[Gryphon Hall]

littlemanpoet,
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I am a fan of LotR. Recently, when I was telling of the wonders of Tolkien's Middle Earth to a friend of mine, he promptly declared that Middle Earth was a boring world, that Tolkien was a boring writer, and that Tolkien's style was boring. [img]smilies/mad.gif[/img] Why, I asked. A friend of his told him. Has he actually read LotR? No, he said. But I know that Terry Brooks is better, because I read him. He's tops!

You said that

[o]ther scholars will point out quite as demonstratively that it "should be obvious to anybody with any sense" (quoting Thomas Cahill here) that the Pentateuch is a compilation of numerous writings from numerous periods of time, organized for the best and most useful presentation.

Estel the Descender asked you whether you actually read the apocryphal gospel according to Thomas (in order to challenge your view that the present canon was arbitrarily put together and it could have either been this or that gospel thrown in). Now, I am asking you the same sort of question: Have you actually read the entire Pentateuch through? Or are you just taking this Cahill guy's word for it (probably because he is some hot-shot professor or something). Have you? "Other scholars" will point it out "quite as demonstratively"? Really? [img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img]

So, in the end, we come back to the leap of faith . . .

Whose leap of faith? Yours, Estel's or those scholars who, without any real solid historical or documentary evidence, do find it necessary to cast aspersions on the faith of, ahem, "fundamentalists" and "triumphalists" (whatever those mean [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]) by pointing out that their Bible is

. . . riddled with errors . . .

and, what, "a collection of oral traditions" and "numerous writings from numerous periods of time, organized for the best and most useful presentation"? All these assertions about how wrong the traditionalists are when, then they say that the Pentateuch may have been this way or may have been written by these people (I've been doing a little reading myself, unless you read different books). They don't really know, do they? Like when some scholars say that it really was impossible for Shakespeare to have written all that he did because his experience was limited; that it was really Francis Bacon.

[img]smilies/eek.gif[/img] How would it sound like if someday someone said that the LotR and the Silmarillon can't have been written by Tolkien, Sindarin and Quenya can't have been invented by him either, and that all of that world was merely compiled together from Nordic and other sources? And they would point out the numerous "errors" in the creation of Middle Earth, too. That, despite all the documentary and historical evidence showing that Tolkien did all by himself.

C'mon, what errors in the Pentateuch? Just taking their word for it again? What contextual evidence (I'm not even asking for other textual, historical or documentary evidence, just the stylistic variations as evidence in the Pentateuch itself, if it really was written by numerous sources).

[img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img] My opinion: What evidence? Those admissible in a court of law, with reason: witnesses, documentary proof, historical evidence. Just because lawyers nowadays (or at least on television) misuse the system doesn't mean that proof is no longer relevant. The Pentateuch is a very cohesive work (that is, when I read it). I also read some of the Qu'ran, which was collected by "numerous sources" based on the words of Mohammed; just because most of the stories can also be seen from the Bible doesn't mean that Mohammed merely copied it from the other scriptures. Just because the description of Meduseld and Edoras are similar to some descriptions in Beowulf doesn't mean Tolkien merely copied from that poem (Tolkien is famous for changing the way people read Beowulf because of his literary criticism of it; he certainly was in the position to imitate Beowulf, but he didn't). Same goes for the Bible. How do we know that the Pentateuch was not compiled by Moses or even actually written by him?

If ever those other scholars were put on the witness stand, you're right, all they would do, all they can do, is interpret all the existing evidence in their light.

And nothing more. [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

Read the Pentateuch yourself. "Don't take my word for it." I find it "a tad cocky" to suppose that it "'should be obvious to anybody with any sense' . . . that the Pentateuch is a compilation of numerous writings from numerous periods of time, organized for the best and most useful presentation" (therefore eliminating all who disagree with Cahill from that group of people with sense).

I was able to get that biased friend of mine mentioned above to read The Hobbit. He finished it, but criticized Tolkien for "taking two pages to describe a mountain" but not enough describing the fight scenes. He said that Tolkien was "over-rated." Hmmmmm . . . Was he right? His opinion is every bit as legitimate as mine; but was he right?

I HOPE that I have not written anything down that may cause this thread to close but things just have to be said.

Neither do I.

If God does exist, if he really was the one who wrote the Bible (through numerous sources), think of it, if he really is out there, and someone is saying he DID NOT WRITE his book? Right. And the Lord of the Rings were really compiled by the Inklings.
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[ June 30, 2002: Message edited by: Gryphon Hall ]