Originally Posted by Archlute

It is not poetry. Even calling it "elevated prose" does not make it anywhere close to Hebrew poetry. There is much assertion/speculation in by the scholars cited above with very little to back up what they are saying. Whoever said that the syntax is "distinctively different" from narrative prose (Wenham? I can't tell since there is an ellipsis in the quote) is smoking crack. If you want to see a difference between the syntax of narrative and poetry read a book like the Song of Solomon. First year students of Hebrew will not be able to make heads or tails of it, however, they will be able to translate Genesis 1 without a hitch.

I do not find a great deal of use from observations of critical scholarship in this discussion to begin with. Why would I take with any seriousness the conclusions of men who would waste time with unbelief , e.g. the Documentary hypothesis ("pure priestly theology"), asserting the possibility of "poetic fragments" and "earlier creation accounts"? That is all scholarly code for "We do not believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch as a whole, nor that God spoke to him and gave him insight on the subject, nor that the Scriptures are divinely inspired in any way, rather the Pentateuch was pieced together over hundreds (thousands?) of years by multiple hands using passed on material and editorial liberties". That is the kind of garbage that you will even find "Reformed" professors of the OT handing out to their students.

While I'm on this kick, let me bring up the problem of unbelief in the classroom again. Back to a discussion of my Pentateuch course at WSC. The prof involved was asserting this same type of drivel, that the Levitical codes were not written strictly by Moses, but were editorially inserted as "can be most certainly seen by the parallels between the law code of Hammurabi and the laws found in Leviticus" (which really is not all that clear anyway when you actually compare the two). So I raise my hand (once again) and the prof tries to ignore me (once again). Finally I interject and ask, "You are saying that this stuff was all later editorial patchwork inserted from the law codes of pagan societies, but at the head of almost every chapter in Leviticus it reads that 'the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron saying such and such' - so what do we make of that?" The answer that I received from a supposedly Reformed prof teaching at a Reformed seminary was astounding. He said, "Well, some of these things are difficult, and don't have easy solutions." Allowing that kind of thinking into a Reformed seminary (which is exactly what you will get from taking your PhD at a higher-critical Roman Catholic institution, and being actively involved in SBL) is why conservative Reformed denominations are getting sloppy with their theology. Students are given the speculative and the novel, and they have no firm foundation set from which they can progress (apart from what they learned at their "fundamentalist" churches - God help them).

I mention all the above, because I do not take issues like Framework, etc. as something to be tossed about in a playful manner. I am absolutely opposed to the mindset behind much of the scholarship, and especially as the ideas of critical OT scholarship has had an influence on some significant Reformed scholars (anybody been keeping up on Pete Enns lately?...). This is a battle that also affects the students who would like to minister later in denominations where these scholars reside.

Case in point, the OT prof to whom I have been referring made quite clear to me in private conversation that he would do his best to see that I would never be ordained in his presbytery with my "fundamentalist" views of Scripture and my failure to hold a "sufficiently robust position of common grace". This is sinister stuff. To have Christ-loving, Gospel-centered men actively weeded out by denominational academics who want to see their agenda advanced at the expense of young ministers who may find the foundations of their scholarship to be lacking is something very serious, and something that will eventually undermine the work of any denomination.