superb job.
did you guys used william propp's
commentary on exodus, it came out only recently.
some suggestions : show the most clear
examples of dh, like - double sinai story or whatever. Because many passages
are very hard to assign to. because much assignment might be wrong but main block of dh will still stand. keep in mind that some people when arguing nit pick on minor points, and feel that if a minor point was wrong then whole dh is wrong.
also you might want to divide it by parshios.
also, i do not know if this is a good idea, to include H(holistic code) in your analysis and Hr touches. P come before and is changed by H. Kind of like Friedman split up Deutoronomy on Dtn, Dtr1, Dtr2.
for some reason friedman did not do it for priestly source - even though it would help resolve some many problems.
I've read a good deal about the DH and I'm generally sympathetic to it's general claim of multiple sources later combined, but I find that trying to piece those sources together a verse at a time is thoroughly unconvincing. I can't help but think that the whole thesis is built on nebulous foundations that could be entirely and conclusively disproven by one well preserved piece of parchment.
OP,
>foundations that could be entirely and conclusively disproven by one well preserved piece of parchment.
or could be entirely and conclusively proven by one well preserved piece of parchment.
you say toe-mae-toe, I say toe-mah-toe.
But I'm not so sure that's true. I think it would take more then one old shred of paper to prove or disprove anything. I think it would take quite a few... unless it was really old, easily dated, and really long.
did you guys used william propp's
commentary on exodus
Not yet. At this point, I am simply trying to identify what the DH is, not argue for or against it. While there is broad scholarly agreement over the source of most verses, there is some scholarly debate over the source of other verses. To avoid making this too complicated, I picked Friedman's version as the one to test, simply because it is well-regarded, commonly available, and covers the whole Torah.
I threw in Driver's source assignments simply for illustrative purposes. Little Foxling recommended Driver a while ago, and noted that he argued persuasively for the DH and against the traditional view (unlike many other more recent authors who assume the DH and then argue for which verse belongs to which source). I figured that any differences between Friedman and Driver might give an interesting illustration of the movement of biblical scholarship over the past 100 years, or at least point out which verse assignments might be controversial.
Once I finish listing the verse assignments for the rest of the Torah, my plan is to make two passes through the Torah.
In the first pass, I will go section by section and see how the DH and traditional explanation explains any discrepancies. Of course, many sections will raise no significant issue for either the DH or TMH. But where one does, I will look at both explanations and see how it holds up. And I will see how consistent the verse assignments compare with other examples of that source.
For example, I think I will start at the beginning with the two creation stories. There are many apparent inconsistencies between them. There are many traditional explanations for these apparent inconsistencies. I'll look at them and see how persuasive they are. The DH posits that the 1st story is J and the second is P. I look at whether breaking this into two separate stories resolves the conflicts. I'll also look at the language in both stories and see how consistent the J story is with other J stories and the P story is with other P stories.
In the second pass, I'll take a look at each characteristic of each source and examine all the places where it appears in the Torah to see how consistently it is used. For example, if word X appears 20 times in P and 1 time in J, that's a pretty good indicator of P. If word Y appears 30 times in P and no times anywhere else, that too is a pretty good indicator of P. And if words X and Y are unrelated both in content and context, then they are two independent indicators of P. But if they are closely related in context (like sacrifice and priest, for example), then the correlation between them can be explained by their meaning, not necessarily by separate sources.
That's the agenda. It's a slow long-term project, but it's worth doing comprehensively.
I think the most important question is this:
How do you do these cool graphs on blogger? 
FU,
"you say toe-mae-toe, I say toe-mah-toe."
No - my point is that the arguments in favor of the particulars are often based in large part or wholly on weak word associations and otherwise unjustified assumptions. Sure, could be true, but it could just as easily be a castle made of cards. The scholarship is not convincing.
It is in this sense that I mean just one piece of real evidence, say a piece of parchment, could totally rock established hypotheses.
How do you do these cool graphs on blogger?
I used a spreadsheet to get the data in place. I then saved it as an HTML file. It stored as a table.
I then edited the HTML file in an HTML editor and stripped out all the extra spaces, etc.
Blogger has a problem rendering tables. But I googled around and found a fix:
http://mlawire.blogspot.com/2007...in-
blogger.html
H=Holiness, not holistic code.
This is frustrating... I was hoping the pasuk about G-d introducing himself to Moshe would be more divided and explained. We get 4 names of G-d in one pasuk...
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