Well, I welcome correction and explanation if you would be kind enough to give it, although I naturally reserve the right to respond to your comments.StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 7:35 am What?
"But I, and Goranson, were not talking about literature or religion -or even history, for that matter. Rather, we were talking about culture." Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:44 pm--according to ABuddhist
fwiw, I do not endorse that characterization about what "we" were addressing.
I could elaborate, but probably to little avail.
But for what it is worth, my understanding of our discussion within this thread was that we were discussing whether Gmirkin's theory should be challenged for trivializing Hebrew culture.
For all readers' benefits, I present our exchange here:
From what I quoted (which is the entirety of my exchange with you), it is clear that our conversation was not about religion or history but about culture - specifically whether Gmirkin's model of the Pentateuch's orgins, if accepted as true, would trivialize Hebrew culture and should be challenged for that reason (as you, in my understanding, were asserting). In response, I pointed out that a culture's product's greater recentness and lack of originality does not make the culture or its products trivial /inferior.ABuddhist wrote: ↑Sun Dec 18, 2022 9:33 amWith all due respect, your assertion that Gmirkin's model can be challenged for trivializing Hebrew culture is defective for 3 reasons.StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Sun Dec 18, 2022 7:42 am Third, REG wrote that "...the Hebrew Pentateuch was composed in its entirety about 273-272 BCE by Jewish scholars at Alexandria..." Such can be challenged--if allowed--both for lack of evidence and for trivializing Hebrew culture.
1. It assumes, without providing reasoning, that a more recent and derivative Pentateuch trivializes Hebrew culture. But the value of a culture or its products is not based upon newness and orginality - otherwise, for example, Shakespeare and English culture would be always regarded as inferior to, for example, Euripides and Greek culture.
2. The same logic which you use to condemn Gmirkin's model of the Pentateuch for trivializing Hebrew culture can also be applied to all other models in which the Pentateuch, far from being written in remotest history by Moses, was written more recently by people who were falsely attributing to Moses and YHWH words from other cultures/authors. But that would suggest that mainstream biblical scholarship is trivializing Hebrew culture.
3. Such a challenge commits the fallacy of appealing to the consequences. But for the same reason that serious scholars do not challenge evolution because, for example, it reduces humans to mere animals, I think that Gmirkin's theory should not be challenged because it allegedly is trivializing Hebrew culture but for the same reasons why reputable scholars challenge ideas - because evidence does not support the idea rather than because the idea, if accepted, might lead people to accept unfortunate and incorrect conclusions.
I fail to understand how this was not, as I said, a discussion about culture rather than about religion or history.
I suppose that StephenGoranson may assert that the fact that this discussion arose in the context of a controversy about dating a religious text means that our conversation was fundamentally about history and religion, but to this, I say that it is possible to analyze and make meaningful contributions to topics from many fields of knowledges' perspectives when topics entrench upon many fields of knowledges' perspectives. For example, whewn studying Shakespeare's plays, they can be appreciated and discussed from the historian's perspective, the linguist's perspective, the dramatist's perspective, and even the poet's perspective. Similarly, the Pentateuch's origins can be discussed from the perspective of religion, history, and culture. I was discussing the Pentateuch's origins from the perspective of culture - specifically, cultural significance and value.
I note that StephenGoranson has not addressed my broader point in the discussion between us - which he may be able to convince me was not about culture (and if so I welcome his correction) - namely whether challenging Gmirkin's proposal about the Pentateuch's origins on the basis that it trivializes Hebrew culture is an appropriate basis for challenging the model, or whether such a challenge is only an appeal to the consequences which should be discarded in favour of challenging Gmirkin with actual evidence.
I write these words as a Buddhist who has been condemned for my faith because Buddhism's rejection of the existence of souls (or a single soul) supposedly means that we can do whatever evil things we want. But that appeal to the consequences, even if accepted as true (which it is not, according to Buddhism), does not address the actual evidence about whether souls (or a soul) exist. Similarly, even if one accept that Gmirkin's model of the Pentateuch's origins trivializes Hebrew culture (which it does not, as I and Neil Godfrey have argued within this thread), that does not address the actual evidence about whether Gmirkin's proposal about the Pentateuch's origins is correct.