NOVA (TV)
Documentary
Hypothesis
The Bible’s Buried Secrets is yet another
presentation of that warn out old hypothesis first presented by Julius
Wellhausen[1] (1844-1918) so long ago.[2] Practically every major Old Testament
theologian who has ever written has either presented a different variation of
the Documentary Hypothesis or a refutation of it. I have the books of roughly a half dozen such
experts in my library. Notably, these
critics do not agree with each other, which might give us an indication that
the only thing widely accepted is the theory’s name. Some of these hypotheses view the Torah as
segmented like an orange, while others view the Torah as shelled like an onion:
this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Suffice it to say that there is no Documentary Hypothesis; rather, there
are several Documentary Hypotheses.
The Bible’s Buried Secrets states that the Documentary
Hypothesis is widely accepted. This is
far from true. The Documentary
Hypotheses have been thoroughly defeated many times, but they seem to have a
knack for rising from the dead. So no
matter how frequently or how thoroughly such theories have been discredited and
refuted, they seem to maintain their adherents.[3] Investigation of such adherents reveals that
many of them reject belief in the existence of the spiritual realm out of hand,
as their first presupposition. Having
said this, the various Documentary Hypotheses have no special evidence;
none. All the internal evidence is
contained in the Old Testament with its Deuterocanon. So you can decide for yourself to either
accept or reject these sorts of theories.
The external archaeological evidence is being used in an attempt to
reconstruct, and refute the biblical evidence.
However, the major archaeological evidence in play was presented in the
film; so, you are free to evaluate that for yourselves as well.[4]
Is there any justification for any such hypothesis or
method? Difficult passages do exist in
the Bible. This does not justify the
underlying method of The Bible’s Buried Secrets that only those
statements verified, scientifically, by other artifacts can possibly be historically
true: so, for example, the dating of Moses from birth at 1526 to death at 1406,[5] based on the best analysis
of dates in Scripture, cannot possibly be true, or so the assumption goes.
Suppression
of Evidence
After the fundamental presupposition of unbelief is exposed,
perhaps the next false claim is that the Old Testament cannot be known to have
been written before roughly 1000: the justification for this is the discovery of
a Hebrew alphabet dated to 950 BC.[6] A brief review of a fraction of the history
of writing reveals milestones: Cuneiform, 3400 BC; Egyptian, 3250 BC; Elamite,
3200 BC; Semitic, 1800 BC.[7] We conclude that the inferences of The
Bible’s Buried Secrets were formed only by ignoring the vast weight of
other evidence: evidence that has been available in western civilization for
many years. There is simply no evidence
that Moses could not have written most of Torah between 1446 and 1406 BC.
Suppression
of Scholarly Opinion
It is no mystery that we do not possess what Moses wrote, or
even the script in which he wrote: or if we do possess it, we don’t know how to
identify it. Moses may well have written
in Egyptian hieroglyphs with which
Moses was certainly educated.
Proto-Sinaitic[8] or Semitic abjads[9] (1800) are another
possibility, Moses had equal reason to know these. Alternatively, Moses could have written in Akkadian
cuneiform, the regional diplomatic language of the period.[10] We do not know what script Moses used; the
documents were destroyed in 586 BC or previously. What this shows is that The
Bible’s Buried Secrets is willing to avoid the opinions of related
scholarship.[11] What the 925 AD evidence establishes beyond
doubt is that the Semitic abjads are
highly developed by 925 AD, and that they were in continual use between 1800
and 925 BC, and beyond.
Supposedly, the
925 BC evidence provides a firm date for the existence of J, possibly from
around 950 BC. Perhaps as a result of
Shishak’s invasion (926-917 BC), E composes a separate document, dating from
around 850 BC, which may or may not have been combined with J. Possibly the destruction of the Northern
Kingdom in 722 BC, or even the sack of Jerusalem in 586 BC, precipitates D to
write around 600, D consists primarily of the book of Deuteronomy, as far as
Torah is concerned. Finally, while at
Babylon or after the return from Babylon, beginning around 500 or before or
later, P edits and assembles the whole thing into approximately what we know as
a printed Hebrew Bible today. During the
editing process, P adds a great deal of his own material to Torah. The Documentary Hypotheses are not usually
concerned with anything outside of Torah.[12]
What
is J?
