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| Author | Topic: Validity of differing eyewitness accounts in religious texts | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1366 days)  Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Well, if you were following what I said, the idea is that at the very least Lot's family would have passed the story down -- and Abraham and his family would certainly have known of it and passed it on. For whatever Moses didn't personally experience he had a lot of witness testimony that went before him to draw from. sure. but there's a problem here. ever played "telephone?"
And the role divine revelation may have played in any of this in Moses' case is simply not known. He may in fact have received special revelations from God about events such as the Creation and the Flood. But we don't HAVE to assume this. It COULD have been passed down the generations. in fact, what genesis is, even without moses, is a collection of traditional stories. these are the stories that had been told orally for god knows how long. there's even an indication that these stories existed in previous written forms. however. that does not make them eyewitness accounts of real events. that makes it an account of a report of a report of a report of a report, etc, back possibly 1000 years or more, to something that may not have even ever happened. this is very, very different from eyewitness testimony. the people who recorded these stories originally weren't there. they'd just heard it from someone else. this is essentially like internet spam. although copied fairly accurately, these rumors often prove to be nothing but bs. occasionally they are true, though. in the case of the bible, it's merely a faith issue, and not relying on actual eyewitness testimony.
Dogma is simply the codification of knowledge. quote: dogma is the church's opinion, or established tradition. it's not just "stuff everybody knows." it's also rather consistently wrong. if it were right, perhaps it'd be scripture and not dogma.
It is valid only insofar as the knowledge it codifies is valid. exactly. and usually, it is not.
Again, tradition, dogma, are only as valid as the knowledge they declare. There is nothing except modernist dogma, as a matter of fact, that opposes the tradition that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch. well, academic scholarship does. but if you ask a reform jew, chances are they'd say something to extent of "traditionally we believe he did, but the indication is that he did not."
I don't take reform Judaism as a standard for anything of course. Like all liberal theology they simply throw out the supernatural because it doesn't sit well with their modernist preconceptions. no, SECULAR humanist jews throw the supernatural out the window. reform jews do not. (btw, i do happen to think that jesus was probably the first reform jew. the ideas he expressed in the gospels are closer to reform judaism than christianity) but i can gaurantee you that reforms jews do take their spirituality VERY seriously. they're just the equivalent of lutherans.
But you are being illogical. That some traditions / dogma are wrong doesn't make all traditions/dogma wrong. they do when they are ignoring contrary scripture, and scriptural evidence. if dogma were based on the scripture it'd be called scripture. for instance, communion and baptism. while technically dogmatic practices, they are based on the scripture. that's not what i'm talking about at all. the tradition that moses wrote the torah is not scriptural.
Possibly scribes wrote it down from Moses' oral delivery. Perhaps he wrote it down himself later the bits of the law and the speeches, sure. but the story had to have come from another source.
Well, that's too bad, obviously very bad argument. So THEY have this way too literal notion of what must have happened. Well, then, I disagree with them. well, this is what i'm getting at. that view is just plain wrong, not to mention illogical. i'm basically just arguing for an extension of that logic, and a more realistic and accurate reading of the scripture, free of assumptions and dogma.
HOw about if it was literally written down by scribes more than by Moses himself, either from his direct dictation, or their memory of his oral teachings to the people while, this appears to be the case with isaiah, et al. isaiah would have had followers (disciples) who would have collected his teachings and prophesies. later, bit of history from an established story (namely kings) were added to his speeches to give them context. now compare with exodus.
The authenticity of Moses' authorship is usually questioned on the ground that other personalities appear to have written parts of it, but that's a silly objection to the tradition of his authorship. Even Paul 1500 years later had an amanuensis who wrote his letters for him -- most certainly by direct dictation and authorized by Paul himself in that case however. right, but this is evidently not the case with moses. the bits the torah is composed of are quite plainly of completely different origins -- i mean, they even refer to god differently. which means that these texts probably represent different geographic locations, or maybe different dates of authorship.
Now THAT does not follow at ALL! actually, it follows directly if you know the cultural conventions.
