I am gratified that the noble Reverend has taken the time to respond in kind to my rather off-topic impressions of the Rollston blogpost. In general, I am in agreement, but I'm approaching it as someone who is interested in these kinds of topics but who is not familiar with this particular issue. I thought Rollston was going to explain why Dershowitz is wrong, but he doesn't even tell us what Dershowitz's claim is. He catalogues the circumstantial evidence that the Shapira Straps (which I assume are small bits of text, not a long narrative) is a forgery, but all of that is immaterial from the standpoint of philology and epigraphy. The categorical denial of antiquity on the grounds the originals are gone was particularly jarring, and all that means is that you can't approach the question by empirical means, let alone settle it. The "dramatic claims require dramatic evidence" cliché is just not satisfying as a response to me. Let's just remove the "dramatic" import of the claims and focus on the evidence we do have, letting the implications unfold as they will. And while I understand Rollston only has so much time and that he must have good reasons for his view, the fact remains not only that a peer-reviewed article by a competent scholar was a published but that he chose to write this non-response. As I say, I am now curious about this and will try to read the Dershowitz article and Rollston's when it comes out. This should hinge on the philology. On the surface, this reminds me somewhat of the controversy around the Praeneste Fibula, where similar kinds of circumstantial facts about shady dealings on the antiquities market were the main evidence against its antiquity, which is absurd (who didn't have to deal with shady grave-robbers at that time?!). Of course in that case we have the object and the matter is settled as far as I know: it is ancient.
Kishkumen wrote: ↑Sat Mar 13, 2021 4:38 pm
My guess is that what we are asking is this: what do we know now that we did not know then, that would lead us to overturn former conclusions that this is a forgery? Maybe you are right. Perhaps we know so much more about earlier Hebrew epigraphy that past judgments about the Shapira Strips can be overturned. I would be surprised to see an epigrapher who apparently knows his subject telling us that it simply cannot be done when it is obvious to everyone that it can.
A good question that Rollston could have answered in a short sentence or two rather than the long paragraphs building the hedge around the sacred orthodoxy that the Book of Deuteronomy was forged by someone at the court of Josiah, which is so obviously his motivation. There have been new inscriptions and texts discovered in the past century, certainly, so maybe Dershowitz adduces them in arguments—or maybe he avoids them. It is not clear from Rollston's blogpost. He does reference some other finds and the "eerie" similarities to some other forgeries, so I am genuinely curious what he sees and am sure he will explain that when he published an article. I'm just responding to what he has posted.
Yes, and there is only so much time in the day, so much time in a life, to spend watching broken clocks. My overall feeling is that if Dershowitz wants to watch broken clocks, then that is his business. At the same time, Rollston is not obliged to agree that it is a worthwhile enterprise.
True, it's just the he wrote the response to Dershowitz. If it's not worth taking seriously, I am left to wonder why he takes it so seriously for several paragraphs which have should have nothing to do with the essential question: does the philology support authenticity or not? If not, one can say so quite quickly. Indeed, I think the comment made on his blog that I referenced does it quite well: you've got post exilic morphology in the text, so it can't be pre-exilic by definition. If Dershowitz doesn't address that problem convincingly, I don't know what the point of the response should be in terms of the philology. It's not pre-exilic!
My suspicion is that this is a small volley in the culture war academics have been fighting against against those who don't know or care about the correct opinion that these straight-A students have so generously constructed for the rest of the kids in the class:
I would have liked to have integrated all of these references into this blog post, but since the New York Times article appeared today, and I wanted to get this post up rapidly, I am just including these as an addendum at the bottom of this blog post.
And that's quite an addendum to a blogpost!
although I suspect some text scholars will find Idan Dershowitz’s proposal alluring, especially since it seems to “confirm” the things some of them have believed about the textual transmission of Deuteronomy in its earliest forms.
Translation: Oh. My. God. Someone might use this to support their belief that Moses wrote the Book of Deuteronomy. We can't have that happen! I'm so glad we have the epigraphic fact-checker to put this candle out before it ignites a blaze of fundamentalism across the New York Times readership.
I think in the case of the Book of Mormon it is not an overstatement to say that, barring some unforeseen corroborating discovery, the lack of the plates leaves the question of the Book of Mormon's authenticity as an ancient text comfortably in the category of forgery.
Yes, and I think that is why Jenkins's exchange with Hamblin was so devastating: just give us one corroborating piece of material evidence and we can go from there. But they've got nothing beyond their flimsy contraption of anachronistic and contradictory parallels that are held together by their very questionable presuppositions—and even that glue lacks sufficient consistency to keep it together.
EDIT: my original suspicion is wrong. I'm not sure exactly who or what Rollston is referring to, but I don't think that the Shapira Strips could lead to a fundamentalist reading.