The fundamental
assumption of J is that some ancient people or other, prior to and independent
from Moses at the burning bush, knew God by His name, JHVH, and not merely by
His title, Elohim. J does not exclude
the use of the generic title E; it merely supposes ancient knowledge of E by
His name J. We would immediately
conclude that the bulk of the content of J is the book of Genesis. However, as soon as we examine the evidence
we see that the idea of J is far more complicated than just Genesis. The proponents of this theory see J as a
complex interwoven thread, which must be disentangled from the modern
manuscripts. In this arrangement, it is
impossible for Moses to have written J at all.
Moses may not even be an historical person, and all the dates in Torah
are falsified insertions, because J does not emerge until after 1000,[13] whereas the internal “falsified”
dates indicate ca 1446, or even earlier, as a date of origin. If these are falsifications, some of them are
repeated in the New Testament.[14]
Over against this
complicated idea, tradition suggests that Moses actually met with a person
named JHVH, at a place dubbed the burning bush, and first entered into a
conversation that would continue for eight hundred sixty years and more, as the
conversation extended into the lifetimes of Moses’ successors. In this conversation, Moses either learned of
his people’s history for the first time, or had it refreshed to him. In either case, the idolatries of Egypt had
dimmed the remembrance of the family history, and in some cases may have
deleted it entirely. In either case,
whether Moses learned it, or relearned it,[15] he wrote it down in what
would eventually be the historical and theological prologue to Exodus and the
rest of Torah. During this writing of
Genesis, Moses either discovered that Adam, Noah, Abraham, and all his predecessors
had known God as JHVH, but his people had lost the family tradition in Egypt;
or Moses, desiring to make Genesis more understandable to his contemporaries,
had applied the name JHVH to Genesis at appropriate places to make Genesis
clearly understandable. The purpose of
writing Genesis is to provide a historical and theological prologue to Exodus,
Leviticus, and Numbers, without which these three books are not completely
understandable.
There is a principle
of logic known as Occam’s Razor. The
simplest solution is usually the correct one.
So which is simpler? To take the
record as it stands? Or to unravel
pieces of it based on a preconceived scheme, and then impose an arbitrary
pseudo-scientific dating system on it?
What
is E?
The fundamental
assumption of E involves the existence of a people who are barbaric,[16] and only know God as
E. They have no inherent intimacy with J
and do not even know His name. Only
after detailed instruction do they discover the name J, and enter into the
precedent discussion with ancestors that have either been forgotten or have
been fabricated for the purpose of inventing a plausible background story.
Our ordinary
conclusion would be that that the bulk of the content of E is Exodus,
Leviticus, and Numbers. Yet, once again,
we learn that this is not the case: closer examination of all these theories
discloses a vast complexity of interweaving.[17] Since E is commonly supposed to have emerged
only after the death of Solomon, one has difficulty understanding how J could
have possibly filled Solomon’s Temple with the smoke of His Shəkinah
Glory, and been called J by a people who were ignorant of His name J, and would
remain ignorant of His name J for another seventy-five years or so after
Shishak’s invasion in 925.[18]
Furthermore, no
plausible reason is provided for this people to discover the name J from their
ignorance concerning E until around 850.[19] Why should a document, for which there is no
other evidence, suddenly emerge in contradiction to the evidence? Are we to believe that the person we know as
Moses only emerges as a recovery from Shishak’s invasion, that Moses escapes
from Shishak’s invented captivity in Egypt with, at most, a few hundred people,
who accidentally stumble on the name J as they wander blindly through Midian,[20] and finally arrive at
Judea to join a divided kingdom, and witness the destruction of its northern
half in 722.
Once again,
Occam’s Razor urges us to embrace the simpler explanation, the traditional
explanation, the one written in the Bible, as plainly read.[21]
What
is D?
D then emerges
sometime after 722[22] as the book of
Deuteronomy, with a few additions, deletions, and corrections. D is prompted by some great disaster, but
certainly not by the hardship of wandering in the desert for the 40 years prior
to 1406. This makes D the covenant
renewal document of the broken remnant of David’s kingdom;[23] not the corrupted
multitude of Exodus, for no such Exodus can possibly have taken place, not in
722. In the process of such reanalysis
the mass of the population has been reduced from around 2.5 million, to a few thousands;
from a people who had witnessed JHVH crush an evil empire and lead them
miraculously for forty years, to Canaanite peasants who have finally achieved a
measure of freedom. The two widely
differing versions are not compatible, are they?
What really did
happen in 722 that the archaeology reveals?
