The year 2011 marks the 300th year after the publication of Henning Bernard Witter's path-breaking discovery of criteria for uncovering a specific source behind the biblical book of Genesis. In 1711, this well-educated pastor in Germany published "Jura Israelitarum in Palaestinam Commentatione in Genesin perpetua" (Israelite laws in Palestine, comments on the eternal Genesis...), where he noted several important differences between the seven-day creation account in Genesis 1:1-2:3 and the story of the garden of Eden in Genesis 2:4-3:24.
The two stories use different designations for God ("God" and the name Yhwh, often translated Lord), are stylistically distinct in other ways, and duplicate each other in describing the creation of plants, animals and humans (in different orders). These observations led Witter to propose that Gen 1:1-2:3 was not written by Moses himself, but instead was an oral song adopted by Moses in the process of writing the Pentateuch.
To be sure, the overall idea of Pentateuchal sources was not new by this point. Other scholars such as Ibn Ezra in the 12th century or Spinoza in the 17th century had posited that much or all of the Pentateuch had been written by authors other than Moses. Witter, however, was the first to develop the sorts of criteria that could be used to actually identify the different sources of the Pentateuch. Moreover, the distinction that he proposed between Gen 1:1-2:3 and 2:4-3:24 anticipated a broader scholarly distinction between priestly and non-priestly sources behind the Pentateuch, an identification of sources that has been dominant in biblical studies for about one hundred and fifty years.
Scientific theories developed around the same time at Witter, such as Newton's laws of motion and Benjamin Franklin's discovery of electricity in lightening are common knowledge. In contrast, scholarly discoveries of sources behind the Bible have ended up more obscure, even in religious communities that focus on the Bible.
This is already seen in Witter's case. His book on Genesis was vigorously opposed by academics of his time, and Witter himself died of an epidemic four years after its publication at the young age of 34. His work was largely forgotten by the time a physician in Louis the 14th's court, Jean Astruc, independently discovered sources beginning with Gen 1:1-2:3 and 2:4-3:24 and extending this insight across all of Genesis (1753). This time the method found traction among some academic circles. By the late 1800s German scholars such as Schrader (1863) and Nöldeke (1869) had refined the division between priestly and non-priestly sources of the Pentateuch into a form quite close to that advocated by contemporary scholars.
Around the time that this biblical source-criticism was being refined, Darwin published "On the Origin of the Species" (1859) and Pasteur developed the theory of germs (1862). Their work established scientific theories that enjoy a similar dominance in biology to that of basic source-criticism in academic study of the Bible. Yet where most school children are exposed early on to the ideas of evolution and germs, it is difficult to find children or adults, even in Christian and Jewish communities, who have been taught something specific about how the Bible came to be through the combination of pre-existing sources.
In this light it makes sense to consciously remember Witter's discovery of Biblical sources and source-critical method three centuries ago, while also keeping in mind how easy it was, both then and now, to forget those achievements.
Book of Genesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Genesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Genesis 1 NIV - The Beginning In the beginning God - Bible Gateway
To accept this would undermine their ability to tell the rest of us we are wrong or going to he'll and create a state of being unacceptable to the human mind known as cognitive dissonance.
I welcome your thoughts.
I humbly and respectfully submit the following apparently reasonable perspective without claiming authoritative knowledge regarding the fictional or non-fictional nature of the Adam and Eve account or regarding scientific logic analysis:
TomMartin 09/24/2011 10:15pm appears reasonably considered to construe a defining relationship between (a1) being a non-fictional human being, (a2) having more faith in God than almost anyone can get in a lifetime and (b) obeying God, respectively. I humbly and respectfully submit the apparently reasonable perspective that accepting the supposition that this relationship exists might be reasonably considered to be understandable. However, scientific logic and analysis appears not to suggest any proclivity to or basis upon which to warrant such a correlation. As a result, there appears to be no logical basis for the apparent TomMartin 09/24/2011 10:15pm assertion that (a) Adam and Eve had the most faith in God of any human being in all of human history, that (b) Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and that, therefore, (c) they are fictional characters. In other words, there seems to be no logical basis for suggesting that Adam and Eve are fictional characters because they had more faith in God of any human being in human history and still disobeyed God, as TomMartin 09/24/2011 10:15pm’s final conclusion appears to suggest.
TomMartin 09/24/2011 10:15pm appears reasonably considered to construe a cause-and-effect relationship between (a) having more evidence of God than almost anyone can get in a lifetime and (b) having more faith in God than almost anyone can get in a lifetime, respectively. I humbly and respectfully submit the apparently reasonable perspective that scientific logic and analysis appears not to suggest such a correlation. Scientific logic and analysis, however, do appear to suggest the possibility for potential similarity in the direction of quantitative change of (a) evidence and (b) faith. Further assertion beyond mere possibility of such potential similarity in direction of quantitative change appears reasonably suggested to be unwarranted. In other words, greatest evidence might result in greatest faith, but apparently, not necessarily.
Regarding the URL, if clicking the links does not launch the blog, copying and pasting the URLs into the browser address bar might. However, Huffington Post comment post display appears to include extra hyphens in the text. These hyphens, if inserted into URLs, might alter the URL and cause “Page Not Found†errors. Comparing the pasted URL with the original might reveal such occurrences. If the blog still does not launch, trying at a later point might achieve better results.
no!
you know it's there though
yep!
because you can feel it, and you can also seen it's effects.
I welcome your thoughts.
The summarized perspective (describing God as a non-imagination-hosted entity that appears suggested to currently be majorly, if not solely, perceivable through an imagination-hosted process – perhaps, in other words, a direct-to-thought process – that bypasses the other senses) appears to reflect the intended perspective.
The HuffPostThinker and BlogSpotThinker suggestions of science’s apparent limitations relevant to perceiving God appear not intended to represent proof of the existence of God, but rather, to suggest science’s lack of reasonable, logical basis for suggesting that God does not exist.
The relevant point regarding “knowing God’s realness†appears intended to be that if God is assumed to be real (non-imagination-hosted) and capable of interaction with humanity, and “knowing†is defined as “recognizingâ€, then, perhaps, the imagination-hosted experience of interaction with the non-imagination-hosted God appears reasonably suggested to qualify as “knowing the realness of God: imaginationally recognizing the direct-to-thought impact of interaction with the non-imagination-hosted God.
Regarding the characteristic of God that appears suggested to make Him less than verifiable via scientific inquiry, the question, though perhaps expectable, appears less than capable of being answered. Knowledge of the aspect of God’s suggested nature that is currently humanly unknown sufficiently enough to humanly describe it would appear to render that aspect to be known and, perhaps, even verifiable. In other words, apparently, humanity’s not knowing appears to prevent knowing, irrefutably, why we don’t know.
My perspective on what “we are saying (or I am suggesting)†regarding the apparently fundamental issue of human capacity to “know God’s realness†is that the Bible appears to suggest the existence of an entity with attributes including that which cannot be as readily observed as even the phenomena science appears to consider to be least easily observable. In addition to the Bible, certain other components of human reality appear to suggest the existence of other apparently missing components that appear to be Biblically attributed to God. Some of these suggested components are shared in the post intended to be mentioned in the next paragraph or post.