[Ordinarily I do not respond the statements that have already been responded
to when someone is responding to that response. (Huh?) But I couldn't
resist in this case.]
"So? I don't think you would believe the Bible if absolutely nothing in the
OT were verified. If there were no Hittites, no Babylonians, no Egyptians,
no Israelites, no Jerusalem etc. Why would you then believe an otherwise
false book? Fideism? Under those circumstances, you would, of course, think
it fiction and then you too would use the wedge approach. Do you believe in
Middle Earth and hobbits? Of course not. There is no physical evidence of
their existence. You have used the wedge approach on the Rings Trilogy. But
if you say, "Hey Tolkein wrote that book I know it is fiction.' OK, what
about Beowulf? We don't really know who composed that story and there is no
evidence of Grindel so the application applies."
Except if you applied the wedge application in this case, you would end up
concluding that Beowulf never existed, when in reality there is strong
documentary and archaeological evidence that such a man really existed. So
be careful how you apply the wedge.
In fact, this is a perfect example of what I believe happened when J and E
wrote their respective versions of Genesis-Kings (sans Ruth). The writers
of Beowulf didn't want to just write about the bare history of a Geatan
king, so they livened it up a bit. They added his fight with Grendel and
his mother at the beginning of his life to make him great, then added the
fight with the dragon so that he could go out with style. Like the people
who wrote the script for the John Wayne movie "Alamo", the writers were less
concerned with historical accuracy than they were with telling a rousing
good story. J and E had loftier goals, but they also wanted to tell an
interesting story.
Kevin L. O'Brien