocks and minerals (let alone the development of current life forms on earth), are also a matter of religious belief. Because the events they refer to HAPPENED IN THE PAST! But just like theories in astronomy and geology, theories about the Pentateuch are possible because different accounts of the past have different consequences for the present (e.g. what we find in existing documents). Some are plausible, some are possible and some are impossible. Some fit nicely with other plausible theories, while others do not.

To put things very simply: there are degrees of evidence and plausibility. It's not just a binary world of "evidence" versus "interpretation" and "religious belief". Rather, interpretation is absolutely necessary to scientific practice, as we try to refine theories and sort the wheat from the chaff. This is what George Athas was getting at by saying that Karl's talk of interpretation raised a straw man. (And again, see the authors mentioned above.)

Karl wrote:
One example, do the different words for God refer to different sources of
documents, or did even the earliest documents indicate that the people
recognized one God, but that he had a few titles besides his name? The
answers to that question shows how the different ideologies interpret the
same data. And the different ideologies / faiths predetermine the answers to
those questions.

This paragraph utterly misrepresents the arguments of source-criticism, as others have mentioned. It isn't a matter of "different names for God", but of sets of texts in which, for no apparent reason, God has one name or the other, AND the fact that these texts correlate with geographical, ideological AND stylistic features that also distinguish the texts. The most succinct and cogent arguments I know of here are contained in Friedman's The Hidden Book in the Bible (appendix). None of his arguments are based on premises that are accepted on faith. In contrast, the explanation that "[God] had a few titles besides his name" is no explanation at all.
(Does this mean I "believe in" Friedman? No, I disagree with several of his conclusions, and I think that the whole theory is subject to revision or disconfirmation. I am also neither a maximalist nor minimalist; my current guesses put the authorship of the bulk of the Pentateuch in the 9th-6th centuries.)

I would also like to challenge Karl's assertion that the text of the Pentateuch itself claims to have been written by Moses. I don't know if this has been discussed on the list before, but the evidence of verses referring to "this book" or "this teaching" (torah) are extremely ambiguous. They could refer to various subtexts like Deuteronomy or the Holiness Code, or they could refer to the entire Bible (the book you are holding in your hands which talks of "this book"). What, you don't think that Moses' death counts against the latter hypothesis, do you? After all, Talmudists believed that everything in the "oral Torah" was already stated on Mt. Sinai (including the words of rabbis from the first century and later). As for me, I don't accept supernatural accounts (including statements showing knowledge of the future) in the absence of very compelling evidence. On the other hand, I do accept as evidence against Mosaic authorship even details such as the claim that Moses was the most humble man (a claim that the most humble man could not make about himself). This is indeed a matter of interpretation, but also of plausibility.


Gabe Eisenstein






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