
New Evidence on When Bible Was Written - adamsi
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/world/middleeast/new-evidence-onwhen-bible-was-written-ancient-shopping-lists.html
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brink
So the large takeaway is that people in further back ancient Israel were more
literate than originally thought, opening up the prospect that the Bible could
easily have been written earlier than what some scholars speculated. Correct?

~~~
baldfat
> Prof. Edward Greenstein of Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv. “The process
> of transmission was much more complicated than scholars used to think.”

Theology Student Here - MY TAKE This is pretty Bogus Study in terms of these
are Statisticians' work based on one outpost on one piece of pottery. Someone
had to publish something to make use of the research money. This is also out
of their domain. Seems like trying to try a new approach and this is all we
get?

It is MUCH more complicated and the Oral Tradition of ANE (Ancient Near East)
is pretty amazing. This also is not taking up the fact that the majority of
the text have very different vocabs, writing styles and different mediums for
delivering ideas (Think Epics like Noah and personal stuff like Job and
politics like the kings) All very different writings.

I would say that Theology and Archeologist and other disciplines are more and
more agreeing that the scriptures have more evidence for a much later date
then 300 - 50 year ago "liberal" scholarship believed. Heck I remember old
Priest saying the Gospels were written in 250 AD and nothing was written in
the first century (To bad we have a bunch of manuscripts from the first
century now) Heck Pontius Pilot (The Roman leader who sent Jesus to the cross
was believe to be made up until 25 years ago when they found his name
inscribed in an unearthed building. This is interesting times.

TL:DR Bad statistical work and very little meat. Nothing to see here.

~~~
partiallypro
I think the study has very little to do with different vocabs, most people
agree that the Torah had multiple authors, JEPD for instance is widely
accepted...though perhaps not as it once was. Either way, in the documentary
hypothesis or other non-Mosaic origin theories, the books were written
separately, from different people and revised over hundreds of years. This
study doesn't really refute that. The oral history is much, much older; the
question is when could this have begun to have been written down?

A lot of scholars have the Torah being penned closer to the 600BC time frame.

~~~
davemel37
> most people agree that the Torah had multiple authors

Source? From what I can tell, most religious people disagree with this point.

~~~
duaneb
I have no firm source as the arguments are scattered over the last three
decades. I can summarize the current viewpoints:

Pro-JEPD camps point towards style analysis, dividing the pentateuch into four
distinct dictions, each with their own (hypothesized) time frames.

Anti-JEPD camps tend to a) pick apart style arguments (with mixed success) and
b) argue for a cohesion of content.

I tend to give the Pro-JEPD camps slightly more credit for their empirical
approach; this is entirely my point of view.

In any case, "most religious people" will argue for Moses himself writing the
Torah in its entirety. AFAIK there is absolutely zero evidence for a
historical Moses. In fact, the strongest evidence is put forth by the Anti-
JEPD camps themselves.

Contrast this to the Quran, which has cohesion of support around authorship by
Muhammad (or in a religious context, transcription of the word of God via
Muhammad) in its entirety; argument around authorship tend to revolve around
modifications during oral propagation between Muhammad's lifetime and the
earliest fragments we have (notably the Sana'a manuscript and the slightly
later Uthman standardized version). There is simply not as much evidence for
multiple authorship of the core text here, though not as much textual analysis
has been performed here as the time period for revision is tiny compared to
the bible and the torah.

~~~
davemel37
> AFAIK there is absolutely zero evidence for a historical Moses.

Lack of evidence is not evidence of anything. The scientific method is good
for eliminating the likelihood of a hypothesis being correct based on
evidence...not the lack of evidence.

> "most religious people" will argue for Moses himself writing the Torah in
> its entirety

It always amazes me how many people have opinions about the Torah without
studying the Talmud in it's entirety.

Why not defer to those Rabbis who have spent their lives studying the talmud
instead of scientists who choose to ignore a massive body of research and
discourse that is highly relevant.

~~~
duaneb
> Lack of evidence is not evidence of anything. The scientific method is good
> for eliminating the likelihood of a hypothesis being correct based on
> evidence...not the lack of evidence.

I agree completely! But the claim that Moses wrote the Torah doesn't hold any
water either, as you just argued, due to ZERO contemporary evidence. The same
problem applies to e.g. the figure Lykourgos forming the pugnacious culture of
Sparta: he's called out a few places, including Plutarch via Aristotle, but no
contemporary evidence of him exists. Most likely he (Lykourgos) is a myth.

> It always amazes me how many people have opinions about the Torah without
> studying the Talmud in it's entirety.

