In chapter 1 of his book Callahan offers up a review of "who wrote the Bible" - and, not surprisingly considering the limited range of sources he uses, arrives at all of the usual conclusions supporting the JEDP theory, Q, etc. Not that we expected him to re-invent the wheel, but perhaps he should have simply stated these matters as presuppositions and avoided any pretence of doing a careful analysis altogether. He has basically lifted concepts here from badly outdated general and biblical encyclopedias (with such whoppers as saying that Yahweh was "originally one of the gods of the Canaanite pantheon"[!] - 11) and presumed that they are still and all that is available.

• The first real magilla we encounter deals with the extended passages of 1 Samuel 16:18 through 1 Samuel 18:2. Briefly, this is the place where David gets hired at Saul's court as harpist in chief, followed by the encounter with Goliath, Philistia's own Hulk Hogan. Callahan, apparently following uncritically some theorist of the JEDP school, slices and dices these passages to obtain what he thinks are two independent and sensible stories [19ff]. That's very nice, but he and the JEDP theorist could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by merely considering a few things. Let's deal with the methods behind their madness:
  • Callahan notes these two verses, 1 Sam. 16:18-22 and 17:12-5 --

    One of the servants answered, "I have seen a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the harp. He is a brave man and a warrior. He speaks well and is a fine-looking man. And the LORD is with him." Then Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, "Send me your son David, who is with the sheep." So Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, a skin of wine and a young goat and sent them with his son David to Saul. David came to Saul and entered his service. Saul liked him very much, and David became one of his armor-bearers. Then Saul sent word to Jesse, saying, "Allow David to remain in my service, for I am pleased with him."

    Now David was the son of an Ephrathite named Jesse, who was from Bethlehem in Judah. Jesse had eight sons, and in Saul's time he was old and well advanced in years. Jesse's three oldest sons had followed Saul to the war: The firstborn was Eliab; the second, Abinadab; and the third, Shammah. David was the youngest. The three oldest followed Saul, but David went back and forth from Saul to tend his father's sheep at Bethlehem.

    Callahan and/or his source find evidence of two different stories mashed into one here, inasmuch as in the first passage, David "seems to have already made himself a reputation as a warrior and has considerable sophistication," whereupon he is called to serve as Saul's armor-bearer. But in the latter verse, Callahan tells us, David is mentioned "as though he had not been mentioned before," saying that he was the 8th of Jesse's sons and that he shuttled back and forth between Jesse and Saul.

    The use of the passage from Ch. 17 goes a bit further, but let's stop here a moment. Callahan and his source are correct in seeing two stories, but there's no need for a slice and dice that sees 16:21-3 continuing at 17:32. The true division and beginning of a new story is at 17:12. The reason that David is mentioned "as though he had not been before" is that 17:12 begins a new unit that was undoubtedly originally an independent unit of oral tradition. It was told without the previous material having been told, so that introducing the main character anew is not the least bit extraordinary -- it is only when the introductory formula was included in the stage when the material was compiled in writing that it took an appearance that looked strange to our eyes.

    Furthermore, there is a specific reason to make a note reminding us about Jesse and that David was the 8th of the sons. Note that only the three oldest sons are named, and that they followed Saul. Since Saul's three oldest sons served also (cf. 31:6), it is likely that there was some sort of "draft" that requested that fathers send their three oldest sons for the sake of the war. Thus the passages make perfect sense together: David is being shuttled in and out of his position at court because he is needed at home to help replace the three eldest sons who are at war. That, of course, is the point in mentioning that Jesse is a bit on the oldish side! The accounts make perfect sense as they stand, once we account for the oral background of the stories.

    But this is not Callahan's only recourse: He also cites these verses, 17:28-30 ---

    When Eliab, David's oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burned with anger at him and asked, "Why have you come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the desert? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to watch the battle." "Now what have I done?" said David. "Can't I even speak?" He then turned away to someone else and brought up the same matter, and the men answered him as before.

