tilting at windmills: a response to 'redaction theory'

[I, Brian]

Originally Posted by bananabrain

not sure i understand exactly what you're getting at here, but i'm sure you don't mean that texts can't be meaningful without secular analysis. i just think that there are ways of doing it which don't imply that the "inside" group are kidding themselves, making it up, conning people, etc.

what united judaic position do you mean? even the halacha allows a lot of different perspectives on this issue. what i don't like is the suggestion that internal perspectives require external validation to be considered somehow 'justified'. i might be misunderstanding what you mean though.

I'm not at all suggesting that external validation is required - simply that I don't see the external position in this aspect being universally dismissive.

Perhaps a big part fo the issue is that you've earlier encountered this theory through less respectful means?

At the end of the day, though, my reply above is more a call to calm. I am trying to defuse potential rants from developing into arguments.

[bob x]

I have not wanted to respond in haste, because I seem to be irritating you to the limit of what you can take. You are saying things like "of course, you're not interested in what we think of our own sacred texts": of course I am interested; that is not the same as believing everything you say, but apparently you want me to give beliefs that I regard as profoundly false the same level of "respect" as what I would give to truth, and that I cannot do.
And: "you seem awfully sure you know the thoughts of the prophets better than our sages." To me, the only evidence for what Jeremiah thought is the recorded words of Jeremiah. A secondary source is not "evidence". The opinion of me, you, a "sage", or an "idiot" (after all, even a blind pig finds an acorn sometimes) may help to point out something Jeremiah said, or some way of viewing what Jeremiah said, that the other person has not noticed. The only advantage that reading the sages has over reading the idiots is that they are more likely actually to have noticed something I haven't; but the only justification for agreeing with what they say has to be a confrontation with the actual words of Jeremiah. I say that Jeremiah never says a thing about the existence of any "Torah" books except the ones he calls corrupt; if you disagree, show me Jeremiah saying something about "Torah". I opine that in Jeremiah's day either there were no other "Torah" books, or else that he did not think studying them was important enough to urge on his audience. If you think this opinion wrong, I do not care to hear "Maimonides said such-and-such" unless you mean "Maimonides pointed out that Jeremiah said such-and-such and read these words as follows..."

Quote: although i understand your point, shibboleth and sibboleth is not so much a dialectal indicator as it is a regional (or tribal, in this case) accent - the point of the incident concerned, of course, being to criticise tribal discriminators. my own accent (which, being iraqi, includes the guttural 'ayin') takes account of the dagesh, as ashkenazic accents do not, also distinguishing between tet and taf, het and khaf and so on, as one might expect given our residence in what is now iraq for 2500+ years. although i'm not a sociolinguist, i don't see how you can state so categorically that you know how the sort of things we're talking about happened - i mean, what constitutes proof in these sorts of cases? isn't it more likely to be something more like the "balance of probabilities"

Regional and tribals accents are what the "dialect" *means*. The only point here was in response to your originally expressed belief that the pronunciation was fixed all the way down to the vowels, from the very beginning; a position you now seem to have abandoned.
"Proof" of the ancient pronunciations is necessarily scanty: there was a deplorable shortage of tape recorders back then. You can look at how a word or name gets written in different scripts: for example, we know that intervocalic "m" shifted to "v" in late Babylonian from borrowings out of Babylonian, like the month-names Kislimu and Simanu becoming Hebrew Kislev and Sivan, and into Babylonian, as the Mede kings named 'Uvakhshatra (Kuaxares in Greek, becoming Cyaxares in Latin) and Ashtuvaga (Astuages, Astyages) are spelled U.MAK.SAS and ISH.TU.MA.GA in cuneiform: evidently those syllabic characters were already being pronounced VAK and VA or they would not have been used to transliterate those names. For variations in the vowels, we are handicapped because nobody wrote the vowels in Hebrew (in any texts that we see, anyhow) until late, so we cannot know whether the lahem/lahimma variation was ancient or medieval in origin. But we can look at early transliterations into Greek, such as Nabuchodnosor, indicating that the vowels pronounced with that name were once closer to the original Babylonian Nabukudurusur (the r to n shift in the consonantal text is a scribal error in the paleo-Hebrew alphabet, where nun like "y" and resh with a triangular head were only a stroke apart; the absence of this error in the duplication of the Kings materials in the prophets indicates that it occurred after the books of the prophets had been assembled, though before the "squarehand" or "Assyrian" alphabet became the standard Hebrew writing).

