Much Ado about Nothing?

[rongo]

I recently read Shakespeare's "Much Ado about Nothing" for the first time. I have read many Shakespeare plays, but never this one. I found the tone, dialogue, and writing to be much different from other Shakespeare plays I have read. This reminded me of the Isaiah authorship controversies, and indeed, really higher criticism of everything, really (Homer, the Bible, etc.). It was really a personal reaction based on my own background and experience (i.e., based on nothing but my gut reaction. It didn't seem to me to have been written by the same person who wrote the other plays), nothing scientific. But, it reminded me of the reasons and arguments behind questioning Isaiah's authorship in a lot of ways --- and something I have said in defense of authentic Isaiahan authorship against stylistic criticism: So, one assumes Deutero and Trito Isaiah because "proto-Isaiah" could not have varied his style, tone, or mood? (one point is that 2 and 3 Isaiah are joyous and exulting, while "proto-Isaiah" is somber and pessimistic. I agree with Sperry that the subject matter plays an important role: prophesying about the downfall of Israel will by definition be more gloomy than prophesying about the gathering of Israel or the Millennium   ). 

I just found it interesting to be on the other side of the fence on this one, based on stylistic reasons and personal reaction. 

[hope_for_things]

6 minutes ago, rongo said:

I recently read Shakespeare's "Much Ado about Nothing" for the first time. I have read many Shakespeare plays, but never this one. I found the tone, dialogue, and writing to be much different from other Shakespeare plays I have read. This reminded me of the Isaiah authorship controversies, and indeed, really higher criticism of everything, really (Homer, the Bible, etc.). It was really a personal reaction based on my own background and experience (i.e., based on nothing but my gut reaction. It didn't seem to me to have been written by the same person who wrote the other plays), nothing scientific. But, it reminded me of the reasons and arguments behind questioning Isaiah's authorship in a lot of ways --- and something I have said in defense of authentic Isaiahan authorship against stylistic criticism: So, one assumes Deutero and Trito Isaiah because "proto-Isaiah" could not have varied his style, tone, or mood? (one point is that 2 and 3 Isaiah are joyous and exulting, while "proto-Isaiah" is somber and pessimistic. I agree with Sperry that the subject matter plays an important role: prophesying about the downfall of Israel will by definition be more gloomy than prophesying about the gathering of Israel or the Millennium   ). 

I just found it interesting to be on the other side of the fence on this one, based on stylistic reasons and personal reaction. 

I'm not too familiar with the arguments behind some people questioning Shakespeare being the author of all his plays, and its interesting that your observations of difference in tone for this play in particular have you wondering about Isaiah authorship.

I would hope that you won't confuse your surface reading of differences in tone in Shakespeare with the robust scholarship around Isaiah authorship.  For a Mormon audience, David Bokovoy wrote a couple really good posts on this subject last year that I would recommend reading just to give some examples of how scholars have determined differences in authorship in Isaiah.  

http://rationalfaiths.com/truthfulness-deutero-isaiah-response-kent-jackson/

http://rationalfaiths.com/truthfulness-deutero-isaiah-response-kent-jackson-part-2/

 

[rongo]

10 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I'm not too familiar with the arguments behind some people questioning Shakespeare being the author of all his plays, and its interesting that your observations of difference in tone for this play in particular have you wondering about Isaiah authorship.

I would hope that you won't confuse your surface reading of differences in tone in Shakespeare with the robust scholarship around Isaiah authorship.  For a Mormon audience, David Bokovoy wrote a couple really good posts on this subject last year that I would recommend reading just to give some examples of how scholars have determined differences in authorship in Isaiah.  

http://rationalfaiths.com/truthfulness-deutero-isaiah-response-kent-jackson/

http://rationalfaiths.com/truthfulness-deutero-isaiah-response-kent-jackson-part-2/

 

I'm well-read on the "Isaiah problem," and I don't find Bokovoy's higher criticism to be convincing. It is a valid viewpoint, and scholars have made some good points. The Documentary Hypothesis does make some valid points, but I find that, at bottom, higher critics don't believe in the possibility of prophecy and revelation. That is what lies at the heart of those who question the authorship of Isaiah --- he made prophecies about things that happened centuries after he lived, so those items had to have been written by contemporaries. The arguments starts there with that assumption and branch out from there ---- focusing inordinately on style, given that assumption. 

I would put Bokovoy in that camp as well. If pinned down,  I believe he would deny the possibility of prophecy and revelation. People feel moved on and write their thoughts, but for God to actually be able to reveal the name of Cyrus to Isaiah 200 years previously? Impossible. That is the discomfort of liberal scholars. They prefer a deism God who exists in a vague way but doesn't interact directly. 

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

I would hope that you won't confuse your surface reading of differences in tone in Shakespeare with the robust scholarship around Isaiah authorship.  For a Mormon audience, David Bokovoy wrote a couple really good posts on this subject last year that I would recommend reading just to give some examples of how scholars have determined differences in authorship in Isaiah.  

http://rationalfaiths.com/truthfulness-deutero-isaiah-response-kent-jackson/

http://rationalfaiths.com/truthfulness-deutero-isaiah-response-kent-jackson-part-2/

David definitely makes some excellent points. I'm not sure I buy everything he says though. Relative to the Book of Mormon he doesn't address really the fact not all Isaiah passages are treated equally. Further he doesn't address the theory that elements and passages of deutero-Isaiah may be contemporary with Jerusalem and then reworked during the exile. i.e. there is middle ground.

I touched upon some ideas along these lines over at T&S a while ago.

[hope_for_things]

4 minutes ago, rongo said:

I'm well-read on the "Isaiah problem," and I don't find Bokovoy's higher criticism to be convincing. It is a valid viewpoint, and scholars have made some good points. The Documentary Hypothesis does make some valid points, but I find that, at bottom, higher critics don't believe in the possibility of prophecy and revelation. That is what lies at the heart of those who question the authorship of Isaiah --- he made prophecies about things that happened centuries after he lived, so those items had to have been written by contemporaries. The arguments starts there with that assumption and branch out from there ---- focusing inordinately on style, given that assumption. 

