ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) (03/12/91)
Last year, we had some people on the net professing to believe that there
are methods which scholars can use to *reliably* decompile the Torah into
several strands (J, E, P, D, and their subdivisions). I claimed that the
Wellhausen school's approach can fairly be described as "prescientific" (it
is not without interest that the Documentary Hypothesis crowd focus on the
kinds of features that modern authorship analytic techniques ignore and
ignore the kinds of features that the statistically based techniques focus
on), and proposed that we use the net to *TEST* the question. If there is
a method for decompiling Biblical documents which deserves the adjective
"scientific", then it must be one which is spelled out clearly enough that
anyone knowing the language and culture can do it. Given that the Jews
themselves when translating the Tanakh into English use those dreaded
footnotes "meaning of Hebrew not known" and that the culture is remote in
time and too often alien in practice, I simply cannot believe that such a
method could work for decompiling Biblical documents and not work for
English documents. Now, someone last year claimed that the Flood story is
two strands scrambled together and we ought to expect that, and someone
claimed that the Noah story is two strands scrambled together and it is a
big surprise, but no-one defending the Documentary Hypothesis claimed that
the Flood story is _not_ composite, and no-one defending that hypothesis
claimed that it is incapable of unscrambling such a composite text. I
therefore produced a synthetic text of just such a kind, described clearly
what the two authors were like and provided known samples (all of which
information is totally lacking for the Flood story), and posted it to
soc.religion.christian as a contest.
I said the contest would close on the 28th of February and that I would
wait 3 weeks before posting the results. I'm posting a week early because
I have received *NO* entries in this contest.
That's right, NO-ONE had sufficient confidence in the Documentary
Hypothesis to risk exposing its failure when applied to modern English.
Just in case there has been a mail strike or something like that,
I'm extending the contest further. I'll accept entries postmarked
up to 21 March 1991, and I'll report the results--if any--after Easter.
I am surprised and disappointed that no-one at all was willing to
put their belief in the DH to the test, even though I made it clear
that the most this particular test could do is show that entrants do
not understand the DH well enough to use it to unscramble something
like the Flood story. Let me say it explicitly: even if I could
prove that the DH cannot handle the Flood story, that would not cast
much doubt on J,E,P,D elsewhere. What it _would_ be is the beginning
of rational enquiry. I really hoped that we might make a _start_ on
rational examination of the DH, and the best way I know to do that is
to perform experiments. The Documentary Hypothesis is not religion or
theology; it is a _literary_ hypothesis, and the method is as subject to
experimental (in)validation as any other literary analytic method.
In order to encourage those who believe in the Documentary Hypothesis
to summon up their intellectual courage, I'll award the US$100 prize
to the first person to get 10 or more of the 14 sentences right.
Here's the contest again, with dates and prize rule amended.
----------------------------------------------------------------
We have recently had two people affirm in this newsgroup that "the
Documentary Hypothesis" _does_ take the story of Noah to be an
interweaving of two sources. One poster says that this is a surprise
even to the DH, the other says that it is only to be expected.
Whoever is right, the significant fact is that we do have affirmations
that the DH does partition that specific story. To cast doubt on the
partitioning of one story is not to demonstrate that the methods fail
_everywhere_, not at all. What I want to accomplish with this
challenge is to cast doubt on the partitioning of the Noah story,
that alone.
Let's face it, not one of the characteristics alleged to demonstrate
the composite nature of the Noah story shows that the redactor of
the present text (and remember that the DH presupposes a LATE redaction)
couldn't find those characteristics in his source. WE do, after all!
If the author of the Book of Jubilees could find a composite source
(Genesis), why should we assume that the sources of Genesis were "pure"?
Anyrate, here's the challenge. Pay attention, because there is MONEY in
it. (I have always wanted to play Randi, and the DH school make an
excellent Geller.)
I have constructed a composite text. The sentences are numbered. Each
of the sentences comes in its entirety from one of two sources. You are
told some of the characteristics of the authors, and given two samples.
The task is to assign the sentences correctly to the sources. Send your
hypotheses to me by *paper* mail (so that I can check the postmark).
If anyone gets 10 or more sentences right, I'll send a cheque for USA$100
to the person named in the correct letter with the earliest postmark.
If noone gets all the sentences right, I'll send a cheque for USA$10
to the person named in the letter with the earliest postmark among the
letters with the highest number of correct sentences. I'll accept
letters postmarked up to and including 21 March 1991, and I'll wait
a further three weeks before reporting the results here and posting any
cheque. Electronic mail will not be accepted.
One thing. I have provided enough clues that a good librarian should
be able to find the original sources without much trouble. I am
trusting you to play the game by the rules. We do not have access to
the original sources of the Torah. You have to infer the answers from
the material in this posting ONLY.
You don't have as much sample text to base your partition on as there appears
to be in the case of Genesis. However, that's not really so, because you
have one thing which the critics do not have, and that is CERTAINTY that
the sample I say comes from A really does come entirely from A and that
the sample I say comes from B really does come entirely from B.
I have printed a copy of this message and another copy with the sentences
lettered to say which source they come from (and provided page numbers)
and gave them to a friend who is not a Christian, so that he could keep me
honest.
