Subject: Re: Book of J
From: Jim Rovira (jrovira@drew.edu)
Date: Wed Jul 10 2002 - 21:48:04 EDT
Cecilia --
I don't think the complaints about Bloom are about his adherence to the
documentary hypothesis (which is old hat and has its own problems even
though it's accepted in some form or another pretty much everywhere but
in fundie circles), or even with the idea that a woman may have written
parts of the OT, but with the lack of evidence for his thesis (from what
I remember of Robbie's post).
It's amazing how much that's the case in Biblical scholarship. The most
outrageous claims are based upon the slimmest conjecture. I haven't
read Bloom and I'm not saying he's guilty of this, but it's not an
uncommon fault. The documentary hypothesis, technically, has NO
physical evidence supporting it. The only texts we have are pretty much
of the whole books or fragments of the whole books. What is observed in
the text could just as well be the result of editorial impositions on a
text substantially written by a single author, esp. if that single
author drew from a number of source texts written in different languages
and by different people. It's a fascinating thesis and has great
explanatory power, but it's hardly "proven."
Jim
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