Peanut Gallery - The Hebrew Bible (Butterflytyrant and IamJoseph Only)

Butterflytyrant needs to remember that the claims he pulled came from the Bible Study Forum on the religious side, not the science side. Religious terminology will come into play, but even our definitions of the English word book includes this one: The words translated as book and scroll are rather interchangeable in the Bible. See the parallels to Psalm 40:7. In the NT, biblion is sometimes translated as scroll and sometimes book even though it means a papyrus roll. Depends on the translation.I feel that IamJoesph has clarified his terminology concerning the use of the word books in Message 4 and again in Message 8. IamJoseph is correct in his terminology and isn't excluding scrolls when he uses the word "book".

BFT seems to interchange the idea of oldest manuscript still existing and when the text is considered to have been written.IAJ is correct that the oldest manuscripts we possess don't really tell us when the books or stories were first written. We can only speculate, but I feel that scholars have come up with various thoughts on the issue. Dating the BibleBFT needs to be more consistent with his questions.IAJ also needs to do a better job of providing links to his support. That's what BFT wants.We bring evidence to the thread. We don't make our opponents hunt for it.

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So, this would bring in the historicity of Moses (and the Exodus) and greatly widen the scope of the debate. That is, if IAJ assumes that Moses was the author. I think this is a brick wall, because IAJ will not be able to bring evidence (outside of tradition, say) of an extremely ancient origin for the Hebrew Bible, and Butterfly won't be able to accept that IAJ takes the tradition that Moses authored the texts as evidence.

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On the religious side, tradition is support for one's position. Whether one agrees with that position or not is another issue.There isn't really any framework set up in that debate for either to debate the veracity of their claims. There isn't really a topic to take a position on.If IAJ makes a claim that the Bible was the first to blah blah blah and his support is that it was written by Moses about whatever time, then BFT needs to present his support that such and such was written before that time. Just not accepting IAJ's support doesn't mean IAJ didn't provide support or reasoned argumentation.I would not consider their debate to be a science forum type debate since the quotes came from the Bible study forum. BFT is questioning IAJ on the Hebrew Bible, not the Christian Bible.BFT doesn't seem to have a consistent argument other than I think he wants IAJ to prove his claims are true to BFT's satisfaction, as opposed to BFT presenting his own position with support to show the audience his position.I think both sides need to realize the other isn't going to concede so demands for such are a wasted effort and clutter the debate.

I'm not clear about BFT's point in dating the document.IAJ made the claim that the Hebrew Bible marks the first recording that the universe if finite and BFT seems to understand that IAJ bases this claim on the first sentence of Genesis (In the beginning).As I said before, BFT seems to switch between saying first recording and oldest copy. I haven't run into anything that doubts that the Torah was written or compiled before 250BCE. So I find the Dead Sea Scrolls irrelevant concerning this point.Per tradition, the Genesis story was written by Moses between 1446 and 1200 BCE. So in a debate on that subject, if he wants to counter tradition, BFT needs to show a document or tradition older that implies the universe is finite.If he goes with the Documentary Hypothesis, then he needs a document older than about 900 BCE.IMO, the dating approach is the wrong way to debate the claim of a finite universe. Unfortunately the approach I would take would entail a definition battle. As discussed in the thread, Not The Planet, the word earth doesn't refer to the planet or universe.It's just speculation trying to put a date on when the Torah stories actually came to life.