Latest Mopologetic Attack on Bokovoy

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_Kishkumen
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Latest Mopologetic Attack on Bokovoy

Post by _Kishkumen »

Dr. John Gee has decided to lob another grenade in the backyard of Dr. David Bokovoy over statements the latter has made on the issue of history and scripture. Dr. Bokovoy recognizes, and rightly so, that the literature of the Old Testament was not written as history, and so one ought not to expect the same kind of methods and aims of these texts that one does of modern, scholarly histories. Moreover, in the West we have a consciousness of the past informed by centuries of historical writing and scholarship within the Western tradition. Those who composed Genesis or Chronicles were not necessarily motivated or guided by the same concerns as Thucydides, Tacitus, or, to move forward in time many centuries, Howard Zinn.

The questions of how and why we discuss the past in the way that we do, or what the uses of the past are, are huge ones. Unfortunately, Gee brushes all of these concerns aside by assuring us that the ancient Hebrews had a consciousness about the past that was deeply historical in that the books of the Old Testament cite early books, writers, prophecies, and so forth. In doing so, Gee would have us believe that this simplistic observation is some kind of rebuttal of Bokovoy's position, when it is, in fact, a powerful testament to Gee's illiteracy or highly selective representation of the state of the scholarship on the issue of Israelite uses of the past in their sacred literature. It is also painfully apparent that when the Bible says something, Gee tends to take it at face value; one might even say that he is uncritical in his reading. At least, that is the impression he gives when he cites statement after statement of Biblical authors referring to earlier works as authorities for their positions.

Furthermore, he doesn't miss an opportunity to take a personal swipe at Dr. Bokovoy:

John Gee wrote:At this point, it is worth citing a much more experienced and distinguished scholar of the ancient Near East on the subject:


Sadly, what this shows, above all, is that Gee, being a novice on the topic of Hebrew literature (he is, after all, an Egyptologist), must rely on the logical fallacy of argument from authority and he encourages others to do likewise. "Don't trust that younger scholar Bokovoy; trust someone whom I, an alleged authority (albeit in a different field), tell you is more experienced and more distinguished!"

This after he has essentially shown us that he uncritically trusts all of the citations of Old Testament authors.

Then, Gee implies that Bokovoy has the wrong ideological perspective, when he cites another scholar:

John Gee wrote:Now, lets consider the opinion of another scholar of the ancient Near East from a very different ideological perspective:


But take a close look at the material he is quoting:

The [Egyptian] Middle Kingdom confronts us with a genuine and well-attested resuscitation of the past, albeit one which was consciously designed to serve the ends of the 12th Dynasty regime in power.


Interest in the past and its memorials increased. Sometimes it was genuine, if not academic, interest in the past for its own sake; mostly it involved piety attendant upon refurbishing ancestral monuments.


This is taken from a work of Egyptology written thirty years ago: Donald B. Redford, Pharaonic King-Lists, Annals and Day-Books: A Contribution to the Study of the Egyptian Sense of History [Missasauga, Ontario: Benben Publications, 1986], 334-35.

What is it telling us about the texts of the Old Testament exactly? Gee assures us that:

If there is academic interest in the past for its own sake in Egypt in the last half of the second millennium B.C. there is no specific reason to suppose that there could not be academic interest in the past next door in Israel in the first half of the first millennium B.C. And, as we have seen, the Bible provides evidence for that sort of academic interest.


This is stunningly poor reasoning. Gee's quotations concern the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 BC) and the New Kingdom (1550-1069 BC) of Egypt. The oldest texts of the Old Testament come from the eleventh or tenth centuries BC, at the very earliest, in a different language and from quite a different culture. But, Gee tells us that there is "no specific reason to suppose that there could not be academic interest in the past next door in Israel in the first half of the first millennium B.C."

What does all of this mean? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Gee has established exactly nothing apropos of anything in this post. Of course, he is unable to do so. These are serious and complicated issues. They cannot be untangled and explicated in the space of a blog rant. It is incomprehensible to me how anyone could presume to make an attempt with a straight face. Quoting a few passages from a scholarly book on earlier periods of Egyptian history to do so is ludicrous. His attempt to insult Bokovoy at the same time completely blows up in his face. The only person who comes out looking bad here is Gee.
Last edited by Guest on Sat Jan 17, 2015 5:31 am, edited 2 times in total.
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_sunstoned
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Re: Latest Mopologetic Attack on Bokovoy

Post by _sunstoned »

Excellent review Kish. Gee's jumps in logic are baffling.
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Re: Latest Mopologetic Attack on Bokovoy

Post by _Zadok »

Isn't this just a case of Gee and Peterson tag-teaming Bokovoy. I'm thinking it was Gee's turn in the ring. Whose turn is it tomorrow?
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_Everybody Wang Chung
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Re: Latest Mopologetic Attack on Bokovoy

Post by _Everybody Wang Chung »

Kishkumen,

For those of us too lazy to search, could you provide links to Gee and the David Bokovoy article he is trying to attack?
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_moksha
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Re: Latest Mopologetic Attack on Bokovoy

Post by _moksha »

Would other Egyptologists take Dr. Gee's position? What about Reformed Egyptologists?
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_Kishkumen
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Re: Latest Mopologetic Attack on Bokovoy

Post by _Kishkumen »

Everybody Wang Chung wrote:Kishkumen,

For those of us too lazy to search, could you provide links to Gee and the David Bokovoy article he is trying to attack?



