(August 25, 2022 at 9:46 am)Angrboda Wrote: It's suspected that the book of Daniel, while pretending to recount visions of future events is actually written after the events for rhetorical reasons. It was a common exercise in rhetoric on ancient schools to attempt to write or speak in the style of a great author or orator. Many of Paul's epistles are thought to be forgeries. It was also rather common for groups of people, schools, to write as if they were a legendary author (Laozi comes to mind). It is a common literary device to write from a first-person perspective even when no such first-person perspective existed. Given all the millions of religious accounts of visions and the mere fact that only a few or none of them can be true, the first-hand accounts of most of them are not true. And we know that various other motives than telling the truth are strong in writing pertaining to religious topics. The book of Deuteronomy is likely not what it appears to be given its miraculous "discovery" in an ancient temple after the fact.
Given the ubiquity of artful but false narratives in this genre, why do you think a naive reading of these statements is most likely to be true?
I prefer conservative interpretations as a starting point. So, my initial objection to your response was going to be something like occam's razor—there's no need to multiply authors unnecessarily, with each author more mysterious than the last. However, you mentioned something that I think is the important part of your argument: You said it was a common literary device to write from a first-person perspective, even when no such perspective existed.
My guess is you have something like Plato's Republic in mind (I'm not familiar with Laozi). So, I would like to know what you had in mind, or what is it that you're comparing it to?