[bananabrain]

i've not responded in haste, because i've been busy - kidding myself over new year worshipping the text, according to you.

of course I am interested; that is not the same as believing everything you say, but apparently you want me to give beliefs that I regard as profoundly false the same level of "respect" as what I would give to truth, and that I cannot do.

again we run into the problem that you seem to think you have a monopoly on recognising the truth - and, more importantly, that what i and thousands of jews for at least two thousand years (let's not even go into preTalmudic times) have believed is "profoundly false"; yet you have nothing but your opinion and the opinions of others to believe in. why can't you understand that even though your opinion may feel 'true' to you, that doesn't make it feel self-evidently true to others? and can't you understand why taking this tone might seem kind of rude to me?

And: "you seem awfully sure you know the thoughts of the prophets better than our sages." To me, the only evidence for what Jeremiah thought is the recorded words of Jeremiah. A secondary source is not "evidence".

look, bob, i'm really trying to find some common language here to try and prevent this deteriorating. i respect your learning in the matter of ancient near-eastern languages and you have prompted me to clarify something about Torah min ha-shamayim that i assumed was the case, but was mistaken about (namely that TMHS requires the pointing and cantillations to be fixed at time of Revelation, which apparently it doesn't) and for that i thank you for increasing my own knowledge. you know a lot more than me about linguistics and the science of textual archaeology or whatever, but this statement about evidence and secondary sources reveals that you don't know anything about how these texts function. have you even heard of PaRDe"S? the 32 rules? the baraita of rabbi ishmael? i don't think you know how the relationship between the oral Torah and written Torah works and i really think you owe us the courtesy of at least trying to understand our position as i do yours, so please do not take it the wrong way if i recommend that you read at least two of these books:

1. "The Written and Oral Torah: A Comprehensive Introduction" by r. nathan lopes cardozo. available from http://www.aronson.com

2. "Leviticus as Literature" by the anthropologist mary douglas. ( http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books )

3. "Black Fire on White Fire: An Essay on Jewish Hermeneutics" by the semiotic theorist betty rojtman ( http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books )

and while you're at it, i recommend r. adin steinsaltz's reference guide to the babylonian talmud, which contains an indepth introduction to jewish hermeneutic and exegetical methodogies. quite apart from all this, if the Torah was written, according to you, by all these different writers and a redactor/s, the book of jeremiah is hardly a guide to the thought of jeremiah - or even evidence that there was such a person. so, by your own logic, appealing to text attributed to the pen of jeremiah (no doubt altered by the lying pen of the scribes, i dare say) as evidence of his thought puts you on a pretty sticky wicket - even for a much-vaunted primary source. i guess what i am trying to say is that you could even break it down into its constituent letters and say each one was written by a different author and you still wouldn't have learned very much.

anyway:

If you think this opinion wrong, I do not care to hear "Maimonides said such-and-such" unless you mean "Maimonides pointed out that Jeremiah said such-and-such and read these words as follows..."

actually, that's exactly what the sages do, all the time. it's the second level of PaRDe"S, that of remez or hint. in other words, if the Text describes somebody as getting divorced, we can deduce that he got married, even if it doesn't say so. by means of a set of other hermeneutical devices we can find out a whole bunch of other stuff about it as well. in fact, the lack of pointing etc aids this process considerably, which is, i dare say, why it wasn't included in TMHS. a standard chumash with RaSh"I (r. shimon yitzhaki, C12th, troyes) ought to show numerous examples of this.

"Proof" of the ancient pronunciations is necessarily scanty: there was a deplorable shortage of tape recorders back then.

which doesn't therefore show that your explanation for something is necessarily the only one, let alone the correct one.

