Big Think

Eric Djebe on February 6, 2008, 7:52 AM

How do you get that number (40)? What about the parts which were worked over by several persons? E.g. you can see by naked eye observation that the account of the passage through the Red Sea contains 2 layers of storywriting.

Or take the book of Job where suddenly this Elihu pops out of nowhere, gives a long rambling speech and dissappears into nowhere again, without a trace in the final scene of Jobs friends asking him to sacrifice for them. The quality of that speech is quite manifestly much lower then that of the foregoing discussion, just take his idea that God loses trace of what happens in the world because of a delayed feedback by the angels. That information is quite a howler if you imagine it to be inspired directly from God.

That passage was later added by someone else, not only science tells us so but plain sense. So, nobody knows exactly how many people worked just how on the bible. And that fuzzes up the picture of direct inspiration by God a bit.

Eric Djebe on February 6, 2008, 12:52 PM

How do you get that number (40)? What about the parts which were worked over by several persons? E.g. you can see by naked eye observation that the account of the passage through the Red Sea contains 2 layers of storywriting.

Or take the book of Job where suddenly this Elihu pops out of nowhere, gives a long rambling speech and dissappears into nowhere again, without a trace in the final scene of Jobs friends asking him to sacrifice for them. The quality of that speech is quite manifestly much lower then that of the foregoing discussion, just take his idea that God loses trace of what happens in the world because of a delayed feedback by the angels. That information is quite a howler if you imagine it to be inspired directly from God.

That passage was later added by someone else, not only science tells us so but plain sense. So, nobody knows exactly how many people worked just how on the bible. And that fuzzes up the picture of direct inspiration by God a bit.

Frank Hannan on February 13, 2008, 10:59 AM

There are parts of the Bible that don't appear before 1000 AD.
40 people? He just makes stuff up. Like the Bible itself: made up stuff.

Frank Hannan on February 13, 2008, 3:59 PM

There are parts of the Bible that don’t appear before 1000 AD.
40 people? He just makes stuff up. Like the Bible itself: made up stuff.

Musycks on March 10, 2008, 9:56 PM

This is why people like Richard Dawkins refuse to debate people like Rick… the cretinous nature of their utterances is breathtaking… and he's the 'expert'!
Dear me… Rick, how can a book full of such contradictory nonsense, be written by God… unless he is a blithering idiot? or unless it was written by a lot of barely literate men, struggling with primitve superstitious ways of understanding their environment, and trying to codify and cope with their existence, in trying to find dignity and meaning? (as well as protect their temporal interests) maybe that's why it's such a rancid stew of racist, venal, misogynistic tosh, leavened with the odd dash of light and humanity… how un-god like? but how human? now there's an idea.

Musycks on March 11, 2008, 1:56 AM

This is why people like Richard Dawkins refuse to debate people like Rick… the cretinous nature of their utterances is breathtaking… and he’s the ‘expert’!
Dear me… Rick, how can a book full of such contradictory nonsense, be written by God… unless he is a blithering idiot? or unless it was written by a lot of barely literate men, struggling with primitve superstitious ways of understanding their environment, and trying to codify and cope with their existence, in trying to find dignity and meaning? (as well as protect their temporal interests) maybe that’s why it’s such a rancid stew of racist, venal, misogynistic tosh, leavened with the odd dash of light and humanity… how un-god like? but how human? now there’s an idea.