Month: December 2015

#314. Is Balaam responsible for the Baal Peor apostasy OR not? (Num 31:16; Rev 2:14 vs Num 22-24, 25:1-19)

Numbers 31:16 is the only verse in the Hebrew Bible that attributes the apostasy of Baal Peor to Balaam’s doing. Indeed, we have already seen in an earlier contradiction (#297-298) how the later Priestly writer inserted the Midianites into a solely Moabite affair in their retelling of the earlier Yahwist version of the Baal Peor incident (Num 25:1-5). Numbers 31:16, however, presents another contradictory layer—that it was Balaam’s doing, that itRead More

#313. Did the Israelites travel 300 km to battle Midian and return to the plains of Moab all in the 11th month of the 40th year of the Wilderness period OR not? (Num 31:1-12 vs Deut 2-3)

In my Introduction to Numbers 21, I laid out the chronological and geographical problems created when the variant traditions represented in this chapter were stitched together and a later chronology and wilderness itinerary were superimposed upon it by its editors (see #268 for a visual diagram of this). To some extent Numbers 31 recalls many of these same chronological and geographical discrepancies. Numbers 31 recounts how the Israelites, commanded by Yahweh, are to avengeRead More

Being Honest to the Texts of the Bible (Part 2b)

Continued from Being Honest to the Bible’s Texts (Part 2a). 2. The Documentary Hypothesis: What is a Hypothesis? Some readers here (one in particular with a new alias) rather than commenting on my posts are caught up in a game of disclosing and then responding to their own assumptions about the intended aims of my work and the aims and methods of biblical scholarship in general by referencing misleading and inaccurateRead More

Being Honest to the Texts of the Bible (Part 2a)

In reading the most recent slew of comments to my original post (Being Honest to the Texts of the Bible, Theirs Authors, and Their Beliefs), many of which fail to address or grapple with the specific points raised in that post, I’ve decided to reply in the form of yet another post that yet again attempts to clarify the objectives of this website specifically, and of biblical scholarship in general. I’dRead More