Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

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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