re: #551 Guanxi88

No, it’s even more than that. Consider, in the case of the Jews - as a people largely constituted BY a set of texts, to attempt to understand the texts in terms of the people is impossible and pointlessly absurd. The texts were the cause, the people the effect, in a sense.

What I’m getting at is that revelation creates so many problems that the texts cannot be treated like conventional literary output if one hopes to try to understand them.

And you are well aware that textual critics have shown over and over that there are many problems with the text, historically, anthropologically, archeologically and so on.

Yes, the text certainly CAN be treated like conventional literary output, and it has. Textual criticism is a science, not just some slipshod meanderings.