The various schools of Biblical Criticism, also called Historical
Criticism, are based on a number of assumptions:
1.
There is no God, gods or goddesses.
2.
Consequently, there is no
possibility of any divine communication with mankind.
3.
There is no such thing as divine prophecy of future events. Any text accurately predicting a future event
was written after the event.
4.
Biblical ‘facts’ are not to be trusted unless corroborated by outside
sources and archaeology.
5.
Outside of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, the rest of the Fertile
Crescent, the lands between these two cornerstones of Ancient World
civilization, were backwaters with primitive and uneducated peoples – incapable
of conceiving monotheism or alphabet writing.
6.
The Chumash is a compilation of four
(or more) separate themes combined into a ‘single text’ by a Great Redactor sometime
in the Second Temple era. The separate
pieces cover: myths and folklore about the creation of the world and early
human history; a history of the Jews from Abraham to crossing the Jordan;
priestly sacrifice rules and regulations; and a synoptic, last volume, Deuteronomy (Devarim in
Hebrew)which recaps the time from the Enslavement in Egypt and Exodus to Moses
last days.
7.
The Chumash melds together traditions from two different religions
as evidenced by the use of two distinctly different names for the divine -- Elohim
(a plural) and the 4 letter name YHVH.
While points #1 and #2
are often not explicitly stated, the rest are well attested.
And put simply, any
text referring to “the word of God” (or gods) are seen as human documents
and pious frauds.
___________________________________
See for example Wikipedia on
Julius Wellhausen (1844 –1918) and biblical criticism
No comments:
Post a Comment