Wed Feb 12 13:11:53 1997
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Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 12:10:30 -0600 (CST)
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From: mshulman@ix.netcom.com (Moshe Shulman)
Subject: Re: Equidistant letters
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I have read with interest/amusement the discussion of ELS here. Usually these
discussions divide between 'Biblical scholars' on one side who discount the
results totally and 'religious' people on the other who use it to support all
manner of beliefs. It is quite rare that anyone will appear who has the
background in Mathematics to insert some sense into these discussions. First,
as of yet from all the results, which are non-trivial, the implications are
not certain. For example, does it prove or disprove DH? The answer is really
we don't know. Most Biblical scholars will discount it immediatly on the
assumption that it does (and hence must be quackery). However the facts are
the opposite. If the results would disprove DH, then the believers in DH would
be relegated to a classification similar to the flat earth society.
As far as I know there has yet to be any analysis as to whether these results
would span through sections the DH assigns to P and J or any other divisions.
Should such a result exist, then we would have to look upon it much as we look
on Carbon 14 dating of manuscripts and other scientific data. Scientific data
represents facts, theories must conform to the facts, facts are not rejected
because they do not conform to theory. (Anyone who wants to argue the opposite
would be advised to look into the history of Ptolemian astronomy.) The only
study I have seen that has a textual significance was one dealing with a few
verses in Leveticus here the MT and Samaritan texts differ. The MT had a
significant result that was not found in the Samaritan.
With that said, we have to look at it at this time as follows. It does seem to
indicate that the MT is superior (something that most have agreed with
anyway), and also that the DH may not be a good explanation of the present
text. One should neither discount, nor overplay the results.
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