Summations Only

There's lots written against this documentary hypothesis nonsense, also known as "the higher criticism," to be found online.

Are you talking about the original Hebrew? Do you read Hebrew?ABE: I just read the first few verses of Genesis 1, in English of course. Is there a problem in the English that you can point out? This familiar passage seems to me to be quite consistent in style.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I'm sure you don't notice the times this is done to me. I can't count the number of well-thought-out and supported posts I've written that have met with total trashing. And there's only one of me to dozens of you.

Is this the way a "hypothesis" should be described?ABE: Interestingly that site says the Documentary Hypothesis is pretty much dead now, having been replaced by other hypotheses. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Actually there seem to be fewer authors since two were combined, though perhaps I didn't read far enough. More, fewer, what does it matter.Nobody of course bothered to notice that the description I noted is not the way one properly refers to an hypothesis. Reminds me of the ToE where all the terminology is put in terms of absolute fact when it's just a lot of unprovable suppositions. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The combining of separate documents into the main text wouldn't be particularly a problem in itself, since Moses could have used many means in putting together the Pentateuch, the problem is denying Moses as the author or responsible overseer of the work, and of course changing the dating. Changing the dating is a great crime of vandalism against God's word as it completely mangles the content of many of the books, both historical and prophetic books, but Daniel in particular. This is unforgiveable.

The frequent repetition is odd, I agree, but the different parts don't contradict one another if you follow the rule for Bible interpretation of taking them all together. Whatever explains the repetitiveness doesn't require the writing to have been the production of anybody but Moses.

I would really like to get off this thread but I do feel an obligation to answer some posts from time to time, even if only in my preacherly style which you dislike. I'm sorry this leaves you in the position of sincerely arguing your case only to be ignored. If this was a subject I'd spent time studying I would probably answer accordingly more often and do my best at the thorough trashing you would prefer, but as it is, with the exception of a point or two here and there, about all I can do is protest what I consider to be an indefensible attack on God's word.My method isn't going to please anybody here in any case because I'm a believer and on this subject I argue as a believer. Whatever I say will be treated as a simple refusal to accept what you all think really is evidence against the inerrancy of the Bible (which, by the way, in my frame of reference is the same thing as saying it's God's word), making me a liar or deluded and so on. When you came back refusing to accept what I'd said about the commentaries on the two and the seven I knew the case was hopeless.The link I posted to the discussion of Mark got the usual put-downs, including the objection that the writer's defense of the Christian understanding of the Biblical record as the work of the Holy Spirit is just "pride." Against such opinions there is nothing I can say anyone here would accept. Scripture makes it clear that we can't understand the things of God by our own fallen intellect, we must be born again from above and be led by the Spirit of God. That's what salvation ultimately is, the regeneration of the spirit we lost through the Fall and our own personal sin. On the other hand, scripture calls the claims of the fallen nature pride, and defines meekness as believing God, but it's clearly easy for you all to reverse the concepts and turn them as accusations against us according to your own way of thinking.But a Spirit-led believer knows things you don't know, it's just a fact. You can't persuade me away from twenty-five years of experience with the supernatural revelation of scripture no matter how sure you all sound and how insulting you get. (I'm thinking of Golffly and jar here too of course.) It's a lot easier to persuade people who started out in the church than it is someone who started out in heavy-duty atheist-secular-rationalist-liberal contexts as I did.So, it would be nice if a (born-again / orthodox / true) Christian who has studied all these things might come along and favor EvC with the necessary knowledge so that it could be the kind of debate you want. As long as it's just me I'm going to continue to protest the very idea of the mistreatment of scripture at the profane hands of the so-called "scholars" you all put above God. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

My evidence is thirty-five-hundred years of tradition: people, including great scholars of the scriptures, who believe the traditional understanding of who the authors were and when the books were written, as opposed to the very recent mental gymnastics of a few self-inflated "scholars" who have the gall to put their own opinion above that of the greats of Christian history.Also internal dating of the scriptures and references throughout them back to Moses as well as to other Old Testament leaders and prophets.That's the evidence for the existence of Moses for starters, but the testimony of the New Testament and Jesus Himself is also evidence.The contradictions and inconsistencies are the product of the method applied. In reality they don't exist. It's really a marvel how a whole "scholarly" or "scientific" system can be invented out of whole cloth to make whatever case you want to make, but it does require ignoring the vast accumulation of evidence against it.

