George:

You’re right that I don’t have proof. On the other hand, merely looking at
the volume of writing that made up the records later incorporated into
Genesis, and merely that which preceded Abraham (and who’s to say that his
library was limited to what is now preserved in Genesis?), recognizing that
he had to schlep his library around with him to preserve it, makes the
probability that he used cuneiform on clay vanishingly small. The same goes
for stone tablets.

Another thing, stone and clay are not only heavy, but fragile. So while
clay and stone tablets could be stored in fixed locations, leather, which
is both lighter and far more forgiving of rough handling, would be the
substrate of choice for a traveling library.

Getting back to your point, I don’t have proof, but I have probabilities,
and the probabilities are strongly against the use of cuneiform by the
patriarchs.

Karl W. Randolph.


On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 11:53 PM, George Athas <[email protected]>wrote:

>
> …, but I'd like to know how we could test for it. If we can't, you have to
> admit that you are purely speculating here. There's nothing wrong with
> speculating, so long as we recognise that it's speculation and don't give
> it any dependent weight.
>
>
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