Just beat it for him. So, you didn’t intend to lump it in with the “fringe” elements? If not; sorry --I’m just so used to it being so treated by others. Cheers!
In principle, @swamidass , you’d have to agree that “fringe ideas” are often at the forefront of paradigm changes, and though I disagree with Mark on his method of exegeting here, I do not conclude that he is “wrong.” The dustbins of academic history are filled with prescient people who were ignored, rather than engaged. Mark is saying that, even given your decade, that’s a raindrop to him. And “luck” will have had nothing to do with it.
That Mark is not claiming some new “apostolic authority” for this view shows good restraint. He is excited about what might be, in service to the church.
Every good communicator knows that, indeed, we are somewhat limited by our audiences, and even the most careful explanation of quantum mechanics, say, will fly right past many listeners. No matter; our intentions, no matter whether communicatively successful or not, are often NOT clear to our whole audience… perhaps, as humans, even to ourselves. A willingness to dialogue and receive criticism is in evidence here, and I’m honored to count Mark as a friend and brother, as I know you are, Josh.
All the best, Mark! I think you’ve gotten some wonderful feedback “meat” to chew on, and ask for guidance about.
Cheers!
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Thank you @Guy_Coe.
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The Tablet Theory is a more concise description of what YECs have implied for generations.
It is not inherently more accurate. It is just more specific.
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How are your thoughts developing @anon46279830? Haven’t heard from you on this in a while. In the coming months hoping to get some OT scholars here to lock horns with. What are your salient points going to be?
Tablet theory was first laid out, in rudimentary form, in 1936. It has developed more broadly since then, but has not enjoyed much popularity among scholars --not for lack of substance, but for the very same kind of false charge that George makes --that it seems too much like the implausible stepchild of YEC fundamentalism.
That is simply, and categorically, not true. Wiseman himself offered an alternative, rarely discussed, called the “revelational day” theory of understanding chapter one, and was himself not a YEC, nor was his son. It enjoyed some sustaining advocacy by Australian archaeologist Clifford Wilson, among others.
Sorry to burst the bubble.
It is currently showing up in broad outline in more and more commentaries and popular treatments. It truly has much more going for it, objectively, than JEDP theory… but don’t expect the academy to be willing to admit to that easily.
Whether one buys into the exact details of the tablet theory, the idea that the sources of the Bible may actually be those named, or hinted at, in the text rather than those reconstructed from thin air by Victorian scholars using dubious literary tools is an important one.
If one believes in Moses as an historical figure, it’s entirely logical that the patriarchal traditions of Israel should have been preserved and available to him (and if they are at all historical, such traditions must have existed), entirely plausible that they would have been in written form or in some fixed oral form, and quite credible that any written documents could have been on cuneiform tablets, given the genealogical and historical situation.
To attribute each tablet to the authorship particular patriarch himself is a step further into speculation - but why should even that be considered impossible?
As for the academy admitting it, there are of course complete and partial dissenters (John Sailhamer cheerfully termed his own view “non-critical” with some measure of defiance!). And the documentary hypothesis itself is no longer a consensus, but casts a long shadow determining how the whole OT is regarded.
That’s an interesting parallel with secularised biological science, which is actually a few decades younger than the documentary hypothesis. Darwinism is said to be dead, but its metaphysical foundation still calls the shots, and anyone entering the “guild” simply has to play by the rules. So if it’s wrong for heretical scientists to try to change science’s ground-rules, then one can’t object if the biblical studies acadamy treats the JEDP business - and methodological naturalism - as foundational too.
Well, of COURSE one can object. Dead or dying paradigms shouldn’t be calling the shots! I do hope that was British understatement, perhaps combined with humorous sarcasm, on your part, @jongarvey ! Cheers!
An eccentric scholar, yes, but a perceptive one, too: https://www.academia.edu/8175774/Tracing_the_Hand_of_Moses_in_Genesis
and more of Mackey’s contributions here:
https://mosesegyptianised.wordpress.com/2016/09/23/moses-a-figure-of-controversy/
Sarcastic? Moi?
@jongarvey What’s worth exploring in this topic is that, should modified tablet theory be true, and I am quite convinced that it is, then this would render the early chapters of Genesis as definitely PREDATING the other, similar ANE accounts.
Which makes them paganized distortions, and rather than providing the supposed setting of the “common ANE worldview,” in “Walton-esque” fashion, makes them self-serving local or regional and syncretistic distortions of what was once the universal primordial narrative.
This is quite in line with the Biblical narrative of the growing corruption of mankind, fueled by deliberate distortions of God’s original message.
Sadly, after an initial reading of the esteemed author @jack.collins newest tome, he doesn’t really take the subject up in his otherwise enjoyable “Reading Genesis Well,” and it would seem the sterility of the plodding academy, as you mention, may have way too much to do with this than with its status as “speculative.”
Guy
Even if the tablet theory itself is not the case, there is no reason why Gen 1-11 should not be early, ie pre-Mosaic (Moberly’s “Old Testament of the Old Testament.”) That is, your argument holds.