I would put Bokovoy in that camp as well. If pinned down,  I believe he would deny the possibility of prophecy and revelation. People feel moved on and write their thoughts, but for God to actually be able to reveal the name of Cyrus to Isaiah 200 years previously? Impossible. That is the discomfort of liberal scholars. They prefer a deism God who exists in a vague way but doesn't interact directly. 

You're well read on this topic, yet you dismiss the overwhelming scholarly consensus because you're not convinced?  No offense, but this is the same kind of logic used by climate change deniers.  The Documentary Hypothesis isn't just "valid points".  Its really the best explanation of the data.  Isaiah authorship isn't disputed by credible scholars, its only disputed by dogmatists and those who are married to rejecting scholarship that runs contrary to their theological convictions.  

Here is what I don't understand about your perspective.  Before I was aware of biblical scholarship back in my uber orthodox days, my beliefs were almost entirely based on appeals to authority.  If an authoritative person made a statement in the context of religion, I believed it.  My present views are all rely heavily on the scholarship of trained professionals and I follow the mainstream of these groups because the processes of science and the academy are the best for bringing the most rigorous theories to the top of the pile through peer review and constant skepticism and dispassionate evaluations of evidence.  

What I don't understand about your perspective is you come across as someone who embraces some level of evidence based scholarship, yet only up to a certain point.  You acknowledge some valid points, yet when evidence goes so far as to challenge your theological paradigm it sounds like you're dismissing the evidence and retreating to apologetic arguments.  Perhaps you can clarify how you can accept some of the scholarship, but not all of it?  Or maybe I'm not understanding your perspective well, and you can correct me.  Thanks

[rongo]

Just now, hope_for_things said:

You're well read on this topic, yet you dismiss the overwhelming scholarly consensus because you're not convinced? 

Yes. I, too, am able to weigh evidence and argument and reach my own conclusion. 

You act as if the arguments and evidence advanced are so compelling as to demand obeisance to them. 

All scholarly topics are debatable and debated. That's how academics make their living. Laymen are also allowed to form and have their own views.

[rongo]

6 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

What I don't understand about your perspective is you come across as someone who embraces some level of evidence based scholarship, yet only up to a certain point.  You acknowledge some valid points, yet when evidence goes so far as to challenge your theological paradigm it sounds like you're dismissing the evidence and retreating to apologetic arguments.  Perhaps you can clarify how you can accept some of the scholarship, but not all of it?  Or maybe I'm not understanding your perspective well, and you can correct me.  Thanks

Happy to. But my class starts in a minute. I'll get back when I can . . .

[hope_for_things]

19 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

David definitely makes some excellent points. I'm not sure I buy everything he says though. Relative to the Book of Mormon he doesn't address really the fact not all Isaiah passages are treated equally. Further he doesn't address the theory that elements and passages of deutero-Isaiah may be contemporary with Jerusalem and then reworked during the exile. i.e. there is middle ground.

I touched upon some ideas along these lines over at T&S a while ago.

Thanks for your link Clark, I will read it.  I think what Bokovoy is doing a very good job of is presenting the mainstream biblical scholarship to Mormon audiences.  What I have a problem with is when people reject that scholarship because it challenging their theological paradigm.  

I'm not sure there is this "middle ground" when it comes to actual scholarly interpretations of the data.  Every time I've looked into those middle ground arguments I find they are based on apologetic defenses of theological ideas, and not on the actual data and interpretation of the data from a dispassionate perspective.  I also find that those who espouse these arguments are outside the mainstream, and would be considered fringe ideas.  This is why I used the climate change example, because you can certainly find those who argue against it, but they are by far the minority.  

[Benjamin McGuire]

hope_for_things wrote:

Quote

I'm not too familiar with the arguments behind some people questioning Shakespeare being the author of all his plays, and its interesting that your observations of difference in tone for this play in particular have you wondering about Isaiah authorship.

I would hope that you won't confuse your surface reading of differences in tone in Shakespeare with the robust scholarship around Isaiah authorship.

There is some irony in this for me personally. It seems to me that his has it backwards. The scholarship surrounding the question of Shakespeare and questions of authorship along with all that this entails is far, far more robust than the scholarship of theories of authorship involving Isaiah. If we take the scholarship of authorship attribution that we have on relatively modern texts (like Shakespeare) and apply it to the world of Biblical studies, we start to see how those arguments are problematic in lots of ways.

For Rongo:

Quote

I'm well-read on the "Isaiah problem," and I don't find Bokovoy's higher criticism to be convincing. It is a valid viewpoint, and scholars have made some good points. The Documentary Hypothesis does make some valid points, but I find that, at bottom, higher critics don't believe in the possibility of prophecy and revelation.

This idea of revelation is largely a red herring. It isn't really used by academics. That by itself makes me question how much you understand of the "Isaiah problem" and the views about it that are published in scholarship. Issues that sometimes confront this idea of prophecy are all about how we date the different authors we see in the Isaiah texts - but play virtually no role at all in the question of whether there were one or two or three primary streams of authorship present in the text as we have it. And this in particular is of primary interest to LDS (because of connections to the Book of Mormon) far more than it is of interest to the academic world. A way of harmonizing this can be seen in certain LDS arguments - like Bill Hamblin's, for example, who suggests simply that we should adjust the dates of the authorship for the three different authorship phases (which would bring them into line with the Book of Mormon timeline), rather than trying to argue that there is only a single author of the Isaiah texts. The techniques used in higher criticism, are themselves widely accepted, and work quite well in other contexts (like, for example, looking at the ways in which certain early LDS scriptural texts are themselves composites, with multiple stages of authorship).

