Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Yitzhak,

See my comments below.



> On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 8:16 AM, Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no> wrote:
>
> >  Hypothesis 2: A group of 600,000 men and their families stayed in
> >  Sinai some time between the 11th and 15th centuries B.C.E.
> >  Prediction: We expect to find ...
> >
> >  Yes, what do we expect to find? Taking into account that this is said
> >  to have happened more than 3,000 years ago, and the account says that
> >  the group did not build houses and cities, what will we expect to
> >  find? Perhaps this is a situation where "absence of evidence is not
> >  evidence of absence"? If it is not, we should be able to point to
> >  definite  things that we would expect to find.
>
> On a certain basis, this is the exact point.  Anyone proposing a certain
> theory must first provide some positive evidence that suggests it is true.
> The Bible cannot itself be taken as evidence.  Only if you a priori assume
> the Bible to be true, is it "evidence," and if you assumed it to be true,
> what's the whole issue with evidence anyway?  If you do not assume it
> to be true -- for example, if you start with the view that it may be all true
> word for word, but not necessarily -- then it can no longer be taken as
> evidence.  Rather, you need external evidence.  Furthermore, with no
> reasons or evidence to support your theory, your theory cannot be
> falsified, making it rather unscientific.  By delineating what you expect
> to find, you take the second step towards making a scientific theory,
> the first step being stating the hypothesis itself.  Thus, "absence of
> evidence is not evidence of absence," but in the absence of any
> expectations, we have no scientific theory, and in the absence of
> positive evidence external to the Bible, we have no proposition on the
> table.

RF:
It does not seem that you have a knowledge  of the basics of the 
philosophy of science. A theory can be defined in this way:  " a 
number of conceptions whose relationship is made explicit." A 
hypothesis can be defined this way: "a claim that fulfills two 
requirements, 1) we are not certain that it is true, and 2) we deduce 
logical consequences from the claim, either to test the hypothesis, 
or to predict or explain something,"

If you use "theory" according to its definition, your use does not 
collocate with your following points. But it seems that you use it as 
a synonym for hypothesis, and in that case you reveal that you do not 
know what a hypothesis is.  You may want to read K. R. Popper (1980) 
"The Logic of Scientific Discovery". There you will learn that in 
science "positive evidence ...that suggests (that a hypothesis) is 
true" is not sought, because it is practically impossible to find 
such evidence. In scientific research hypotheses are falsified but 
not verified. To bring in the Bible and a certain view of it is 
completely irrelevant when the test of my hypothesis is the issue. In 
order to keep the discussion on a scientific level I refrained from 
stating my own viewpoints. And by definition, the hypothesis "The 
Pentatuch was written in the 15th century by a person called Moses" 
implies uncertainty regarding the claim; otherwise it was not a 
scientific hypothesis.

In an earlier post someone said that he was tired of the 
fundamentalism that permeated some posts. I will not use the word 
"tired," but I am certainly amazed at all the scientific 
fundamentalism that several posts reveal-and even worse-many persons 
do not realize that they are scientific fundamentalists. I am 
perfectly aware that very few scholars today would accept a Mosaic 
authorship of the Pentateuch. But why do most members of the list 
reject the same? Because Wellhausen did it? Because van Seters did 
it? Because the bulk of scholars do it? Here is where scientific 
fundamentalism comes into play: So many persons have a certain 
viewpoint that they never personally have researched in a 
systematical scientific way. And they believe it because those with 
authority believe it. This is in my view a faith that is comparable 
to the faith of fundamentalists

So, I formed the hypothesis in order to try to appeal to the 
intelligence, logic, and imagination of those who hold the mentioned 
view, trying to cause them to ask themselves: "Why do I reject the 
Mosaic authorship? Do I have proofs? Do I have evidence? What do I 
actually have?" So far I have not received any balanced answers based 
on sound scientific methodology. (And again, please remember that I 
in this post do not argue in favor of the Mosaic authorship, I am 
just asking questions.)



> Let us then delineate something that could remain:
> A large pile of quail bones.  How many is "large"?  Well, there were
> 600,000 men.  The quail would come for 30 days (Num 11:20), but
> only for 2 days is collection actually said to have taken place (Num
> 11:32), three times of collection in all (day, night, day).  Collection
> was at 10 pieces a person (at a minimum), so taken together that
> is 600,000 * 10 * 3 = 18 million units of quail.  So how about a
> large pile of bones belonging to 18 million quail.
>
> It is also specific enough so that even if we don't find any specific
> reason to link this huge pile of quail bones to the Israelites, most
> people would probably see a relationship.
>
> Anyway, no such pile is known, and until we find such a pile, or
> other positive evidence, we have no proposition on the table.