Ken Kitchen points out that the very close parallels with the ANE stories suggest they all date from approximately the same time, ie 1st part of 2nd millennium BCE (and reflecting events in the previous millennium). That, of course, fits with the tradition being carried by the Patriarchs from Ur.
The “protohistory” would not have taken anything like the same form, he says, if it had been composed later, such as at the time of the exile. And that is true - you can tell that Morte d’Arthur is mediaeval, not post-Roman, from the whole style and content, whereas Gen 1-11 reads in the same way as the ANE stories.
Therefore, Kitchen says, Genesis carries equal historical weight with the ANE texts, and is just as likely to be the root from which they came, as that it borrowed from them. In forthcoming book, I give some reasons from anthropology why the perversion of a monotheistic story is more likely.
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So, how do we politely ask Dr. Collins to engage with this (much more defensible, from an apologetical point of view) explanatory rubric? I’ve had the same difficulty regarding getting him to consider a sequential reading approach, which he seems bound and determined to disallow, probably because of a perceived need to defend against the hackneyed old charge of the first two pericopes being, somehow, contradictory, which a sequential reading neatly solves, as well?
@jack.collins , I do hope your schedule opens up a crack, and that the current health concerns diminish! Will continue praying towards those ends!
I dont think that is actually true.
The one thing we know about the priests of Assyria and Babylon is that they CONTINUED to record and archive history on tablets.
This actually SUPPORTS the tablet theort, right?
Just not in the way you want it to! During the exile, any Jewish priests who learned cuneiform, and who was granted access to the archives, would have had centuries worth of tablets at their disposal!
And as we know, the tablets would have included history, myths, and histories morphing into legends!
A perfect case in point? A concordance would quickly find a reference in the OT regarding the “Waters of NK”! And there would hundreds if not thousands of tablets on Enki.
Trsnslators say: NK means Noach, or aka: the man English speakers call Noa(c)h!
So… we are supposed to believe the flood waters are legitimately called Noah’s? Ha.
It is just as likely, if not more so, that the OT was refering to the Waters of (e)N.K.(i)!
To cover up that blunder, the scribes re-oronounce NK to mean Noach… Enki.
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Your question belies a vast underestimation of the manuscript evidence and its provenance which already exists for an already written account well before the Babylonian exile period in history. Moses would have had personal and unfettered access to the royal archives in Egypt, where the use of vellum or papyrus to re-record the older tablets was already well underway.!
Well, that’s all very nice… but it does seem rather circular.
You reject the existence of thousands of tablets in Babylon because Egypt was filled with non-tablet methods for recording stories and history… and that’s why you hold to the Tablet Theory (?!? - huh?).
The Tablet Theory is almost as good as the Animal Skin Theory. The latter is better because animal skin is must less vulnerable to breakage… and are certainly more portable than having hundreds of dried (or baked) clay tablets.
I know that it is difficult to resist the temptation that Genesis writes about the oldest of times… so it must be the oldest document. But the texts don’t really hold up to scrutiny that well.
For example, parts of the David saga appear to be older than Exodus… because David and his retainers don’t seem to have any idea what to do with the Ark of the Covenant… even though it has only been gone for what?.. less than a year? The Levites don’t come to fetch it… when it is fetched, it is touched and people die… and when it is finally “domesticated” … it is put in a tent that doesn’t appear to be the original Tabernacle… and when the Ark is finally loaded into the Temple… there is no mention of the original tabernacle even then.
Genesis appears to be more of a “back story” for Exodus, which is already a back story for the Ark and the Son’s of Aaron, which is a marvelous Hebrew pun: since Aaron and “Box” (or Ark) are virtually indistinguishable phonetically (though there is some difference in spelling to veil the reality). In other words, the “Sons of the Ark” gets a back story where there is literally someone named “Ark”.
The whole Genesis and Exodus fixation on snakes is very much a Persian era consideration. The holy fire that is kept burning constantly is right out of the Zoroastrian handbook… if there was one. The White Horses associated with Jerusalem are also a beautiful connection to the same kind of symbolism loved by the Persians.
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To be fair, Jack’s reasoning is based closely on the reading of the text, linking the two “created in the image” accounts of chs 1 & 5 via a chiastic structure, thus tying them together. I’ve not studied it closely, but at some stage I’d like to examine it closer to see if his reasoning might equally tie them together as a literary unit, rather than as a set of events. That might require a scholar more versed in the varieties of chiastic composition in Genesis and elsewhere.
After all, the common backgrpund against which one argues for literary unity is against the source critics who said that they were simply separate stories thrown together, and that’s not me and thee are suggesting.
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Chiasms do not function to pair up distinct events and conflate them into one; they preserve a summative storyline, highlight a central theme, and show how two distinct stories are both related to that theme. They provide literary unity and mnemonic touchpoints, while indicating storyline transitions. They are not chronological equivalency markers, for example. They indicate that the text wishes us to see both of the attached accounts as vital to that central theme.
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No, George; you’re just thoroughly confused by what my answer meant. I’d be happy to explain, should you actually decide to move beyond a kind of dismissiveness.
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