The reigning Israelites had so grievously sinned against JHVH in 722
that He finally removed His patient tolerant protection from them. He moved the Assyrians to destroy them, and
scatter their population throughout the Assyrian empire. With their overlords removed, the common
people, mixed with foreigners that the Assyrians had imported, were left to
divide the land of the northern kingdom as they saw fit. Those who now occupied the land were a mixed
race of Canaanites and other ethnicities; except in rare cases, they were not
Israelites. Some Israelites escaped to
find sanctuary in the surviving southern kingdom. The remaining mixture survived to become the
Samaritans.
What
is P?
Ostensibly, P is
the document which the returning Jews assembled either in Babylon before 516 or
back in Jerusalem after 516:[24] the document which we, in
substance, know as the Hebrew Bible.
Ostensibly, this document is the final assembly and edition of JED and P:
a final assembly in which P adds a considerable amount of his own material.[25]
In this final
assembly, the existence of the other 34 Old Testament books and all of the
Deuterocanon remain without explanation.
At the very
least, we would expect a corresponding treatment of Psalms: since the Psalter
appears to be an explication of the theological aspects of Torah drawn from the
life experiences of Moses, David, Asaph, the Sons of Korah, and others.
Ostensibly, the
distinction between the elements JED and P can be known from differences in
grammar, handwriting style, lexicography, syntax, and the like that are
observable in ancient documents. So we
must ask. Which observable differences
in grammar, handwriting style, lexicography, syntax, and the like are these, since
no ancient documents from the period 1000 to 516 have survived? Are we to draw these conclusions from
variations in the Masoretic Text, which is the scholarly work of a few Jews
from 600 to 1300 AD? How can that possibly
be relevant to events of one to two millennia earlier? Are we to draw these conclusions from
variations in the Greek Text translation which is completed no later than 200
to 140? Are we to draw these conclusions
from variations in the Dead Sea scrolls, which were only recently
discovered? Is it not apparent that no
such observations in grammar, handwriting style, lexicography, syntax, and the
like can possibly exist? The documents
from which P is assembled are not originals, but copies that have passed
through centuries of hand written reproduction, so of course variations
existed, but it is impossible that such variations can be discovered from any
presently extant document.
Conclusion
By now it should
be apparent that all of the Documentary Hypotheses in any of their variations
are all fabrications: all of them are a lie.
The only foundational evidence that can be produced is a handful of
archaeological artifacts, themselves subject to a great deal of subjective
speculation, and manipulation. We can
watch this manipulation and speculation of data as The Bible’s
Buried Secrets dodge in and out of the facts they represent.
If such theories
of construction can stand, we would be forced to conclude that the
contradictions with what Torah itself reports are too numerous and too
significant. Torah is necessarily
mythology according to these hypothetical approaches. We, on the other hand, conclude that such
theories of construction cannot stand; therefore all Documentary Hypotheses are
mythologies. If any of the Documentary
Hypotheses could stand, serious doubt is cast upon the historic existence of
Yahweh, the Shəkinah, Moses, Israel as an ethnic people, Judaism as
a religious development, and even Jesus as the Son of God. There would be no realistic or historical
base for Judaism, Christianity, or Islam whatsoever.
If any of the
Documentary Hypotheses could possibly be correct, then Jesus would be a false
prophet: a charlatan, fake, fraud, imposter, liar, quack, sham. But Jesus is the True Prophet, Who seals His
veracity, not only by raising from the dead, but also by His enthronement before
the Day of Pentecost in 33 AD, which is sealed by the coming of the Holy
Ghost. Since Jesus is such a King,
Priest, and Prophet, he affirms for us that the Old Testament is true as given
and received in Greek; therefore all of the various Documentary Hypotheses are
exposed as fraudulent: doomed to failure because of a lack of evidence.
[4]
Actually, there are indications that the archaeological evidence was
cherry-picked to support one particular bias, conclusion, preconception, or
prejudice. We are about to expose indications
of such cherry-picking in our investigation into the history of writing, as
well as in the refusal to credit other experts in parallel fields.
[5] This
is the conclusion drawn from the MT. The
Septuagint text differs by 40 years which would place the birth of Moses at
1486 and his death at 1366. In either
case, we are a far cry from nothing at all prior to 1000.
