Joshua Berman on the Fallacies of Some Modern Practitioners of Higher Criticism

While I embrace Higher Criticism as a useful tool, many who employ such a method, due to an acceptance of full-blown naturalism, often exaggerate the “problems” within the text of the Old Testament. Joshua Berman has discussed some of the logical fallacies many higher critics engage in. Consider the following:

Creating false doublets and false dichotomies:

. . . the two-source theory is foisted upon the text; it produces dichotomies and doublets that are of its own creation and not inherent in the text. One such “imaginary” difficulty and contrived doublet concerns the source of the deluge. For source critics, the P version claims that God allowed the waters of the depths and the heavens to flood the earth (Gen. 7:11; 8:2). The difference and distinction between the two founts of the deluge are presented as if they are mutually exclusive.

Logically, of course, there is no reason why the deluge could not have emanated from both rainclouds and heavenly and earthly wellsprings. There is no contradiction between the two. Moreover, the notion of divine deluge stemming from these two sources is a common trope. In fact, consider the sources of the deluge in the Mesopotamian account of the flood story, which is caused both by rainfall and opened dikes:

I gazed upon the appearance of the storm,
The storm was rightful to behold! . . .
A black cloud rose up from the horizon,
Inside [the cloud] was thundering . . .
Erregal tore out the dike posts,
Ninurta came and brought with him the dikes. (Tablet XI of the Gilgamesh Epic [XI:98-103])

Divine deluges that stem from both from cloud rain and from the well springs of the earth are a familiar trope in the Tanakh (Ps. 77:17-18; Prov. 3:20). Moreover, the Genesis Flood account mentions these two founts together in two places (Gen. 7:11-12; 8:2). However, were source critics to adopt a reading whereby the Genesis Flood derived both from cloud rain and from other wellsprings together, it would no longer be possible to bisect the text into two accounts. Source critics must ignore the attested trope in the Mesopotamian version of the flood story and the other biblical source of divine deluge from rain and from other well-springs, so that each of the putative versions of the story will have a flood unto itself. When critics separate the founts of the deluge, they do so not because the theory solves a problem in the text; rather a problem in the theory gives rise to an unnecessary and forced distinction in the text. (Joshua Berman, Ani Maamin: Biblical Criticism, Historical Truth, and the Thirteen Principles of Faith [Jerusalem and New Milford, Conn.: Maggid Books, 2020], 112-13)

Non-sequiturs

Consider the Masoretic Text’s version of Genesis 7:15-16: “[The animals] came unto Noah, unto the ark, two by two, from all of the living creatures. They were male and female of all creatures, as Elokim had commanded him. And Hashem closed him in.” The final phrase of verse 16, “And Hashem closed him in,” follows directly from the previous elements in verses 13-16. Noah and his family enters the ark, the animals enter the ark, and, to conclude, Hashem “shuts the hatch” as it were, and closes Noah in. However, in the putative non-P source, the following text is hypothesized: “(7:10) And after seven days, the waters of the deluge were on the earth. (7:12) The rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights” (7:16b) and Hashem shut him in.” Source critics splice the text in this fashion because verse 16b refers to God as Hashem, and thus must be assigned to the non-P source, which they reckon refers to God exclusively as Hashem. However, this reading is deficient on two grounds. In the first place, it creates a non-sequitur as it implies that it had been raining already for forty days and forty nights before God enclosed the ark (Note that the vayiktol form of the verb vayisgor, cannot have the connotation of the past perfect, “had closed in”)! Secondly, it removes verse 16b, the notice of God shutting in Noah, from the simple context of the verses in which it is organically found in the Genesis text, following the embarking of Noah, his family, and the animals. (Ibid., 113-14; note: “Hashem” [the name] is the term used by modern Jews as a substitute for uttering/writing YHWH)

Applying modern literary expectations to ancient texts

Berman has the following engaging footnote:

A further methodological flaw of source criticism is worthy of note here. Source critics believe that simply by looking at the text they can identify the inconsistencies and fissures that are the keys to recovering and recreating the putative source of the Torah. They assume that our notions of literary unity and what constitutes and inconsistency in the text are universal and obvious. But they are not. Consider the biblical criticism of one of Islam’s most celebrated theologians, Ibn Hazm the Andalusian, who lived in Cordoba in the eleventh century. He hated Jews and hated Judaism, writing a one-hundred-page critique of Genesis in which he demonstrated that it could not possibly have been written by Moses alone and must have had multiple authors, owing to all of the inconsistencies in it. Although Ibn Hazm identifies many of the inconsistencies flagged by modern scholars, repetitions do not bother him in the least. Two accounts of Creation, two times Noah boards, the arks, etc.—these are textual phenomena that Ibn Hazm never flags as signs of multiple authorship. It is no coincidence; medieval Islamic literature revels and delights in repetition of all sorts. From this we can clearly see that canons of literary unity are not universal but culturally dependent. Our modern, Western notions of consistency are actually those of Aristotle. Can we be certain that the authors of biblical Israel shared our Aristotelian notions of what a consistent text looks like? Put differently, the burden of proof falls upon source critics to demonstrate that they are truly bear of all the keys necessary to identify inconsistencies in the ancient text. (Ibid., 118-19 n. 11)