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Originally Posted by Calgaryborn
Thought you would chime in with a little more of your unbelief?
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My "unbelief"??? What makes you presume a lack of belief on my part, and in what specifically? Don't fret. I plan to still get to the rest of your post—but it will take a little time, and I only have a minute here and there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Calgaryborn
Without other Hebrew texts of the same dating to compare it would be irresponsible to conclude that these books lie about who and when they were written.
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Who said anything about "lying"? Surely with all your own biblical knowledge even you recognize that the majority of the Old Testament books are anonymous.
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Originally Posted by Calgaryborn
You don't have that. You have theories that you chose to hold as facts.
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Partly true. There aren't many, but there are some Hebrew inscriptions that date to the classical period that are fairly reliable for dating, but the fact that there is NO epigraphic evidence of any kind in the region from before 1000 B.C.E. does nothing to help your cause at all.
*EDIT* It should furthermore be noted that the body of evidence for scribal practices and literacy in the Syro-Phoenician region is progressively growing as new archeological discoveries are unearthed and published. We usually hear preliminary reports about these things at the annual meeting of the
Society of Biblical Literature, and while the record is incomplete, it generally fairly positively supports the late dating for most of the biblical texts.