Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Documentary Hypothesis Contest extended Message-ID: Date: 12 Mar 91 09:02:22 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia Lines: 216 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Last year, we had some people on the net professing to believe that there are methods which scholars can use to *reliably* decompile the Torah into several strands (J, E, P, D, and their subdivisions). I claimed that the Wellhausen school's approach can fairly be described as "prescientific" (it is not without interest that the Documentary Hypothesis crowd focus on the kinds of features that modern authorship analytic techniques ignore and ignore the kinds of features that the statistically based techniques focus on), and proposed that we use the net to *TEST* the question. If there is a method for decompiling Biblical documents which deserves the adjective "scientific", then it must be one which is spelled out clearly enough that anyone knowing the language and culture can do it. Given that the Jews themselves when translating the Tanakh into English use those dreaded footnotes "meaning of Hebrew not known" and that the culture is remote in time and too often alien in practice, I simply cannot believe that such a method could work for decompiling Biblical documents and not work for English documents. Now, someone last year claimed that the Flood story is two strands scrambled together and we ought to expect that, and someone claimed that the Noah story is two strands scrambled together and it is a big surprise, but no-one defending the Documentary Hypothesis claimed that the Flood story is _not_ composite, and no-one defending that hypothesis claimed that it is incapable of unscrambling such a composite text. I therefore produced a synthetic text of just such a kind, described clearly what the two authors were like and provided known samples (all of which information is totally lacking for the Flood story), and posted it to soc.religion.christian as a contest. I said the contest would close on the 28th of February and that I would wait 3 weeks before posting the results. I'm posting a week early because I have received *NO* entries in this contest. That's right, NO-ONE had sufficient confidence in the Documentary Hypothesis to risk exposing its failure when applied to modern English. Just in case there has been a mail strike or something like that, I'm extending the contest further. I'll accept entries postmarked up to 21 March 1991, and I'll report the results--if any--after Easter. I am surprised and disappointed that no-one at all was willing to put their belief in the DH to the test, even though I made it clear that the most this particular test could do is show that entrants do not understand the DH well enough to use it to unscramble something like the Flood story. Let me say it explicitly: even if I could prove that the DH cannot handle the Flood story, that would not cast much doubt on J,E,P,D elsewhere. What it _would_ be is the beginning of rational enquiry. I really hoped that we might make a _start_ on rational examination of the DH, and the best way I know to do that is to perform experiments. The Documentary Hypothesis is not religion or theology; it is a _literary_ hypothesis, and the method is as subject to experimental (in)validation as any other literary analytic method. In order to encourage those who believe in the Documentary Hypothesis to summon up their intellectual courage, I'll award the US$100 prize to the first person to get 10 or more of the 14 sentences right. Here's the contest again, with dates and prize rule amended. ---------------------------------------------------------------- We have recently had two people affirm in this newsgroup that "the Documentary Hypothesis" _does_ take the story of Noah to be an interweaving of two sources. One poster says that this is a surprise even to the DH, the other says that it is only to be expected. Whoever is right, the significant fact is that we do have affirmations that the DH does partition that specific story. To cast doubt on the partitioning of one story is not to demonstrate that the methods fail _everywhere_, not at all. What I want to accomplish with this challenge is to cast doubt on the partitioning of the Noah story, that alone. Let's face it, not one of the characteristics alleged to demonstrate the composite nature of the Noah story shows that the redactor of the present text (and remember that the DH presupposes a LATE redaction) couldn't find those characteristics in his source. WE do, after all! If the author of the Book of Jubilees could find a composite source (Genesis), why should we assume that the sources of Genesis were "pure"? Anyrate, here's the challenge. Pay attention, because there is MONEY in it. (I have always wanted to play Randi, and the DH school make an excellent Geller.) I have constructed a composite text. The sentences are numbered. Each of the sentences comes in its entirety from one of two sources. You are told some of the characteristics of the authors, and given two samples. The task is to assign the sentences correctly to the sources. Send your hypotheses to me by *paper* mail (so that I can check the postmark). If anyone gets 10 or more sentences right, I'll send a cheque for USA$100 to the person named in the correct letter with the earliest postmark. If noone gets all the sentences right, I'll send a cheque for USA$10 to the person named in the letter with the earliest postmark among the letters with the highest