So as I went over my notes on the two books I wanted to discuss, I noticed that it would be good refer to a trend they both mention: that the books after the Pentateuch in the OT, especially the history books, don’t seem to know about the Pentateuch. My apologies if this is well known to other readers; both authors cite other books.
This point is significant for the theme of these posts since Adler’s focus in on the Pentateuch and not the OT as a whole.
Wright notes that the books of Samuel and Kings do “not know of an Exodus from Egypt. Instead it presupposes that the ‘Israelites’ had always lived in their homeland, albeit under foreign domination” (Wright, 66)
Adler observes a similar trend: “Most of the causes of impurity found in the Pentateuch are cited nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. Outside the Pentateuch, the notion of impure species of animals is never mentioned, women who give birth are never said to be impure, sexual intercourse and semen are never spoken of as ritually defiling,” etc. (Adler, 80). Contrary to the Law’s proscription on graven images, Adler notes, “Solomon’s temple is said to have been filled with sculpted and embroidered images of bulls, lions, and winged cherubim—none of which seem to have provoked the ire of the biblical authors” (Adler, 102).
Wright argues for two different metahistories in the OT with varying theologies: the books of Samuel and Kings that Wright calls the “Palace History,” and that of Genesis and Exodus that he calls “the People’s History.” The palace history, Wright argues, focusses on the Yahweh’s covenant with David, while the people’s history turns away from monarchy and focuses on Yahweh’s covenant with Israel through the Law. Again, Wright and Adler note that Samuel and Kings seem unaware of the Pentateuch.
Thus in my upcoming posts, I’ll discuss historicity questions with the OT as a whole, but my main focus will be the Pentateuch. As Wikipedia points out, the evidence is pretty clear that the historical claims of the Pentateuch—Exodus and conquest—did not happen. But that still leaves the question of when the Pentateuch was written with considerable debate. Like I said in a previous post, Adler gives some pretty good evidence for a late date for the composition of the Pentateuch: c. 300 BC.
My next posts will discuss more of Wright’s and Adler’s claims, but differences between the Pentateuch and later parts of the Bible is an important point in both books.
Comments
32 responses to “Old Testament Historicity 2: Differences with the Pentateuch”
“As Wikipedia points out, the evidence is pretty clear that the historical claims of the Pentateuch—Exodus and conquest—did not happen.”
As D&C 110 points out, the appearance of Moses to Joseph Smith did happen.
Does where you are going leave any space for Moses, or does he disappear with the Exodus?
I talked about those issues in previous posts, so I’ll review them here.
“Yes, I’m well aware that there’s a lot of debate about a lot of issues, but in my personal beliefs about God and theology, I’m on board with what scholars are able to demonstrate as the historical evidence. That is, I’m good with saying what the scholarly evidence demonstrates, as opposed to holding to scriptural claims of historical events without evidence.”
https://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2024/10/believing-history/
“if there is consensus on something, I believe scholars have come to that position in good faith. I do not feel the need to hold doggedly to all scriptural historical claims, nor do I believe that God insists that I do so.”
https://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2024/05/what-historical-claims-does-god-insist-that-we-believe/
I don’t believe there was a historical Moses that the Bible describes because my understanding is that the historical evidence indicates there was not. Again, see the above quotes. I’m happy to adjust my views if evidence suggested so.
We talked about DC 110 in the comment chain. Here’s something I said: “I think people are proposing minimal Moses as a way to make DC 110:11 fit with current scholarship, or the claim that a Moses could have appeared but one who left no historical evidence. I understand why that exercise may be appealing, but I okay with giving myself some flexibility around those claims.”
Add the Book of Mormon to the list of books that seems to be unaware of the current contents of the Pentateuch. Despite Nephi saying they had “the five books of Moses” (possibly a loose translation?) and multiple prophets saying they obeyed the Law of Moses, there’s no discussion of dietary restrictions or of things or people being ritually clean or unclean. Many of the people with physical disabilities that Jesus healed at the Bountiful temple would have been excluded from the Jerusalem temple. (I notice because I would have been excluded from the Jerusalem temple.) The prophets accuse the people of all kinds of wickedness, but only once are they accused of not following the Law of Moses, and that’s for violating the Ten Commandments.