You can look at how a word or name gets written in different scripts: for example, we know that intervocalic "m" shifted to "v" in late Babylonian from borrowings out of Babylonian

yes, i know, but judaism started out as a conscious rejection of much of the surrounding host culture, language, customs and religions in favour of an innovative new vision of society - and this process continues to this day. and from that perspective the fact that the babylonians used to do or say something is therefore no guarantee of the jews having done it or not:

Joshua said to all the people, "Thus says G!D, the G!D of Israel, 'From ancient times your fathers lived beyond the River - Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, and they served other gods. But I took your father Abraham from beyond the River, and led him through all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his descendants and gave him Isaac." - joshua 24:2-3

however, as you are no doubt aware, they were hardly perfect and used to pick up stuff from people we disapproved of all the time, like the constant struggle in NaKh between the cult of the baals and asherahs and what the prophets were saying they ought to be doing. furthermore, i am taking a minimalist position here, namely that when i maintain TMHS i am *only* talking about the consonantal text of the pentateuch. the rest of the OT is a completely different argument and one which, frankly, i shall leave to those who are interested. obviously we have our own opinions upon who traditionally is understood to have authored such and such a book (such as solomon in the case of kohelet/ecclesiastes and the song of songs) but they have little bearing on what we actually learn from them. therefore, if you're telling me that there were three isaiahs or whatever, i don't really have to object.

OK. even though we're going to have to agree to disagree, i have tried to show how my position can be one of integrity and one that is worthy of respect and not dissing out of hand. i'm sorry i have to get aggressive about it occasionally but so would you if someone came round to your house and started digging up the foundations to look for oil, or whatever.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[Nogodnomasters]

There is a problem with the document hypothesis whether one supports it or not. There is clearly different styles of writing and view points in the Old Testament books in question. They were most certainly written by various authors. However, there is no E, P, or D document that can stand by itself. These documents are all parasites on the J document, which I will contend as does Richard Elliot Friedman, extends until the crowning of Solomon as a single text.

This was a "living document." As time changed stories were added or inserted to the original text. The beauty of the way they did it is inspirational. They left the original ancient text intact. Many times the inserted phrase or story altered the original meaning of the text.

I have gone through this text and further edited Friedman's work and the book of J. It seems there was a pattern to one of the redactors. That is to repeat a phrase in the text and insert material betwen those phrases. The inserted material would provide a long introduction for a concept, person or place which would then "echo" with smaller insertions through the next few pages. Every noticed how Samuel dies twice? Solomon become king twice? Abraham travels with Lott twice? All within a page of each other?

Once the text is properly edited it becomes MORE astounding. The story becomes a star guide for the constellations. The Bible stories from Adam and Eve as Leo and Virgo to the crowning of Solomon as the Southern Crown follows a contigeous flow through 48 constellations and hundreds of stars. At this point everything falls in place. It becomes easy to identify the cardinal points. My guess is 2141 BCE is the age of the original text. It has an extremely heavy Babylonian influence.

Stories and passages were added as the cardinal points changed and as cities went to dust and new ones appeared. The authors believed the stars told of their past, present, and future. The prophets and Revelation are all extreme astrological documents.

The text is also very historical, minus the miracles. The great famine of 2200 BCE plays as the general background. I have worked through most of the problems of anachronisms that prevent the text of dating to this age by eliminating them in the text itself through the aforesaid method.

Another beauty in explaining the text with astrology is that those "difficult" texts now make perfect sense in the original Hebrew. Astrology also accounts for the deliberate mistranslations into the Septuagint.

I also have a Biblical time that is 100% archaelogically correct.

[bob x]

L'shanah tovah tiktav I hope the High Holy Days are doing good for your spirit.

Originally Posted by bananabrain

again we run into the problem that you seem to think you have a monopoly on recognising the truth

Not at all. But I am not going to give your opinions, or the opinions of "thousands of jews for at least two thousand years" (and bear in mind that all that time there have been thousands of intelligent who thoughtfully considered the Biblical texts and yet held different opinions) the same respect that I would give to truth, unless you persuade me that it *is* truth, or at least (not to demand perfect wisdom from you) that there is something aspect of truth captured in it. Simply pointing out that many people share your opinion does not in itself confer respectability on it: lots of people are of the opinion that Bush is a decent and honorable man, but I do not respect that opinion.

Originally Posted by bananabrain

why can't you understand that even though your opinion may feel 'true' to you, that doesn't make it feel self-evidently true to others? and can't you understand why taking this tone might seem kind of rude to me?

