Ray Harder wrote:Ray Harder wrote:
A gross oversimplification of this question (but evidence supported statement) would be to say why would the Hebrews write their literature when virtually no one in society could read it? Widespread literacy is a modern phenomenon. Unless you argue that the ancient Israelites were different from all other ancient cultures. There is no evidence of exceptional literacy among the ancient Israelites.
kwrandolph wrote:
I have to object at this point. Whether or not a society was literate had more to do with the value a society put on literacy, and the difficulty in learning the writing system, not the era in which they lived.
The evidence I’ve seen indicates that the Scandinavians were literate, almost totally, from about 2000 years ago. The runes were easy to learn and apply to spoken language.
Even though Jesus was just a carpenter, we see in his visit to his home synagog that he was expected to be able to read. That suggests universal education 2000 years ago in Judea. If it was expected then, when reading was done in a cognate language to what they spoke, why assume that 1500 years earlier that the majority of people were illiterate in their own language?
I am not sure how to dialogue with you productively Mr. Randolph. You reject the idea that ancient societies were basically illiterate because somehow it conflicts with your religious views.
Ray, this particular issue has nothing to do with my religious views.
Whether a society is literate or not has nothing to do with the time period, much to do with societal values and availability of tools, most notably an alphabet easy to apply to the language.
We see this with the Cherokee Nation, while they were still nomads living in teepees, they came to recognize the importance of writing. So after the invention of an alphabet by Sequoyah in 1821, within a few years there was almost 100% literacy among the Cherokee, both men and women. I also read of another example that happened in Africa, but I don’t remember the details.
On the other hand, we have the late history of the Romans in their decadence didn’t value literacy, while the Christians among them did. By about 300 AD Christians were mostly literate, while non-Christians were mostly illiterate.
So the question is, what value did the Hebrews of 1500 BC place on literacy? They weren’t held back by the tools of literacy, as were most of their contemporaries, as their writing was simple and easy to apply to their language. If they placed a high value on literacy at that time, as was common among their descendants, then Moses would have had a ready audience for written documents. There are a few clues that literacy was expected among ancient Hebrews, but nothing definite that I can remember right off hand.
Unfortunately, what you’re trying to do here is to prove a negative, which is almost impossible to do convincingly.
Ray Harder wrote: You are not willing to grant that it is fairly universally agreed upon by all educated people who examine the subject even though you admit that you have never read any of these books and you are not interested in doing so because you know without even reading them that they are wrong because scholars without a religious bias are in fact biased by their secular religion which is evolution.
Oy veh!
Ray Harder wrote: I based my statements on the numerous books and articles I have read on the subject and on my own interpretation of the evidence I have examined. I have read all of the written evidence from ancient Israel that was published prior to about 1985 in the original languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Ammonite, Edomite, Moabite, Phoenician, etc.) I have read all known seals, ostraca, inscriptions, etc. The fact is that there exists almost NO written material from Israel before the Dead Sea scrolls. In fact, a reasonably advanced student can read ALL of the written materials (excluding the Dead Sea scrolls) known from before the NT period from Israel in a few days in their original languages. I know, I did it to prepare for my graduate exams! If the Israelites were so literate, then where is all the evidence?
The evidence we have indicates that it should be difficult to find surviving evidence, as the preferred materials for writing were perishable, i.e. would rot away if not carefully taken care of. Therefore the lack of evidence is not evidence of lack.
We know that a major export from Egypt to the Levant was papyrus. Israel is part of the Levant. Now for what were the people using papyrus if not for writing?
Ray Harder wrote:You suggest that Jesus was literate at age 12 and therefore you suggest that we can generalize that most 1st century Jews could read and furthermore from that story you extend literacy to all Israelis back to long before the time of Moses.
That’s not what I wrote. What I wrote was about a cultural expectation from 2000 years ago as illustrated by a particular event recorded in Jesus’ life, then to ask a rhetorical question, what’s to prevent a similar cultural expectation to have been the case 1500 years earlier? What says that a similar cultural expectation didn’t exist 1500 years earlier?