number of correct sentences. I'll accept letters postmarked up to and including 21 March 1991, and I'll wait a further three weeks before reporting the results here and posting any cheque. Electronic mail will not be accepted. One thing. I have provided enough clues that a good librarian should be able to find the original sources without much trouble. I am trusting you to play the game by the rules. We do not have access to the original sources of the Torah. You have to infer the answers from the material in this posting ONLY. You don't have as much sample text to base your partition on as there appears to be in the case of Genesis. However, that's not really so, because you have one thing which the critics do not have, and that is CERTAINTY that the sample I say comes from A really does come entirely from A and that the sample I say comes from B really does come entirely from B. I have printed a copy of this message and another copy with the sentences lettered to say which source they come from (and provided page numbers) and gave them to a friend who is not a Christian, so that he could keep me honest. Source A Nationality: American Sex: Male Profession: Neurologist Date: earliest version, 1982 Sample: Abe Baker was a clinician who shot from the hip. During a typical teaching session, one of my fellow first-year residents was presenting a patient who had a confusional psychosis. After telling Abe about the entire medical history of this patient and the results of the physical examination, this poor, unsuspecting resident then began to recount the patient's psychiatric history. Abe would have none of it. He exploded. A psychiatric history is a waste of time, he said. No neurologist should ever take one. Everybody has psychiatric problems. The whole world is crazy, so are all its inhabitants. The question is not if a patient has a psychiatric problem. The question is whether the pation has a neurological problem that can account for his or her behaviour. That is a neurologic question and has to be evaluated on neurologic grounds, not on psychiatric ones. A psychiatric history is irrelevant. Source B Nationality: British Sex: Female Profession: Historian of Medicine Date: 1983 Sample: The Oedipus complex now became the central point of Freud's theories. The first published mention of Oedipal motivation occurs in "The Interpretation of Dreams", published three years later. "It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our Father. Our dreams convince us that this is so." The story of Oedipus and his destiny "moves us only because it might have been ours--because the oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon him," he declared. Oedipal conflicts now replaced seduction as the origin of the neuroses. Wittels tells us that when Freud had brought a patient to a successful conclusion, he used to show the patient an engraving after a painting by Ingres, "Oedipus and the Sphinx". Many years later Freud enlarged on the Oedipus theory with an excursion into anthropology in "Totem and Taboo" (1912-1913) when he traced the beginnings of religion to the "father of the primal horde". HERE IS THE COMPOSITE TEXT. Each numbered sentence comes either entirely from A or entirely from B. The challenge is to work out which. YOU could win USA$100! 1. Freud's early experiments with cocaine and his own use of the newly synthesized drug as a medication in the years 1884 to 1887 is known from his early papers and appears in all his biographies. 2. Sigmund Freud's original interest in cocaine was the direct result of the suggestion that cocaine might have a specific therapeutic use in the treatment of addiction. 3. By 1883, Freud had become a close friend of another young medical scientist, Ernst von Fleischl. 4. There is no question that Fleischl was addicted to morphine. 5. The cost of the drug was prohibitive, but nevertheless Freud ordered some from the house of Merck. 6. Freud obtained a shipment of cocaine from Eli Merck in the United States in the hope that he could use it to cure his friend and colleague. 7. Clutching at the new drug "like a drowning man," within a few days Fleischl was taking it regularly. 8. After several months of administering cocaine to Fleischl and taking it himself, Freud wrote the first of his five articles on coca. 9. This article, entitled "Ueber Coca", was a glowing report that suggested seven successful therapeutic applications for coca. 10. Having been witness to the terrible scenes of von Fleischl's severe cocaine intoxication, knowing that von Fleischl was still taking morphine as well as cocaine, and having warned his fiancee of acquiring the habit, Freud allows his 1885 paper to go forward for publication. 11. In print, Freud always maintained that cocaine was a wonder drug, and that, by itself, it was not addicting. 12. Freud continued to hold that cocaine was not addicting, stating in his fifth and final paper on cocaine, published in 1887, that "cocaine has claimed no victim who has not previously been addicted to another drug." 13. It always always been assumed that Freud ceased taking cocaine in 1887, years before he began his major psychoanalytical work. 14. But when Freud formulated his psychoanalytic theories, he was under the influence of a toxic drug with specific effects on the brain. Send your partition, together with your name and postal address, to Dr R. A. O'Keefe, Department of Computer Science, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia. -- The purpose of advertising is to destroy the freedom of the market.