Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Gabe:

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 11:28 AM, Gabe Eisenstein 
<gabe AT cascadeaccess.com>wrote:

> Karl wrote:
>  >There are different responses to the theory, two of which I consider
> plausible: the story in Genesis is a pious fraud foisted on a credulous
> people starting shortly before the Babylonian Exile, continuing into the
> post Exile age (Documentary Hypothesis); or it is a true history (which is
> the point of view I take). A third option, that the words don?t mean what
> they mean I consider incoherent.
> [end Karl]
>
> A 4th option: the book is a mixture of mythology, legend and literature.
> (Later Biblical books mix in history as well.) Ancient people were by
> and large more sophisticated about these categories than those moderns
> who adhere to a strict truth/fiction dichotomy. They weren't victims of
> fraud (although it is true that after hundreds of years some people
> begin to treat legends as strictly factual.) (And some people treat tv
> soap operas as factual.) You can take pride in legends about national
> heroes and founders without "believing" them in the strict modern sense.
> And you can appreciate literary expansions of oral legends without
> imagining them to be factual accounts. (The Aeneid, for example.) What's
> important in such cases is that the literary work says something true
> about the national character, the sociopolitical circumstances, etc.
> As for "shortly before the Exile", even if I think that parts of
> Deuteronomy and Kings were written shortly before the Exile, I assume
> that precursor documents and oral legends go back for many centuries.
>

When I wrote the above, I considered your fourth option as a subset of the
first, though I can see why you want to list it as a separate option.

>
>
Karl wrote:
>  > Much of what is claimed to be history really isn?t. Strictly speaking,
> history are the events recorded in writing. The Bible claims to have
> preserved the most ancient of records. As for pre-history, when did that
> occur? Did it occur? Is there such a thing as pre-history? There is no way
> we can tell for certain.
> [end Karl]
>
> No, strictly speaking, history is an account of past events using all
> available evidence. If I look outside and the ground is wet, I consider,
> among other possibilities, the hypothesis that it rained. I don't need a
> document saying that it rained. Your questioning of whether anything
> happened that isn't written down seems very bizarre to me. I think it
> must be part of your defense against looking seriously at the
> foundations of archaeology, geology, biology and the other sciences you
> reject (in their mainstream form).
>

The problem with “pre-history” is that there is no way to date it. “Stone
age” tools and implements may have been used long after metals were used in
other parts of the world, in fact we know that that is the case as the North
American Indians were still stone age people at 1500 AD.

I, too, have been trained in the natural sciences. Unless my professors,
PhDs in the natural sciences, didn’t know what they were talking about, they
gave a definition for science the rules out the past as being a proper
subject for scientific investigation. But they were also illogical, claiming
that certain non-scientific beliefs were “scientific”.

My question is not if anything happened, but what happened?

>
> Karl wrote:
> I happen to trust that the Bible gives an accurate account of history,
> other
> people say it is fiction. To each his own. We are here to discuss the
> language, not whether or not what the message imparted by the language is
> true or fiction.
> [end Karl]
>
> And yet you're the one who brought up the theory about toledoth formulas
> and Bronze Age writing. Which is fine with me. But I disagree that there
> is a "message imparted by the language" that can be interpreted
> independently of one's views about who/how/why/when the language was
> written and transmitted.


I think you misunderstand me here. Though maybe not.

When looking at a sentence, there are certain grammatical and lexicographic
rules that indicate what meaning the sentence has. That’s true with all
languages. However, if the person speaking has a reputation for dishonesty
and lying, the words he speaks will have a very different reaction than if
he is known for being very honest and factual. The meaning of the sentence
is independent of the reaction of the hearers. When we look at the
who/how/why/when the language was written and transmitted, we are not
looking at the words, but on other clues to gauge how we should react to the
words.

Where we disagree is in the who/how/why/when the language was written and
transmitted. Where we can agree is in the meaning of the words, independent
on our reaction to them.


> I think I have some understanding of the
> message of Moby Dick, for example; but my understanding would change
> dramatically if I found out that it was a factual account. And in the
> case of historical writers (take Josephus, for example), I take into
> account the motivations and possible prejudices of the writer , in order
> to determine what is really being said.
> [snip]
>
> One thing I originally hoped to find on this list was more discussion of
> the evolution of Hebrew, as analyzed by Rendburg et.al. The theory that
> humanity and language began in the Bronze Age would not, it seems to me,
> be compatible with a scientific history of Hebrew. But of course the
> data are sparse. Nevertheless it seems to me that when you begin
> analyzing linguistic differences between books such as Genesis and
> Kings, you are playing a game that must ultimately destroy your
> position. Some scholars discern linguistic forms in Judges and
> Deuteronomy that they claim are older than the language of Genesis.
> Surely such facts must make a difference to our understanding of the
> meaning of the words in question.
>

The basis for the claims in the above paragraph are all dependent on a
certain Weltanschauung which I rejected à priori for other reasons. Without
its religious belief to back it up, the whole theory falls apart. It’s not
that the words of Tanakh are different, it is that our reactions to those
words differ based on our incompatible presuppositions.

>
>
> Gabe Eisenstein


Karl W. Randolph.