There is no reason whatever to suspect that it was not all written and assembled in Moses own time, at least within a short time after his death. It has been treated as such from the very beginning, by people who had the same fear of God Moses had, who would fear to tamper with such a writing. actually, there is. it's got a lot of anachronisms that indicate a later date of authorship. a date at least 300 years later. some are aside mentions, posibly the result of an editor inserting something, but most are not. like i said, this is a two part case: 1. different authors, and 2. wrong time.
I certainly have never said God literally "wrote" the Bible, and that is really a silly idea. I hope no Christians have tried to defend that one. you haven't posted here that long. stick around, every once in a while someone will try to defend that position. personally, i consider it blasphemy. i've seen the "problems" with the text. inaccuracies, typos, contradictions, inconsistencies, editting and translation error. and to say god's responsible for all that basically makes god out to be a crappy writer. a perfect being would not make mistakes. nor, if it was THAT important to him, would he allow mistakes to be made on his behalf. but don't get me wrong, i do think SOME of it is inspired by truths based on from the most high. i just think it's especially vague in nature, and filter by fallible human beings.
Moses however may very likely have written most of the Pentateuch personally -- this is very possible as Moses was raised in Pharoah's household where he would have learned all the arts and sciences of the day. which, btw, would not include writing in proto-hebrew. moses, most likely, would not have known hebrew until very late in his life. but i will grant you this, the best single piece of evidence that some of the torah may have originated in someone educated in the egyptian royal class is that there is an egyptian word or two in the torah. when moses parts the "red sea" the word that's mistranslated as "red" is actually the egyptian word for reeds, like papyrus. so there's a hint that moses may have existed, and that exodus may have happened. but this is of course far from conclusive. the text itself does not seem to have wholy originated in egypt, just the name of the place.
Jesus is never said to have written anything. He supports His testimony by witnesses. jesus may have written something, there's nothing that says he DIDN'T. his followers (witnesses) would have written down what he said, yes. so speeches by jesus like the sermon on the mount may be fairly accurate. however, if these documents existed, they were only the source for the source documents used by the synoptic gospels.
That is what God did all through the Old Testament, appointed witnesses to His doings to write it all down and guided their writing by His Holy Spirit. That is how God "wrote" the Old Testament. In the same way we can say that Jesus/God "wrote" the New Testament though He did not literally pen a single word. He inspired His followers by the Holy Spirit to put it into words for posterity. well, what god did was appoint prophets. these prophets collected disciples. and the disciples collected teachings. so if we have something in the bible that's accurate to the words of god (according to the prophets) it'd be books like isaiah and jeremiah. but kings is not one such book. nor is genesis.
There is absolutely NO reason to believe that "some stuff in there is bound to get distorted, changed, left out, added to, etc." in genesis there absolutely is. these stories started their lives as oral traditions. and as i pointed out above, those get distorted. QUICKLY. just like in the game "telephone."
The fact is that the scribes were scrupulous in copying the text. I know PaulK kept challenging me on this, but it seems pretty reasonable to me to believe that if the Old Testament books we have today are identical in meaning to those found in the Dead Sea Scrolls from a hundred or so years before Christ, that scribal accuracy is VERY reliable, and why shouldn't it have been as reliable BEFORE the DSS as after? this is a very good argument. and it's totally reasonable to assume that the text we have now is more or less faithful to texts at their last date of editting, or maybe even to their original drafts. however, these dates are also suprisingly late. as i said, genesis dates somewhere between 900 and 650 bc, and i have reason to suspect it's at the latter end of the scale. however, run with me on this one: genesis is composed rather faithfully of existing documents. we know this because they haven't been rectified against one another. this is sort of like genesis at one point being a whole bible itself: j and e and p are all separated, we've just lost the separations. so here the errors actually give it MORE authenticity. which means we can extend each text back to it's last date of anachronisms. but that's about it. every indication is that before those dates, these stories were completely oral, traditional tales. which are not reliable witness testiments.
