ncramer@bbn.com (Nichael Cramer) (11/29/90)
ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: >H2) Much of the text which was incorporated from earlier documents > was not significantly altered. > In one sense, this is likely. Based on analogy with the NT and > Kings/Chronicles, one would expect a story like Noah's ark to be > copied INTACT and more or less verbatim. On the contrary, the text of the Noah story would seem to present a perfect example of a passage whose present state is most comfortably explained by the dissection as described by the DH. It seems to me that any discomfort with the DH's model of the interweaving of sources is completely overwhelmed by the difficulties faced in trying to accept the story as the work of a single source. If there's interest we can go into this in more detail at a later time, but to save space let's consider only the straightforward issue of the story's internal factual contradictions: the duration of the flood (40 days/over a year); the source of the waters (rain/terrestrial); what bird was sent out (1 [or 3] doves/1 raven); how many of each kind of animal (2/14). If we are to believe that there is a single source for this story, we are left explaining --in a believable manner-- how such a writer could produce a story with these contradictions. But if we accept the story as viewed as the conflation of two (or more) sources such problems as these disappear. Moreover, the individual story fragments show a consistency with the overall structural detail of the source to which they are attributed. To take a single, specific example, consider the issue of how many of each type of animal: J says 14 while P says 2. We see why this is significant when we consider the J and P sources in their entirety. The P writers were priests from the Southern Kingdom who claimed lineage (and hence their authority) from Aaron. When we read the P story as a whole, we note that the story is written in such a way that _nowhere_ does any man perform a ritual sacrifice prior the consecration of Aaron. As a particular consequence, in the P version of the flood story Noah _cannot_ perform a sacrifice following his release from the Ark; consequently he can get by with just two of each kind. J's Noah on the other hand needs to perform a sacrifice to God and so had _better_ have more than one male and one female of each kind (at least of the "clean" --i.e. sacrificable-- species). > [T]he Higher Critics ... claim to be able to detect > multiple sources _within_ single stories. > > This really seem rather implausible. We *KNOW* what happened > when ancient authors produced an edition of the material in (say) > Genesis, because several of the results survive. Specifically, I > refer you to "The Antiquities of the Jews" by Flavious Josephus > and to "The Book of Jubilees". Drastic paraphrase, wholesale > interpolation of legendary material (yes, even in Josephus), and > lots of filling in gaps (for example the Book of Jubilees tells > us the name of Cain's wife). > > Basically, Wellhausen's approach requires that the redactor of > the Pentateuch was willing to chop up his originals into > separate phrases and interweave phrases from separate traditions > (it is quite common to find half-verses attributed to different > sources)... Minor technical point: division of verses is irrelevant to the current discussion as versification of the OT text didn't occur into well into the Middle Ages. > ... yet was fanatically literal about the *words* in the > scraps he was so carefree about chopping up and re-arranging. Well, what does the DH say about the how this "blending" of sources would have come about. My understanding of the standard model is that the evidence is that most of the blending of the Pentateuch occurred following the fall of the Northern kingdom. Now, first, what is the political situation under which the Redactor worked? In short, remnants of the Northern priesthood, bringing their own traditions, views of God and ritual practices suddenly found themselves on the doorsteps of the Southern temples, facing priests who had their own set of religious practices and precepts. In particular, the Northern refugees brought their own version of Holy Scriptures (i.e. the JE materials), writings which differed in significant ways from the corresponding ur-Torah of the Southern religious centers (i.e. the P writings). Now, consider the Redactor's position: he has two major works, both of which are considered *sacred* and inviolable and each of which is supported by a strong faction in the religious leadership of the country; two factions each of which have their own doctrinal and ritual axes to grind (and neither of which is eager to see its position and power diminished). In short, what choice do you have but to perform a careful, detailed merging of the texts? The very _words_ themselves are holy (unlike your case of Josephus); you simply _can't_ change them in a cavalier manner. Furthermore your goal is a single unified work, but peering over your shoulder you find a hoard of critics and censors whose goal is to ensure a balanced and even-handed merging of the two texts; texts that often different in radical ways. > An extremely important thing to remember is that the Wellhausen > school were working before Statistics. By today's standards, > most of the work done under the "Documentary" banner has to be > regarded as prescientific.... But this is like saying that Newton's work was done before there were sophisticated clocks so everything he said about Physics must have been