On Tue, 30 Nov 1999 20:08:05 +0000, glenn morton wrote:
[...]
SJ>[Whether the Hebrews brought
>>alphabetic writing with them to Egypt (ca. 1800 BC) or Moses learned
>>alphabetic writing in Pharoah's court (ca. 1400 BC), this fits the Biblical
>>picture of Moses writing the Pentateuch, which liberal criticism under the
>>influence of evolutionary presupposition formerly denied....
GM>They haven't denied it in over 50 years so what is the point of this jab?
The "point of this jab" is that there is an old saying which goes something
like this: "those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it!"
It is a *fact of history*, and therefore should never be forgotten, that
liberal critics, under the "influence of evolutionary presuppositions", which
included the claim that writing had not been invented then, denied that
Moses wrote the Pentateuch:
"Contrary to the contentions of Wellhausen, who maintained, against
archaeological evidence already available in his day, that writing did not
appear among the Hebrews until the early monarchy, they had the means of
producing written records at their disposal from very early times. From at
least 3100 B.C. in the ancient Near East, writing was regarded as one of
the high-water marks of culture and human progress. Writing may have
been developed originally by the Sumerians in order to meet their
administrative and economic needs, although there appear to have been
even earlier forms of written communication. At any rate, the cuneiform
Sumerian corpus of logograms, syllabic signs, and determinatives was
adopted and expanded by the Akkadians during the first half of the third
millennium B.C. as a vehicle for expressing their own Semitic language."
(Harrison R.K., "Introduction to the Old Testament", 1970, p201).
And lest Glenn says that there is nothing about "evolutionary
presuppositions" in the above, elsewhere Harrison says that Wellhausen
"occupied a position in the field of Old Testament criticism
analogous to that of Darwin in the area of biological science",
"This basic theory was given its classic expression in the work of Julius
Wellhausen (1844-1918), who studied theology under Ewald at the
University of Gottingen. A man of wide spiritual vision, Wellhausen
possessed a brilliant and penetrating mind... Wellhausen followed Vatke in
adopting the evolutionary concepts characteristic of the philosophy of
Hegel, and was also influenced to some extent by the views of Herder on
the Old Testament. He lived in an age when the intellectual climate was
dominated by theories of evolution, and, as Hahn has remarked, he
occupied a position in the field of Old Testament criticism analogous to
that of Darwin in the area of biological science." (Harrison R.K., 1970,
p201).
A similar evolutionary claim was made in New Testament studies that the
gospels were not written until the second century AD, long after Jesus
lived, and this was only given up comparatively recently. Both these claims
were based on "evolutionary presuppositions" but were able to be tested
against the evidence and were eventually found to be false.
Evolutionists like Glenn would like this all to be forgotten as though it had
never happened, so that's why they say things like: "They haven't denied it
in over 50 years so what is the point of this jab?"
The problem is that the same Darwinist evolutionary presuppositions that
were eventually discredited in Christian theology, because they were at
variance with the evidence, are still alive and well in biology, where they
are much harder to test.
But it is my expectation, that where it becomes possible to test biological
evolution against the facts, that the same pattern of disconfirmation of the
Darwinist pattern, and confirmation of the Biblical pattern, will occur. In
fact this is already happening:
"Palaeobiologists flocked to these scientific visions of a world in a constant
state of flux and admixture. But instead of finding the slow, smooth and
progressive changes Lyell and Darwin had expected, they saw in the fossil
records rapid bursts of change, new species appearing seemingly out of
nowhere and then remaining unchanged for millions of years-patterns
hauntingly reminiscent of creation." (Pagel M., "Happy accidents?", review
of "The Pattern of Evolution" by Niles Eldredge, W.H. Freeman 1999,
Nature, Vol 397, 25 February 1999, pp664-665)
Steve
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"In short, it is clear that Darwin's success was due to several common vices
as well as to several uncommon virtues. His gifts as an observer in all fields
concerned with the needs of a theory of evolution were extraordinary. His
industry and patience in collecting and editing his own observations as well
as other people's were hardly less remarkable. On the other hand, his ideas
were not, as he imagined, unusually original. He was able to put his ideas
across not so much because of his scientific integrity, but because of his
opportunism, his equivocation and his lack of historical sense. Though his
admirers will not like to believe it, he accomplished his revolution by
personal weakness and strategic talent more than by scientific virtue."
(Darlington C.D., "The Origin of Darwinism", Scientific American, Vol.
201, May 1959, p66)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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