What does the Talmud have to do with the Pentateuch authorship? I was not
commenting on the authorship beyond Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and
Leviticus. The Talmud also wouldn't present any contemporary evidence as it
dates to several centuries after the earliest Pentateuch fragments and ~1.5k
years after Moses would have walked around.

I'm very open to arguments that the Talmud IS relevant (it'd be pretty
exciting to me, I'm a big fan), but I don't see it off hand. The Rabbis had
every reason to present a coherent narrative regardless of its accuracy, and
they were certainly not in a position to verify it themselves. If they did,
I'd love to see how.

~~~
davemel37
>What does the Talmud have to do with the Pentateuch authorship?

As someone who spent 10 years studying and only covered about 10% of the
talmud, I can assure it that there is deep and complicated discourse on
everything you can think of including the authorship of the Torah. There is
nothing taken for granted. No one is given a free pass to "maintain a
consistent narrative". There is constant dispute about every single letter
written in the Torah (in fact, dispute on grammar, sentence structure, etc..
to the point that there are rules compiled for how to interpret every single
word choice, letter, phrase, etc... in the Torah.)

It is highly relevant and these discussions are beyond my capabilities to
address fully other than to know to defer to the several dozen people alive
today that are truly deep experts, or the several thousand others who at least
completed the entirety of the talmud.

It's simply ignorance to have an opinion on the Torahs authorship without
being a talmud expert. (Too many people dismiss it because they have no idea
whats actually in it!)

~~~
duaneb
Somehow i don't think you were interested in addressing anything I said.
Assurances are worthless compared to the very specific evidence i requested.

I see no way anything written in the talmud would have any effect.

~~~
davemel37
>i don't think you were interested in addressing

Interested, just not knowledgable to address them fully.

>I see no way anything...

I presume this is because you dont actually know whats contained in the
talmud. While modern science tools may not have existed, smart scientisits,
mathmeticians, liguists, historians, etc... did and in fact, they discuss at
length the authorship of the torah.

You wrote previously that the rabbis wanted a cohesive narrative. This is
patently false. There is even a concept within torah study called "eilu
ve'eilu" which means we can disagree, and still both be right. My point being
that there is nothing cohesive or narratove based in the talmud other than a
rigorous search for Absolute Truth.

Pretty much every word mentioned by someone in the talmud is followed by an
aggressive quest to disprove it...and many things are even left unanswered...

Without taking a peek into the talmud, it is not intellectually honest to
dismiss it...especially invoking modern science without even seeing if its
consistent with that science or not.

~~~
duaneb
You misunderstand me.

A), i have read some of the talmud; i do not believe i have the collected
texts in their entirety.

B), i meant to say it is in the interest of the rabbis to propagate the
cohesive narrative of Moses authoring the pentateuch, NOT that the talmud
itself has a cohesive narrative.

Perhaps there was some confusion about the word "torah"\--I was refering to
the pentateuch, ie the original five written texts, not the broader meaning
including the rabbinical texts. To my knowledge, authorship of the latter is
entirely a different topic of which I do NOT have much knowledge or interest--
not because it is not interesting, but because it is orders of magnitude more
complex and (personally) I just enjoy reading it and the authorship does not
play into my enjoyment the way the authorship of the pentateuch lends it
meaning. Can you understand how it would be different written by the patriarch
of an entire ethnicity vs some unknown goat herders? The text means entirely
different things under these interpretations, so the argument over authorship
is worth the pursuit. Personally, i dont think it means any less in either
interpretation; i think the pentateuch is invaluable regardless of your
beliefs, ethnicity, or stance on JEPD. Genesis itself just might be the
greatest text ever written in my humble opinion--I see new things every time I
read it, and it is the closest we will ever get to understanding the the, erm,
human experience of civilization itself.

