ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) (12/04/90)
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 all the 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 28 February 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 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 shall print a copy of this message and another copy with the sentences
lettered to say which source they come from (and provided page numbers)
and give them to a friend who is not a Christian, so that he can 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 pation 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: Historion 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 Flieschl 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 "concaine 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.
--
I am not now and never have been a member of Mensa. -- Ariadne.