Fact-Checking the Torah -- a maven he's not

Edouard Reuss embodies the same principles of “higher criticism” that Astruc does. He makes his claims based on what he thinks are the principles, applying his “axioms” inconsistently and without regard to the data. His problems come out most clearly in two locations that should have signaled to a person thinking logically, that he was constructing a tower of rubble.

Exodus 23:19 says “you shall not cook a kid in its mother’s milk.” Deuteronomy 14:21 has the exact same phrase. What does this mean to DH?

There are several ways that DH could jump with this. One is to claim that the phrase in Deuteronomy is, predictably, D, and that it was interpolated into Exodus from D.

There is also a possible claim that both phrases are from P. Why? Deuteronomy 14 is a partial paraphrase of Leviticus 11, leaving out the vermin and adding this phrase at the very end.

Or they could both be assigned to J, because Deuteronomy 14 uses the combined Names of Gd, but it would get no support in Exodus where neither name appears. We don’t have to get wrapped around the axles about this since we know the Names of Gd axiom is based on false facts, as well as being applied inconsistently.

Which way did Reuss jump? He made a circular argument.

He claimed that since Leviticus is from the Babylonian Captivity, it discusses rules applying from then on, and that is why it discusses insects. He cited to Matthew to make this claim. What Matthew says has nothing to do with what happened during the Babylonian Captivity six centuries earlier, unless Matthew is writing a history of the Captivity.

Then Reuss claimed that since Deuteronomy is from the time of the destruction of the temple, people would have ignored insects because they could eat domestic animals whose owners had been taken into captivity. D is actually attributed to Josiah’s reign, 30 years before the Babylonian conquest. Bleek’s Einleitung which established the DH claim about D, was published when Reuss was 24. It’s hard to see how Reuss could get this wrong and still claim to be an expert in the DH version of Jewish history.

Again, Reuss had made up his mind as to what he thought, and he retrofitted his reasons to correspond, but they are illogical or have no factual basis.

The modern assignments are: Exodus to E (despite the absence of either Name) and Deuteronomy to D.

In these locations, however, Reuss makes two claims consistent among Christians and particularly Protestants.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved