"Who Wrote The Bible?"

Grout

The book "Who Wrote The Bible?" by Richard Friedman is the best single source I've found for explaining the origins of the Torah.

The "Documentary Hypothesis", now almost universally accepted, posits that the "five books of Moses" were in fact written by at least four people as late as the return from exile. Friedman explains and illustrates this explanation in a readable, even entertaining, yet still precise, fashion.

Has anyone here done real research on the Documentary Hypothesis and yet found it unconvincing? If so, why?

Here's a link to the Barnes & Noble description of Friedman's book:

http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0060630353

drahcir yarrum

Drum Roll Please:

The Bible was written by Bernie Finklestein in 450 AD. It was originally published by Bantam books. It never made the New York Times Best Seller list. In fact, in some cities it was considered too sexually explicit for children to read.

I think you will find that I'm right about this.

accuracy

The Documentary Hypothesis has been around a long time but is "widely accepted" by only some groups of scholars. It is still a hypothesis because there are no real documentary proofs for it; it is based upon "educated guesses." To get a better view, balance your reading of this book with books by conservative or Evangelical Christian scholars, or conservative Jewish ones.

JosephAlward

Accuracy,

Anyone with a sixth-grade education or higher who's willing to do about an hour's work in Genesis 6-9 can prove virtually beyond any reasonable doubt that there are at least two different authors at work in the flood story, and they don't even have to know anything about the Bible, and no source other than the Bible is required. I won't present the evidence to back up claim here, but I assure you it's there.

Joseph F. Alward
"Skeptical Views of Christianity and the Bible"
http://members.aol.com/jalw/joseph_alward.html

accuracy

Joe,

I can assure you that there are many Bible scholars with educations far beyond the sixth grade who dispute the Documentary Hypothesis. I have read their works in scholarly journals and books. The matter is arguable, but not beyond doubt. Two or more story strands do not mean that one author has not written or edited the whole. The book of Genesis itself indicates that different "histories" (sefarim toledot) whether oral or written, went into its composition. But this is not the same as the unproven JEPD controversy.

Moxy

counter-arguments are generally along the lines of admitting that there were multiple sources but that the composition was inspired, altho it retains the evidence of distinct sources, and then proceeding to use awkward explanations to tie up the inter-document contradictions.

how 'convincing' you find those is a subjective matter.

mox

JosephAlward

I'm not aware of a single secular, Biblical scholar who does not believe that the flood story is composed of two stories from two completely different traditions, containing contradictory information.

The "single" story appearing in Genesis 6-9 was created by taking one passage from an author who called the deity "God," and the next passage from an author who called the deity "LORD," then the next from the "God" author, and so on for five or six interleavings.

Readers may confirm this for themselves. All they have to do is copy and paste the flood story from an online Bible, then take out all of those passages which speak of "God." Miraculously, those "God" passages together tell a complete story of the flood, while the passages left behind, attributed to the "LORD" author, also tell a complete--but different--story of the flood.

One also finds, for example, that one of the authors refers repeatedly to Noah's "sons," while the other other never does, referring instead only to Noah's "family" or "those with him." One author mentions "convenant" nine times; the other never uses the word.

One of the authors seemed to be obsessed with the divine number "seven," so he used it repeatedly; the other author didn't. The former author is the one who wrote that Noah was instructed to put seven of each kind of animal on board, while the other other wrote that Noah was to put two of each kind of animal on the ark.

There are five other correspondences like this which remove any doubt about there being two different authors and two different--and conflicting--stories.

If one doesn't wish to do the work I've mentioned above, it's already been done at the site below

* http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/Two_Flood_Stories.htm

In that article, one will see how one may unravel the "single" flood story into two different, and complete, flood stories.

If, after reading this article, anyone still believes that Genesis 6-9 was not a composite of two different and contradictory flood stories, I would invite them to present their counter-argument to this forum.

Joseph F. Alward
"Skeptical Views of Christianity and the Bible"
http://members.aol.com/jalw/joseph_alward.html

Gopher

Joseph,

Thank you for bringing your research to this forum. It is almost without exception clear and unbiased, and brings the discussions into the realm of reason and out of the grips of "feelings" and "hunches".

BTW, if you want to make your links clickable, you'll need to leave a blank space in front of the URL, or put a non-blank character (such as *) immediately before the address. This will help us find your references more readily. For example:

* http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/Two_Flood_Stories.htm

GopherWhy shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

JosephAlward

Thanks a lot, Gopher; I've been trying to figure out how to do clickable links for a week now. I've made the change to my recent post.

Joseph F. Alward
"Skeptical Views of Christianity and the Bible"
http://members.aol.com/jalw/joseph_alward.html

Gopher

Joseph,

You could also make the link in your profile signature clickable as well.

* http://members.aol.com/jalw/joseph_alward.html

GopherWhy shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Who Wrote The Bible?"

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