{{{{PaulK claims there were changes to Isaiah made before the DSS. This kind of stuff is based on modern destructive fragmenting "scholarship" that thinks it can determine historical events from scholars' own subjective speculations about the appearance of the text no matter what kind of nasty motives it slimes the people with who believe in it, and it makes me sick to have to deal with that kind of thinking, but at some point I may have to study it well enough to try to answer it. I have no doubt whatever that Isaiah has been intact since it was put together by Isaiah himself or soon after his death by scribes, just as I KNOW that Daniel was written when it says it was written and not a few hundred years later, which is claimed only because of the prejudices of scholars who refuse to accept the reality of prophecy. But this is a digression by now. There is absolutely NO evidence whatever for these things , just prejudiced subjective speculations.}}} isaiah was indeed changed prior to it's inclusions in the dss. let's run over exactly what we have in the book of isaiah. isaiah has speeches, lots of them. textual evidence indicates at least two, possibly three sources for these speeches. not all of them appear to be the same isaiah, actually. and then interspliced with the speeches is text from kings. so even if you don't believe that there were two or three isaiahs, this historical bit was added after the speeches were written down, from an existing text. it's not a coincidence, or evidence of divine inspiration, that this text is magically exactly the same as an earlier existing text: it was simply copied faithfully for context. so the model that we have for isaiah is this: isaiah gave speech and prophesy to the kings of judah and babylon. up to three sets of scribes wrote these speeches down. after his death, these speeches were compiled into a collection, and text from kings was added for historical background. in my opinion. isaiah probably faithfully renders the words of isaiah.
The problem with this thinking is that the records of the Israelites were written and compiled by men who had a deep reverence and fear of the God who had performed miracles for them and showed them His nature and powers and goodness, and those who had the responsibility for the scriptures treated them as sacred. yes, you're absolutely right they did. except for maybe the miracles, because the indication is that most of these scribes existed well after god stopped performing miracles on a daily basis. although, they likely believed in them anyways, so the point is moot.
You cannot just assume they would have met with the same fate of neglect as ordinary human records. they're still human records, even if they're religiously strict about them. you're basically relying on the idea that EVERYONE held the same ideas (something evidenced against with the bible, and the split kingdoms after solomon's death) and that no one had ulterior motives (something that can also be demonstrated against with the bible, btw). basically, everyone would have to hold them sacred in the same way. it'd only take one person to mess things up, insert text, etc.
but the scriptures remained in the temple in their same condition ready for the revival under Josiah for instance, when they were brought out and read to the people and national reformation was the result. as i mentioned, josiah appears to have had ulterior motives. granted, getting rid of idols may have been a good thing, but every indication is that "idolatry" is the catchword thrown against enemies. he bashes israel for having golden calves, for instance. but judah had golden cherubim that served the same function.
Exactly right. As I've been saying over and over all we have is WITNESS evidence, the Hebrew text, probably written after years and years of oral rehearsal by the people and by Moses himself. repitition several generations is not "witness evidence." it's a retelling ot witness evidence, maybe. but it is not witness evidence itself. and it's suprisingly unreliable. (actually, even straight witness evidence is rather unreliable)
And for all you know Moses did some writing during the wanderings. You don't know that he didn't. It is quite possible. yes, but i'm fairly certain that what we have is not it. or a very, very filtered and degenerated version of it.
(and an egyptian record and archaeological evidence of a ruling class of semitic people in egypt called the hyksos, but i don't know if they were hebrew or not. if they did, the moses story is considerably backwards) Sorry, I don't follow. see, we DO have evidence from egypt that people from canaan were indeed there. almost at the same time most people place the exodus at, actually. these people were called the hyksos, and we have LOTS of evidence of them. pottery, records, houses, all kinds of stuff. they ruled egypt for almost 400 years, before they were expelled and chased back to the middle east. there's A LOT of debate as to whether these people were hebrew or not. personally, i don't know to make of it. if they were hebrew, then it turns the exodus story on its end. if not, it creates a lot of problems. why evidence of these people who kicked the egyptians' butts, but no hebrews who punished them with wonders from the heavens? these also would have been semitic people opressing semitic people.