Jesus didn’t treat parts of it as binding either–for himself or for others. For example, he did not say “By the way folks, this woman had an issue of blood, so if she touched you while she was pushing through the crowd to get to me keep in mind you’re ritually unclean for the rest of the day.” (Peter’s comment about physical contact in the crowd is not there for comic relief; it’s there to highlight the magnitude of the Law of Moses violation Jesus is endorsing. In terms of Haidt’s moral foundations, Jesus put caring for others above cleanliness/sanctity.)
So yes, most of the Law of Moses as we know it today being a late and unauthorized addition is something that’s seemed likely to me for a while.
Of course this argument rests upon the Book of Mormon being a reliable history (which is not to say it’s infallible) and the New Testament generally being more reliable than the Old. I’d add Joseph Smith’s accounts of his experiences to my list of reliable sources, which has implications for the existence of a man named Moses who did important spiritual things, if not what Exodus tells us he did. But I consider the question of Moses’s existence to be asked and answered in previous posts and don’t need Stephen to respond to it further here.
I thought that it was just Deuteronomy that was a later addition to the Old Testament. Something that was added after the Israelites returned from Babylon.
Yes, lots of historicity questions, RLD.
Jared, you’re referring to a more standard view of biblical construction that is still prevalent, but that the guys I’m citing on calling into question. It does appear to me that the evidence is more on these more recent guys’ side and will talk about that in future posts. Again, recents scholars are making what looks to me like a very good evidentiary case that the Pentateuch was written much later than the more standard view. Again, probably AFTER 300 BC and continued to be tinkered with for a couple more centuries. More to come.
“Again, recents scholars are making what looks to me like a very good evidentiary case that the Pentateuch was written much later than the more standard view.”
They comprise a pretty-small minority of their scholarly community–don’t they? I’m wondering if some folks might consider them “fringe.”
Stephen, one thing that I’ve finally understood with these recent posts is that your approach to historical issues isn’t to lower the salience of historicity, but to raise it. So with something like the Garden of Eden, for example, a typical approach might be deciding that it may not be historically accurate, but then treating Genesis as an inspired account that reflects deeper truths that help us understand our lives, etc., etc. In contrast, you seem to see devotional implications in the lack of documentary evidence, while you’re also interested in discovering what the documentable history would be, and this in turn would also have devotional implications.
So if you were Jewish and followed Wright and Adler, how would that affect your celebration of Passover and other holidays associated with the Exodus narrative?
The question has real implications for us because of Jesus’ celebration of the Passover, and the institution of the sacrament, and the Exodus and Passover imagery that shows up in the New Testament and elsewhere. So it’s not an issue that can be set aside.
In a way, though, the details of Pentateuch historicity seem superfluous. What I means is, it’s clear already that you’re approaching it as basically ahistorical. And that’s a defensible choice for books with a strong supernatural element. You could even see it as the default option. But once you’ve made that choice, the historical details aren’t super compelling.
But as a few people have pointed out in various ways, once you make that choice, it’s difficult to avoid a radical un-making of 2300(?) years of Western religious history, and I don’t see how an elevation of history can repair that. But you also don’t seem to be heading towards naturalistic atheism. So I still don’t quite understand how you get from point A to point C.
Jack, these ideas aren’t the consensus but the evidence looks pretty good. Like I said in a previous post, I’m predicting these ideas will win out because of the evidence that supports it.
Jonathan, I’m thinking about these posts in terms of Mormonism and my research on what I think influenced Joseph Smith. Sorry to be repetitive, but again, I see the concept in Smith’s day of “the ancient theology” having a big influence on founding Mormonism. So as the scholarship calls more and more of OT historicity into question (especially the Pentateuch), it seems to me that Mormonism (as I interpret it) can be a guide to thinking about historical questions with the Bible.
Simply put, and I’ll talk about this more, scholars are arguing for greater Greek influence on OT conceptions and NT theology. And what I’ve found about JS’s influence is that he felt the ancient theology was key lost truths he felt called to restore. And I think that’s pretty cool.
And I suppose such scholarship may have an affect on Jews. Wright and Alder are both Jewish. This guy teaches at the University of Haifa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjOW7vfPILA
I may refer to that video in future posts. I think it’s a good overview of many of these issues.