Ben McGuire

Edited September 11, 2017 by Benjamin McGuire

[hope_for_things]

13 minutes ago, rongo said:

Yes. I, too, am able to weigh evidence and argument and reach my own conclusion. 

You act as if the arguments and evidence advanced are so compelling as to demand obeisance to them. 

All scholarly topics are debatable and debated. That's how academics make their living. Laymen are also allowed to form and have their own views.

The mainstream of scholarship is constantly being debated and those ideas that survive the process are the ones that have sustained substantial scrutiny and risen to the top.  I don't believe that lay persons like ourselves should pick and choose which scholarly theories fit nicely into our theological paradigms and which ones don't.  An example of doing this in another area of life besides climate science, would be in the medical community.  If we accept the use of medicines that doctors prescribe, yet on the other hand reject the use of immunizations based on some fringe perspectives.  

I can understand forming your own views on things that are still very experimental and debatable in the scholarly community, perhaps like string theory in Physics, but how can you pick and choose on something that is so well established as mainstream like the Documentary Hypothesis?  

[smac97]

7 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

You're well read on this topic, yet you dismiss the overwhelming scholarly consensus because you're not convinced? 

Disagreeing with consensus about a disputed topic?  Horrible!

7 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

No offense, but this is the same kind of logic used by climate change deniers.  

Disagreeing with consensus about a disputed topic?  Horrible!

7 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

The Documentary Hypothesis isn't just "valid points".  Its really the best explanation of the data.  

And yet it's not beyond reasonable dispute.

7 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Isaiah authorship isn't disputed by credible scholars, its only disputed by dogmatists and those who are married to rejecting scholarship that runs contrary to their theological convictions.

So you are making the same criticism that Rongo is making: That presuppositions are the main driving force in the conclusions being drawn (secularists presuppose that God is not part of the process, and reach conclusions congruent with that presupposition; sectarians presuppose that God is part of the process, and likewise reach conclusions congruent with that presupposition).

7 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Here is what I don't understand about your perspective.  Before I was aware of biblical scholarship back in my uber orthodox days, my beliefs were almost entirely based on appeals to authority.  

Rongo isn't making an appeal to authority.  You, however, are doing just that ("You're well read on this topic, yet you dismiss the overwhelming scholarly consensus...").

7 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

If an authoritative person made a statement in the context of religion, I believed it.  

And now you are doing the same thing.  You have just replaced religious authorities with secular ones.

"Scholarly consensus" is a tricky thing.  It is helpful, but not infallible.  It is also not static.  It changes and grows and retracts.

7 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

My present views are all rely heavily on the scholarship of trained professionals and I follow the mainstream of these groups because the processes of science and the academy are the best for bringing the most rigorous theories to the top of the pile through peer review and constant skepticism and dispassionate evaluations of evidence. 

There are all sorts of problems with overreliance on this approach.  It is tempting to attribute to "science and the academy" the purest of motives, that they are interested only in the pursuit of objective truth.  

The reality is . . . not quite that:

Quote

Science Is Suffering Because of Peer Review’s Big Problems

BY STEFANO BALIETTI
August 9, 2016

A scientist can spend several months, in many cases even years, strenuously investigating a single research question, with the ultimate goal of making a contribution—little or big—to the progress of human knowledge.

Succeeding in this hard task requires specialized, years-long training, intuition, creativity, in-depth knowledge of current and past theories and, most of all— lots of perseverance.

As a member of the scientific community, I can say that, sometimes, finding an interesting and novel result is just as hard as convincing your colleagues that your work actually is novel and interesting. That is, the work would deserve publication in a scientific journal.

But, prior to publication, any investigation must pass the screening of the “peer review.” This is a critical part of the process—only after peer review can a work be considered part of the scientific literature. And only peer-reviewed work will be counted during hiring and evaluation, as a valuable unit of work.

What are the implications of the current publication system—based on peer review—on the progress of science at a time when competition among scientists is rising?

The impact factor and metrics of success

Unlike in math, not every publication counts the same in science. In fact, at least initially, to the eye of an hiring committee the weight of a publication is primarily given by the “impact factor” of the journal in which it appears.

The impact factor is a metric of success that counts the average past “citations” of articles published by a journal in previous years. That is, how many times an article is referenced by other published articles in any other scientific journal. This index is a proxy for the prestige of a journal, and an indicator of the expected future citations of a prospective article in that journal.

Given its importance, publishing in top journals is extremely difficult, and rejection rates range from 80 percent to 98 percent. Such high rates imply that sound research can also fail to make it into top journals. Often, valuable studies rejected by top journals end up in lower-tier journals.

We do not have an estimate of how many potentially groundbreaking discoveries we have missed, but we do have records of a few exemplary wrong rejections.

For example, economist George A. Akerlof’s seminal paper, “The Market for Lemons,” which introduced the concept of “asymmetric information” (how decisions are influenced by one party having more information), was rejected several times before it could be published. Akerlov was later awarded the Nobel Prize for this and other later work.

That’s not all. Only last year, it was shown that three of the top medical journals rejected 14 out 14 of the top-cited articles of all time in their discipline.

The question is, how could this happen?

Hmm.  It sounds like "peer review" is not exactly the pristine, utterly reliable means of discernment you want it to be.  In fact, "peer review" has been strongly criticized for many reasons (emphases added):

Quote

Various editors have expressed criticism of peer review.

Allegations of bias and suppression

The interposition of editors and reviewers between authors and readers may enable the intermediators to act as gatekeepers. Some sociologists of science argue that peer review makes the ability to publish susceptible to control by elites and to personal jealousy. The peer review process may suppress dissent against "mainstream" theories and may be biased against novelty. Reviewers tend to be especially critical of conclusions that contradict their own views, and lenient towards those that match them. At the same time, established scientists are more likely than others to be sought out as referees, particularly by high-prestige journals/publishers. As a result, ideas that harmonize with the established experts' are more likely to see print and to appear in premier journals than are iconoclastic or revolutionary ones. ...