    Callahan says, "Here David is clearly unfamiliar with what Saul has said concerning Goliath." [20] Yes, he is: No doubt he missed it being out on "shuttle launch", as the story, as a cohesive unit, clearly indicates. Callahan then complains, however, that David's lines above "smacks of chronic, petty sibling rivalry" not suitable for a king's armor bearer and a man of valor. First of all, if anyone's comment "smacks" of such rivalry, it is Eliab's, not David's. Any such "rivalry" must be read into the text. Second, I think most of us with siblings will realize that it is quite possible to be one way with them and another way with our employers. Even if this happened to be a bit of whining on David's part, it hardly seems extraordinary in the tapestry of human reactions. Callahan also goes on to suggest that David would not "be running around the camp pestering the soldiers" about the reward for killing Goliath, which simply reads too much into the text: Furthermore, many of these "soldiers" were likely to have been young men just as wet behind the ears as David was. Let us not have the impression of a tiny, loquacious punk in jeans and T-shirt bothering seasoned veterans in combat fatigues. It doesn't exist. Callahan's portrayal is a wild caricature.

    After this, Callahan makes the usual cite of these verses, 17:55-8:

    As Saul watched David going out to meet the Philistine, he said to Abner, commander of the army, "Abner, whose son is that young man?" Abner replied, "As surely as you live, O king, I don't know." The king said, "Find out whose son this young man is." As soon as David returned from killing the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul, with David still holding the Philistine's head. "Whose son are you, young man?" Saul asked him. David said, "I am the son of your servant Jesse of Bethlehem."

    As usual, Callahan uses this to suppose that Saul does not know who David is - which is ridiculous, for the question is clearly, who is David's father, number one, and number two, note that David was only one of Saul's armor-bearers (16:21). We do not know how many of these there were under Saul, but if there were more than a few, say five or six, and if David had been away from court for a while, then it is certainly not surprising that in the heat of a pressed battle situation Saul happened to forget whose son was who; although we may suppose that the question was rhetorically designed for the sake of rounding off the story the same way it began in 17:12 --- something that makes perfect sense in an oral culture.

    After this, Callahan finds inconsistency in that David is taken back into Saul's service (18:2), but the verse says "From that day Saul kept David with him and did not let him return to his father's house." - in other words, the shuttle trips were at an end now. There isn't the slightest inconsistency in these stories and not the least reason to slice and dice them into two different "J and E" accounts. Such theories are the product of literary fantasy, not careful consideration. (For more on this, see here.)

  • Here's another chestnut, involving the story above, along with verses:

    2 Sam. 21:19 In another battle with the Philistines at Gob, Elhanan son of Jaare-Oregim the Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite, who had a spear with a shaft like a weaver's rod.

    1 Chr. 20:5 In another battle with the Philistines, Elhanan son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, who had a spear with a shaft like a weaver's rod.

    Many conservative commentators have supposed that in the first verse, "Lahmi the brother of" was somehow transformed into "the Bethlehemite". Gleason Archer provides a perfectly rational textual explanation as to how this slip may have happened, and there is no reason why it is not acceptable (see below for summary), but Callahan will have none of it. He objects as follows (here, and now we add, in Secret Origins of the Bible [248]:

    1. First, he says, "Archer is using a method that he would scoff at if it were used by advocates" of the JEDP hypothesis. I think the reader will recognize this as worthless ad hominem speculation. Unless Callahan finds a place where Archer actually does this to an explanation of the same sort advanced by a JEDP theorist, he is merely blowing hot air.
    2. Second, he says he finds "no particular reason" to accept Archer's idea "over a more simple and direct one of a later writer trying to resolve an inconsistency." Well, I do: It has to do with giving ancient documents the benefit of the doubt; it has to do with textual criticism; it has to do with not assuming that ancient people were stupid. Archer's explanation is quite within the canons of textual criticism, and Callahan should familiarize himself with these principles further.
    3. Callahan wonders then why both Samuel and Chronicles use the "like a weaver's beam" in their conclusions. It does not occur to him that the use of the phrase elsewhere is exactly the sort of thing that would induce an errant scribe to use it elsewhere in an effort to make the text coherent. Callahan's comment that a scribe would have to both move a portion of the word while leaving it there at the same time ignores that this is a perfect description of a known type of textual error called dittography.
    4. Finally, Callahan objects that the explanation contradicts Archer's earlier assertion that "God kept the authors of the books, and by logical extension the editors of the canon, from error." Archer may or may not argue this, but it doesn't matter anyway. We do not believe that God preserved copyists from error, although provisions may have been taken to ensure that, say, the books of Samuel did not turn into sandal repair guides.