RF:
Here we need to go back to Duhem-Quine's problem.  Your hypothesis 
is: "The 600,000 men in Sinai are said to have eaten Quails. And 
therefore we expect to find huge piles of quail bones." The test of 
the hypothesis is to look for quail bones.

What are the auxiliary hypotheses behind this primary hypothesis? I 
see at least three such auxiliary hypotheses:

1) The habit of the people was to collect the bones after the quails 
were eaten and make huge piles of them.
2) Quail bones can be preserved for more than 3,000 years without 
being dissolved.
3) The weather conditions have been favorable to a preservation of 
the bones, and they have not been swept away by strong winds, rains 
or other means; neither have they been covered by sand.

Please remember what Duhem-Quine correctly said about auxiliary 
hypotheses. it is quite clear that each of the auxiliary hypotheses 
are problematic. Moreover, Sinai is a big area, and the question is 
where to start to search for quail bones. If they are not found in 
one place, they can be in another place.

> Textually, we could suggest something else: If the Pentateuch was
> written after the 10th century, we would expect to find mention of
> iron tools.  Prior to this, we would expect copper tools to
> predominate.  We thus find such verses as Num 35:16, Deut 27:5,
> or Deut 28:48, which mention ONLY iron tools, to be specifically out
> of place.  The iron chariots of Jos 17:16-18 also have very little to do
> with the 15th or 14th centuries.  Of course, you can doubt it, you can
> try to falsify it, but it shows you what happens once we have a
> specific proposition on the table: it becomes scientific and open to
> discussion and alternative explanations.

As some posts already have shown, we cannot know the first time when 
iron was smelted. To speak of a bronze age with stages, an iron age 
with stages, and other ages with stages, as if the whole ancient 
words centered around particular metals, can be very misleading. Here 
we find a host of auxiliary hypotheses which may be questionable. How 
can we know that a particular community did not use iron tools when 
another community only used bronze tools? Only a small part of the 
communities in the ancient world have been researched. Because most 
ancient communities have not been explored we have a fine example 
that absence of evidence of iron is not evidence for the absence of 
iron.


> In fact, if you want to examine the proposition that "The Pentateuch
> was written in the 15th century by a man called Moses," you should
> also be ready to examine the proposition that "The Pentateuch was
> not written in the 15th century or was not written by a man or the
> man was not called Moses."  Furthermore, when actually dealing with
> hypotheses, you would also be much more open to variant hypotheses,
> since you may want to modify your original hypothesis as time goes
> on.  For example, you find a piece of evidence that has negative
> implications for your original hypothesis (this is actually good, since
> it means you are really considering those pieces of evidence that
> may falsify your hypothesis), but you realize, being partial to your
> hypothesis, that a slight restatement could deal with this evidence
> and also withstand all the evidence that you have collected thus far.
> Unless you are ready to examine variant hypotheses, you are not
> taking a scientific approach.

Here you collide head on with scientific methodology! You cannot form 
a scientific hypothesis regarding what does *not* exist; that simply 
is nonsense. But if you again look at requirement 1) in the 
definition of a hypothesis, you will see that uncertainty is inherent 
in the hypothesis. It is the very test of the hypothesis that that 
may falsify it and show that what it proposes is not correct. You 
turn the situation upside down.


> Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it also means
> you have no sound proposition to begin with (by definition: sound
> means it rests on solid evidence).
>
> Yitzhak Sapir
> _______________________________________________


 By way of conclusion I will say: There is no way to prove that the 
Pentateuch was written in the 15th century by a man called Moses. And 
conversely - and this is also corroborated by the lack of scientific 
tests of my hypothesis proposed by list-members - it cannot be proved 
that the Pentateuch was written at a later time.

Evidence for both possibilities may be found, but as I see it, so far 
this evidence is not conclusive - it must be interpreted and 
evaluated- and there are many possible errors. Fundamentalism in 
connection with Mosaic authorship is to believe that each word in the 
Tanakh was dictated by God. Fundamentalism on the other side is to 
follow the Latin saying "vox populi vox dei" (the voice of the people 
is the voice of god) but changing "the people" with "the scholarly 
consensus". My experience in academia and on this list is that this 
kind of fundamentalism is widespread indeed.

Between these two fundamentalist viewpoints, there is room for faith 
and consideration. A very fine translation of the definition of 
Christian faith in Hebrews 11.1 in the New Testament is found in the 
NWT:
"Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident 
demonstration of realities though not beheld." This translation does 
full justice to the Greek words hUPOSTASIS and ELEGCOS, and it 
implies that while faith has a subjective side it has a rational 
foundation. People may appeal to archaeological and linguistic data 
to find "the evident demonstration of realities," but in the last 
stance the subjective elements of faith is at work both among those 
who believe what the books of the Tanakh says about their writer and 
time of writing and those who reject it.

Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo