Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Ted:
Aren't you being a bit uncritical? Look at the works you listed!

Who wrote Kings or Chronicles? Their authorship is not listed. Furthermore,
what sources did they use? Some were listed, but how many were
merely plagiarized without attribution? As such, are these good examples?

Or how about Psalms? It openly admits multiple authors.

Even Genesis gives literary clues that it was made up of earlier documents,
either written by eye witnesses to the events or closely related to actors
in the events. E.g. the events of the flood were written by Noah's sons.

The problem comes in when works attributed to one author, are claimed to
have been written by multiple authors. E.g. Isaiah. That's also where the
disagreement comes in, a disagreement based on faith / philosophy /
religion. If Isaiah wrote the whole book, as is claimed, then he named Cyrus
over a century before he came on the world's stage. If Isaiah was written by
multiple authors, then the whole Bible is untrustworthy, because it is
making claims that are not true. The same is true of other books such as
Exodus through Deuteronomy. That is the theological argument. From the
stylistic, linguistic point of view, there is no evidence that all people
agree on that indicate multiple authors for those books whose authors are
named.

Karl W. Randolph.

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 3:42 PM, <TedBro AT aol.com> wrote:

> Hi, All:
>
> To supplement Lloyd's comments... It seems clear to me that everyone
>  accepts
> the idea that certain Biblical books contains multiple sources  and were
> edited / redacted. Who would doubt multiple sources for Kings,  Chronicles
> or
> Psalms? Logically, no one could have been eyewitness to all the  events of
> Genesis. Even excluding chapters 1-11, Genesis covers three  generations
> and must
> have either oral tradition or written sources, even if set  down word for
> word by
> Moses.
>
> On the other hand, I suppose one could contend that God inspired Moses with
> supernatural knowledge of the doings of Abraham, Issac, Jacob and Joseph
>  that
> he otherwise would have known nothing about, but then could not God have
> inspired Ezra to that same end? Since Ezra is viewed, even by the most
> conservative minded, as an inspired author, how is faith threatened by
> viewing  Ezra
> putting final touches on the Pentateuch?
>
> Cheers,
> Ted Brownstein
>