    (For the record, here is a summary of Archer's explanation: 1) a copyist first mistook the sign of the direct object before "Lahmi," which was '-t, for a b-t and got Bethelehemite; 2) the copyist also misread the word for "brother" ('-h) as the sign of the direct object before "Goliath" and made "Goliath" the object of "killed" instead of "brother" as Chronicles does; 3) the word "weavers" was also misplaced after "Elhanan" to make the name "son of the woods of weavers," which is quite an unlikely name.)

  • Callahan next finds disharmony in 2 Chronicles 28:20 --

    Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria came to him, but he gave him trouble instead of help.

    This, he says, is "at variance with 2 Kings" as well as being "at odds with history as well. Tiglath-Pileser never attacked Judah." [25] No, he did not, and this verse does not say he did. The very next verse goes on to say: "Ahaz took some of the things from the temple of the LORD and from the royal palace and from the princes and presented them to the king of Assyria, but that did not help him." One of the big problems here is that Callahan is using a version that interprets 28:20 as saying that King T-P "came against" Ahaz rather than strengthening him -- this does not refer to a military excursion but to the pagan religious influence of the Assyrians which Ahaz fell to. The Chronicles writer (probably Ezra) knew very well that T-P had come to the military aid of Ahaz (for he had the book of Kings as a source!); but in the day of this writer, such help from pagan enemies was not to be highlighted. Rather, it was the spiritual results that were to be put forward, and in that respect, T-P was a decidedly bad influence on King Ahaz. Ezra did not want to leave any implication that a pagan king had "helped" -- especially not the king of a land that had been bad news for Jews in another time-frame!

  • Turning to the NT, Callahan accepts uncritically all of the usual arguments re Q, Markan priority, and evangelistic freedom; he cites all of the usual bits re Mark's alleged ignorance of geography, and this verse, Mark 10:12:

    And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.

    This is said by many, including Callahan [29], to indicate that the evangelists felt free to alter Jesus' words: A woman was not allowed to divorce her husband under Jewish law; therefore, this must have been added later for the sake of Mark's Roman readers. But there are a number of factors that count against pure invention. First, obviously, "there's a law against it" does not equal "it didn't happen"; else we need to empty out our prisons. Second, we know from Josephus that one of the Herodian queens did indeed divorce her husband, as Joe points out, in spite of this regulation - and it may be that Jesus had this very event in mind. Third, a Jewish woman could always get a divorce under Roman law. It would get her thrown out of Judaism, but if they were appealing to the Romans in the first place, we can be pretty sure they didn't care!

    Mark may be reporting one of several versions of Jesus' teaching on divorce, or, he may have taken a separate observation by Jesus and arranged it topically with the other material. But there is absolutely no reason to suppose that he invented the saying out of whole cloth for the sake of his readers.

  • Callahan also wonders about the "loss" of other letters written by Paul. "Anything from the hand of Paul would likely have been considered inspired had it survived," he tells us. [30] Since it is likely that Paul himself was the one that did the choosing, however, this poses no problem at all. (See Appendix to this article.)
  • And of course, there are all the usual objections about the authorship of the Pastorals and Christian doctrine supposedly not being formulated until Nicea; as well as a few arguments by Christian commentators that I do not care to defend. Thus does Chapter 1 end.
  |
  
  Thought Police - A Review of Chapter 2

  In this chapter Callahan tells us "How to Think About the Bible." It is a review of the nature and function of prophets and prophecy along with a good serving of basic history of the sort one might find in an encyclopedia. As such, it is generalized and contains little that we need to address, and little that we have not addressed before. The old objection about Jepthah's daughter is present and accounted for. Here's a new one, about 2 Kings 3:27 --

  Then he took his firstborn son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him as a sacrifice on the city wall. The fury against Israel was great; they withdrew and returned to their own land.

  The "he" here is the king of Moab, who is taking on the Israelites and was losing pretty badly up to this point. Callahan sees this verse as evidence that Yahweh was at one time a mere tribal deity, not the overall Creator, and "the Israelites believed that Yahweh had no power in Moab" against Chemosh, the Moabite god - for otherwise, what is the "wrath" here, and why would they withdraw in the face of victory?

