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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] theories and standards

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  • From: James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>
  • To: dwashbur AT nyx.net
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] theories and standards
  • Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 08:21:27 +0100

Hi,

Quoting dwashbur AT nyx.net:



On 17 May 2009 at 18:36, Gabe Eisenstein wrote:


What replaced Jim's theory as the dominant topic of the list was a
theory saying that Genesis was written by many of the characters who
appear in it, beginning with Adam (or, excuse me, with God). I don't
think I need to start listing the hundreds of tenuous assumptions
involved in this hypothesis, but they must include a very young earth,
an incredibly fast spread and differentiation of human populations and
cultures, and Hebrew as the mother of all languages.
[snip]

I'm not sure how you got to the idea that this theory requires all of these things, but it
doesn't. There's nothing implicit in what language the earliest records were kept in, or even
what was the "mother of all languages." The age of the earth has nothing whatsoever to do
with it. We're talking about a literary theory related to structure and genre, nothing more.


I agree. While the theory raises several unresolved issues it doesn't raise any of the above for me. I can see where you get the age of the earth from if you are working on the assumption that Karl is proposing that we take the 7 days of creation as literal 24 hour periods but I don't think that is what Karl is asserting.

I did once hear a theory that Hebrew must be the mother of all languages and that there was some biblical support for this. However, try as I might, I haven't been able to find any biblical support for this. We are merely told that everybody's language gets confused at Babel but no mention is given as to what language they spoke before that.

As for the spread of human cultures, all we really know is that writing appeared a few thousand years ago, about the claimed time of the authorship of the Torah. Everything before that we call prehistory and is a bit of a grey area. Even the 'historic' bit is grey so the prehistoric bit is far greyer and we rely on what shreds of archaeological evidence we can find to develop theories of hunter-gatherer cultures that started farming and building cities near rivers.

While I think the discussion may have already run it's course I don't particularly see how why it shouldn't be left to grind to its natural halt.

James Christian



Dave Washburn

Ibuprofen, Hebuprofen, Shebuprofen, Theybuprofen, wouldn't you like to be a profen too?
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