This is the same question that *I* have for *you*. You do not treat me with a tone of respect: you talk down to me as if I were a child who has never looked at this stuff before. For example:

Originally Posted by bananabrain

have you even heard of PaRDe"S?

Yes, I have. An adequate set of English words for it: the Plain meaning of the text, the Reasonable inferences, the Directed understanding from comparing with other texts, and the Symbolic meanings.

Originally Posted by bananabrain

if the Torah was written, according to you, by all these different writers and a redactor/s, the book of jeremiah is hardly a guide to the thought of jeremiah - or even evidence that there was such a person. so, by your own logic, appealing to text attributed to the pen of jeremiah (no doubt altered by the lying pen of the scribes, i dare say) as evidence of his thought puts you on a pretty sticky wicket

AS WITH JUST ABOUT ANY ANCIENT BOOK, Jeremiah has a complex history and has to be scrutinized carefully to distinguish what is original and what is added later. There was a "Short Jeremiah" text in ancient circulation (used for the Septuagint and other early translations) missing many of the chapters in the "Long Jeremiah" (the text now in the Tanakh): at some rather-late date, supplemental materials were added to the book. Much of this is likely to be genuine material, simply passed down through a different chain of custody (there are, in most of these chapters, no tell-tale signs of being written in a later stage of the Hebrew language than the "Short Jeremiah" material, or by an author with different idiosyncrasies of favorite word usage; this is in contrast to the "Second Isaiah" material, which appears to be centuries later than the "First Isaiah"). It is thought that the scroll compiling Jeremiah's prophecies described in Jer. 36 was, essentially, the "Short Jeremiah", and that Baruch made some other collections of later prophecies afterwards. But some additions are from quite separate sources, such as an early draft of the book of Kings (some time before the NebuchadRezzar-> NebuchadNezzar copyist error crept in), inevitably including some spurious compositions (chapters 50-51 are considered very suspect).
The Septuagint added a different, shorter collection of "supplemental Jeremiah" material, supposedly by Baruch and concluding with a letter from Jeremiah to the exiles in Babylon, and then there is an apocalyptic "Second Baruch", but even the Christians recognized that as bogus. Catholics still have the "First Baruch" in their Bibles, minus the "Epistle" (which was not even written in Hebrew apparently, rather in Greek; it was long doubted whether the rest of "Baruch" had a Hebrew original, but some of it turned up at Qumran) despite Jerome's opinion that "it isn't worth translating".
Both Septuagint and Tanakh ascribed the "Lamentations" poems to Jeremiah, though marking them off as a separate book: the stage of the Hebrew language and the emotional tone of immediate pain both indicate that these poems are genuinely from an author present at the sack of Jerusalem, but he is more likely to be someone whose name is lost, rather than Jeremiah (otherwise why would they not have been passed down together with Jeremiah's writings, which as they stand contain all kinds of stuff, poetry, prose, and miscellaneous?)

Originally Posted by bananabrain

"Maimonides pointed out that Jeremiah said such-and-such and read these words as follows..." actually, that's exactly what the sages do, all the time.

But it is not what YOU are doing. I point out that Jeremiah has a lowly opinion of the Torah books that the scribes circulate. You opine that there must have been other, uncorrupted copies of the Torah around which Jeremiah approved of: "why can't you understand that even though your opinion may feel 'true' to you, that doesn't make it feel self-evidently true to others?" If you want to persuade me, you need to show something in Jeremiah that could be taken as indicating that.

Originally Posted by bananabrain

yes, i know, but judaism started out as a conscious rejection of much of the surrounding host culture, language, customs and religions in favour of an innovative new vision of society - and this process continues to this day. and from that perspective the fact that the babylonians used to do or say something is therefore no guarantee of the jews having done it or not

You are not getting my intentions in citing the Babylonian linguistics at all. You had asked the question, how can you possibly know what changes in pronunciation happened in ancient times? The answer of course is that you cannot know with certainty, but: there are certain kinds of evidence that indicate highly probable answers. And I was starting with an example from Babylonian just because it was not from Hebrew: you don't have any emotional stake in believing that one definitive pronunciation of each cuneiform syllable has been passed down from the beginning of time, so I thought I could tell you "It is believed by scholars that all the MA came to be pronounced VA, etc." and show how one would go about concluding such a thing.

