Fact-Checking the Torah -- Astruc and Language

This is the post I told you about some time back when I said I could show that DH is not based on the Biblical Hebrew.  I gave part of the data a couple of weeks ago, but I have Astruc’s own admission of the fact.

He says that he did not use the Vulgate Latin.

He chose the French Geneva Bible, also known as the Olivetain or Neuchatel Bible.

Why?

Because, Astruc says, the Latin did not sufficiently demonstrate the differences between the names of Gd to support Astruc’s claims. This is another case of the fallacy called sampling bias, pre-selecting your data source based on whether it supports what you want to prove, instead of admitting you could be wrong if some data disagrees with you.  It is often the basis of fraud, and its use in scientific work has resulted in the discrediting of scientists who operated this way.

Because Astruc’s work rests on a fallacy, it is false and later work relying on it is discredited.

What’s more, it’s nonsense, as I said a few months ago, to analyze Torah in any language except  Biblical Hebrew. That practice was based on the concept of mischsprache, however, which comes from the 19^th century. Astruc was writing in the 18^th century and he simply didn’t know enough to analyze the Hebrew.

Astruc claims that the French Geneva Bible was translated directly from the Hebrew. That is the claim of its authors. But Astruc claims that the Neuchatel is a literal translation of the Hebrew. “Literal” is a red herring, as I said nearly a year ago,  because of such things as idioms and the nuances of conjugations, as well as the difference of meaning in different contexts. That’s another fallacy.

Astruc does not follow his own criteria in analyzing his chosen material. He claims Genesis 28:1-4 comes from his B (precursor to J). But this text does not contain the combined names at all. It contains the name El Shadai, and it contains elohim, which the Neuchatel translates as Dieu. This latter fact ought to mean that Astruc puts this fragment into A.

So Astruc’s use of the Neuchatel is riddled with fallacies and is based on linguistic nonsense.

I always suspected that DH had its basis in a translation. Now I know it’s true, because Astruc admits it. But while Astruc used it to illustrate his work, he did not perform his analysis based on Neuchatel or he would have known it didn’t support his claims.

Now, why would Astruc tout Neuchatel? That’s for next week.

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