Ray Harder wrote: That is a lot of speculation and is contrary to the evidence at hand. Let's accept this story at face value for the sake of discussion. Isn't it true that the gospels are stories about the exceptional nature of Jesus? Just because He did it, why do you generalize that most or all Jews of that and the previous two millennia did it? Isn't the whole point of the gospels that Jesus was exceptional? Or did all Jews go around raising the dead, healing the sick, performing miracles, and casting out demons? Isn't the point of the story that Jesus ability to read and interact with scholars was NOT common? Why include this story if everyone was doing it? The bible argues my point that reading was the exception in the first century. Note even Paul bragging that he is writing with his own hand as if this was something exceptional. II Thess. 3:17, Philemon 1:19, Col. 4:18
I have a completely different understanding of these examples.
We have the clear example of Jeremiah, a trained, literate priest, hiring a scribe to do most of his writing apparently because the scribe had better handwriting than what he had. The same could be applied to Paul. In fact, as I noted before, that was a common practice even among literate peoples up until probably less than a century ago. We have the case of King Hezekiah even literate in Aramaic, not his native tongue.
Ray Harder wrote:Ray Harder wrote:
The only thing that can be said fairly definitively is that oral traditions are are almost universal in societies ancient and modern. It can be deduced that Israel was no different.
kwrandolph wrote:
While all societies have oral traditions, some societies are also literate.
How can you admit on the one hand that you have no expertise on the one hand and then make dogmatic statements like this on the other? Name ONE ancient society that was literate and please point to evidence to support your unique theory.
Ancient societies were not literate.
All ancient societies, or just most?
Given that the preferred writing materials were perishable and outside of Egypt where the climate preserved some, none have survived to the present, how can you be dogmatic that
all ancient societies were illiterate?
Even in modern, Western, literate societies, there are still oral traditions among certain areas, but those that are noted and written down means that fewer and fewer of them are strictly oral.
Ray Harder wrote: There were almost no schools,
The lack of formal schools does not mean an illiterate society. It merely means that a literate society would make efforts at home schooling, as increasingly is the case here in the U.S. as the government schools decrease in quality.
Ray Harder wrote: and only some children and a few slaves of the very affluent (aka. the "1%") we're educated and literate.
Where’s your evidence?
Ray Harder wrote: Books and writing materials were outrageously expensive and public libraries were basically non-existent.
Books were outrageously expensive, but most of the expense was in hiring scribes to write them down. Writing materials, while not cheap, were within reach of even common people.
During the Second Temple period, we have synagogs which were the public libraries of their time. We don’t know what existed before the Babylonian Exile.
Ray Harder wrote: Private archives did exist, but consisted mostly of personal records prepared by scribes such as tax records, property deeds, etc. --much like private archives even today.
Ray Harder wrote:
But the Psalms are “songs” and not “literature” you say? Is Homer’s writing literature or songs? What about the Hebrew (and foreign e.g. Balaam) prophets giving “oracles?” What about the passages that secular scholars fairly universally recognize as the oldest traditions in the Hebrew bible that seem to be songs or oracles or poems (indicating a poetic (and therefore oral?) tradition?) (E.g. the “Song of Moses” in Exodus 15, the “Song of Deborah” in Judges 5, the “Blessings” of Jacob and Moses in Genesis 49 and Deuteronomy 33 respectively, the “Oracles of Balaam” in Numbers 23 & 24, the “Poems of Moses” in Deuteronomy 32, Psalm 68, etc.)
kwrandolph wrote:
“Secular scholars” are not that secular, rather they have a religion based on evolution, and it’s based on that religion that they speculate on the ages of those songs. They have no evidence other than their religion that their speculations are correct.
So even though you have never educated yourself to be able to study the evidence adduced by scholars, and you frankly admit that you have never read their arguments, you label them "speculations" and suggest they are influenced by evolution. I spent over 8 years in graduate school and don't recall Charles Darwin or evolution being mentioned even once! Either in class or in the scholarly works we read. Secular scholars differ from you in that they use evidence and scientific methods of reasoning to deduce their conclusions, they do not start out believing they know the answers as revealed by God Himself. Then they accept whatever answers the evidence leads them to.
The book that I read that really opened my eyes to the ideas behind much of the Documentary Hypothesis was the PhD dissertation titled
Zur Datierung der Genesis “P” Stücke by Dr. Samuel Külling. It contains numerous extensive quotes from works as early as 1807 (before Charles Darwin was even born) to numerous writers by 1820 (when Charles Darwin was still a young lad) in French, Dutch and English as well as the book’s German. Analyzing those quotes showed the authors’ presupposition of evolution as the reason they came to their conclusions.
I expect you haven’t read that book. As far as I know, it has never been translated into English.
Ray Harder wrote:The evidence for these passages being older comes from years of detailed study of these texts and then finding reasonable explanations of the evidence that we see. If you make the effort to learn to read Genesis, or Kings, or Ruth without looking at an English text, a grammar, or anything but a "reader's lexicon" then you read these passages, you can plainly see for yourself that they are different in some way. Just like when you read the gospels one after another, you will find that John is "different" from the other three. You will see it for yourself. Don't accept my word for it, learn to read Hebrew and then read it for yourself and see if I am not right.
Most of what I know about Tanakh is from reading it in Hebrew without looking at an English text, nor grammar, and I have yet to crack open a “reader’s lexicon”. I would say that the most difficult portion of Tanakh to read is the first 35 chapters of Isaiah, most of the book of Job is a romp in the park compared to that.
I prefer reading it on an older computer where the font is archaic Hebrew, based on the Gezar calendar. Of course no Masoretic points.
I’ve noticed that there was a literary development over the centuries, from fairly simple for Genesis and the rest of Torah, to a greater complexity primarily that of oblique statements where one needs to “fill in the blanks” in order to understand what is meant, until after the Babylonian Exile, when the writing became very simple as is typified by people writing in a foreign language not their own. This pattern comes up if and only if one accepts the internal dates recorded in the books that have dates or inferred dates as being accurate.
Ray Harder wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:
Meter is a different subject, but I think there was meter in those songs.
Can you provide your scansion of even ONE paragraph of Hebrew poetry?
What I do for meter is to pronounce each written letter as a consonant, followed by a vowel. That becomes really hard in words where we have gotten used to reading certain letters as matres lectionis. I also pronounce all plosive consonants as hard consonants, without softenings as indicated by the Masoretic points. But as for the vowels, I readily admit that what I use are wild guesses, very likely an ancient Hebrew wouldn’t understand it even if I’m correct as to that the alphabet was originally a type of syllabary.
Ray Harder wrote:Ray Harder wrote:
Jeremiah’s message was repeatedly characterized as being given orally. (E.g. Jer. 26:7 etc.) However a reoccurring character in Jeremiah is his personal scribe Baruch (E.g. “Then Jeremiah called Baruch the son of Neriah; and Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the LORD, which He had spoken unto him, upon a roll of a book.” עַל-מְגִלַּת-סֵפֶר Jer. 36:4) This may imply that Jeremiah couldn’t write himself, but depended on a professional scribe. (So why did he feel the need to write at all? And why was this remarkable? Could this imply a newness of the concept of written religious proclamations?) Jeremiah also records a tradition that the prophet Micah prophesied orally (Jer. 26:18). There are repeated statements of written texts like letters which had to be read to the hearers --even kings and princes (Jer. 36:21) (Implying perhaps that even the royal class couldn’t read or write.) This situation reflected in Jeremiah is exactly what we would expect in a primarily oral culture transitioning into a written one --at least at the governmental level. (As it does in most cultures, bureaucrats long before commoners.) Widespread written literacy as a social value is very much a modern phenomenon.
kwrandolph wrote:
That doesn’t take into account the widespread practice in literate societies before the invention of word processors, that people were hired as scribes because of their beautiful handwriting to do the actual writing. This practice lasted even through the typewriter era.
This is just simply not true and absurd on the face of it.
I find this statement absurd.
Ray Harder wrote: Why would a peasant living in abject poverty hire someone just because they had flowery handwriting to fill out their tax records or census forms? Even if you can't/won't read them, look at the Oxyrhynchus papyri, the Elephantine papyri, or the Lachish or Arad ostraca. You don't have to read Greek, Aramaic, or Hebrew to see that the quality of handwriting of ancient scribes is anything but beautiful! Overall, I would proclaim that it sucks! And your assertion that people hiring scribes for their handwriting in literate societies is "widespread" is utter nonsense. I myself lived for many years before the advent of word processors and never ONCE hired a scribe --for anything!
If you won't/can't read books on the subject watch the movie "Central Station." This was made in 1998 and one of the main characters is a former public school teacher who makes her living as a public scribe in a bus station in modern Brazil. This is parallel to how scribes were used in non-literate societies and continues into modern times even in reasonably literate societies. These people are hired to help the poor comply with government regulations and forms and occasionally to compose a personal letter. Exactly what we fine in the ancient world.
Hiring people for their handwriting is a modern luxury among the affluent to address their wedding or bar mitzvah invitations. It was NOT the reason ancient people used scribes.
Boy are you dogmatic, and based on what?
Jeremiah was 1) from a priestly family Jeremiah 1:1, therefore not a peasant living in abject poverty 2) literate Jeremiah 51:60, therefore his hiring a scribe had little to do with his ability to write, and 3) most likely was not Baruch’s only client.
Some scribes were definitely better than others. For example, the writing of the Nahal Heber scrap with part of Psalm 22 on it is far better than that on the Great Isaiah Scroll. One of the scrolls that went on a traveling exhibition had several of the Psalms, with beautiful handwriting that was easy to read.
The practice of hiring scribes in the last form was to hire a typist, a practice that was still practiced when I was young. Except for big companies, most typists were hired on a per job basis, for important documents such as PhD dissertations. The word processor is a real boon to people like me, who think one word, but often see a different word appear on the screen. Back in the old days of typing, I spent so much time with white-out that it really slowed me down. That in spite of being a touch typist.
Ray Harder wrote:kwrandolph wrote:
In Jeremiah 51:60 after Jeremiah was kidnapped to Egypt and Baruch was in captivity in Babylon, Jeremiah himself wrote documents that he sent to Babylon.
Ah, actual evidence, how refreshing! Yes, on the face of it this clearly suggests that Jeremiah was able to actually write the text himself, but I still wonder if this might be taken in context that perhaps when someone is said to have written something that it actually meant "composed" and not actually handwritten by their own hand. I wouldn't push this point and generally believe in taking texts at face value, but I wonder if a case can't be made that the biblical authors used scribes even when it is occasionally suggested that they themselves penned the words. The case for Baruch the scribe actually writing much of Jeremiah has been given. Even the apostle Paul mentions his scribe by name, Tertius (Rom. 6:22) Peter's is also mentioned "Silvanus" (1Peter 5:12). It was not uncommon for scribes to have had draft-writing powers with final approval reserved for the author. Perhaps this accounts for the differences in language and style among some of the epistles that has caused some to question the Pauline authorship of the entire corpus. Like Jeremiah, Paul makes a specific point of mentioning it as exceptional when he actually penned a portion with his own hand as if this was something exceptional. It seems that even among the authors of the bible, the use of a scribe as an amanuensis was probably the norm as it was throughout the ancient world in general.
Jer 1:7 But the LORD said unto me: say not: I am a child; for to whomsoever I shall send thee thou shalt go, and whatsoever I shall command thee thou shalt speak.
Be not afraid of them; for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the LORD.
Then the LORD put forth His hand, and touched my mouth; and the LORD said unto me: Behold, I have put My words in thy mouth;
If Jeremiah's message was written, why didn't the LORD touch his HAND?
If you had read the book of Jeremiah, you’d have noticed that God didn’t order him to write down what he had said until much later. He was to start out speaking the message.
Ray Harder wrote:Ray Harder wrote:
Like the Bible, the epic poems of Homer have subject matter from the mid 2nd millennium BC
That date is ultimately based on cross-referencing with Egyptian dates. But the Egyptian dates are a horrible mess thanks to Manetho.
Ray Harder wrote:Ray Harder wrote: and a written tradition that dates from much later. Homer is almost universally recognized as originating in an oral form. Reducing these texts to writing seems to have widely begun in the 5-6th centuries BC though the extant manuscript tradition is largely from medieval times. Though no scholar to my knowledge argues for any direct connection between the early Homeric and Biblical textual traditions, I think the parallels are striking.
kwrandolph wrote:
How long a period was there between when the events Homer sung about, and Homer? I wouldn’t be surprised if it was no more than one or two generations. One clue is the number of generations between Odin and his ancestor who was a son-in-law to King Priem — they add up to about 800 years, give or take about a century. There are other clues from other sources that point to about the same time.
Yet the speculation concerning a supposed oral tradition for the Torah is much longer. Given the recorded widespread apostasy even among the priests, it’s unlikely that such a complex history as recorded in Torah would have survived more than one or two generations without being written down.
Even after Homer was written down, the oral tradition continued in parallel for over a millennium. There is nothing that would prevent the oral transmission of the Bible even after parts of it started to be written down.
I have no idea what you are talking about when you say "One clue is the number of generations between Odin and his ancestor who was a son-in-law to King Priem — they add up to about 800 years, give or take about a century." Odin is a character from Norse mythology and king Priam is from Homer, other than that, I have no clue what you are talking about or what it has to do with the length of oral traditions.
