Summations Only

True, but is that really the point? Your statement was the evolution was not mentioned in the Bible. Yes, that is true, but the Bible does describe an origin for men and women that if true, absolutely precludes them from evolving from apes. I don't believe your statement about Faith's counting of Christians is correct, so there likely is no conundrum. I think Faith believes this country is supposed to be Christian, but that it deviated from that path pretty early in American history. She isn't completely consistent about when. Sometimes she dates it from the enacting of the first amendment, but other times she claims that the first amendment has been perverted.

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.

duplicateEdited by NoNukes, : I must be the EvC's most inept poster...

If I were going to take on the task of doing what seems to be your homework, namely producing the evidence you relied on, it would be for the purpose of continuing the discussion between you and I.

No nukes,
What are you looking for exactly?
One can take the two biblical genesis accounts. Line them up and show the discrepancies. Is that what you'd call citation?
I wouldn't call it that hence the wonder.
I also know you are completely aware of this yourself and again that makes me wonder if you are asking for something different.Does it matter if somebody produces a name to go along with a relatively common sense approach of identifying the differences?
Or, am I way out in the left field, which is entirely possible.

You can show the discrepancies that way, but can you show claims of separate authorship in that way? I'm not convinced that you, jar, and I have opinions on the matter that are worth all that much. Neither would I.

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

Ah, authorship. That is a bit different or harder no doubt.
Where's 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

This is debating stuff is supposed to be fun. I don't want a discussion that you really are not into. But that isn't going to stop me for asking you to back up a claim. I'm not likely to read that.

I've read the book actually.
I am mostly giving you a bad time, for no real reason either.;-))))

Freidman's work is a great source but today there is far more sources on line. Wake Forest has lots of material IIRC.The Documentary Hypothesis (Document meaning source rather than a single piece of paper) has evolved to understand that there were many sources and not just four although the traditional four types remain as guides. The "J" and "E" sources these days are pretty much looked at as one type, each pointing to material from a particular tradition ; "J" being ones that used the term YHWH (when written in Hebrew) or Yahweh to refer to God while the "E" used the term Elohim instead. Both though are thought to be fairly early traditions reflecting differences between the traditions of Israel and Judah and to have originally been written down around 800-700 BCE.Two other major influences are related to the "D" Deuteromic influence which concerned mostly legal matters and the "P" or Priestly tradition that referred mostly to matters important to observing religious and priestly ritual. Genesis 1 is thought to be an example of the "P" source meant to affirm the sacred week and sabbath and redacted (edited) much later into Genesis.But that is all pretty old material. There are newer findings and techniques that seem to show even more editing, revisions and rewriting of material. As more and more early texts are found and examined using technology that simply didn't exist until recently the pictures gets even more complex. Some examples are the long ending to Mark and the beginning of Mark where "son of God" was added in a different hand and at a later date (determined by Infra-red examination of the Codex Sinaiticus).So there is historic criticism (the flood never happened) and textual criticism (contradictions and material added) and redaction (editing, organizing like the Sermon on the Mount and Genesis 1) and documentary criticism (the general tradition the created a section or story; for example JEPD or the authors of Matthew and Luke using material from Mark and at least one other now lost source).Edited by jar, : appalin spalling and missing "t"s

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

Richard Carrier also addresses a lot of issues.

The Documentary Hypothesis, remember, is just that, a hypothesis. The "evidence" is the subjectively determined differences in the text and there is no proof of any of it whatever. It's all overheated imagination that there were many authors. Many scribes working under Moses perhaps but it was all Moses' production. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.