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  • From: George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>
  • To: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Qohelet
  • Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:19:12 +1000

Ron,

I feel you're making another assumption here, namely that if an author is
taking on the persona of someone else in writing that they must be 'lying'.
In our world today, we call it 'fiction', not 'lies', and we often consider
such literature to be among the classics (e.g., 'I, Claudius' by Robert
Graves, or 'Robinson Crusoe' by Daniel Defoe). There is a difference between
fiction and lies. Some fiction is lying, while most fiction is simply
creative writing/expression. Would you call all fiction 'lies'? Jesus told
fictional tales; would you classify them as 'lies'? If you resort to 'taking
things at face value', then I'd argue you need to read literature with a bit
more vigour and rigour, and in fact probably don't use that standard for most
fictional literature. And, in fact, it would be easy to argue that fiction is
often the vehicle of truth - in fact, most Christians would argue that for
Jesus' parables. Literature is not legislation. It is creative expression,
and authors usually employ their creativity to get their point across. To put
it in a very crude manner, we often tell 'lies' in order to express the truth
(can't remember who originally said that).

Your question about whether there is any other biblical literature that
employs this type of technique reveals another assumption: that you require
more than one example of it to exist within a confined corpus before you
believe it might be possible. But what if there is only one example of it in
the corpus? You are demanding the evidence take a particular shape before
accepting it as evidence. This, I fear, is not sound methodology, even though
I understand the sentiment behind it. I realise there is safety in numbers,
but what are we to do if there is only one example of what you're talking
about? Something can be legitimately unique.

But, to answer your question, I think there is more than example of fictional
first-person narrative in the biblical corpus: Daniel 4, and 7-12. But that
may open another can of worms which I don't wish to open. I fear you may also
disagree with me on that one, leaving us back at square one.


Regards,

GEORGE ATHAS
Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia)
www.moore.edu.au





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