Here is Gee's piece:

http://fornspollfira.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-israelite-sense-of-history.html

Here is the Bokovoy piece he is responding to:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davidbokovoy/2015/01/historicity-and-scripture/
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_moksha
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Re: Latest Mopologetic Attack on Bokovoy

Post by _moksha »



By the four canoptic jars, he has got Dr. Bokovoy on this point!
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_Gadianton
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Re: Latest Mopologetic Attack on Bokovoy

Post by _Gadianton »

Reverend,

An excellent find on your part, but I'm confused more than a little. You write,

The Rev wrote: Gee brushes all of these concerns aside by assuring us that the ancient Hebrews had a consciousness about the past that was deeply historical


Whoa! Hold on there Reverend, and please, help me, as an aging man not so quick as I once was, understand the Mopologist worldview better than I apparently do. Didn't Gee recently rate That Noble Dream by Peter Novick 3/3 stars? And isn't he the author of Abracadabra, Isaac, and Jacob?

Now as I understand it, and I approach the alter of a man as learned as yourself on the stuffy topic of history humbly and will suffer my stripes if I error, American Historiography according to Peter Novick, is afflicted with the air of objectivity where there is really nothing more than subjective narrative. And in his own work, Gee writes:

Gee wrote:"Properly conceived, science is not, and should never become, an intellectual partner of theology"-including Mormon theology. Looking at the same concern from the religious side, one can say that genuine faith can only be sustained outside the dimensions of historical and scientific evidence.


He further cites Kuhn to argue that Egyptology fails to live up to feigned objectivity. So we are to suppose that the Israelites, just as ourselves, were infected with the same obsession for representing the past with the precision of a German tool designer? I thought that the apologists, and Brandt Garner comes to mind here, typically argued just as Bokovoy -- for the sake of making a limited geography viable -- that the Book of Mormon was a narrative history that has little to do with the way the diseased American history profession understands history? Thus, numbers in battle were exaggerated etc., and it's only the beam in the eye of the critic -- the misguided obsession with the enlightenment -- that has a problem with this.
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_aussieguy55
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Re: Latest Mopologetic Attack on Bokovoy

Post by _aussieguy55 »

It was Israel Finkelstein, Israeli archaeologist who is his book The Bible Unearthed and David and Solomon show how much of the Exodus and conquest was myth. It did not happen. No walls around Jericho. He is not an amateur, he teaches in a university in Israel. If there was no Exodus, no Moses?
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Re: Latest Mopologetic Attack on Bokovoy

Post by _Chap »

aussieguy55 wrote:It was Israel Finkelstein, Israeli archaeologist who is his book The Bible Unearthed and David and Solomon show how much of the Exodus and conquest was myth. It did not happen. No walls around Jericho. He is not an amateur, he teaches in a university in Israel. If there was no Exodus, no Moses?


In matters of history, particularly ancient history, we must always be a little cautious about claims that someone has 'shown' something to be the case, as if he had constructed a proof of some mathematical theorem that had stood the test of colleague's criticism. Things don't really work like that. And judgements about the historicity of Exodus are different kinds of things to judgements about Samuel, Kings and Chronicles.

But it does not seem that Finkelstein's position is by any means an outlier. Here is an interesting summary from a review of a recent book in which Finkelstein and a colleague debate (you can look inside it on Amazon):

The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel (Archaeology and Biblical Studies) Paperback – October 24, 2007

by Israel Finkelstein (Author), Amihai Mazar (Author), Brian B. Schmidt (Editor)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Quest-Histori ... 1589832779

The Preface to this 2007 book states, “This book contains the papers that were delivered at … the Sixth Biennial Colloquium of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism in Detroit. The Institute is the intellectual arm of the worldwide movement of Secular Humanistic Judaism. Humanistic Judaism depends on science for the story of the Jewish people. With regard to the early history of the Jews it depends on archaeology. It was our great desire to bring together two of the most famous Israeli archaeologists [Israel Finkenstein and Amihai Mazar] … with the revelation of their recent discoveries. We were not looking for final answers to our questions. We were looking for believable answers.”