Stephen, yes, it’s becoming clearer how the various parts of your project relate to each other, including OT historicity. But there’s still the practical question of how to celebrate Passover.
Again, I’m thinking about this from my own faith tradition so I don’t have any personal authority to wade into the religious rites of those that are not my own. But I do there there are plenty of Jews who engage in Passover without thinking it’s historical and are able to derive religious meaning as an community act. Perhaps I’ll Google it :).
Another way I would put it, is that I believe we Mormons can rethink that biblical narrative. https://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2024/10/rethinking-the-biblical-narrative-introduction/
I think we can put together something that fits the scholarly evidence: the importance of “the ancient theology” and the wickedness of the Christians that tried to suppressed it (1 Nephi 13). If that fuller truth that was “lost” came from the Greeks, is it somehow illegitimate. Can truth only come from the Hebrews? Again, 2 Nephi 29 says otherwise. https://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2024/12/i-shall-speak-unto-all-nations-and-they-shall-write-it/
Stephen, it’s understandable to shy away from questions about other faith traditions. But the questions about our own faith tradition are kind of urgent, since Jesus’ celebration of the Passover is for us the institution of the sacramental ordinance, which many of us will be participating in around 36 hours from now. So opting to see the Pentateuch as ahistorical, while also raising the importance of historicity, has some tricky consequences. (I’m not saying that you must answer the question now, I’m just giving context for why it’s a question I hope you address at some point.)
“Deriving religious meaning as a community act” is a reasonable approach. There are just two issues.
One issue is that I don’t know how communal meaning fits in with your project. So far you haven’t seem inclined to let communal meaning limit the flexibility of your personal belief. When you’ve written about scriptural historicity, you haven’t directly addressed the community of readers as a factor. You’ve talked about creating a safe space for people who don’t see the Book of Mormon as historical, but what does it mean to be part of a larger religious community that largely does see the Book of Mormon as historical? How might you derive meaning from that community act? Again, a question that may not be answerable in a single comment.
The second issue is that deriving meaning from a community act works for a Calvinist approach to sacraments, which sees their function as largely memorial, but won’t work with our own approach, which sees them as effective acts requiring proper authority, and in some cases as essential and salvific. So treating the Exodus as ahistorical and simultaneously elevating the importance of history might quickly run into some pretty significant downstream consequences for the whole Restoration as a religious project.
Johnathan, I don’t understand your concern regarding the Passover. The Passover has always been an extremely symbolic celebration and many of the symbols are messianic. So why does it matter if the underlying narrative behind it is historical or not? Jesus appropriated a couple of the symbols from the Passover celebration and those have become our sacrament, but it does not follow that the original narrative (which we don’t even retain in our ordinance) must be historical for the appropriated symbols to be legit.
I for one fall into the camp that the Exodus story captures a real event albeit much, much smaller than the one depicted in the Bible. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to believe a small group of escaped slaves (maybe 10?) managed to escape Egypt led by a Hebrew and that they experienced what they would describe as miracles on their journey to Canaan. While the Exodus story certainly could a complete invention (the complete lack of any Egyptian sources mentioning it certainly suggests it), I just think it plays too large a part in Jewish cultural memory to be just a story.
Okay, you bring up lots of issues, Jonathan, and will probably be an ongoing conversation. So obviously I won’t be able to give definitive answers to all of them. But here are a few thoughts in no particular order.
1) Again, the issue of the problems of Exodus historicity are an outgrowth of Israel archaeology that’s been going on for decades. I remember taking a class for my PhD program c. 2007 where the professor apologetically informed us that it was clear Moses was not historical. This has been around for a while now.
2) So Jews have been dealing with this for a while and when I Googled “how to celebrate the Passover without believing it was historical,” a whole lot of resources came up.
3) My next post is on Elephantine, whose documents seem to make two things clear. C. 400 BC Jews knew nothing of Moses or the Exodus, but were celebrating something they called Passover. We’re not really sure what that ritual was (there is a damaged document talking about a ritual and using the term “fermentation” that scholars have thought related to unleavened bread, but that isn’t clear). But there seems to have been a ritual of Passover BEFORE Jews created the Pentateuch and Moses probably a little after 300 BC. It looks like Moses and the Exodus were interpreted ONTO an earlier rite (that we know almost nothing about, unfortunately.)