Criticisms of traditional anonymous peer review allege that it lacks accountability, can lead to abuse by reviewers, and may be biased and inconsistent.

Failures

Peer review fails when a peer-reviewed article contains fundamental errors that undermine at least one of its main conclusions and that could have been identified by more careful reviewers. Many journals have no procedure to deal with peer review failures beyond publishing letters to the editor.

Peer review in scientific journals assumes that the article reviewed has been honestly prepared. The process occasionally detects fraud, but is not designed to do so. When peer review fails and a paper is published with fraudulent or otherwise irreproducible data, the paper may be retracted.

A 1998 experiment on peer review with a fictitious manuscript found that peer reviewers failed to detect some manuscript errors and the majority of reviewers may not notice that the conclusions of the paper are unsupported by its results.

Fake

There have been instances where peer review was claimed to be performed but in fact was not; this has been documented in some predatory open access journals (e.g., the Who's Afraid of Peer Review? affair) or in the case of sponsored Elsevier journals.
In November 2014, an article in Nature exposed that some academics were submitting fake contact details for recommended reviewers to journals, so that if the publisher contacted the recommended reviewer, they were the original author reviewing their own work under a fake name.  The Committee on Publication Ethics issued a statement warning of the fraudulent practice. In March 2015, Biomed Central retracted 43 articles and Springer retracted 64 papers in 10 journals in August 2015. Tumor Biology journal is another example of peer review fraud.

Plagiarism

Reviewers generally lack access to raw data, but do see the full text of the manuscript, and are typically familiar with recent publications in the area. Thus, they are in a better position to detect plagiarism of prose than fraudulent data. A few cases of such textual plagiarism by historians, for instance, have been widely publicized.

On the scientific side, a poll of 3,247 scientists funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health found 0.3% admitted faking data and 1.4% admitted plagiarism. Additionally, 4.7% of the same poll admitted to self-plagiarism or autoplagiarism, in which an author republishes the same material, data, or text, without citing their earlier work.

Abuse of inside information by reviewers

A related form of professional misconduct is a reviewer using the not-yet-published information from a manuscript or grant application for personal or professional gain. The frequency with which this happens is unknown, but the United States Office of Research Integrity has sanctioned reviewers who have been caught exploiting knowledge they gained as reviewers. A possible defense for authors against this form of misconduct on the part of reviewers is to pre-publish their work in the form of a preprint or technical report on a public system such as arXiv. The preprint can later be used to establish priority, although preprints violate the stated policies of some journals.

Examples

• "Perhaps the most widely recognized failure of peer review is its inability to ensure the identification of high-quality work. The list of important scientific papers that were rejected by some peer-reviewed journals goes back at least as far as the editor of Philosophical Transaction's 1796 rejection of Edward Jenner's report of the first vaccination against smallpox."
• The Soon and Baliunas controversy involved the publication in 2003 of a review study written by aerospace engineer Willie Soon and astronomer Sallie Baliunas in the journal Climate Research, which was quickly taken up by the G.W. Bush administration as a basis for amending the first Environmental Protection Agency Report on the Environment. The paper was strongly criticized by numerous scientists for its methodology and for its misuse of data from previously published studies, prompting concerns about the peer review process of the paper. The controversy resulted in the resignation of several editors of the journal and the admission by its publisher Otto Kinne that the paper should not have been published as it was.
• The trapezoidal rule, in which the method of Riemann sums for numerical integration was republished in a Diabetes research journal, Diabetes Care. The method is almost always taught in high school calculus, and was thus considered an example of an extremely well known idea being re-branded as a new discovery.
• A conference organized by the Wessex Institute of Technology was the target of an exposé by three researchers who wrote nonsensical papers (including one that was composed of random phrases). They reported that the papers were "reviewed and provisionally accepted" and concluded that the conference was an attempt to "sell" publication possibilities to less experienced or naive researchers. This may however be better described as a lack of any actual peer review, rather than peer review having failed.
• In 2014, an editorial was published in Nature highlighting problems with the peer-review process.
• In the humanities, one of the most infamous cases of plagiarism undetected by peer review involved Martin Stone, formerly professor of medieval and Renaissance philosophy at the Hoger Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte of the KU Leuven. Martin Stone managed to publish at least forty articles and book chapters that were almost entirely stolen from the work of others. Most of these publications appeared in highly-rated peer-reviewed journals and book series.

I think swinging from one extreme (excessive reliance on religious authorities) to the other (excessive reliance on secular authorities), particularly as to moral/spiritual issues, is not the best way to go.

7 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

What I don't understand about your perspective is you come across as someone who embraces some level of evidence based scholarship, yet only up to a certain point.  

Yes.  Scholarship is not infallible.  It is not perfect.  It is, in truth, a very messy and complex endeavor that has many problems with it.  

7 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

You acknowledge some valid points, yet when evidence goes so far as to challenge your theological paradigm it sounds like you're dismissing the evidence and retreating to apologetic arguments.  

I'll let Rongo for himself.  For me, I am quite happy to engage substantive scholarship.  But I don't kowtow to it.  

Thanks,

-Smac

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

Thanks for your link Clark, I will read it.  I think what Bokovoy is doing a very good job of is presenting the mainstream biblical scholarship to Mormon audiences.  What I have a problem with is when people reject that scholarship because it challenging their theological paradigm.  

I'm not sure there is this "middle ground" when it comes to actual scholarly interpretations of the data.  Every time I've looked into those middle ground arguments I find they are based on apologetic defenses of theological ideas, and not on the actual data and interpretation of the data from a dispassionate perspective.  I also find that those who espouse these arguments are outside the mainstream, and would be considered fringe ideas.  This is why I used the climate change example, because you can certainly find those who argue against it, but they are by far the minority.  