Source A
Nationality: American
Sex: Male
Profession: Neurologist
Date: earliest version, 1982
Sample:
Abe Baker was a clinician who shot from the hip. During a typical
teaching session, one of my fellow first-year residents was
presenting a patient who had a confusional psychosis. After telling
Abe about the entire medical history of this patient and the results
of the physical examination, this poor, unsuspecting resident then
began to recount the patient's psychiatric history. Abe would have
none of it. He exploded. A psychiatric history is a waste of time,
he said. No neurologist should ever take one. Everybody has
psychiatric problems. The whole world is crazy, so are all its
inhabitants. The question is not if a patient has a psychiatric
problem. The question is whether the pation has a neurological
problem that can account for his or her behaviour. That is a
neurologic question and has to be evaluated on neurologic grounds,
not on psychiatric ones. A psychiatric history is irrelevant.
Source B
Nationality: British
Sex: Female
Profession: Historian of Medicine
Date: 1983
Sample:
The Oedipus complex now became the central point of Freud's theories.
The first published mention of Oedipal motivation occurs in "The
Interpretation of Dreams", published three years later. "It is the
fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse
towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish
against our Father. Our dreams convince us that this is so." The
story of Oedipus and his destiny "moves us only because it might
have been ours--because the oracle laid the same curse upon us
before our birth as upon him," he declared. Oedipal conflicts now
replaced seduction as the origin of the neuroses. Wittels tells us
that when Freud had brought a patient to a successful conclusion, he
used to show the patient an engraving after a painting by Ingres,
"Oedipus and the Sphinx". Many years later Freud enlarged on the
Oedipus theory with an excursion into anthropology in "Totem and
Taboo" (1912-1913) when he traced the beginnings of religion to the
"father of the primal horde".
HERE IS THE COMPOSITE TEXT.
Each numbered sentence comes either entirely from A or entirely from B.
The challenge is to work out which. YOU could win USA$100!
1. Freud's early experiments with cocaine and his own use of the
newly synthesized drug as a medication in the years 1884 to
1887 is known from his early papers and appears in all his
biographies.
2. Sigmund Freud's original interest in cocaine was the direct
result of the suggestion that cocaine might have a specific
therapeutic use in the treatment of addiction.
3. By 1883, Freud had become a close friend of another young
medical scientist, Ernst von Fleischl.
4. There is no question that Fleischl was addicted to morphine.
5. The cost of the drug was prohibitive, but nevertheless Freud
ordered some from the house of Merck.
6. Freud obtained a shipment of cocaine from Eli Merck in the
United States in the hope that he could use it to cure his
friend and colleague.
7. Clutching at the new drug "like a drowning man," within a
few days Fleischl was taking it regularly.
8. After several months of administering cocaine to Fleischl and
taking it himself, Freud wrote the first of his five articles
on coca.
9. This article, entitled "Ueber Coca", was a glowing
report that suggested seven successful therapeutic applications
for coca.
10. Having been witness to the terrible scenes of von Fleischl's
severe cocaine intoxication, knowing that von Fleischl was still
taking morphine as well as cocaine, and having warned his
fiancee of acquiring the habit, Freud allows his 1885 paper
to go forward for publication.
11. In print, Freud always maintained that cocaine was a wonder
drug, and that, by itself, it was not addicting.
12. Freud continued to hold that cocaine was not addicting,
stating in his fifth and final paper on cocaine, published
in 1887, that "cocaine has claimed no victim who has not
previously been addicted to another drug."
13. It always always been assumed that Freud ceased taking cocaine
in 1887, years before he began his major psychoanalytical work.
14. But when Freud formulated his psychoanalytic theories, he was
under the influence of a toxic drug with specific effects on
the brain.
Send your partition, together with your name and postal address, to
Dr R. A. O'Keefe,
Department of Computer Science,
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology,
GPO Box 2476V,
Melbourne,
Victoria 3001,
Australia.
--
The purpose of advertising is to destroy the freedom of the market.hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (03/12/91)
I've been the most active recently in the "liberal" camp, so I thought you might be expecting a response from me. If you read my posting over the weekend, I think you'll realize that I'm substantially more conservative than the typical scholars that work with the documentary hypothesis. Certainly I don't claim it is possible to unscramble arbitrary texts based on stylistic differences. In fact I find the typical commentaries that assign alternate half-verses to various sources ludicrous, and have said that a number of times in the past. I do see signs of multiple viewpoints in some places, e.g. in Gen. 1 and 2. However I have great scepticism about the detailed reconstructions some scholars have proposed. My understanding is that you need much larger samples of text than we normally have in order to make serious stylistic analyses. As far as I can tell, if you wanted to make a separation of sources in the flood account the primary basis for doing so would be differing chronologies. The normal claim from the documentary hypothesis is that one source assumed 40 days for the flood and the other assumed 150 days. Based on this, you could make at least a rough cut at a separation. I'm sceptical about claims to be able to do better than this, or to be able to separate sources everywhere in Gen. At least in English translation I don't see enough difference in style in the flood account that I'd try to make a separation on that basis, nor do I believe I can separate your sources based on style. I don't offhand see any equivalent in your text of the chronological difference in Gen.
