Summations Only

Jar will have to confirm, it's been a while since I've looked into textual analysis, but I believe the beginning chapters of Genesis are solely or mostly just two authors, but that as you get further into Genesis that other voices also emerge.--Percy

Casting aspersions and calling people names isn't a valid response.As far as everyone knows, that Moses wrote the Pentateuch is an ancient tradition with no supporting evidence. There's plenty of evidence that he didn't write it, such as the multiplicity of styles and perspectives, and the part written after his death.The split of the Jewish community caused by the exile, the gradual evolution of their traditions in different directions in the split communities, then the merging of the different traditions after the return from exile, neatly explains the textual evidence. Inerrancy ignores all the evidence and has no evidence in its support.--Percy

You're stating what you're trying to prove again. We already know your position. It's time to begin offering evidence in support of your position. You're confusing yourself with God again.--Percy

Then this is something you'll have to provide evidence for.This shouldn't have to be explained, but if you want other people to accept something you believe as true then you have to provide evidence that it is true. We have to do the same. You cannot just declare what is true and what is not.--Percy

We have been presenting the evidence in the form of contradictions, and we're continuing to present the evidence. If you're truly interested we could get into more detail, like the differences in style, vocabulary, tradition and narrative. You're response to the evidence so far has been a non-response, in effect, "The Bible contains no contradictions, you're all haters and debunkers, and that's that." The Torah was originally an oral tradition. It wasn't written down until the exile or after, at least six or seven hundred years after Moses.--Percy

I hope I am amazed someday.But as much as Faith would like to talk about that instead, this thread isn't about the wonders to come. It's about the evidence for divine origin and inerrancy of the Bible.--Percy

Behaving in a Christian manner toward others is a fairly "basic calling" of Christianity, wouldn't you say? You can start any time.--Percy

If for the sake of discussion you want to grant Faith's assertions that the passages of one pair versus seven pair are two separate interactions between God and Noah at two different times and that you should ignore the other discrepancies and problems (Noah gathers the animals on two separate occasions? Twice from all over the world? The same animal kinds again?), then that's fine.But the evidence shows the two passages to be different derivatives of a single older oral tradition, one modified to include the concept of clean versus unclean, the other without that modification. Both passages end with Noah doing as instructed, because that's the way the original single passage ended. Faith claims that clean versus unclean represents "necessary teaching that matters," and must therefore be inerrant. To many people, a difference of one and seven is just the type of obvious discrepancy one would look for to falsify claims of inerrancy.I don't think I'm alone when I say that I'm not sure what to make of Faith's claims that only "necessary teaching that matters" is inerrant. I would think that a book can't be a little bit inerrant in the same way that one can't be a little bit pregnant. Claiming that only those parts that matter are inerrant while specifying which parts matter, all without any objective criteria, seems the height of fallacy.--Percy

Jar has not been meeting with success, and when I've merely alluded to it I've drawn responses like this: Golffly mentioned two writers and copying from earlier mythologies and got this: In the absence of any hint of willingness by Faith to discuss rather than lashing out, and since it would take some considerable time to refamiliarize myself with the details of textual criticism, it doesn't seem a wise investment of time.--Percy

Yes, do it yourself. In case it helps save you from wasting your time, Faith called the scholars you'll be citing "some self-appointed mindtwisters who sit around making stuff up out of their own subjective ditherings." (Faith in Message 1942)--PercyEdited by Percy, : Punctuation.

My homework? Anyway, about a discussion between you and I, I guess I wasn't looking at it that way. Did you want to have a discussion about what I called textual criticism? I told you it's been a while, and poking around online I see I've forgotten so much I wasn't even using the correct term. What I was really referring to was the documentary hypothesis (Wikipedia link). You'd be better off talking to Jar about that. Jar was making certain arguments, and I was reading along going, "Oh, yeah, I remember that stuff." I might have added a detail here or there that I recalled on my own, but for the most part I don't think I said very much that Jar didn't say, just differently.I do recall that back in Message 2002 we had this exchange: Refreshing my memory a bit from Wikipedia, the documentary hypothesis postulates that the Pentateuch is a blend of sources by four different authors writing in four different time periods. The basic hypothesis as originally proposed has seen considerable modification and spawned several alternative hypotheses, but they all retain multiple authors at their core. Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible? is a great introduction to the documentary hypothesis.--Percy

The Wikipedia article on the documentary hypothesis that I mentioned in my previous post explains the evidence for different authors pretty well, and there's also Richard Friedman's book, Who Wrote the Bible.--Percy

Agreed. Nothing ever does.I think Jar had already provided information supporting anything I said about multiple authors. As I've said, I don't believe I said anything new. Jar was hammering on the point and I wrote some stuff on it, too. Jar has just provided some good additional information in Message 2037.--Percy

Yes, of course, it's a hypothesis developed to explain certain facts about the Pentateuch. In this context the word "proof" should be used in a scientific sense to mean "tentatively supported with evidence." The documentary hypothesis is a framework of interpretation for the Pentateuch text. For one simple example, in some places the Pentateuch refers to God as Yahweh, in other places as Elohim, and these places appear to be interwoven. The documentary hypothesis proposes how this and many other features came to be using facts from the Pentateuch and a wealth of historical, archeological and textual evidence. For another example, the different writing styles and vocabularies are representative or evocative of the circumstances of different historical periods. Moses lived six or seven hundred years before the Pentateuch was written down during or after the exile. There's a tradition that Moses wrote the Pentateuch but no evidence, and both the internal and external evidence discredit the idea.--Percy

The true believers of any religion have no problem with the problems of their religions. That's because they have blinders on. This is just something that people do for everything. "My football team is the best." "My school is the best." "My town is the best." "My country is the best." "My religion is the best." This tendency of people to think well of what is closest and most important to them is just human nature. It has little basis in fact.What you need for this thread is evidence, not believers. There's no evidence here. This is merely a call to faith. You could just as meaninglessly have said, "There are no different "god types," there is Allah. Too bad you all can't see it. The Quran is to be believed, not torn to pieces."--Percy