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May 19, 2007
What?
Sheldon Drobny has written a horrible piece on The Huffington Post. At least the second half is horrible. I rather agree with the first half but the errors of the second half are so grievous that they more than negate the values of the first half.
He makes this amazing claim about the Torah:
Archeologically it has been determined that the Torah was written during the Babylonian exile of the Judeans in the 6th century B.C.E. It was not written by Moses during the Exodus. They were written by the priests of that period to form a basis for their control over the people who followed their faith.
Nonsense! Archeology has not and cannot show any such thing. To be sure, some, perhaps much, of the Torah was written during and after the exile. And he is right that Moses did not write it. But there are virtually no scholars, religious or secular, that think it was all written during the Exile. His whole statement on the origins of the Torah seems based on misunderstood hearsay rather than actually reading what scholars have said.
Then he turns his skills to the Christian New Testament:
The authorship of the New Testament has not been subjected to as much critical analysis. I have found an interesting piece about the subject that was written in 1979. It is called The True Authorship Of The New Testament by Abelard Reuchlin. His well documented work suggests that the New Testament was written by a Roman to control the rebellious Judeans that were so troublesome to the Romans.
What? The authorship of the various books of the Christian New Testament has been the subject of intense critical analysis for as long as there has been critical analysis. In fact, this statement seems to rest on the rather strange idea that the Christian New Testament is a single entity. I know nothing of Reuchlin's work but any work with a title containing the word "true" likely isn't. A lot of work on both the canon of the Christian New Testament and the individual books has been done since 1979 and as far as I know none of it points to the work of a Roman who was seeking to put down rebellious Judeans! Of course, nothing before 1979 pointed in that direction either.
A complete debunking of Drobny's piece would take more effort and space than his remarks deserve. I am discouraged that so many people find a collection of documents, the youngest of which is nearly two thousand year old, authoritive in the way they do. But the second half of Dorbny's essay is so deeply flawed that those who share my view should be among the first to repudiate the essay.
Update:
I took the link at the bottom of the Drobny's piece to look at the whole article. I should have done that before I wrote this post. The remainder of the article is a long quotation from Reuchlin's book. It's still nonsense!
Posted by Duane Smith at May 19, 2007 8:21 PM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |
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Comments
Dilettantes....
Posted by: Jim at May 20, 2007 5:09 AM
Did this mysterious Roman fellow also write the New Testament Apocrypha as well, and if so, why aren't they in the New Testament? The bit about Pliny the Younger cowriting Luke was hysterical...
Posted by: afarensis at May 20, 2007 4:29 PM
It is certainly nice to see an acknowledgement of the existence of anti-Bible dingbats coming from someone who isn't a fundamentalist.
Posted by: Looney at May 21, 2007 4:13 PM
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.
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