Originally Posted by bananabrain

when i maintain TMHS i am *only* talking about the consonantal text of the pentateuch. the rest of the OT is a completely different argument

To me, of course, all the books are of the same kind, and show all the same signs of having the same sorts of editorial histories behind their current forms. The Torah was "frozen" earlier than the other books: I believe that the public reading described in the book of Ezra, with interpreters to make sure the Hebrew-impaired in the audience would understand every word, was a reading of the exact same text (up to a handful of scribal errors) that we have today. I just do not believe that the text was "frozen" before then; in the Kings period, people still felt free to add material, or rephrase, etc. This is not to say that there is not a large core of genuinely quite ancient material in it.

[bananabrain]

But I am not going to give your opinions, or the opinions of "thousands of jews for at least two thousand years" ...[]...the same respect that I would give to truth, unless you persuade me that it *is* truth, or at least (not to demand perfect wisdom from you) that there is something aspect of truth captured in it. Simply pointing out that many people share your opinion does not in itself confer respectability on it.

yes, of course i realise that. my problem is - and this isn't the first time i've said so - that you appear to think that i ought to give your opinions and the opinions of other academics the respect i would give to the truth (and let me say that i do not for a moment suggest that they lack that certain logic and coherence which has convinced many) WITHOUT ACCORDING ME AND THOSE WHO AGREE WITH ME THE SAME RESPECT IN RETURN. you are, in effect - and don't think that i am trying to take offence on purpose here - suggesting thereby that opinions deriving from jewish thought are less than "respectable", which i consider entirely unwarranted, as if you were suggesting that academics are somehow infallible, in this case to suggest that *human logic and deductive rationality can explain everything*, which i find kind of arrogant. that's what gets up my nose!

i am sorry if you think i don't "treat you with a tone of respect" (the web is a brusque medium and conveys little nuance of tone) the fact is that i *don't* disrespect your academic credentials, which i think i have said, yet you insist that my own points of reference are not worthy of respect! why on earth should i be convinced by such a one-sided perspective? you haven't justified it at all. look, if you *do* know about PaRDeS and the Oral Torah and yet choose to opine that all of this body of thought contains no "aspect of truth", as you put it, i can only conclude that you're being just as selective about what constitutes evidence as you think that i am being.

I point out that Jeremiah has a lowly opinion of the Torah books that the scribes circulate. You opine that there must have been other, uncorrupted copies of the Torah around which Jeremiah approved of....[]....If you want to persuade me, you need to show something in Jeremiah that could be taken as indicating that.

i don't have any religious obligation to persuade you that i'm "right", you know - but what is it exactly that gives you the right to demand that everyone else kowtow to your frame of reference and justify themselves in your terms? i don't feel i have to justify myself to you and the only reason i am bothering to continue with this discussion is because i am trying to show the rest of the people that may be reading this that people like myself can maintain traditional jewish beliefs without relinquishing our critical faculties and that being branded as superstitious primitives by implication despite maintaining both is discourteous, unfair and unwarranted. i'm not interested in having a point-by-point argument with you about jeremiah because you're not open to any source of authority outside a western university. nothing i would say could possibly convince you. i can't convey my inner experience to you over the web, or even in person, yet you seem to think i am obliged to do so because your deductive methodology is by definition superior to mine! i'd like to coexist intellectually, but if you insist that my frame of reference must be subjugated to your own 'superior' one than i am afraid that that stands in the way of us being able to discuss things as with mutual respect.

A particular point about Faith - under any circumstance - is that it requires a personal leap into potential irrationalism. By this I mean that we are required to make final judgements on issues that simply cannot be quantified, let alone proved. That is where Faith takes over.

these are your words, but i could just as easily apply them to the irrational belief that rationalism is a powerful enough tool to understand the entirety of the human experience. do you listen to music at all? or look at art? rationality can't explain them. yet apparently i must deny spiritual truths because they cannot be validated by rationality. you haven't exactly addressed these points, possibly because they can't be addressed.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[bob x]

Originally Posted by bananabrain

if you *do* know about PaRDeS and the Oral Torah and yet choose to opine that all of this body of thought contains no "aspect of truth", as you put it

It is not "all of this body of thought" that I am questioning, only the particular belief that the book dropped from the sky, letter-for-letter as we have it now, a claim that the text does not even make for itself. I find much of value in the "body of thought", and do not think it all becomes worthless if it is seen as something that evolved over time.