Finkelstein states in his first article reprinted, “In the early days of scholarship, the battle over the history of early Israel was fought between a conservative school of thought, including the classical biblical archaeologists, and the higher-critical scholars. A minimalist school, which rejected altogether the value of biblical history for the study of Canaan/Israel in the Iron Age, joined this debate in the 1990s. Without engaging in a detailed survey of the history of research, I wish first to deal with the pros and cons of these two camps---the conservative and the minimalist---and then to turn to my own point of view, representing what I would describe as the voice of the center.” (Pg. 9) He adds, “conservative scholars… reconstructed the history of Israel according to the biblical text. Archaeology played only a supportive role.” “Pg. 12) He points out, “The sheer number of name lists and details of royal administrative organization in the kingdom of Judah that are included in the Deuteronomistic History seem unnecessary for a purely mythical history. In any event, if they are all contrived and artificial, their coincidence with earlier realities is amazing… Much of the minimalist effort has been invested in the claim that David and Solomon… are not historical figures… This argument suffered a major blow when the Tel Dan basalt stele was discovered in the mid-1990s… Though fragmentary, this inscription offered a unique perspective on the turbulent politics of the region in the ninth century B.C.E…. This was the first time that the name ‘David’ was found in any contemporary source outside the Bible, in this case only about a century after his own supposed lifetime.” (Pg. 13-14)

He explains, “The third camp---to which I belong and which is positioned in the center, is far from either of the other two poles I have treated above. Scholars in this camp adopt a late-monarchic (or exilic) date for a large portion of the Pentateuch and much of the Deuteronomistic History. Hence, they acknowledge the value of these texts in preserving reliable evidence on the history of Israel in monarchic times. However, they see the stories… as highly ideological and adapted to the needs of the community during the time of their compilation. Hence, the most meaningful difference from the conservative camp is that the adherents of the centrist camp tend to read the texts in the reverse direction of their canonical order… This does not mean that the texts have no historical value. It does imply, however, in many cases… they provide us with far more historical information about the society and politics of the writers than about the times described in them.” (Pg. 14-15) Later, he adds, “Against the conservative or minimalist camps, I argue that much of the David and Solomon narrative in the Bible cannot be read as a straightforward historical testimony and that their kingdom was far more modest than traditionally perceived. At the same time, against the so-called minimalists, I contend that David and Solomon are historical figures---the founders of a dynasty based in the Judahite city of Jerusalem.” (Pg. 107-108)

He observes, “The Exilic redactor of the Deuteronomistic History flatly puts the responsibility for the fall of Jerusalem on [Manasseh’s] head. Archaeology has given us a completely different story---or at least a completely different perspective on Judahite affairs… Archaeology also shows us that Manasseh saved Judah from annihilation… The lesson here is clear and simple. If a period so close to the compilation of the text shows such a great gap between the heavy ideological construct of the biblical text and the more nuanced economic and social construct of the finds, one should be even more cautious when dealing with the description of earlier periods. The Deuteronomistic Historian could have been even more free to advance his ideology in those cases where the memory of the real events was increasingly more vague.” (Pg. 16) Later, he summarizes, “To make a long story short, tenth-century Jerusalem---the city of the time of David and Solomon---was no more than a small, remote highlands village, and not the exquisitely decorated capital of a great empire.” (Pg. 113)

Mazar states, “there are still debates and discussions concerning the definition of biblical archaeology as a concept and field of research… It was considered by many as a field loaded with theological and ideological agendas, reflecting the religious beliefs of Christianity and Judaism. We often hear that biblical archaeology’s main goal is ‘ to prove the Bible’ so to speak. William G. Dever preached for many years that we needed to redefine our field of research as ‘Syro-Palestinian Archaeology,’ thus relocating it in the wider context of Near Eastern archaeology unrelated to biblical studies. A few years ago, the American Schools of Oriental Research … decided … to change the name of its popular magazine, Biblical Archaeologist, to Near Eastern Archaeology. The change reflected the desire of American archaeologists working in our field to liberate the discipline from any religious framework.” (Pg. 32)

In a later article, Mazar admits, “No direct evidence on the Israelite sojourn in Egypt and the Exodus can be extracted from archaeology. The only evidence that one might seriously consider is circumstantial. The biblical story of the Hebrews living in the land of Goshen… can be understood in the context of the rich evidence for West Semitic populations living in this area through most of the second millennium B.C.E. … During the thirteenth century, Ramesses II… built a new city… in an area where large West Semitic populations lived for centuries. The story in the book of Exodus where the Hebrews are portrayed as building the city of Ramesses may reflect this huge building operation of the thirteenth century.” (Pg. 59) He adds, “It is now accepted by all that archaeology in fact contradicts the biblical account of the Israelite Conquest as a discreet historical event led to one leader. Most scholars of the last generation regard the Conquest narratives as a literary work of a much later time, designed to create a pan-Israelite, national sage.” (Pg. 62) He concludes, “To be sure, much of the biblical narrative concerning David and Solomon can be read as mere fiction and embellishment written by later authors. The stories of David’s conquests in Transjordan and Syria, Solomon’s wisdom, the visit of the Queen of Sheba, the magnitude and opulence of Solomon’s buildings, and so on, should not be read as historical accounts. Nonetheless, the total deconstruction of the United Monarchy as suggested by some current authors is, in my view, unacceptable.” (Pg. 138)
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