4) My interpretation of Jesus (based on some scholarship that I’m not an expert on) is that his teachings and rites move things in a more Hellenistic direction and away from the Pentateuch (I’ll post on that). Yes, the Eucharist was given during holy days, but it was a rather different ritual with Hellenistic similarities. Connecting the Eucharist to the Passover is a product of Christian theologizing of wanting to unite the Old and New Testaments, but I don’t see that as what Jesus was doing.
5) Yes Mormon theology including the Book of Mormon adopted that assumption of blending the Old and New Testaments, because that was standard theology in the early 19th c.
6) As I’m arguing in these posts, Joseph Smith also wanted to draw on “the ancient theology” or Greek stuff. For instance, the temple endowment as JS presented it (we’re making lots of changes that are altering stuff) isn’t like Jewish temple rites (as much as we try to add stuff to make it so). As I argue in my dissertation (Quinn noticed this too) it’s much more like contemporary descriptions of the Eleusinian mysteries, a very important Greek ritual. Joseph Smith wanted such a rite because his sources (including one he owned) convinced him that Jesus had performed such a rite and had embraced the fuller “ancient theology” but that evil Christians (the great and abominable church) had removed those rites and fuller truth. JS felt called to restore that lost truth including a mystery rite (the endowment) and ancient theology (the plan of salvation.)
7) I think some scholarship suggests that JS was onto something. I did a series on that at the JI. Speculative, but kind of fun. https://juvenileinstructor.org/the-secret-tradition-part-10-joseph-smith/
8) Yes there can be a clash between faith observances and people having different views of historicity. Again, I’m guessing that Jews celebrating Passover with some not believing it’s historical could provide some resources.
9) The post I did on “quiet” and BoM historicity is my approach in church. But I also would like to help people stay in the church if they find themselves not believing in BoM historicity but want to stay. That creates challenges, but other faith traditions have had similar challenges.
Dr., yes I do see some flexibility.
Cougar, I may post more on this. My limited sense is that Russell Gmirkin was probably onto something in his book Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch (2006). I’m currently reading it, but Adler seems to be thinking along similar lines and to give additional evidence of Gmirkin’s argument.
Here is a video presentation of Gmirkin’s argument by Derek at Mythvision. A little technical, but I think you’ll get the gist if interested. (Sorry, the thumbnail that gets posted is sort of clickbait, but I did find it to be a helpful video).
I’ll post what Wright and Adler say about the references to Passover at Elephantine (which I think are interesting) in some future posts. But here’s what Wikipedia says about Passover’s history: “The Passover ritual is thought by modern scholars to have its origins in an apotropaic rite unrelated to the Exodus to ensure the protection of a family home, a rite conducted wholly within a clan.” In other words, a protection ritual against harmful supernatural forces. “As the Exodus motif grew, the original function and symbolism of these double origins was lost.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover#Origins_and_theories
In other words, it was a prior ritual that became interpreted in the light of the Exodus story AFTER the Pentateuch became authoritative among the Jews (which according to Adler wasn’t until around 110 BC). Jesus operated within the Pentateuch culture, but implemented a different rite.
Dr Cocoa: My concern isn’t with treating the Passover as symbolic at all. That’s an entirely reasonable approach. It’s not Stephen’s approach, however, so my concern is specifically how the Passover (and inherited Passover symbolism) could continue to function in the context of Stephen’s project. His general aim (and he can correct me if I have this wrong) is to recover historical reality and free religious belief from the historical inaccuracies that cling to it – that’s what I mean by “raising the salience of historicity.” The symbolic potential of traditional narrative isn’t something he seems interested in as a solution to historical issues. (Stephen, my apologies if I’ve misunderstood.)
Stephen, on 4) and 5), I don’t think you can call the desire to unite the OT and NT a matter of later theologizing – it’s woven into the NT itself all over the place! The NT authors repeatedly connect Jesus’ life and teachings directly to the OT. So OT historicity rapidly becomes a pressing issue for Christians as well in the context of a project that emphasizes historicity.