Sorry for the confusion!

~~~
davemel37
No real confusion about the Torah, I was also only referring to the pentateuch
as well. The talmud does however discuss who wrote each of the later texts.

> the cohesive narrative of Moses authoring the pentateuch There is a
> disagreement in the Talmud about this point.

When you say you read talmud, have you ever studied it in a Yeshiva, while
learning the commentary, or just read an english translation of part of it?

I think the point that seems to be lost in this discussion is the following.
Picture a conversation on reddit like this... redditor1: my opinion is the
truth. redditor2: source? redditor1: here is the link redditor2: but three
years ago you said this competing theory. redditor3: those opinions are
consistent because of differing circumstances... redditor4: what this other
thing he said that is the same circumstances as the old post but supports the
new one. redditor3: I guess i was wrong. I am stumped. redditor4: it makes
sense because if you look at the sentence structure, they are really the same
thing said in two different ways.

Now imagine a conversation like that trying to determine the veracity of every
single word in the Torah, every single law and theory mentioned in the talmud
and mishna, etc...

Studying the talmud is not some text some guy wrote down. It is an intense and
deep analysis that considers math, physics, science,logic, language analysis,
etc... all with the goal of finding the truth about the torah and mishna...not
to support a theory about G-d giving over the Torah to Moses who than
transcribed most of it.

What I am trying to say is that while I don't know the relevant discussions
around the pentateuch authorship other than the link I shared earlier from
Ohr.com ... These scholars who analyzed the text to determine if there were
multiple authors, etc... really need to look at the explanations in the talmud
for why one sentence is written one way and another is written another way...

It seems intellectually dishonest to me to analyze these things without
consulting the talmudic experts who have studying the relevant sections...As
there might be discussion and context that is very relevant.

~~~
duaneb
Then it was I who misunderstood.

I tend to prefer arguments that stand on their own, and i highly doubt that
the persuasive aspects of the talmud's authorship discourse are disjoint with
the academic discourse. It would be shocking to me to find parallel
communities discussing the same topic unaware of the other's existence.
Regardless, at this point i am willing to admit I am out of my depth and
cannot devote the time to pursuing the topic without enrolling in yeshiva
myself; much of my interest focuses on its historical context and its relation
to abrahamic religions, not just rabbinical judaism. I will have to settle for
comiserating with you: it is indeed a shame that I have not consulted the
talmudic experts. Perhaps soon. :)

------
Animats
So somebody found some commercial records in Hebrew, and this immediately gets
extrapolated into religion. Somebody is obsessing.

Nine out of ten surviving Babylonian tablets are financial records.[1] There
are surviving financial records from Ur two millennia older than Christianity.

[1]
[http://viking.som.yale.edu/will/finciv/chapter1.htm](http://viking.som.yale.edu/will/finciv/chapter1.htm)

~~~
duaneb
> Somebody is obsessing.

Welcome to biblical studies.

This is relevant because people have traditionally argued for later dates
based on literacy rates; this provides shaky evidence against that argument.
It's more like the null hypothesis than firm dating data in itself.

------
Apocryphon
I find this discovery very interesting when juxtaposed against a similar
discovery on the other side of the continent:

"A Revolutionary Discovery in China" by Ian Johnson
[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/04/21/revolutionary-
dis...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/04/21/revolutionary-discovery-in-
china/)

The manuscripts’ importance stems from their particular antiquity. Carbon
dating places their burial at about 300 BCE. This was the height of the
Warring States Period, an era of turmoil that ran from the fifth to the third
centuries BCE. During this time, the Hundred Schools of Thought arose,
including Confucianism, which concerns hierarchical relationships and
obligations in society; Daoism (or Taoism), and its search to unify with the
primordial force called Dao (or Tao); Legalism, which advocated strict
adherence to laws; and Mohism, and its egalitarian ideas of impartiality.

...

Do these old texts matter today? They do in several ways. One has to do with
the antiquity of China’s written culture. In the West, many classic texts, for
example by Homer or stories in the Bible, are widely accepted as having been
oral works that later were written down—a view of history picked up by Gu and
the antiquity-doubters of the early twentieth century. Even though Gu was
sidelined in China, his heirs in the West have tended to dismiss traditional
views that important works in China were written down early on, or even
composed as written texts. For many of these skeptical Westerners, Chinese
efforts to prove the antiquity of their culture is closet chauvinism, or part
of a project to glorify the Chinese state by exaggerating the antiquity of
Chinese civilization.

But the new discoveries should give pause to this skepticism. Allan argues
that the texts were indeed primarily written down, and not transcribed oral
tales. Besides the Daodejing, only a few of the texts excavated over the past
twenty years have mnemonic devices or rhyme. She writes that even the texts
that claim to be speeches of ancient kings originated as literary
compositions. And as the Guodian texts show, works like the Daodejing took a
written form earlier than skeptics believed, possibly even as early as the
traditionalists have always claimed.

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ekianjo
Title should refer to the Old Testament not the Bible as a whole.

~~~
Mikeb85
More like 'Torah'. Half of what's referred to as the Old Testament refers to
events that happened during and after the Babylonian exile...

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yoodenvranx
How is it even possible that a page like the NY Times serves me one of those
fucking whatsapp-you-have-7-viruses-and-let's-vibrate-your-phone ads?

