open source theology

I believe any close study of the text shows Moses obviously didn’t write the pentateuch, and I was surprised that Beckford thought this was so surprising or a big problem? My problem was that this somehow makes scripture untrustworthy or less the ‘word of God’ (whatever we mean by that). The pentateuch had a long and complicated history, and they’re are definitely different sources involved, but what kind of sources - oral or written, short stories or a long extended narrative is unknown. See Joseph Blenkinsopp’s The Pentatuech for a good discussion of the issues involved.

I found the program interesting, if a little too much trying to be sensationalist. So each gospel has its own portrait of Jesus, so what? That does not make it any less history as Tom Wright has shown? See also Richard Burridge’s four gospels, one Jesus? I think the use of the word ‘spin’ was highly unhelpful, being a very late 20th century-loaded word. Wright’s comments on the program we’re spot on and it was noticeable that he rarely paused for breath to make it difficult for his words to be edited - which was different to eddie adams and mark goodacre, who obviously had been. Having said that, I felt that Beckford’s conclusion that the bible has a messy history is fairly true and unproblematic (unless you’re a conservative evangelical), there was a battle for orthodoxy going on at every point. I’m not sure I can reach the conclusion that beckford ain’t no friend of the gospel. The most shocking piece of film was the interview with the southern baptist pastor from US - that was scary!

I have more faith in the words of Dr. Robert Walker O’Neal than in the sources mentioned above.

According to Dr. O’Neal: We are told that the Creator dictated the words of those five books to Moses. Each copy of the Torah has since been copied only under teams of rabbis to avoid a character or word from being misplaced from its original position within the first scroll.

The earliest known copy is on display, he says, at the Hebrew museum in Jerusalem. Most people do not know this. The document is secured in an atomic bomb-proof vault in the form of a scroll, wrapped around a cylinder.

The cylinder is brought up occasionally for study but, to preserve its condition, no one is allowed to touch it. When the study is completed, the cylinder then descends back to its resting place underground. If Israel is attacked by nuclear forces, the scroll should survive until the End of Days.

I think you should spend more than 5 minutes writing your comments next time. There are so many problems with your arguments that I wonder if it’s worth responding to.

First, you say that the Bible teaches young people a ‘proper and good’ way to live, then you refer to them as victims being brainwashed. As per dating, there are many different viewpoints in Christianity on the history of “time.” — sorry, the Bible doesn’t say anything about 4000 BC. I personally am an old-earth creationist and do not hold to a literal 6 day creation. Check out some of Hugh Ross’ writings on that. Lastly, I’m not sure why the discovery of Dinosaur fossils would have anything to do with discrediting the Bible.

del dominus

I did not see the presentation, since I assume that it was on Ch 4 in the UK and I live in the USA, but certainly it could not have presented anything I haven’t seen before. At every opportunity, the greater media of the USA attempts to discredit the Biblical record - smiling as they do so.

I’m afraid I have to disagree with your assertions:

It is just many writers’ interpretation of events, rarely written at the time of the occurrence.

It is true that the Biblical record was written over several millenia, and it is true that there were redactions and developments of the text bringing us to the texts we have today, but you cannot safely conjecture that the original writers were not writing at the time of occurrence.

By way of reference, let’s just bring the Book of Genesis into view. Traditionally, it is said that Moses was the author of the Torah. The dominant literary theory is just as Ivan said:

The composite authorship of the Pentateuch demonstrates this perfectly. Yahwist, Priestly, Elohist and Deuteronomist scribes all vying to get their view of true religion across, presenting us with multi-faceted truth about the Supreme Being.

I have great difficulty with the argument. For one thing, there is no consensus on the various editors’ contributions. For another, it seems excessively complex. Some of you will disagree with my position on this.

I instead embrace P.J. Wiseman’s Tablet Theory which is based on Wiseman’s experience in the Middle East as an amateur Assyriologist and the research of his son, Donald J. Wiseman, who is professor emeritus of Assyriology at the University of London. In brief, the Tablet Theory holds that Genesis was edited together from various ancient tablet sources. Some are ancestral records predating Hebrew language, others are more contemporary records.

The presence of the covenant name YHWH and the fact that it is freely interchanged with the older, more generic name ELOHIM in pre-Mosaic literature is evidence that it was edited sometime during the Mosaic Period (my personal term for the period from right before the Exodus until Samuel and the Monarchy).

Wiseman’s theory coincides nicely with the presence of a number of variant words which occur in raw form in Genesis. To illustrate, we can look at Jacob/Israel’s words to his sons in Genesis 49. In speaking to to his sons, Jacob uses the term rendered as “tribe” in most of the English versions of the Bible - shebhet. This word derives from the Egyptian sebAt (seen in English as nome). It is not native to the Indo-European language group that gave rise to Hebrew - an imported word.

Had the later editors been writing this record instead of simply recording it, they would probably have used the much more prevalent word for tribe - matteh - which is more tied to the geographical locations of tribes and is Indo-European in origin.

The portions of Genesis that deal with Mesopotamia (i.e. Abraham, etc) demonstrate a tremendous amount of older words that give hints of their origin. These portions of Genesis derive from records predating those of the Egyptian, later period. These units were compiled into a single narrative but left largely intact, reflecting the cultural influences of their time.

To me, Wiseman’s theory better describes the composite nature of the text of Genesis better than the J/E/P/D theory ever could. There is no reason to assume that there weren’t later editorial reviews a la J/E/P/D but they did not substantially change the ancient records. They may have made some word changes, place name updates, etc, but they did not originate the text or re-write the stories.

Likewise, there is no reason to assume that the authors of any of the other books of the Hebrew Scriptures specifically were removed from the events they record. In fact, the Samuel/Kings narrative is so faithful to original documents that it creates seeming “contradictions” for those who do not understand the ancient method of reign calculation. (For a more indepth explanation of that, you can see Gershon Galil’s Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah). The authors recorded things as they were, while later editors would have tried to make things work. As Galil points out in his introduction, these kinds of things are missing from Samuel/Kings, which is the reason that other well-meaning interpreters misunderstand and overcomplicate the interpretation of the record.

I know many will disagree with this position, and there will be all kinds of “what abouts” that you will throw my way, and I respect your right to disagree, just as I hope you respect my right to hold to my own researched position. I acknowledge my subjective predisposition to believing the Bible is accurate.