Originally Posted by bananabrain

you appear to think that i ought to give your opinions and the opinions of other academics the respect i would give to the truth (and let me say that i do not for a moment suggest that they lack that certain logic and coherence which has convinced many) WITHOUT ACCORDING ME AND THOSE WHO AGREE WITH ME THE SAME RESPECT IN RETURN.

I do not expect you to kowtow, but to examine those opinions and see if there is not logic to it. I examine Jewish opinion and find logic in much of it, but not in the Torah min-ha-shamayim premise. Not finding any verisimilitude in that, I accord it no more respect than parallel Christian claims about the Gospels and Epistles, or Muslim claims about the Qur'an, or Hindu claims about the Bhagavad Gita.

Originally Posted by bananabrain

the only reason i am bothering to continue with this discussion is because i am trying to show the rest of the people that may be reading this that people like myself can maintain traditional jewish beliefs without relinquishing our critical faculties

If that is what you are trying to do, then of course, you need to exhibit the use of critical faculties.

Originally Posted by bananabrain

i'm not interested in having a point-by-point argument with you about jeremiah because you're not open to any source of authority outside a western university. nothing i would say could possibly convince you.

You are mistaken. If you say, "Here is something in Jeremiah, and here are the inferences I draw from those words", then I do not care whether the source of your inferences is a University professor, Maimonides, or the Idiot Rabbi of Pinsk-- or whether you have no source at all except your own insight. The strength of the inferences has to be judged on its own merit, not on the borrowed merit of any "authority". In that sense you can say that I am not open to any source of authority including western universities. Many opinions have come out of western universities which, on examination, prove to be rubbish.

Originally Posted by bananabrain

i can't convey my inner experience to you over the web, or even in person, yet you seem to think i am obliged to do so

Well, we have our own inner experiences, and when it gets down to that level there is ultimately no real possibility of communicating. Deductive reasoning may or may not be "superior", but it is something that can be communicated from one person to another, in a way that internal intuitions cannot.

[bananabrain]

i think i'm pretty much done with this argument now.

It is not "all of this body of thought" that I am questioning, only the particular belief that the book dropped from the sky, letter-for-letter as we have it now, a claim that the text does not even make for itself.

but what i keep pointing out and what you keep ignoring is the idea that the validity and authority of the Written Torah is *axiomatic*, which means it is unprovable and therefore fundamentally a matter of belief - much like your belief in the supremacy of logic, rationality and the other categories that come out of greek thought - and the only supporting opinions you are going to find for it are the ones that come out of the accompanying Oral Torah, which you also allow no voice. i am not by any means suggesting that you personally should start believing in TMHS, but what i am trying to do is give our friends here on this board some context to the assumption that textual analysis from an academic POV is the only game in town with any integrity. i am trying to argue that the traditional point of view is honest about not trying to prove things about a system using categories from outside the system. this is also a *anthropological* argument which you keep trying to frame in terms of "my claim is more *logical* than your claim". it's like a painter holding a gun at another painter's head in order to prove that his painting is better.

I find much of value in the "body of thought", and do not think it all becomes worthless if it is seen as something that evolved over time.

no, of course not. however, what does fall down when TMHS is removed is the *authority* of the system. Divine Command has much more clout than "well, that's what our ancestors said they did". and i have strong reservations about whether the jewish people would have survived without TMHS.

I do not expect you to kowtow, but to examine those opinions and see if there is not logic to it. I examine Jewish opinion and find logic in much of it, but not in the Torah min-ha-shamayim premise.

IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT LOGIC!!! halakha, for example, has its own logic, which does not - amazingly - exactly look like the logic of english common law. what i find astounding is that you seem to think that everything should be logical according to your understanding!

