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])
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)