I agree that 9) is the right goal. But another big-picture question I have is if your historical project is the right solution for your pastoral aims. Would lowering the salience of history by emphasizing narrative symbolism and community meaning be a more effective way to achieve those aims?
Jonathan, yes, New Testament writers like Matthew and Hebrews really want the Testaments to gel, but I agree with scholars who argue that such a move is problematic (I’ll post a bit on that, though again, not an expert).
I suppose there is a lot of different ways to deal with these kinds of historical issues. All I can say is what I’ve found helpful personally, and that I’d like to try to be helpful to others. But I do think there are approaches that me and others do NOT find helpful. 1) Pretending that scholarship supports certain faithful narratives when it does not. 2) Telling people that if they are truly faithful, they will ignore scholarship that is contrary to those narratives. 3) Telling people that history simply does not matter when we are talking about historical claims. 4) Insisting that scholars not inform believers of scholarship because it might be upsetting to them. On the topic of these posts, it isn’t ME that’s coming up with the idea that the Exodus isn’t historical. That’s experts who’ve I’ve read and their work is widely available.
So those kinds of approaches I listed are not my cup of tea. Instead, I think it is better to think about being flexible with the religious narratives we’ve put together. We can still have God and Jesus without a historical Pentateuch, in my opinion. We can still have a valuable Mormon religion without a historical Book of Mormon. And the point of these posts is that I see some value in connecting the positions between Joseph Smith’s theology and certain aspects of biblical scholarship (again, the Greeks).
I know making adjustments to claims about history and belief are a challenge, but it seems like a conversation worth having.
Stephen, I wanted to add that if it’s an approach that helps you or someone else, it’s worth pursuing.
One problem with discussing OT historicity is that it’s so far outside of my area of expertise. I can imagine various ways to approach Wright and Adler by analogy to things I’m more familiar with (like the distance between what the available evidence allows vs what it requires, and the difference between carefully stating what the evidence suggests and pushing an argument as far as it will go), but it would be nice to have someone versed in the field at hand.
As a counter-balance to the above, one book I’d recommend (there are others), is called Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture, and Geoscience, a 2015 book published by Springer out of Switzerland. Its edited by Thomas E. Levy, Thomas Schnieder and William H.C. Propp. Propp is the author of the two Exodus volumes in the Anchor Bible Commentary series. It contains 42 essays covering a wide variety of approaches, many of which deal with the historicity issue dealt with in the OP. Contributors include Jan Assman, Israel Finkelstein, Ronald Hendel James Hoffmeier, Konrad Schmidt, Thomas Romer, Baruch Halperin, William Dever, Gary Rendsburg, Donald Redford, as well as the editors. While i don’t claim to be an expert, I have spent years dealing with some of this material in projects of my own and I find that both Wright and Adler (as described in the OP) to be in the minority of scholarly opinion. The contributors have varying degrees of religious belief themselves, but they are academically honest in their approaches, conservative in their analysis and rigid in their scholarship. Anyone wishing to delve into this farther, could try this one (though, like most of the more academic approaches, its not cheap)
Additionally, the emails of the various contributors are included and my experience is that many welcome questions.
As an additional source to compare with Adler, I’d recommend How Old Is the Hebrew Bible?: A Linguistic, Textual and Historical Study by Ronald Hendel and Jan Joosten. Its also part of the Anchor Bible Reference Library series from Yale (along with Adler) and it was published in 2018. The first chapter is fascinating as it addresses how much biblical scholarship ignores linguistic inquiry. The authors cite several well-known works (including Joel Baden’s Composition of the Pentateuch and David Carr’s Formation of the Hebrew Bible). They address Carr “at length because unlike other scholars, he addresses this issue directly, and because his position is well-informed.” Linguistics can also be applied to the unified Isaiah issue, although that’s certainly minority scholarship. This book is only $2.99 on Kindle right now.
Okay, there’s been some misunderstandings of why I wanted to reference Wright and Alder. It was NOT to argue against the historicity of the Exodus. I address THAT issue in this previous post: https://www.timesandseasons.org/index.php/2024/05/what-historical-claims-does-god-insist-that-we-believe/
Again, I first heard of the scholarship that archaeology had overturned at By Common Consent about 15 years ago (was it Ronan?) My understanding is that Israel Finkelstein’s archaeology played a major role in demonstrating the conquest did not occur. Jan Assman, as I understand it, is largely in agreement with the video I posted above about the Exodus story likely coming from Manetho (c 275).