The middle ground is that many commentaries note that a lot of Isaiah was in development prior to the exile but after the Assyrian prophecies of proto-Isaiah. It doesn't explain everything, but typically it explains a great deal. More or less it's just the idea that deutero-Isaiah isn't composed out of whole cloth after the exile but was already in development at the time of Jeremiah. The elements that are explicitly from the exile or later are simply missing from the Book of Mormon.

I'd add that the very way Nephi and Jacob modify Isaiah with their own pesher suggests that was a common practice at the time of Jeremiah and thereby actually gives support for a multi-author Isaiah. i.e. the claims about deutero-Isaiah themselves rest upon practice we see in the Book of Mormon. Quoting from my T&S post:

Quote

It’s worth noting that a popular contemporary theory on proto-Isaiah (the earlier chapters of the book) is that the poetic parts were written by Isaiah while the prose parts are later midrashic-like commentary on those original poems and date to the time of Josiah. (See for example John Goldingay’s Isaiah commentary) I bring this up both because this somewhat corresponds to what we find in the Book of Mormon with its use of Isaiah but also because this would have likely been in the lifetime of Lehi. That is the Book of Isaiah already would have been seen as a scroll with the original text of Isaiah along with commentary and other works added. If there were initial prophecies of deutero-Isaiah being composed at the time of Lehi they may well have ended up on the brass plates if they were associated with the larger text just as the commentary was.

Isaiah 48-53 are the main problematic passages -  the so called stubborn Israel passages. The argument more or less is to accept the multiple authorship but merely problematize when those chapters were written.

Again this is well within the scholarly mainstream. See for instance McKinley, "The Usefulness of a Daughter" in Isaiah and Imperial Context: The Book of Isaiah in the Times of Empire. They aren't debating that deutero-Isaiah isn't writing well after proto-Isaiah merely questioning whether it reflects the Babylonian exile. She quotes Goldingay, "we do not even know for certain whether the material in Isaiah 40-55 is of Babylonian background or perhaps mixed origin." She writes herself, "...there appears to be a change of focus in chapters 49-55. While some have suggested that 'the core of Isaiah 40-48 originated in Babylon addressing the gola, whereas Isaiah 49-55 was composed by a group in Judah to address the population of Jerusalem after 520 BCE."  

I don't want to portray this as without controversy. But effectively it's just pushing the text back 20 years to after the initial attacks by Babylon and first generation of exiles but before the final conquest and exile. i.e. during the very disruptive period of Zedekiah between 597 and approximately 586. Effectively the claim is that deutero-Isaiah 48-53 is a different prophet contemporary with Jeremiah writing after the initial exile but before the final one -- much like Lehi.

Edited September 11, 2017 by clarkgoble

[hope_for_things]

47 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

There is some irony in this for me personally. It seems to me that his has it backwards. The scholarship surrounding the question of Shakespeare and questions of authorship along with all that this entails is far, far more robust than the scholarship of theories of authorship involving Isaiah. If we take the scholarship of authorship attribution that we have on relatively modern texts (like Shakespeare) and apply it to the world of Biblical studies, we start to see how those arguments are problematic in lots of ways.

I think this is a good point, and I'm just personally not familiar with any of the scholarship around Shakespearean authorship to make any interesting comparisons.  I think you're right that as more scrutiny is applied to Biblical studies, the more the traditional assumptions about authorship for biblical writings are brought into question.

[hope_for_things]

39 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Disagreeing with consensus about a disputed topic?  Horrible!

Yes, and potentially dangerous especially if its with respect to examples I provided earlier, like climate science or immunizations. These examples are appropriate for conservative religious communities because there are so many pockets of deniers that don't use critical thinking skills and are willing to dismiss mainstream scholarship because of ideology.  Its quite common, just read the news.  

For biblical authorship, there is no real danger other than the danger of just being uniformed and losing out on the ability continue to learn and grow on that subject.  

43 minutes ago, smac97 said:

So you are making the same criticism that Rongo is making: That presuppositions are the main driving force in the conclusions being drawn (secularists presuppose that God is not part of the process, and reach conclusions congruent with that presupposition; sectarians presuppose that God is part of the process, and likewise reach conclusions congruent with that presupposition).

No, I didn't say anything about how a person should interpret the scholarship theologically, or place any boundaries around how that interpretation informs a person's beliefs in the how God works.  

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Rongo isn't making an appeal to authority.  You, however, are doing just that ("You're well read on this topic, yet you dismiss the overwhelming scholarly consensus...").

Apples and Oranges.  I was talking about appeals to authority figures that have no training in this discipline.  Would you consider these church leaders to be authorities on how to engineer a bridge, or how to determine the biology of a new species?  We're talking about experts in a field of study and following the experts, which pretty much everyone does with respect to just about every subject, except you're making an exception with this one topic, biblical experts.  They are biased and we can reject their consensus findings, but for every other subject in life you follow the consensus.  

50 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Hmm.  It sounds like "peer review" is not exactly the pristine, utterly reliable means of discernment you want it to be.  In fact, "peer review" has been strongly criticized for many reasons (emphases added):

The scientific peer review process has corrective mechanisms already built in.  All that has to happen is a more plausible explanation for the data needs to be presented and then tested and peer reviewed.  Again, think about my examples earlier.  Would you ignore the experts in other fields of study with such abandon as you do with these biblical scholars?  What other fields of study are you so skeptical about the scientific process on?  Are you a conspiracy theorist?   

 

[hope_for_things]

26 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

The middle ground is that many commentaries note that a lot of Isaiah was in development prior to the exile but after the Assyrian prophecies of proto-Isaiah. It doesn't explain everything, but typically it explains a great deal. More or less it's just the idea that deutero-Isaiah isn't composed out of whole cloth after the exile but was already in development at the time of Jeremiah. The elements that are explicitly from the exile or later are simply missing from the Book of Mormon.

