Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Rev. Bryant J. Williams III" <bjwvmw AT com-pair.net>]



Dear Jim,

 

I think that one should take into account that the old Graf-Welhausen Theory and the issue of Oral Story-Telling needs to be completely scrapped and started over again. So, please don't go with the so-called "missing link" idea.

 

Although it is written for the NT Studies, Richard Bauckham's, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, brings out several studies that find that eyewitnesses would have kept the stories essentially the same even within the community that was now the protector of the original stories. Theses eyewitnesses would have been the control over the retelling of the stories to prevent inaccurate transmission of the stories; and yet, allow for some variation in wording as long as this variation did not change the story. Extrapolating from that, it would seem that the stories passed down from the Patriarchs would be extremely accurate. Byskog, Gerhaddson, etc., should be consulted. A lot of water has passed down the river since initial historical-critical theory that has been shown to be wrong due to presuppositions that are no longer tenable. Again, I point out that Bauckham's book is about the Gospels and the issue of Eyewitnesses including memory studies, etc. But, considering that the issue of the ANE and the area of Canaan, later Israel (deliberately renamed Palestine by the Romans), it would not be too much of a stretch to see that the same transmission techniques are still employed.

 

Rev. Bryant J. Williams III