So I’m NOT citing these authors to try to make the case against Exodus and Conquest: my understanding is that matter was settled 20 or so years ago. Here’s a few quotes from scholars that Wikipedia cites:
Lester Grabbe, 2007: “When I began my PhD studies more than three decades ago in the USA, the ‘substantial historicity’ of the patriarchs was widely accepted as was the unified conquest of the land. These days it is quite difficult to find anyone who takes this view.”
Peter Enns, 2013: “the archaeological record has not been friendly for one vital issue, Israel’s origins: the period of slavery in Egypt, the mass departure of Israelite slaves from Egypt, and the violent conquest of the land of Canaan by the Israelites. The strong consensus is that there is at best sparse indirect evidence for these biblical episodes, and for the conquest there is considerable evidence against it.”
So we’re talking about two different things: FIRST, the historicity of the Exodus and Conquest which the evidence clearly demonstrates did not happen. I did not bring up Wright and Alder to try to argue for that point, since that’s pretty much settled.
The SECOND issue–when was the Pentateuch (and the rest of the Bible) written–IS very much debated. And here I need to distinguish between Wright and Adler. Wright is much more conventional; his book is essentially an overview and he holds to much of the OT being written during the Persian period. Pretty standard.
But as I read Wright, I couldn’t help but think the the evidence he presented, particularly about Elephantine (see the post I just put up) suggests the Bible being written later than when Wright said.
Alder’s finds ARE pretty revolutionary. I have not posted about them yet, so I find it a little strange for Terry to denounce Adler’s conclusions before I’ve given that summary (unless Terry has read it, he didn’t say he had). Anyway, I will post that soon.
On the point about older forms of Hebrew being used in the Bible, Dag Barnea addresses that in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjOW7vfPILA
As they point out, it was common for people to trying to write in older sounding language because that language was seen as carrying more weight and sounding more holy. I’ve heard this in common in lots of faith traditions and is very common in Protestant cultures trying to match the language of the KJV (the Book of Mormon being an example). I have no biblical language expertise, but I have noted some problematic scholarly attempts to derive some apologetic purposes from the fact that the BoM has late 16th c. English. (Here’s an exMo post mocking those claims [they cite our own Jonathan who wrote a very good series on those claims]. I don’t share these exMos’ worldview, but do agree that some apologists can say goofy things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stn6UV5jF1I)
So I agree with Barnea’s caution. In my amateur opinion, Adler’s evidence (which I haven’t posted about yet) looks pretty good and it seems like Barnea’s caution about archaic language is a good point too.
But my bigger point is that I DO NOT see this as a matter of a fight over larger issues of belief. I’ll repeat what I said in an earlier comment: We can still have God and Jesus without a historical Pentateuch, in my opinion. We can still have a valuable Mormon religion without a historical Book of Mormon. And the point of these posts is that I see some value in connecting the positions between Joseph Smith’s theology and certain aspects of biblical scholarship (again, the Greeks).
I’m curious to find out “what happened” without trying to force the evidence to conform to a prior set of religious beliefs. Let’s figure out the evidence independent of that and THEN work to make sense of things religiously.
There’s nothing goofy about Carmack’s work on early modern English in the Book of Mormon. I think my 2019 post about his article holds up reasonably well. Here’s my conclusion:
I can’t prevent my post from being cited in a crappy apostate video, but Carmack’s article isn’t problematic, and certainly not the kind of thing that deserves to be mocked. Grown-ups can look at the same evidence and reach different conclusions.
Jonathan, they weren’t mocking Carmack or the Skousen’s scholarship. They were mocking Skousen’s claim that their scholarship somehow indicated something supernatural like a 16th century translator (I’ve had multiple people tell me that Skousen did make such speculation in conferences). As they point out, Skousen even corrected Peterson claiming that Skousen had not said so.
My problem is how Dan Peterson has used Skousen’s and Carmack’s scholarship. I really don’t think it proves anything about the Book of Mormon’s validity. My vague memory of your posts is that you seemed to have some issues with Peterson’s claims too. So yes, I’ve heard and read a number of Peterson’s claims about Carmack’s and Skousen’s scholarship and have found many of those claims by Peterson to be goofy. So I apologize for making it sound like I was criticizing Carmack, but I do think Peterson’s claims on this issue ARE goofy.