I'd add that the very way Nephi and Jacob modify Isaiah with their own pesher suggests that was a common practice at the time of Jeremiah and thereby actually gives support for a multi-author Isaiah. i.e. the claims about deutero-Isaiah themselves rest upon practice we see in the Book of Mormon. Quoting from my T&S post:

 

I would like to hear what David or another person well versed in the biblical scholarship has to say about these Isaiah writings prior to the exile, as its not something I'm familiar with.  

As for the second part I would like to question your starting points.   I think this is part of the problem with how Mormon scholars approach these questions.  Blending theological assumptions about authorship that you can't prove and that don't have any basis in empirical analysis (ideas like Nephi or Jacob modifying Isaiah) with actual scholarly findings is problematic.  This really confuses these arguments, and I personally don't like that kind of an approach.  

[clarkgoble]

7 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I would like to hear what David or another person well versed in the biblical scholarship has to say about these Isaiah writings prior to the exile, as its not something I'm familiar with.  

As for the second part I would like to question your starting points.   I think this is part of the problem with how Mormon scholars approach these questions.  Blending theological assumptions about authorship that you can't prove and that don't have any basis in empirical analysis (ideas like Nephi or Jacob modifying Isaiah) with actual scholarly findings is problematic.  This really confuses these arguments, and I personally don't like that kind of an approach.  

The main question is the arguments. Let's be honest the dating of these texts typically has no empirical basis. In most cases the evidence is extremely weak and typically from the text itself. That's not to say there can't be stronger arguments usually based upon linguistic data. However in this case I don't think there is anything like that. 

[hope_for_things]

24 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

The main question is the arguments. Let's be honest the dating of these texts typically has no empirical basis. In most cases the evidence is extremely weak and typically from the text itself. That's not to say there can't be stronger arguments usually based upon linguistic data. However in this case I don't think there is anything like that. 

One difference being that we have actual historical events to build the textual analysis around like the exile for example.  And I don't believe scholars would characterize this specific textual analysis as "extremely weak" either.  

[smac97]

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

Yes, and potentially dangerous especially if its with respect to examples I provided earlier, like climate science or immunizations.

Wow.  I thought you were being facetious.  I see now you are serious.

Quote

These examples are appropriate for conservative religious communities because there are so many pockets of deniers that don't use critical thinking skills and are willing to dismiss mainstream scholarship because of ideology.  Its quite common, just read the news.  

Oh, the irony.  You appear to be criticizing "conservative religious communities" for, in essence, not thinking for themselves, and instead for relying on groupthink and appeals to authority.

You are doing very much the same thing, except that your group think and appeals to authority are, at the moment, socially popular.  

You aren't advocating "critical thinking skills."  You are advocating abandoning one form of unreasoned devotion (religious) in exchange for another (selective and media-driven narratives about scholarly "consensus").

Quote

Quote

So you are making the same criticism that Rongo is making: That presuppositions are the main driving force in the conclusions being drawn (secularists presuppose that God is not part of the process, and reach conclusions congruent with that presupposition; sectarians presuppose that God is part of the process, and likewise reach conclusions congruent with that presupposition).

No, I didn't say anything about how a person should interpret the scholarship theologically, or place any boundaries around how that interpretation informs a person's beliefs in the how God works.  

Again, you are advocating abandoning one form of unreasoned devotion (religious) in exchange for another (selective and media-driven narratives about scholarly "consensus").

Quote

Quote

Rongo isn't making an appeal to authority.  You, however, are doing just that ("You're well read on this topic, yet you dismiss the overwhelming scholarly consensus...").

Apples and Oranges.  

No, it's apples and apples.

Quote

I was talking about appeals to authority figures that have no training in this discipline.  

Rongo said: "I'm well-read on the 'Isaiah problem,' and I don't find Bokovoy's higher criticism to be convincing."  He makes no reference to relying on "authority figures that have no training in this discipline."

But he disagrees with you, and you claim to rely on "overwhelming scholarly consensus."

Apples to apples.

Quote

Would you consider these church leaders to be authorities on how to engineer a bridge, or how to determine the biology of a new species?  

Rongo did not reference "church leaders."

Rongo did not make an appeal to authority.  You did.

Rongo claims to be informed about the relevant scholarship, and that he has arrived at his own conclusion.  You fault Rongo for doing this because his conclusion is at odds with what you think "the overwhelming scholarly consensus" is.

Rongo's conclusion is reasoned.  Yours is a knee-jerk appeal to authority.

Quote

We're talking about experts in a field of study and following the experts, which pretty much everyone does with respect to just about every subject, except you're making an exception with this one topic, biblical experts.  

Yes, I admit it.  I differentiate different types of scholarship.  Math is a different field than speech pathology.  Anthropology is a different field from mechanical engineering.

Many, many scholarly fields are heavily, heavily influenced by personal opinions, and groupthink, and conjecture, and presuppositions, and money, and political considerations, and on and on and on.  

So I am happy to listen, and often defer to, expert opinions on various topics.  But not all.  And not always.

As an attorney, I have read quite a bit about how some types of litigation, such as medical malpractice, "often turns on the battle of the experts' competing opinions."  By your facile "reasoning," no such "battle" should exist.  Experts are experts.  They all think alike.  They all reach the same conclusions.  There is no need to consider nuance.  Or differing methodologies.  Or unaccounted for factors and influences.  Nope.  There's a "consensus," and once reached it is - by your reckoning - Objective Truth.  Unassailable.  Unchanging.

This is very wrong.  A simplistic and naive approach to most "scholarly" inquiries would be very much what you seem to be advocating:

• A) There is an Objective Truth.
• B) "Scholarship" and "Experts" are best situated to discern that Objective Truth.
• C) That Objective Truth is to be found through "Consensus."

