So the large takeaway is that people in further back ancient Israel were more literate than originally thought, opening up the prospect that the Bible could easily have been written earlier than what some scholars speculated. Correct?
Theology Student Here - MY TAKE This is pretty Bogus Study in terms of these are Statisticians' work based on one outpost on one piece of pottery. Someone had to publish something to make use of the research money. This is also out of their domain. Seems like trying to try a new approach and this is all we get?
It is MUCH more complicated and the Oral Tradition of ANE (Ancient Near East) is pretty amazing. This also is not taking up the fact that the majority of the text have very different vocabs, writing styles and different mediums for delivering ideas (Think Epics like Noah and personal stuff like Job and politics like the kings) All very different writings.
I would say that Theology and Archeologist and other disciplines are more and more agreeing that the scriptures have more evidence for a much later date then 300 - 50 year ago "liberal" scholarship believed. Heck I remember old Priest saying the Gospels were written in 250 AD and nothing was written in the first century (To bad we have a bunch of manuscripts from the first century now) Heck Pontius Pilot (The Roman leader who sent Jesus to the cross was believe to be made up until 25 years ago when they found his name inscribed in an unearthed building. This is interesting times.
TL:DR Bad statistical work and very little meat. Nothing to see here.
A lot of scholars have the Torah being penned closer to the 600BC time frame.
Source? From what I can tell, most religious people disagree with this point.
Pro-JEPD camps point towards style analysis, dividing the pentateuch into four distinct dictions, each with their own (hypothesized) time frames.
Anti-JEPD camps tend to a) pick apart style arguments (with mixed success) and b) argue for a cohesion of content.
I tend to give the Pro-JEPD camps slightly more credit for their empirical approach; this is entirely my point of view.
In any case, "most religious people" will argue for Moses himself writing the Torah in its entirety. AFAIK there is absolutely zero evidence for a historical Moses. In fact, the strongest evidence is put forth by the Anti-JEPD camps themselves.
Contrast this to the Quran, which has cohesion of support around authorship by Muhammad (or in a religious context, transcription of the word of God via Muhammad) in its entirety; argument around authorship tend to revolve around modifications during oral propagation between Muhammad's lifetime and the earliest fragments we have (notably the Sana'a manuscript and the slightly later Uthman standardized version). There is simply not as much evidence for multiple authorship of the core text here, though not as much textual analysis has been performed here as the time period for revision is tiny compared to the bible and the torah.
Lack of evidence is not evidence of anything. The scientific method is good for eliminating the likelihood of a hypothesis being correct based on evidence...not the lack of evidence.
> "most religious people" will argue for Moses himself writing the Torah in its entirety
It always amazes me how many people have opinions about the Torah without studying the Talmud in it's entirety.
Why not defer to those Rabbis who have spent their lives studying the talmud instead of scientists who choose to ignore a massive body of research and discourse that is highly relevant.
I agree completely! But the claim that Moses wrote the Torah doesn't hold any water either, as you just argued, due to ZERO contemporary evidence. The same problem applies to e.g. the figure Lykourgos forming the pugnacious culture of Sparta: he's called out a few places, including Plutarch via Aristotle, but no contemporary evidence of him exists. Most likely he (Lykourgos) is a myth.
> It always amazes me how many people have opinions about the Torah without studying the Talmud in it's entirety.
What does the Talmud have to do with the Pentateuch authorship? I was not commenting on the authorship beyond Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus. The Talmud also wouldn't present any contemporary evidence as it dates to several centuries after the earliest Pentateuch fragments and ~1.5k years after Moses would have walked around.
I'm very open to arguments that the Talmud IS relevant (it'd be pretty exciting to me, I'm a big fan), but I don't see it off hand. The Rabbis had every reason to present a coherent narrative regardless of its accuracy, and they were certainly not in a position to verify it themselves. If they did, I'd love to see how.
As someone who spent 10 years studying and only covered about 10% of the talmud, I can assure it that there is deep and complicated discourse on everything you can think of including the authorship of the Torah. There is nothing taken for granted. No one is given a free pass to "maintain a consistent narrative". There is constant dispute about every single letter written in the Torah (in fact, dispute on grammar, sentence structure, etc.. to the point that there are rules compiled for how to interpret every single word choice, letter, phrase, etc... in the Torah.)
It is highly relevant and these discussions are beyond my capabilities to address fully other than to know to defer to the several dozen people alive today that are truly deep experts, or the several thousand others who at least completed the entirety of the talmud.
It's simply ignorance to have an opinion on the Torahs authorship without being a talmud expert. (Too many people dismiss it because they have no idea whats actually in it!)
I see no way anything written in the talmud would have any effect.
Interested, just not knowledgable to address them fully.
>I see no way anything...
I presume this is because you dont actually know whats contained in the talmud. While modern science tools may not have existed, smart scientisits, mathmeticians, liguists, historians, etc... did and in fact, they discuss at length the authorship of the torah.
You wrote previously that the rabbis wanted a cohesive narrative. This is patently false. There is even a concept within torah study called "eilu ve'eilu" which means we can disagree, and still both be right. My point being that there is nothing cohesive or narratove based in the talmud other than a rigorous search for Absolute Truth.
Pretty much every word mentioned by someone in the talmud is followed by an aggressive quest to disprove it...and many things are even left unanswered...
Without taking a peek into the talmud, it is not intellectually honest to dismiss it...especially invoking modern science without even seeing if its consistent with that science or not.
A), i have read some of the talmud; i do not believe i have the collected texts in their entirety.
B), i meant to say it is in the interest of the rabbis to propagate the cohesive narrative of Moses authoring the pentateuch, NOT that the talmud itself has a cohesive narrative.