Not finding any verisimilitude in that, I accord it no more respect than parallel Christian claims about the Gospels and Epistles, or Muslim claims about the Qur'an, or Hindu claims about the Bhagavad Gita.

hah, yes, but i don't find academics marching all over the middle east proclaiming that the Qur'an is not a Divine text, for some reason. not that i advocate the response of islamic fundamentalists for a minute, but it seems somewhat like the Torah is a softer target.

If that is what you are trying to do, then of course, you need to exhibit the use of critical faculties.

there's no need to be insulting. my critical faculties have been exercised in this area for many years and are no less strong for the views i hold. i'm just not arrogant enough to think that they are the most powerful analytical tools ever used.

If you say, "Here is something in Jeremiah, and here are the inferences I draw from those words", then I do not care whether the source of your inferences is a University professor, Maimonides, or the Idiot Rabbi of Pinsk-- or whether you have no source at all except your own insight. The strength of the inferences has to be judged on its own merit, not on the borrowed merit of any "authority".

er... so academics don't rely on any authority at all? i think that's questionable in the extreme. quite apart from the fact that you aren't saying who's doing this "judging" on its own merit. who judges how strong these inferences are? i might easily cite *you* as an authority, but somehow i doubt you'd object to that. tradition relies on a certain degree of *trust* - and that goes for you as well; you trust the academics before you not to have lied and, similarly, i don't see why i shouldn't trust that "moses received Torah at sinai, transmitted it to joshua, joshua to the elders, the elders to the prophets, the prophets to the men of the great assembly" simply on the say-so of a bunch of people whose doctrines, if followed, would lead to the extinction of our way of life.

i've enjoyed some of our discussion and learned a lot, but i'd really rather finish it here, because i can't see any progress. i just hope the other people who have read it have taken something useful out of it.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[Vajradhara]

Namaste all,

well, bananabrain, i did

and i want to thank you both for a thought provoking thread!

it can be... tiring... to explain a belief that is deeply held, even with someone that shares it.. let alone to those that don't.

i, for one, always appreciate the time and effort it takes to have someone in a tradition explain how they percieve the tradition and how it's implemented in their lives.

as they say... the Dharma rain falls equally on all... and we each respond in our own way and with our own capacity.

[bob x]

Originally Posted by bananabrain

i think i'm pretty much done with this argument now.

Well, I thought you had abandoned me in disgust some time ago...
All right, if you're tired I won'e answer blow-by-blow, just a few thoughts.

Originally Posted by bananabrain

i have strong reservations about whether the jewish people would have survived without TMHS.

I believe that you survived many centuries before this TMHS premise was ever thought up, and will survive after it has become a small minority view.

Originally Posted by bananabrain

hah, yes, but i don't find academics marching all over the middle east proclaiming that the Qur'an is not a Divine text, for some reason.

The reason is simply that you haven't looked at what academics have to say about the process by which the Qur'an came to be, presumably because it is of little interest to you. Would it surprise you, for some reason, to find that most scholars do not think the Qur'an dropped out the sky, just as it is, letter for letter?

Originally Posted by bananabrain

there's no need to be insulting. my critical faculties have been exercised in this area for many years and are no less strong for the views i hold.

I'm sure that's true. You do not come off as any kind of a dummy, and I am sorry if I gave the impression I was thinking of you as such. What I meant was that you were refusing to engage in critical reasoning, saying "What's the use of my elucidating Jeremiah for you when I know in advance you won't listen" and that kind of thing, and then you said your purpose was to show that you could still engage in critical reasoning. Well, if you want to show that, you would have to do so, not just say that you have done so on other occasions in the company of people you like better.

Originally Posted by bananabrain

so academics don't rely on any authority at all?

Not in the sense you mean, of taking it as "axiomatic" that whatever Dr. Soandso says must be accepted without question. Of course, nobody has time to research everything personally, most things you have to take on trust. I would think fleas, lice, and ticks are similar kinds of bugs, but the biologists tell me fleas are actually like houseflies and mosquitoes but with wings distorted into backshields, while lice are like aphids or waterbugs, and ticks are not insects at all but like little spiders-- now I could examine for myself the reasons they say so, look at the injective proboscis on the flea and the sucking parts on the louse and count the legs of a tick, etc. etc. Or more likely, I will say, that is what they do professionally, I will take their word for it-- but that is because I do not really care what the proper classification of these vermin is. If there was some reason why it was important to know, then I would check out the evidence for myself.