I agree with A.  B and C are, many times, much more problematic, particularly as regarding subjects that either 

• A) do not lend themselves to the basic principles of the Scientific Method (centered on observation and replication);
• B) are very complex;
• C) are lacking in sufficient data; and/or
• D) are topics that are susceptible to non-scientific factors (like money, prestige, political considerations, controversy, and so on).

So "consensus" is helpful, but only in some ways, and only up to a point.  There are limitations to what it can and cannot do.  There are limitations to the validity of "conclusions," even if those conclusions presently enjoy a "consensus."

As for the subject at hand, I think biblical scholarship is a total grab-bag full of conflicting opinions about pretty much every biblical topic under the sun.  And a lot of those opinions are based on non-scientific factors (such as the presuppositions I mentioned earlier).  So folks like Rongo are free to read up and try to sort things out.  I admire that far more than unthinking capitulation to vague, unidentified "consensus" groupthink.

Quote

They are biased and we can reject their consensus findings, but for every other subject in life you follow the consensus.  

Oh, get a grip.  I have said nothing like this.

Quote

The scientific peer review process has corrective mechanisms already built in.

And yet that process fails.  Spectacularly.  A lot.  Again from the Wikipedia article: "Peer review in scientific journals assumes that the article reviewed has been honestly prepared. The process occasionally detects fraud, but is not designed to do so."

"Biblical scholarship" seems to be a field that is particularly susceptible to groupthink and slavish devotion to "consensus" (that is, secular, naturalistic consensus).  So disagreeing with scholarship arising out of naturalistic/atheistic presuppositions is not remotely like challenging Copernican heliocentrism or 2+2=4.

Reasonable minds can disagree about all sorts of things, including important things.  But in this thread, there is only one person who is appealing to some self-selected and unidentified notion of "scholarly consensus" about something as arcane and subjective as "The Isaiah Problem," and the acting as if the matter is settled, and that anyone who dares to depart from the "consensus" plantation is an ignorant rube (your reference to immunizations was particularly obnoxious).

Quote

All that has to happen is a more plausible explanation for the data needs to be presented and then tested and peer reviewed.  

This is way, way too facile.  "The Isaiah Problem" has plenty of countervailing theories and arguments and evidence.  There is no objective "consensus" about it except for the groupthink of the particularly group towards which you presently list.

Quote

Again, think about my examples earlier.  

We can add "poisoning the well" to your "appeal to authority" from earlier.

The logical fallacies are piling up.

Quote

Would you ignore the experts in other fields of study with such abandon as you do with these biblical scholars?  

Can you conceive of a difference between disagreeing with "experts" and "ignoring" them?

Aristotle said: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

Rongo has given this subject some study.  And rather than acknowledge this you are attempting to paint him as an ignorant rube because he disagrees with you about it.

Quote

What other fields of study are you so skeptical about the scientific process on?  Are you a conspiracy theorist?   

Your remarks on this point are becoming . . . unbecoming.  And embarrassing.

-Smac

Edited September 11, 2017 by smac97

[hagoth7]

4 hours ago, rongo said:

I just found it interesting to be on the other side of the fence on this one, based on stylistic reasons and personal reaction. 

I find the tone and substance of this post sufficiently different from other posts to posit that your account has been hacked. 🤔

[hope_for_things]

24 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Oh, the irony.  You appear to be criticizing "conservative religious communities" for, in essence, not thinking for themselves, and instead for relying on groupthink and appeals to authority.

You are doing very much the same thing, except that your group think and appeals to authority are, at the moment, socially popular.  

You aren't advocating "critical thinking skills."  You are advocating abandoning one form of unreasoned devotion (religious) in exchange for another (selective and media-driven narratives about scholarly "consensus").

Yes, I am criticizing conservative religious communities for group think and appeals to authority, exactly.

No, I'm not doing the same thing at all.  For one thing, I'm telling you that I'm not tied to any dogmatic authoritative statements, whatever the best science of the day, I will follow those findings.  Science isn't perfect, but its the best methodology we have to skeptical critical analysis of the information.  It is exactly opposite of religious dogma.  You've got this critique entirely wrong, science is not just another unreasoned devotion of a different flavor.  

28 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Rongo did not reference "church leaders."

Rongo did not make an appeal to authority.  You did.

Rongo claims to be informed about the relevant scholarship, and that he has arrived at his own conclusion.  You fault Rongo for doing this because his conclusion is at odds with what you think "the overwhelming scholarly consensus" is.

Rongo's conclusion is reasoned.  Yours is a knee-jerk appeal to authority.

Those are all questions I asked Rongo based on assumptions I was making and I'd love to hear his response.  

29 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Many, many scholarly fields are heavily, heavily influenced by personal opinions, and groupthink, and conjecture, and presuppositions, and money, and political considerations, and on and on and on.  

Huge overstatement here, while personal opinions and bias affect every human enterprise, the institutions, the competition, the peer review, the process, all of these things continue to weed out the poor arguments and as a whole lead to greater knowledge and wisdom.   Can you give me even one example where an established scholarly consensus in the past 100 years has proven to be completely wrong while a fringe idea was actually right and was being ignored or suppressed due to some institutional biases that you claim exist?  

34 minutes ago, smac97 said:

As an attorney, I have read quite a bit about how some types of litigation, such as medical malpractice, "often turns on the battle of the experts' competing opinions."  By your facile "reasoning," no such "battle" should exist.  Experts are experts.  They all think alike.  They all reach the same conclusions.  There is no need to consider nuance.  Or differing methodologies.  Or unaccounted for factors and influences.  Nope.  There's a "consensus," and once reached it is - by your reckoning - Objective Truth.  Unassailable.  Unchanging.

This is very wrong.  A simplistic and naive approach to most "scholarly" inquiries would be very much what you seem to be advocating:

• A) There is an Objective Truth.
• B) "Scholarship" and "Experts" are best situated to discern that Objective Truth.
• C) That Objective Truth is to be found through "Consensus."