Well, if they didn't happen the lesson is useless because the lesson is how God acts in REAL time and space, how God's law and will actually affect all of us, so it is crucial to their meaning that they in fact happened. This is God acting in REAL history. If you don't get that you really don't get anything of importance out of the Bible. well, no. that's not right. look at the parables. is it important if they happened or not? or are they just there to tell us something?
At the moment I'm focusing on the history of Israel though. Genesis is another kind of discussion. still, i think you might be able to contribute to that thread.
I'm already stretched way too thin, but maybe I'll at least take a look at it if you bump it. will do.
You have no idea of the meaning of Esther and Ruth if you call them "secular." Esther is all about God's faithfulness in protecting His people even while they are in exile under pagan rulers. i'm pretty certain that esther fails to mention either "god" or "LORD." i think song of songs does too. esther alos appears to be a borrowed story, obviously robbed of it's religious meanings. see, the name "esther" is suprisingly similar to the name "ishtar." this alone might be forgivable, but "mordechai" is also suspiciously similar to "marduk." so two coincidences with babylonian gods. and the king, who's name i can never remember who to spell, he's actually a real person -- he's king xerxes of persia. so they're putting a story about babylonian gods in a secular political context. the irony is that a lot of biblical anti-pagan stuff is ripped right off pagan stories. the church kept this practice up. ever wonder why we celebrate jesus's resurection with bunnies and eggs? easter (also from ishtar) is a pagan fertility festival. we just wrote the christian stuff on top of it, to get rid of the pagan traditions. and it WORKS.
Ruth is a model of faithfulness to the LORD by a Gentile, giving a prophetic picture of God's future salvation of the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, as she leaves her homeland and attaches herself to the Israelites and their God. The picture is complete in her becoming an ancestress of Jesus Christ. oh. there's a problem here, btw.
quote: quote: quote: quote: david is a third generation moabite, according to ruth. meaning, he would be allowed in the temple, or on the throne.
Nothing "philosophical" about that. follow along.
If you were following the actual history carefully you'd know that God had decreed Jerusalem for His temple, no, he decreed that the temple should be in ONE place in deuteronomy. and jerusalem had the first temples, so all others are bad. deuteronomy was "discovered" during the reign of josiah. in other words, nobody knew. samuels-kings and chronicles were all written AFTER deuteronomy was "found." the authors are putting forth the philosophy that god hates israel, but love judah because of this. and i can prove it. there was a king in the norther kingdom who made alliances with foreign nations, king ahab. he marries jezebel (which kings HATES, mind you), allows foriegn temples, the whole nine yards. why did he do this? foriegn alliances. according to the records of king shalmanessar the third of assyria, he fought a war against this alliance, so we know who's in it. he reported how well he was doing, of course, but his position kept retreating further and further from israel, according to his annals. ahab and his alliance kicked his butt all the way back to assyria. --now, where is this in the book of kings? there was a king who followed him from another dynasty, kind jehu. jehu fought to get rid of idols and reunite the two kingdoms. kings likes jehu, a lot. it mentions that his only folly was that he didn't rectify jeroboam's sin. but he dissolved this alliance, shut down all the foreign temples, trashed idols, etc. and as a consequence, when shalmanessar came back, jehu lost. badly. here he is kissing shalmanessar's feet:
now, where is this in kings? they don't even mention either, do they? they don't contradict it, they just leave it out. because it'd be contradictory to their point of "god loves judah and hates israel." this is a bias in the text that has been know about since shalmanessars annals and that obelisk were found. and take note, we're not totally trust them against the bible. in fact, shalmanessar outright lied in his reports of the war. we know he lied because aside from talking about how well we was winning, his reported positions kept falling back. so it's not just one ancient text against the other. so here, even the eyewitness account of the events is not so reliable, but it shows that bible's report is indeed designed to put across a sort of propagandic idea of who's right, and as a result leaves out some important facts. which is not very intellectually honest of the scribes who composed it. This message has been edited by Admin, 04-29-2005 07:42 AM
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