New Evidence on When Bible Was Written • Hacker News Board

Re: New Evidence on When Bible Was Written

#71

Post by duaneb » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 5:13 AM UTC

baldfat wrote: post #25

brink wrote: post #11

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?

> Prof. Edward Greenstein of Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv. “The process of transmission was much more complicated than scholars used to think.” 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 t…

I think this is the strongest statistical work possible given the dearth of physical evidence.

I do agree that a) the grant money might have been spent better elsewhere and b) the conclusions are anorexic.

Re: New Evidence on When Bible Was Written

#72

Post by meeper16 » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 5:13 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #42

So somebody found some commercial records in Hebrew, and this immediately gets extrapolated into religion. Somebody is obsessing. Nine out of ten surviving Babylonian tablets are financial records.[1] There are surviving financial records from Ur two millennia older than Christianity. [1] http://viking.som.yale.edu/will/finciv/chapter1.htm

No need to extrapolate into religion. Most of what was happening in Israel and Babylon at that time was based on the worship of the one God of Israel vs the worship of the many gods of Babylon. Everybody worshiped one god or another and they went to war based on their worship of one god or another. Similar to today in fact.

Re: New Evidence on When Bible Was Written

#73

Post by c0achmcguirk » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 5:17 AM UTC

jeena wrote: post #62

c0achmcguirk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It follows from your reasoning that it would be unwise to follow a scientist who believes in science, then.

How does one "believe" in science?

By believing in the Inductive Principle and the future will be like the past. How do you prove that? By relying on the Inductive Principle... circularity is unavoidable and this is where faith comes in.

Re: New Evidence on When Bible Was Written

#74

Post by c0achmcguirk » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 5:19 AM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #64

c0achmcguirk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It follows from your reasoning that it would be unwise to follow a scientist who believes in science, then.

Science isn't a faith, and even then to combat bias it's testable knowledge is subject to peer review.

Does the scientific method rely on the Inductive Principle? How would you prove the IP without relying on the IP?

If you believe something that can't be proven, what do you call it?

Re: New Evidence on When Bible Was Written

#75

Post by duaneb » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 5:28 AM UTC

davemel37 wrote: post #60

partiallypro wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the study has very little to do with different vocabs, most people agree that the Torah had multiple authors, JEPD for instance is widely accepted...though perhaps not as it once was. Either way, in the documentary hypothesis or other non-Mosaic origin theories, the books were written separately, from different people and revised over hundreds of years. This study doesn't really refute that. The oral history…

> most people agree that the Torah had multiple authors Source? From what I can tell, most religious people disagree with this point.

I have no firm source as the arguments are scattered over the last three decades. I can summarize the current viewpoints:

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.

Re: New Evidence on When Bible Was Written

#76

Post by yoodenvranx » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 5:34 AM UTC

How is it even possible that a page like the NY Times serves me one of those fucking whatsapp-you-have-7-viruses-and-let's-vibrate-your-phone ads?

Don't they have any quality control? It's time to finally root my phone and install an adblocker.

Re: New Evidence on When Bible Was Written

#77

Post by Mikeb85 » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 5:52 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #54

Title should refer to the Old Testament not the Bible as a whole.

More like 'Torah'. Half of what's referred to as the Old Testament refers to events that happened during and after the Babylonian exile...

Re: New Evidence on When Bible Was Written

#78

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 6:18 AM UTC

gnaritas wrote: post #26

mholt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not joking. You know there are academics who study this for a living, right? http://mi.byu.edu/ - see especially the works of Terryl Givens, John Sorenson, Hugh Nibley, Richard Bushman, Grant Hardy... I never said it was published 600 BC. It was indeed published in 1830, but story within it originates ~600 BC. Very different things.

Mormons who study the book of Mormon don't exactly qualify as good sources, nor are Christians who study the Bible, nor are Muslims who study the Koran as all are extremely biased by their beliefs. Such people look for evidence to justify beliefs rather than looking at evidence to decide what should be believed.

[deleted]

Re: New Evidence on When Bible Was Written

#79

Post by nitrogen » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 6:23 AM UTC

mholt wrote: post #46

nitrogen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This claim seems very strongly to suggest a system of belief that is not shared by all: "...the Book of Mormon, which originates ~600 BC in Jerusalem. In fact, page 1, verse 2 says..."

A story is allowed to state its own setting, fictional or not. Remember not to confuse date of publication with date of events within it.

I think the key difference is in "originates in" vs. "claims to originate in." If you said, "The book claims to originate in 600BC," or, "The story within the book is set in 600BC Jerusalem," there would be less objection.

Re: New Evidence on When Bible Was Written

#80

Post by bduerst » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 6:25 AM UTC

c0achmcguirk wrote: post #74

bduerst wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science isn't a faith, and even then to combat bias it's testable knowledge is subject to peer review.

Does the scientific method rely on the Inductive Principle? How would you prove the IP without relying on the IP? If you believe something that can't be proven, what do you call it?

No, it doesn't. The scientific method seeks to refute existing knowledge by testing falsifiable theories and predictions. Faith is an opinion on a belief that is not falsifiable.