On the bigger point, it’s not uncommon for religious writers to use archaic language because that archaic language sounds more holy. Again, to Barnea’s point.
Is there the possibility that the lack of references to the Pentateuch could be due to the lack of the ability to reference anything? In other words, people need the scholarly concept of referencing before they can start referencing. What form would the first four books of the Bible have been at that time? A stack of papers which were important but didn’t have a name?
The issue isn’t the lack of reference to the Pentateuch as a general concept, but a lack of reference to the CONTENT of the Pentateuch: the people, the events, the laws in the Law of Moses. See the post I put up on Elephantine as an example.
Stephen, I don’t think I’ve ever commented on Dan Peterson’s work, although in general I like his writing.
I like the idea of figuring out what happened and then making sense of it. But…
1) I think trying to make sense of history is largely what people have always done, although historical methods and access to records have improved.
1a) So we need a better response than throwing out prior meaning-making. When Paul writes that “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed,” that’s important and meaningful in a particular framework, no matter what we think about the historicity of the Exodus or the timing of the Pentateuch’s compilation.
2) We always bring prior knowledge and beliefs to history. The best we can do is try to be conscious of prior knowledge, responsible in how we deal with it, and willing to update it.
3) People will still disagree. If reputable scholars are still publishing books about the Exodus, for example, then scholarly views would seem to be not as uniform as Wikipedia says.
4) History still won’t tell us the things we actually want to know. The prime example here is the Resurrection. We can approach early Christian writings about it from a strictly naturalistic point of view and decide that it must be a myth, or that Jesus’ body was secretly stolen by his followers, or that he must have recovered spontaneously. Or we can admit that some supernatural things do happen, and then debate which ones and when. But we can’t always defer the search for meaning until after the facts are settled.
Peterson is the person that video was criticizing. I do think there were serious problems with that particular argument from Peterson (which I’ve heard him repeat a number of times).
We may be going round and round a bit here. I do very much believe that meaning is important but do believe we can make adjustments to how we make meaning of things along the way. I do understand that long-held interpretations are powerful and problematic to call into question. But I’m against the “either-or” that I often see in these discussions: “either there is an Exodus and Moses or there is no God and religion” is how it sometimes seems to get framed.
I think we can make adjustments and we can learn about the evidence.
I thought much of this was addressed with the discovery of the Book of the Law of the Lord in the Temple during the reign of King Josiah in the 7th century BC. Whether that was specifically Deuteronomy, the Pentateuch or another book seems to not have much bearing; its content included the Law of Moses, and the people seem to have been unaware of it previously, though how long it may have been missing from their society is debatable.
Even after its discovery, it was still rare. Having it written on the brass plates seems to have been an exception. Nephi and his brothers couldn’t just go somewhere else and get another copy; the brass plates may have been one of the few, if not the only copy then extant. Even Lehi, who was likely a young adult at the time of Josiah, seems to have only been previously aware of their contents by hearsay, and have never read them prior to 1 Nephi 5. One might theorize as well that they had been created by Zenos and/or Zenock and contained the only copies of their writings. One might theorize a lot of things.
Anyway, that would explain why The Book of Mormon makes frequent references to the Law of Moses and why it isn’t as common in the Old Testament historical books. Obviously, the discovery of the Book of the Law of the Lord in the time of Josiah is too notable to not be considered for this topic; why has it not been addressed here? Does the scholarship consider that this refers to something else and that the matter has been closed? Why the omission?
My understanding is there there is no evidence of Josiah or his reforms.
From Gmirkin: P R. Davies in 1992 called into question Josiah’s reforms “Let us first remind ourselves that the only evidence for such a reform is the Biblical story itself. … Here we have before us an unverified attempt to give Deuteronomy some antique authority and to argue that its contents are appropriate for the implementation in a political body” (25).
Then on page 27, Gmrikin notes Josiah’s reforms at idealized and literary “describing what a reform should have looked like.” But not archaeological evidence for Josiah destroying unauthorized places of worship at the Bible describes.