I agree with A.  B and C are, many times, much more problematic, particularly as regarding subjects that either 

• A) do not lend themselves to the basic principles of the Scientific Method (centered on observation and replication);
• B) are very complex;
• C) are lacking in sufficient data; and/or
• D) are topics that are susceptible to non-scientific factors (like money, prestige, political considerations, controversy, and so on).

So "consensus" is helpful, but only in some ways, and only up to a point.  There are limitations to what it can and cannot do.  There are limitations to the validity of "conclusions," even if those conclusions presently enjoy a "consensus."

As for the subject at hand, I think biblical scholarship is a total grab-bag full of conflicting opinions about pretty much every biblical topic under the sun.  And a lot of those opinions are based on non-scientific factors (such as the presuppositions I mentioned earlier).  So folks like Rongo are free to read up and try to sort things out.  I admire that far more than unthinking capitulation to vague, unidentified "consensus" groupthink.

This is really a misunderstanding of my position that turned into a strawman.  I'm not saying that consensus = objective truth.  I'm saying that we trust the process, we trust the experts in every other segment of our lives, why do religious people feel confidence in rejecting biblical scholarship when they so overwhelmingly trust other fields of study?  

As for Objective truth, I do believe it exists when it comes to questions about authorship or archaeology.   Philosophical and religious truths are subjective and don't fit into the scientific process, and I agree with you on that.  However, where religious beliefs intersect with traditional scholarship, I think the right strategy is for a person to accept the scholarly consensus and adjust their subjective religious beliefs according to the new information that science has established.  I see this as a very Mormon thing to do in the vein of a Henry Eyring.  

Your approach to dismissing biblical scholarship seems inconsistent with the ways you approach other fields of scholarship, precisely because you haven't adjusted your subjective beliefs to the new information the scholarship has produced.  This process of adjusting to the new information apparently can be very slow for some communities in society, it took the Catholics 350 years to admit they were wrong about Galileo.  Lets hope that Mormons are a little quicker to adjust to the science.  

[stemelbow]

5 hours ago, rongo said:

I'm well-read on the "Isaiah problem," and I don't find Bokovoy's higher criticism to be convincing. It is a valid viewpoint, and scholars have made some good points. The Documentary Hypothesis does make some valid points, but I find that, at bottom, higher critics don't believe in the possibility of prophecy and revelation. That is what lies at the heart of those who question the authorship of Isaiah --- he made prophecies about things that happened centuries after he lived, so those items had to have been written by contemporaries. The arguments starts there with that assumption and branch out from there ---- focusing inordinately on style, given that assumption. 

I don't think you've grasped Bokovoy's position if you think he's concluded because of higher criticism that there is no possibility of prophecy or revelation.  What have you read from Bokovoy? 

5 hours ago, rongo said:

I would put Bokovoy in that camp as well. If pinned down,  I believe he would deny the possibility of prophecy and revelation. People feel moved on and write their thoughts, but for God to actually be able to reveal the name of Cyrus to Isaiah 200 years previously? Impossible. That is the discomfort of liberal scholars. They prefer a deism God who exists in a vague way but doesn't interact directly. 

I can't say I'm surprised to see your functional non-believer idea get pulled out here too. 

[sheilauk]

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

  Can you give me even one example where an established scholarly consensus in the past 100 years has proven to be completely wrong while a fringe idea was actually right and was being ignored or suppressed due to some institutional biases that you claim exist?  

Climate change.  In the 1970s and early 80s most scientists claimed the earth was cooling and an ice age was coming.  One man in particular argued the opposite.   He was considered fringe, he was in a BBC broadcast about climate change as the token nutball putting the case for global warming.  Well, you know what the consensus is now.   

Science and the scientific method is not infallible.   Consensus often changes,  especially around the humanities subjects.   Even consensus in economics changes (eg austerity v no austerity) and there were scientists who didn't think the higgs boson would be found.   People who disagree with the scientific consensus can be right. 

[hope_for_things]

19 minutes ago, sheilauk said:

Climate change.  In the 1970s and early 80s most scientists claimed the earth was cooling and an ice age was coming.  One man in particular argued the opposite.   He was considered fringe, he was in a BBC broadcast about climate change as the token nutball putting the case for global warming.  Well, you know what the consensus is now.   

Science and the scientific method is not infallible.   Consensus often changes,  especially around the humanities subjects.   Even consensus in economics changes (eg austerity v no austerity) and there were scientists who didn't think the higgs boson would be found.   People who disagree with the scientific consensus can be right. 

Your example is a frequently used myth, please see this link below which has links to studies debunking this myth.  The few media outlets that reported on this 1970s cooling prediction represent a minority of scientists, not a consensus or even majority.  And since the 1970s the understanding of climate science has improved dramatically.  But unfortunately some politicians and others like to use those media reports from the 70s to perpetuate a distrust in the scientific understanding about climate change.  

https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-intermediate.htm

[Bernard Gui]

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

You are doing very much the same thing, except that your group think and appeals to authority are, at the moment, socially popular.  

You aren't advocating "critical thinking skills."  You are advocating abandoning one form of unreasoned devotion (religious) in exchange for another (selective and media-driven narratives about scholarly "consensus").

Objectivity and consensus: That which consists of those who believe like I do.

[sheilauk]

https://longreads.com/2017/04/13/in-1975-newsweek-predicted-a-new-ice-age-were-still-living-with-the-consequences/

I'm sure a lot would like to think it a myth.  Obviously,  with more data, and not ignoring data, scientists changed their minds. As do biblical scholars.  But I remember all the fuss in the 70s re the ice age and I watched a documentary about the changing consensus which showed the 70s footage of the "lone" voice.  But I'm not interested in searching further.  Feel free to ignore my anecdotal position.