Originally Posted by bananabrain

you aren't saying who's doing this "judging" on its own merit.

Yourself, always. If you take it as an axiom that the Torah is always right, it is still you who decided to trust the people who propose that as an axiom, as opposed to trusting the people who would propose the Qur'an.

Originally Posted by bananabrain

you trust the academics before you not to have lied

Not on THIS subject!!! On any matter connected with religion I want to see the primary textual material; I wouldn't take any scholar's word for "gospel" (if you'll pardon the expression).

Originally Posted by bananabrain

b'shalom
bananabrain

Vaya con dios!
X

[Pamela]

This thread has been haunting my thoughts for the last two days. I wish to relate my quandary over redaction theory and literalism, and would appreciate input.

When I was young (born and raised a Vatican 2 Catholic), I loved to read the Bible stories. One of things I recalled was regret that I didn’t live in those times, when magic and miracles took place..for of course, such things were long over. Around fourteen, I had a crisis of faith, and began to drift around. In these many years of drifting, and studying, I came across redaction theory, and it fascinated me. It gave me a means to approach these texts, and to go, “These people really were like me, and everybody else, weren’t they?” (I am not comparing myself to the noble souls of Moses, Jesus, Abraham, etc, but to the fact that people really were people back then.)

Yet as I find comfort in redaction theory for giving me a means to approach the people within the scriptures, I sometimes miss the faith I once had. What happened on Mount Sinai, and what happened after Jesus’ Crucifixion (as two examples) that has inspired people, driven people, for hundreds of years? I may regret the dryness or rationality of redaction theory, but then I think about the scriptures and my experience of the Church and think, “why does it seem that The Divine really did stop speaking us authoritatively 2000 years ago?”

How do I reconcile this? I haven't yet. I don’t know how. So I patiently study, and think and when I can, pray.

How do the rest of you reconcile this? For I’m sure I’m not alone in this as a Westerner, at least.

[The Fool]

That's an interesting point - it might even serve for a thread in itself as I'm sure it's going to touch on far wider issues here.

[bananabrain]

well, i was brought up to assume that the redaction theory was true, but eventually i just decided that a) it didn't really account for the nature of the Text on the level that i was encountering it from my own personal experience and b) it was complete euroccentric cultural imperialism with little understanding of the inner nature of the system. however, this does not prevent millions of (mostly europeanised) jews from believing it and nonetheless finding a variety of reasons to stay jewish and/or observe the commandments. what does fall over is the argument from authority, but it is precisely that argument that is necessary to enable one to start to appreciate the inner nature of the Torah and stand again oneself at Sinai, to paraphrase susannah heschel. in other words, without appreciating the Divine nature of the Text, there is only so far you can go on this particular journey. incidentally, bob, i've just been given a book that gives all the traditional sources for what we are required to believe and there is plenty of room for me to find a sustainably OK position as well as appreciate the fact that the sages have always disagreed about almost everything (apart from the halakhic process). it's r. aryeh kaplan's "handbook of jewish thought" and i think it would be a really interesting addition to your bookshelf, as it contains all the sources for what the traditionalists believe about, for example, tikkunei soferim or the masoretes.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[bob x]

Originally Posted by bananabrain

it's r. aryeh kaplan's "handbook of jewish thought" and i think it would be a really interesting addition to your bookshelf, as it contains all the sources for what the traditionalists believe about, for example, tikkunei soferim or the masoretes.

Maybe I will buy it for myself for Chanukkah ;-)

[bob x]

Originally Posted by Pamela

One of things I recalled was regret that I didn’t live in those times, when magic and miracles took place..for of course, such things were long over.

The medievals had a different kind of faith than any except the most extreme fundamentalists: they thought they were STILL LIVING in a world where those kinds of stories take place as a matter of course. It is hard now to read the medieval stories about the saints without shaking our head and wondering how gullible people were: but recall that nobody had a good grip on how the world works back then, so none of the stories sounded implausible at all.
It is only more recently that it has become necessary to have this kind of bifurcation, where part of your mind believes in the world where you go through your day-to-day activities and another part believes in a magical world of the past where quite different things used to happen.