Link to the article: http://www.jackmiles.com/Home/other-works/on-the-bible/radical-editing
Summary: In this article, Jack Miles questions whether the mixture in many biblical texts of evident attempts at partial harmonization with an apparent tolerance for the residual disunity demonstrates that these authors was operating under quite a different aesthetic from our own. For Miles, the ancient editor’s “proto-logical” aesthetic did not merely involve the application of a looser standard of logical consistency, but instead was one of positively “willed confusion”. The ancient editor may not have gone so far as to seek out deliberately jarring and contradictory effects, but on the other hand, “it didn’t bother him enough for him to eliminate” the inconsistent results, which “must mean that to some extent, he simply liked it.” The ancient biblical redactor evidently had quite different priorities from those of the modern fundamentalist. (Taken from: http://remnantofgiants.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/thom-stark-versus-matt-flannagan/)
Thom Stark says something similar: What source critics understand is that (1) ancient redactors weren’t as bothered by these sorts of contradictions as we moderns are, and (2) for the most part their M.O. was to faithfully preserve their source material, allowing contradictions to stand. (They hadn’t heard about the doctrine of inerrancy yet.) So a few tiqqune sopherim (pious scribal alterations of the text) notwithstanding, scribes were interested in preserving their source material intact. Redactors compiled source materials not as a modern would, in order to weave a seamless, consistent narrative, but rather to bring together various traditions into one body… The redactor’s purpose was not to combine the sources into a coherent, internally consistent narrative, but rather to combine the narratives in a way that allows them to maintain their distinctiveness while at the same time uniting them. Redactors cared about their source material, not because they thought it was “inerrant,” but because the source material reflected the traditions of the peoples.
Summary: In this article, Jack Miles questions whether the mixture in many biblical texts of evident attempts at partial harmonization with an apparent tolerance for the residual disunity demonstrates that these authors was operating under quite a different aesthetic from our own. For Miles, the ancient editor’s “proto-logical” aesthetic did not merely involve the application of a looser standard of logical consistency, but instead was one of positively “willed confusion”. The ancient editor may not have gone so far as to seek out deliberately jarring and contradictory effects, but on the other hand, “it didn’t bother him enough for him to eliminate” the inconsistent results, which “must mean that to some extent, he simply liked it.” The ancient biblical redactor evidently had quite different priorities from those of the modern fundamentalist. (Taken from: http://remnantofgiants.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/thom-stark-versus-matt-flannagan/)
Thom Stark says something similar: What source critics understand is that (1) ancient redactors weren’t as bothered by these sorts of contradictions as we moderns are, and (2) for the most part their M.O. was to faithfully preserve their source material, allowing contradictions to stand. (They hadn’t heard about the doctrine of inerrancy yet.) So a few tiqqune sopherim (pious scribal alterations of the text) notwithstanding, scribes were interested in preserving their source material intact. Redactors compiled source materials not as a modern would, in order to weave a seamless, consistent narrative, but rather to bring together various traditions into one body… The redactor’s purpose was not to combine the sources into a coherent, internally consistent narrative, but rather to combine the narratives in a way that allows them to maintain their distinctiveness while at the same time uniting them. Redactors cared about their source material, not because they thought it was “inerrant,” but because the source material reflected the traditions of the peoples.
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