wrong. No, in both cases when better techniques and equipment became available they were applied to the problems at hand. And so far as I know any "statistical" work supports the DH. > ... If you throw out everything that has > not been cross-validated, what's left? Most of the data? >H4) Higher Criticism has succeeded in identifying (parts of) sources. > There is no agreement about how many "documents" there are. The > old J, E, P and R have each been split into several, and there's > JE, and so on. > So this end of the spectrum has no plausibility at all. This is hardly accurate. There is surely uncertainty and debate about many of the details of DH, but that, in and of itself, certainly offers no real challenge to general structure of the DH. > ..... (It's rather odd that none of the Ps seems to know > much about Temple practice, given that "P" stands for "Priest".) Excuse me if this sounds abrupt, but what on earth can you be talking about? > ...[Moses] didn't sit down with a >typewriter and write the whole thing in a few days, like an Old >Testament Earl Stanley Gardner. Any number of assistants (each with >their own characteristic vocabulary and style) could have been involved >in recording the events described in Exodus--Deuteronomy. As long as >Moses checked and approved these records, and supervised the collation, >the traditional account would remain valid. A "source" discerned on the >grounds of vocabulary and style might be no more than one particular >assistant. (Hey, Fred, you polish the Noah story. I'll do the >introduction. > [...] >So combine > -- an unknown number of assistants with their own vocabularies and styles > -- an unknown amount of post-editing >and the plausiblity of some of the Higher Critical methods appears, um, low. Point 1: This model (multiple assistants) is a strawman which attempts to refute issues that have virtually nothing to do with how the DH works or the results that it predicts. In short, this whole line of argument is, I would guess, based on the common misunderstand about the DH that the only difference between the various sources are some vague, minor differences of literary style (an effect admittedly heightened by the reading of standard translations, one of whose desired goals is presumably to produce a smooth, homogenous sounding result). While these difference are there and are important, equally important is that fact that each source also has characteristic (and consistent) ritual and religious biases, vocabulary, historical and geographic emphases, and views of God and the universe that differed in significant ways.) Point 2: More importantly, the result that this model would have produced would have little to do with the text of the OT that we have before us. Specifically, your O. T. Gardner would have to give instructions more like: Hey Bob, you write the intro, but do it in 'Style A': write using a basic Shakespearian English using terms from List#1 and excluding terms from List#2. (in particular, if you use "fast" remember that it means "firm" or "not moving"); your point of view is strictly euro-centric with the centers of power in London and Paris. You can't mention anything that happens after 1610 and if you discuss the 18th century it must be in the future tense. And when you discuss God, He is a vague, cosmic power who never deals with mortals directly. Steve, you work on the ending, and use 'Style B': an modern, urban American english, omitting terms from List#1 and heavily using terms from List#2 ("fast" for you is a synonym for "speedy"). Your primary sources of power are Washington and NYC and anything that happened in the 18th cent is in the past. You God is personal and speaks with humans. Also, you have lots of miracles: talking animals, angels, stuff like that. Jill, you do the appendix in 'Style C'. Your power-base is Tokyo and your english contains lots of Japanese-isms.... Well, you get the point. But, in fact, the actual case is somewhat worse than this. In order to get the text that we have now, OTG's directions would have to be more like: Bob, write the intro. But do the first three paragraphs in Style A. Then switch for two lines to Style B. Back to Style A for a paragraph. Then a dependent clause in style C, two paragraphs in Style D.... Now, clearly I've exaggerated here for effect. But only in quantity, not in kind. And this is the important point. Any model that we use of how the OT was put together has to be able to produce the text that we have before us. We might form a good analogy with the NT and the "Synoptic Problem"; and how the SP is distinct from its proposed solutions. The SP (in short, the complex ways in which the first three Gospels are interconnected) exists independently of our efforts to answer it. We may accept or reject any specific proposed solution to the SP (e.g. the Four Source Hypothesis), but the state of the NT texts is the situation we are given --our data if you will. Any solution that we accept must --at the very least-- be consistent with that data. Likewise, we may be uncomfortable with how the DH's model of the evolution of the text of the OT, but the text of the OT that we have shows every indication of comprising fragments from geographically, linguistically, culturally and historically diverse strata. These are our data and it is from this point which we start. And whatever model we choose to accept for how this form of the text came about must be consistent with --and reasonably explain-- those data. NICHAEL nichael@bbn.com -- deep autumn my neighbor, what does she do?