  There is one big thing that speaks against this "wrath" being from Chemosh - in this war against Moab, Israel was not alone: They were accompanied by the Edomites and by the armies of Judah, and there is no indication that either of these armies had to take a break from the field. However, Herzog and Gichon in Battles of the Bible [171] provide the answer: Child sacrifice was often performed in the ANE because of imminent plague. The Israelites would have interpreted the sacrifice as an indication that plague was already in the city, and therefore would have made haste to leave as soon as possible. (The word for "wrath" means indignation or strife, and "against" is a preposition that can mean among, between, concerning, or through.) The bottom line is that reading this as evidence of Yahweh as a tribal deity unable to knock out Chemosh is ludicrous overstatement.

  |
  
  Behold, the Critics are Coming! - A Review of Chapter 3

  In this chapter Callahan devotes attention to the earlier prophets. He naturally accepts uncritically the usual arguments about the division of Isaiah (his main source for this is from 1895! - for a brief look at the unity of Isaiah, see here). Let's have a look at some specifics.

  • The first verse of concern is Isaiah 7:16 --

    But before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste.

    The two lands referred to here are Syria and Israel. Callahan acknowledges that Syria fell in time, but claims that Israel did not - for Samaria fell in 722 BC, 10 years after Syria, and the boy would have been beyond the age of "knowing enough to reject the right and wrong." Or would he? Some commentators place this age at 12 (which would fit the fulfillment sufficiently); we would say for our own children at age 3, but recall that the age of 12 is special in Judaism. Since it could go other way, Callahan's criticism cannot be accorded any validity.

  • Along the same lines, Isaiah 8:4 is noted:

    "Before the boy knows how to say 'My father' or 'My mother,' the wealth of Damascus and the plunder of Samaria will be carried off by the king of Assyria."

    This prophecy is declared false because the child "would have spoken his first words even before the fall of Damascus." [60] This may or may not be true: A child may speak understandable words at a very early age, or may wait until as long as age 3 to do so. Isaiah made this prophecy around 1 1/2 to 2 years before the fall of Damascus, and it was about a year more before Assyria invaded Israel, replacing king Pekah with Hoshea and in all likelihood taking some plunder with them. (Note that two different Hebrew words are used for wealth and plunder, the latter indicating spoils of war, not conquest.)

  • Also in the same set, Isaiah 7:18 --

    In that day the LORD will whistle for flies from the distant streams of Egypt and for bees from the land of Assyria.

    This prophecy is said to be false because Egypt did not occupy Judah, but this is not what the verse is saying at all. It merely indicates a forthcoming battle between these two foes, which did happen in 701 BC.

  • Noted a little later (past some arguments we need not deal with) is Isaiah 39:6-7, a prophecy to Hezekiah:

    "The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your fathers have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the LORD. And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood who will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon."

    It should just be noted that Callahan has a version that uses "sons" instead of "descendants" - hence he supposes [67] that this was not fulfilled entirely since none of Hezzie's actual sons went to Babylon.

  • A brief note is also in order in regards to one of Callahan's observations on the sequence of events in Is. 36-39. He objects that events are reported out of order, inasmuch as the death of Sennacherib at the hands of his sons (37:38) took place some 20 years after events recorded in Isaiah. [68] From this he draws certain conclusions against the validity of the prophecies therein, but they are all superfluous: He is expecting history to be done in strictly chronological order in a time when the process of writing history was still under construction. In this time, it was also possible to write history topically rather than according to strict chronology. Thus the writer here simply "took care of business" by tying up the loose end of Sennie's story right there and then, rather than placing it in a chronological order according to the events he reports.

    Regarding the same passages, Callahan argues against validity by noting that parts of what was written is "copied verbatim from 2 Kings". That Isaiah might have written first is dismissed because "the common material is in prose and is in the style of 2 Kings, whereas the prophecies of Isaiah were mostly in poetic form." Well, one wonders what it is that could possibly have kept Isaiah from writing in both poetic and prose form, but either way, Callahan's case is pretty thin to rest on only two verses from each book (2 Kings 20:16-18; Is. 39:5-7). This type of argument is simply baseless, and has long been abandoned by sensible Biblical scholars - though not some of the outdated scholars referred to by Callahan.

  • Finally from Chapter 3, we have a matter from this verse, Micah 2:12 --

    "I will surely gather all of you, O Jacob; I will surely bring together the remnant of Israel. I will bring them together like sheep in a pen, like a flock in its pasture; the place will throng with people."

    This prophecy is declared "obviously false" because "Those taken into exile from Israel by Assyria never returned." [70] But the prediction is not to the people then alive, but to "Israel" the corporate entity. It is fulfilled if ANY members of the nation return, and that indeed happened.

    ---

    Go Home!