When tradition is as strongly supported as the Biblical tradition is, it is evidence in itself. Its support by great Bible interpreters, translators and scholars puts to shame the made-up fantasies of modern scholars.Yeah, its vastness makes it hard to produce it.Here's some of the evidence for the existence of Moses, which you can only discredit by the lies of the scholars about the referenced scriptures: Moses refs 1Moses refs 2Moses refs 3Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The references show that the Jews all looked back to Moses as their great leader throughout their history, Jesus and three of His disciples actually saw Moses, and the Jews continued to teach about him throughout the New Testament. None of this has anything in common with fiction. It is history and that is indeed evidence of Moses. The Jews to this day recognize Moses and Abraham and all the people referenced in their scriptures as historical. So you have the arrogance to say they, along with all orthodox Christians for two thousand years, are believing a mere fiction as reality, while nobody takes the Morte d'Arthur as anything BUT fiction. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You can't have "positive evidence" that the Flood never happened. You cannot prove a negative, jar, you ought to know that. There is tons of evidence that it DID happen even apart from the scriptures which are evidence enough. The strata, the fossils. IMMENSE evidence, worldwide too. The sort of formation and contents that cannot rationally be explained by normal processes except in the minds of those who need so badly to believe in evolution they can't recognize reality. At least have the grace to speak in a way that reflects the fact that you are representing an HYPOTHESIS, instead of in such dogmatic terms. The ending of Mark was taken out of the bogus Alexandrian manuscripts; it occurs in all the others. There's even an empty space in Sinaiticus where that passage normally occurs that testifies to its having been there originally. Smoking gun evidence that all you debunkers ignore, along with all the other evidence that Sinaiticus is a bogus mss. Dean Burgon proved the validity of that passage in his lengthy study of the manuscripts."Son of God" is a Name for Jesus given throughout the New Testament. Mark is traditionally understood to be the second gospel and it's only the self-appointed revisionists who say otherwise, based on nothing but their own subjectivity. Blech.Elohim is the generic Semitic word for "God," while Yahweh, or Jehovah is His actual Name as given only to His own people starting with Abraham. Both terms apply to the true God in scripture.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I have given the reasonable answer to your claim about the bottleneck many many times. There WAS a bottleneck but you calculate it from the assumptions of evolutionary time whereas I calculate it from the assumptions of Biblical time. In Biblical time because Creation started out as perfect and death did not exist until the Fall, there was no genetic deterioration of the sort that is now reflected in the drastic genetic reduction of a bottleneck.At the time of the Flood there would have been sufficient genetic variability for even a drastic bottleneck to leave the enormous genetic variability from which all life forms continued to thrive and evolve microevolutionarily from the time of the Flood until now. The original genome would have had a much larger percentage of heterozygosity such that even when highly compromised as a result of the Flood it wouldn't compromise the viability of any of the Species. The variety of new phenotypes would be much smaller of course, and you can look at the fossil record for some hint at the enormous numbers of pre-Flood phenotypic variations that no longer exist -- if you can pry yourself loose from the evo assumptions long enough to consider the facts. The percentage of human heterozygosity today is about 7%, which is probably comparable to the percentage in all the animal Species. If it was even as low as 50% at the Flood the great loss due to that event would not show the usual signs of bottleneck we see today, but there would still be a huge amount of variability.It wouldn't be until after a few thousand years of degeneration due to the death that entered at the Fall and the massive death at the Flood that we'd start to see the situation of so many fixed loci occurring in severely genetically depleted speciesk, such as the cheetah and the elephant seal and wherever else we find severe recent bottlenecks.You've been answered many times already.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Not in the Bible they don't.

Yes of course I realize that. We're talking about LOTS of gene loci, remember, not just what's left over now after most of it has become "junk DNA" so there would most likely be many more loci per trait than we see now. And we know there can be many alleles per locus in a population too and yes I know it's not clear how these arise in the Creation model. This variability in the whole population is what would diminish with a bottleneck, but remain sufficient with the greater genetic diversity at the time of the Flood (as compared to now) to produce all the phenotypic variations since then.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.