ncramer@bbn.com (Nichael Cramer) (03/13/91)
hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu writes: >I've been the most active recently in the "liberal" camp, so I thought >you might be expecting a response from me. If you read my posting >over the weekend,... I for one seem to have missed this. If you still have it around and wouldn't mind e-mailing me a copy... >... I think you'll realize that I'm substantially more >conservative than the typical scholars that work with the documentary >hypothesis. Certainly I don't claim it is possible to unscramble >arbitrary texts based on stylistic differences. I certainly don't think that this is any more "conservative" than even the most ardent scholar working to disentangle the sources of the OT --let alone the most "typical". As has been stressed here repeatedly (frankly, to little avail) stylistic difference are only one and typically a minor criterion used as a basis for the identification of sources. Now does this mean that examination of such differences is _useless_ as a tool? Of course not. Clearly the uncertainties involved, the error-bars if you will, can be quite large and the discussion of any conclusion based on such evidence must keep this in mind (I defy anyone to find a serious claim to contrary). Nonetheless, it doesn't hurt to remind ourselves that, as with any tool the results may be quite surprising when that tool is wielded by a master craftsman. > ... In fact I find the >typical commentaries that assign alternate half-verses to various >sources ludicrous, and have said that a number of times in the past. >I do see signs of multiple viewpoints in some places, e.g. in Gen. 1 >and 2. However I have great scepticism about the detailed >reconstructions some scholars have proposed. ...and it's hard to imagine that the scholars in question would disagree with you in the details. Are all detailed, specific assignments to be taken equally seriously? Surely not. Certainly without a specific example[*] and the corresponding evidence it's impossible to say. As with any scientific endeavor, the farther one gets down in the details, the larger the corresponding uncertainties are going to become. But this certainly does not, in itself, destroy the credibility of the explanatory powers of such source criticism taken in the broad. [* And more on this below] >My understanding is that you need much larger samples of text than we >normally have in order to make serious stylistic analyses. ...and this is one of the many reasons that simple stylistic concerns are not given much weight in the final analysis of the sources. > ... As far as >I can tell, if you wanted to make a separation of sources in the flood >account the primary basis for doing so would be differing >chronologies. The normal claim from the documentary hypothesis is >that one source assumed 40 days for the flood and the other assumed >150 days. This is certainly one difference. Other difference include, among others, differences in vocabulary and the very theology used. But much more important, these difference DON'T OCCUR RANDOMLY. Characteristics of single sources remain constant throughout that source; granted sometimes in very broad strokes, but constant nevertheless. This is one of the most powerful pieces of evidence, and is one typically overlooked in such casual dismissals as O'Keefe's. > ... Based on this, you could make at least a rough cut at a >separation. I'm sceptical about claims to be able to do better than >this, or to be able to separate sources everywhere in Gen. This I suppose is the crux of the matter. The only thing that O'Keefe and other critics of such schemes of source assignment have said is "This is not how I think the text of the Bible works". There has yet to be a specific attack on _any_ point of argument of the source critics. Suppose we were discussing, say, Physics. We wouldn't consider "It doesn't seem _sensible_ to me that the universe would work like that" a useful or even a serious attack on Special Relativity, particularly in view of the enormous emperical data to the contrary. So, let's start from something specific. If there is an assignment of a chunk of text to a specific source that you feel is shaky, let's start from that. Broad, sweeping generalizations are useless; not the least when trying to hold reasonable discussions. So, as I say, point to an example where you feel that the evidence for a specific assignment is weak and we'll start from that. >At least in English translation I don't see enough difference in style >in the flood account that I'd try to make a separation on that basis,... This is simply stating the obvious fact that _any_ translation, english or otherwise, is useless for this kind of work. >nor do I believe I can separate your sources based on style. And to repeat, no one else has claimed this either (or, to perhaps state this more precisely, "there would certainly be a great deal of uncertainty were one to base ones conclusions _wholly_ on considerations of style"). > ... I don't >offhand see any equivalent in your text of the chronological >difference in Gen. There is no chronological difference; there is no evidence of major, mutually exclusive differences in vocabulary; there is no evidence that the sources are arguing from differing schools of science; there is no significant grammatical/linguistic differences between the source; as pointed out above, this is only a brief fragment whereas the sources in question extend in a consistant way over at least the first five books of the Hebrew Bible; there are no multiple expressions of the same information (critically important for the comparison of multiple sources); the sources do not recount mutually contradictory data... etc. etc. etc. Most importantly the fragments at hand don't exhibit the uniformity of collateral clues across their domain that the sources of the OT exhibit --for example, the fragments used in the "quiz" displays no analogues to the phenomenon of duplets that occur throughout the HB. In summary, the example given in the "quiz" does not exhibit _any_ of the characteristics on which the work of the source critics is based other than some trival, possibly non-existent, stylistic difference. It is, in short, simply a straw man that --at most-- demonstrates that the author's minunderstanding and misapplication of the DH doesn't go very far towards explaining the text of the OT. But this is very different from a significant criticism of the _actual_ work of the source critics themselves. Nichael