Perhaps there was some confusion about the word "torah"--I was refering to the pentateuch, ie the original five written texts, not the broader meaning including the rabbinical texts. To my knowledge, authorship of the latter is entirely a different topic of which I do NOT have much knowledge or interest--not because it is not interesting, but because it is orders of magnitude more complex and (personally) I just enjoy reading it and the authorship does not play into my enjoyment the way the authorship of the pentateuch lends it meaning. Can you understand how it would be different written by the patriarch of an entire ethnicity vs some unknown goat herders? The text means entirely different things under these interpretations, so the argument over authorship is worth the pursuit. Personally, i dont think it means any less in either interpretation; i think the pentateuch is invaluable regardless of your beliefs, ethnicity, or stance on JEPD. Genesis itself just might be the greatest text ever written in my humble opinion--I see new things every time I read it, and it is the closest we will ever get to understanding the the, erm, human experience of civilization itself.
Sorry for the confusion!
> the cohesive narrative of Moses authoring the pentateuch There is a disagreement in the Talmud about this point.
When you say you read talmud, have you ever studied it in a Yeshiva, while learning the commentary, or just read an english translation of part of it?
I think the point that seems to be lost in this discussion is the following. Picture a conversation on reddit like this... redditor1: my opinion is the truth. redditor2: source? redditor1: here is the link redditor2: but three years ago you said this competing theory. redditor3: those opinions are consistent because of differing circumstances... redditor4: what this other thing he said that is the same circumstances as the old post but supports the new one. redditor3: I guess i was wrong. I am stumped. redditor4: it makes sense because if you look at the sentence structure, they are really the same thing said in two different ways.
Now imagine a conversation like that trying to determine the veracity of every single word in the Torah, every single law and theory mentioned in the talmud and mishna, etc...
Studying the talmud is not some text some guy wrote down. It is an intense and deep analysis that considers math, physics, science,logic, language analysis, etc... all with the goal of finding the truth about the torah and mishna...not to support a theory about G-d giving over the Torah to Moses who than transcribed most of it.
What I am trying to say is that while I don't know the relevant discussions around the pentateuch authorship other than the link I shared earlier from Ohr.com ... These scholars who analyzed the text to determine if there were multiple authors, etc... really need to look at the explanations in the talmud for why one sentence is written one way and another is written another way...
It seems intellectually dishonest to me to analyze these things without consulting the talmudic experts who have studying the relevant sections...As there might be discussion and context that is very relevant.
I tend to prefer arguments that stand on their own, and i highly doubt that the persuasive aspects of the talmud's authorship discourse are disjoint with the academic discourse. It would be shocking to me to find parallel communities discussing the same topic unaware of the other's existence. Regardless, at this point i am willing to admit I am out of my depth and cannot devote the time to pursuing the topic without enrolling in yeshiva myself; much of my interest focuses on its historical context and its relation to abrahamic religions, not just rabbinical judaism. I will have to settle for comiserating with you: it is indeed a shame that I have not consulted the talmudic experts. Perhaps soon. :)
I cant cite specific sources off hand but style analysis and diction is analzyed at length in the talmud and every word choice and sentence structure is examined.
I encourage you to reach out to a talmudic expert...perhapd at ohr sameach or aish hatorah and ask for their take on these positions. They can cite specific talmudic sources better than I can.
Well my reading in Seminary was anywhere from 2,00-14,000 pages per class. There is NO WAY I could read the complete Talmud (What length is it? At LEAST 5,000 pages and it is difficult to get the order right with the writing)
Time - Well I would place it from what 200 BCE to 500 CE and that is way out of from the writing of the Torah.
Big Error - We treat writing from ANE with the eyes and genres of 21th century people. We try to fit them into our mold. There would be no concern what so ever about the authorship being true or not just like how Pseudepigrapha works were also very much accepted with the full knowledge that another author wrote that work. Clearly Enoch didn't write the Book of Enoch but that didn't keep people from reading it and accepting it. Heck The Book of Enoch is quoted in Jude.
Deut 34:5 And Moses the servant of the LORD died there in Moab, as the LORD had said.
I think it is pretty clear someone also had their hand in writing that line and the rest that followed :) Most hyper-religious stances are relatively new. Heck their is very little literal 7 day creation support through most of the history of Jewish and Christian theology.
It is a talmudic discussion about this question.
The talmud literally covers every question people have, yet they dismiss the opinions of those who spend their lives studying the Talmud... and instead rely on lack of evidence...without actually studying the discourse around these issues.
On the JEPD theory, though, Umberto Cassuto's scholarship presented significant challenges to the JEDP theory as early as the first half of the 20th century. Continued scholarship suggests Wellhausen's theory was based on incomplete assumptions on the evolution of language common to his time (the late 19th century). The 20th century produced vast amounts of philological research unavailable in Wellhausen's time (late 19th century).
More recently, John Sailhamer has done some very interesting research into the Torah (Pentateuch). His research suggests the seeming fragmented inclusions are not the result of numerous authors, but a single author using existing sources to weave a single narrative, similar to the Gospel of Luke. His incorporation of both Higher Criticism, Canonical Criticism, and liteary research manage to harmonize compelling elements from the various competing theories. Would highly recommend his recent(ish) book, "the Meaning of the Pentateuch".
I do agree that a) the grant money might have been spent better elsewhere and b) the conclusions are anorexic.
Well, 16 pieces. Although how it ties into Biblical dating I don't really follow.
It's more likely that their religious practices were limited to the priesthood, and it wasn't until the exile that they were written and compiled into a standardized format.
In fact, this theory isn't foreign to Jewish tradition, nor to how other religions have operated throughout the years.