[6]
Note that the discovery of a single stone with an abjad inscription is
sufficient to drive the historic credibility of the Bible back from 517 toward
950 or even beyond to 1000; and even force, at least the possibility that the
David-Solomon Empire might be an historic reality.
[9] Alphabets
without vowels: As writing develops from
speech, consonants are the dominant sounds heard and recorded first. Actually the Semitic abjads already contain
vowel-letters (א - ה - ו - י), but the
idea of vowels is not fully developed.
With the emergence of the predecessors of Greek, the idea of vowels will
be completely developed. Phonics, as a
science, will continue to develop symbols to distinguish sounds, but these
phonic symbols are rarely found in ordinary writing. Alphabetic writing symbols have not developed
much beyond Greek and Latin concepts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjad
[11] See
note 3.
[12] Please
note that the graph, “Distribution
of materials…” paints a bizarre picture.
[13] J
is supposed to emerge at 950, but David is dead at 970, which necessarily makes
J the creation of Solomon’s court.
[14] Acts
7:6; 13:20; Galatians 3:17
[15] In
other words, Genesis is sourced in oral tradition, or is taught by Yahweh at
the burning bush, or some combination of both.
If Genesis is sourced in scraps of documents, there is no evidence that
such scraps of documents ever existed among the Israelites.
[16] It
is the E assumption that eventually forces the false conclusion that the
Israelites are really Canaanites who discover the path to monotheism all by
themselves. Yahweh is not the Self-revelation
of God, Who miraculously stoops to speak to His children at their level. Yahweh is the creation of a self-deified
people, who seek to present themselves as messianic to the world. This is god created in the image of Man,
rather than man created in the image of God.
The emphasis on monotheism does not remove the blasphemy expressed by
this view. Neither Israel nor Judah
invented God. The Israelites are not
Canaanites, which false claim Genesis anticipates: so E sources must be driven
backward into Genesis to warrant all of E’s false assumptions.
[17] Please,
review the graphic “Distribution of
materials…” one more time.
[18] There
is no reason to suppose that David and Solomon knew J, even though J may have
already existed, according to this theory.
If David and Solomon had known J, then there is no reason for the rediscovery,
reintroduction, or reinvention of Yahweh in E: for Yahweh was already
known. The hypotheses all begin to
unravel under the weight of their numerous internal self-contradictions, and
the absence of any evidence for source documents of any kind.
[19] This
places the theoretically supposed Shasu migration to around 850, well past the
introduction of the Iron Age in the Holy Land.
However, the Egyptian records date to the fourteenth and thirteenth
centuries.
[20]
It is this “accidental” discovery of J by E that provides the supposed necessary
existence of J from 950, and its late discovery by E in 850. Now the dividing line cannot be the
simplicity of the division between Genesis and Exodus. It must be interwoven around the
presupposition of indigenous Canaanites called Israelites, who will now be
joined by E Canaanite nomads who have stumbled upon the name J. The Canaanite/Israelites adopt the name J and
insert it back into the mythology of the living smoke that inhabits Solomon’s
temple.
[21]
BTW, how is it that J and E came to be woven together so seamlessly, without
enormous conflicts in dating and other historical errors?
[22] As
late as 600 according to some: since Josiah (641-609) is already dead at this
point, he is supposed to have read a book that is not yet written.
[23] According
to others, presumably at Josiah’s discovery and reading of the Law. Yet, why would Josiah discover and read a
document that has just now been written?
Are we to believe that a handful of temple scribes were wise enough and
fast enough to miraculously invent a document out of thin air? … A document that would perfectly fit Josiah’s
political and spiritual needs at that very moment? Or, are we to believe that they concocted
such a document in the eighty years period since 722? There is opposing evidence to such a scheme from
the numerous idols, graven images found even adjacent to the Temple that such
scribes were not at all interested in reform, but were in fact involved in the
apostasy: why would they even wish to write a document favoring reform. Only a handful of prophets favored reform:
Isaiah, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and
Zephaniah; these stood pretty much alone.
[24] 500
according to Wellhausen, which is 16
years after the return. It is
significant that Wellhausen saw this material as necessarily post-return. The Bible’s Buried Secrets has invented an entirely new idea
of a pre-return Torah.
[25] According
to Friedman, approximately 50% of Torah.
[26] If
you have been blessed or helped by any of these meditations, please repost,
share, or use any of them as you wish.
No rights are reserved. They are
designed and intended for your free participation. They were freely received, and are freely
given. No other permission is required
for their use.
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