Odin was the leader of the Asa people who invaded Germanic lands about 75±25 BC who insisted, like the Roman emperors and Egyptian pharaohs, to be worshipped as a god while he was still alive. He was also an ancestor worshipper who kept a written record of his ancestors back to Medai, son of Japhet, who took a ride with his father Noah in a big boat. This is a pagan record, not Bible. Assuming an average of three generations a century, counting back to roughly 800 BC, we find one ancestor, whose name I’ve forgotten, who was a son-in-law to King Priem of Troy. (I looked it up once because I supposedly am a direct descendent of Odin through his youngest son Yingve.)
The present assumption that the Trojan war was four centuries earlier is based on cross-referencing time lines with Egyptian history which was padded by Manetho to make it appear older than it really is.
There are a couple of other indicators putting the true date of the Trojan War at about 800 BC.
Putting a date of about 800 BC for the Trojan War means that there was no long oral tradition between the war and Homer, instead there’s the possibility that Homer heard about it from children or grand-children, if not from a few aged veterans themselves, about the war, though once the song was composed, it may have gone through a period that it was remembered as an oral tradition before being written down.
Ray Harder wrote:kwrandolph wrote:
There’s no reason to assume that Jews in Moses’ time were illiterate as a people, seeing as the alphabetic writing was known long before the Exodus.
Therefore, it seems that it is stronger to say that Moses wrote Torah, than that there was a period of oral tradition that lasted centuries.
If there was widespread literacy in Israel, where is the evidence?
Where is the evidence that there wasn’t widespread literacy in Israel at that time?
Ray Harder wrote: It is simply not true that "the alphabetic writing was known long before the Exodus."
Have you been keeping up even with the news reports of archaeological findings over the last couple of decades?
Ray Harder wrote: There is no evidence that even the concept of an alphabet existed in any culture before about 2,200 BC (when alphabets seem to have been invented) let alone the widespread use of one.
The Exodus happened about 1450 BC.
Ray Harder wrote: And it didn't start being used in societies for many centuries after that--if we grant that Ugaritic used a true alphabet, the Exodus would have been roughly contemporary with that.
The Ugaritic dates were fixes by cross-referencing to Raamsis II and his son who apparently were its contemporaries. But when did they live? 1200 – 1100 BC, 1000 – 900 BC, 600 – 500 BC (rough rounded dates), all of which I’ve heard from different sources? All of them too late for the Exodus. From the evidence I’ve seen so far, the youngest dates seem the most likely.
Ray Harder wrote: It wasn't until David's time that governments and their bureaucracies started using alphabets widely. This led to widespread government sponsored scribal education, more efficient governments, and thus the rise of smaller kingdoms to rival the great governments of Egypt and Assyria. The alphabet made it possible for smaller groups to form a government and during the first millennium BC we see many nations from Greece to Israel rise on the international scene. This didn't happen before that because there was no alphabet being used for the creation of national epics or bureaucracies. Governments and their rules always drive culture and art --which develop secondarily.
Where is your evidence for this supposed development of writing?
Ray Harder wrote:By the time of the NT, the role of the scribe in the actual composition of letters (in this case Paul's) "could vary greatly, either from simply taking down dictation to rewriting the initial draft and improving its style and format. The use of a scribe and his degree of involvement in the composition process, in fact, may help to explain the quality of Greek in the letters of Peter and the differences of style and diction between the different letters of Paul. Some New Testament scribes are identified by name (Tertius in Romans 16:22 and Silvanus in 1 Peter 5:12), where they seem to be fellow Christians who were competent in letter writing; scribes can be presumed in the other letters, although there is not always much evidence pointing to their identity—such as whether they were professionals hired for a single job—or to what degree they were involved in wording of the final draft. In every case, the scribe seems to have read the final draft to the sender, who would approve it and often “sign” it by setting down his own name or mark, and sometimes, in the case of a literate sender, by writing a brief summary of the letter in his own hand or making some other comment (see Galatians 6:11; 1 Corinthians 16:21; 2 Thessalonians 3:17; and Philemon 1:19)."
http://hccl.byu.edu/classes/Rel212eh/Un ... iquity.pdf
Literacy in the ancient world was exceptional and all the epigraphic evidence proves this and a careful reading of the old and new testaments supports this view.
How can the surviving epigraphic evidence prove anything, when it omits what was probably the most common writing, writing that was produced on perishable materials that haven’t survived?
Karl W. Randolph.