Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Gabe Eisenstein <gabe AT cascadeaccess.com>]

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