Don't they have _any_ quality control? It's time to finally root my phone and
install an adblocker.

------
lai
It's very interesting to see that they used image processing algorithms
(machine learning!) in their study!

------
cconcepts
It seems as though, in some online communities, the discussion about faith and
purpose has begun to evolve beyond some variation of "OMG you believe XYZ?
That is proven completely false by ABC - Lolz".

I won't hold my breath but increased meaningful discussion can only be a good
thing.

~~~
brink
I'm ready to receive the down-votes here, but I've been reading through those
posts along with scientific articles for years and I'm still not convinced
that the Bible was made up. So it's refreshing to have actual open discussion
rather than atheist and bible bashing fights.

~~~
gnaritas
Of course the Bible was made up, it didn't write itself; it's a work of
fiction by men, nothing more. Nor is there a lick of evidence to the contrary.

~~~
nZac
Do you mean that because a book doesn't write itself, which is an impossible
task, it can't be true? That seems to remove the possibility to know anything
from a written text including science, history, autobiographies, and other
forms of non-fiction.

~~~
gnaritas
Any written text can be either true or false, fiction and mythology have
always been wildly popular. The bible, like all works of fiction, was made up
by men.

> That seems to remove the possibility to know anything from a written text
> including science, history, autobiographies, and other forms of non-fiction.

Things aren't true because they're written, they're true because they can be
verified as true; writing merely adds the possibility to pass on the knowledge
required to verify a truth. Absent re-verification, nothing is true simply
because someone wrote it down.

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exabrial
No real substance to add to this discussion, but I love it when these kind of
studies come out. By the reaction of the relevant parties you can see who
accepts humility and science.

~~~
dosgonlogs
I would prefer if you spelled it out for us. Are you trying to say that if
someone is religious, that they do not value the Scientific Method, and that
they lack humility? Or are you saying it is the other way around? If I
interpret it either way, I could not agree with you. Your statement comes off
as presumptuous and ignorant, and therefore it is ironic and hypocritical,
since you have drawn such a tremendous conclusion that is a sweeping
generalization based on what exactly? Please correct me if I did not interpret
your words the way you intended them to be interpreted.

As far as the study is concerned, here it is:
[http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2016/04/05/1522200113.DCSu...](http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2016/04/05/1522200113.DCSupplemental/pnas.201522200SI.pdf)
It looks like they had to develop new techniques because of the condition of
the writing, for the purpose of processing the images, and analyzing them. I
will have to read more before I can form an adequate to my own taste, but my
preliminary opinion is, that they are filling in too many blanks in order to
form a meaningful conclusion.

~~~
exabrial
Neither, so no offense implied or taken, I'm a regular churchgoer mysel. All I
was saying is when confronted by new science, weak or overstreched churches
will deny obvious truths (example:evolution) while churches that are actually
focused on the orignal mission of Christ will simply say 'thats cool'.

~~~
dosgonlogs
My apologies then. Looks like I was the one jumping to conclusions and being
insulting to top it off.

~~~
exabrial
No worries, I went back and read what I wrote and realized it could have been
perceived that way.

------
mholt
> _literacy may have been far more widespread than previously known in the
> Holy Land around 600 B.C., toward the end of the First Temple period._

Interesting correlation to the Book of Mormon, which originates ~600 BC in
Jerusalem. In fact, page 1, verse 2 says:

> _2 Yea, I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the
> learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians._

And further discusses how Lehi "hath written many things which he saw in
visions and in dreams; and he also hath written many things which he
prophesied." Lehi was of a priestly order, of which there were at least
hundreds, if not thousands, of members, which also correlates well to this
finding:

> _But if the literacy rates in the Arad fortress were repeated across the
> kingdom of Judah, which had about 100,000 people, there would have been
> hundreds of literate people, the Tel Aviv research team suggests._

So anyway, the linked article and this source seem to corroborate each other.

Edit: Okay, lots of down votes. How does this comment not contribute to the
discussion?

~~~
tymekpavel
> Interesting correlation to the Book of Mormon, which originates ~600 BC in
> Jerusalem.

The Book of Mormon was written in 1830. Am I missing something here?

~~~
mholt
It certainly was published in 1830. The account within it originates ~600 BC.

~~~
jeena
"The theory that the Book of Mormon is an ancient American history is
considered to fall outside academic credibility."
[https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/wp-
content/uploads/sbi/arti...](https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/wp-
content/uploads/sbi/articles/132%2022-55.pdf) page 37

~~~
mholt
Hmm, we're not talking about American history here.

