Was there *knowledge* before the Pentateuch was inscripturated?

[crhoades]

This may be a sophomoric question but all of the threads regarding Scripturalism and knowledge made me think it.

If we derive Knowledge as defined as justified true belief *only* from Scripture then can we say that there was no knowledge whatsoever before the first books of the Bible were penned?

Of course we can differentiate what types of knowledge were present. I'm pretty certain that there were opinions around...

For example:
I'm sure there are cases to be made that God spoke and revealed himself directly even in burning bushes -but at that point how did Moses *know* that it was God without using his sense perceptions - and was what he took away from the burning bush experience considered knowledge? I'm talking about the event itself - not the account of the event we now have.

So for the sake clarity - Yes or No - Was there knowledge before the Bible was inscripturated and then qualify terms/arguments. I confess - I think it will be a bold move to say that there was no knowledge - even if you define it as justified true belief. But that's what the arugmentation will be for.

Again - be gentle - Clark may have already answered this - I have no clue. This may have been hashed and rehashed a million times already. Just never run across this before. Thanks everyone!

 

[Civbert]

This may be a sophomoric question but all of the threads regarding Scripturalism and knowledge made me think it.

If we derive Knowledge as defined as justified true belief *only* from Scripture then can we say that there was no knowledge whatsoever before the first books of the Bible were penned?

Deriving knowledge and justifying knowledge are two different issues.

Of course we can differentiate what types of knowledge were present. I'm pretty certain that there were opinions around...

For example:
I'm sure there are cases to be made that God spoke and revealed himself directly even in burning bushes -but at that point how did Moses *know* that it was God without using his sense perceptions - and was what he took away from the burning bush experience considered knowledge? I'm talking about the event itself - not the account of the event we now have.

What he took aways that was justified as knowledge, were the Words of God. And Moses did not *know* that it was God speaking to him using sense perception. Let's say for the sake of argument that one can actually somehow turn sensations into propositions. What proposition would Moses have. A bush is burning. The bush is talking. The bush is claiming to be God talking. (We're pushing the envelope since language is not a product of sense perceptions.) But Moses has not way to justify that God really is speaking to him. The only thing that is left is faith. Moses had faith, and believed that God was speaking to him. And this is the same faith we have in Scripture. How do we *know* the Bible is the Word of God. We are convinced by the Holy Spirit to believe. We can not prove it. We can not logically deduce the Bible is the Word of God. We *know* the Bible is the Word of God only in the sense that we are very certain, and we believe because the Spirit has moved us to believe - to our salvation.

This gets to the necessity of faith for knowledge, and the heart of presuppositionalism.

So for the sake clarity - Yes or No - Was there knowledge before the Bible was inscripturated and then qualify terms/arguments. I confess - I think it will be a bold move to say that there was no knowledge - even if you define it as justified true belief. But that's what the arugmentation will be for.

There has been knowledge since the first time God spoke to Adam.

Again - be gentle - Clark may have already answered this - I have no clue. This may have been hashed and rehashed a million times already. Just never run across this before. Thanks everyone!

Not a problem. The Scripturalist Axiom is speaking about how we can justify knowledge today. God's revelation for us is the Scriptures. Before the "the Bible was inscripturated" there was direct verbal revelation. And this knowledge was passed on to others by spoken language.

 

[crhoades]

So outside of the # of people that God spoke to directly and the people that they told - there was no knowledge and in a continuing sense even today. So to go with the deepest, darkest Africa concept - say a person living today in L.A. who wasn't brought up in church and has not been exposed to the Bible whatsoever - can we say that they truly don't *know* anything? Or is it that whatever they propose to know may in fact be knowledge but just isn't justified for them to claim it to be such?

 

[Civbert]

So outside of the # of people that God spoke to directly and the people that they told - there was no knowledge and in a continuing sense even today. So to go with the deepest, darkest Africa concept - say a person living today in L.A. who wasn't brought up in church and has not been exposed to the Bible whatsoever - can we say that they truly don't *know* anything? Or is it that whatever they propose to know may in fact be knowledge but just isn't justified for them to claim it to be such?

Yes. They can not justify what they claim to know. They may believe many true propositions, but they lack any foundation. It all depends on how you define knowledge, and were you set the bar for what justifies knowledge.

For instance, if you define knowledge as a belief one is certain about, then there's a huge amount of propositions that would fit the definition, including many contradictory propositions. A low bar leads to incoherency.

If you define knowledge as something more than propositions (if that really makes any sense), then you have ambiguous and in-cognate knowledge. You know it, but you can't say what it is, it ineffable (which is a self contradiction).

There also working knowledge, muscle knowledge, relational knowledge, and all these things refer to very different subjects - some contrary to the others. So when we speak of muscle knowledge, we want to be sure to not confuse that with epistemic knowledge. I know how to ride a bike. When we speak of working knowledge, that too is not epistemic knowledge. I know how to design a bridge. Relational knowledge is the information we gain through relational databases. These are all legitimate ways of using the term know and knowledge. But they are not the all same thing.

The philosophical definition of knowledge (and this is debated too) is justified true belief. This makes knowledge propositional. It means knowledge must be true universally. Person 1 can not know A and person 2 know not-A. This definition has not time component. If A is true, then A is true for all times, places, and people. Or maybe it is better to say that the meaning and truth value of A can not be a function of time, place, or person.

The point I want to make though, is that when you say "know" and I say "know", if we mean something different, there will be confusion. This doesn't mean my "know" is right, or your "know" is wrong, but that it is best to agree to a definition of "know", at least for the sake of discussion, before we debate or discuss who knows what and how.

 

[JohnV]

Chris:

I've always thought of knowledge in terms of knowing things first, and then being mandated to organize that knowledge into a proposition or set of cohering propositions. I often know things before I am able to express them. And sometimes I come to know things through putting them into propositional form.

My propositional form usually doesn't take the form of sentences. On paper it looks more like a poem with a (-) in front of each line, with underlinings, bolded words, crossed out words, squeezed-in words, lines and arrows, and sometimes evidence of ripped out pages. That's my way of thinking. I've accumulated a lot of these notebooks over the years. I'm never without a notebook of some sort. (One of these days I'm going to sort them all into a better system than I've got now.) The gist of this is that I work out my knowledge through proposition. I do not say that I do not know until I have things worked out into proposition, for that would mean that I happen to fall upon things that I know after I work them out. No! It's because I know I know something that needs more careful working out that I am following this practice. It's there already, but needs to be put into form, otherwise it wouldn't be bugging me the way it does. It's not just trying to solve riddles. I have something in mind each time; my jottings are not random.

Understanding knowledge in this way means that I can fully accept the idea that men knew before the Pentateuch was written. Even if God spoke to only a few, all men knew. They would not have been able to kick against the goads, to subvert, deny, or suppress the truth unless they knew it to do those things to truth. Not orgnanizing your knowledge into proposition is not necessarily not knowing.

 

[JohnV]

'Course, from the above you might be able to tell that I don't quite go for the idea that knowledge is justified true belief. I mean, surely one can only claim to know things that are true and have been authoritatively verified by Someone who knows all things. I just don't call things that I personally justify as true to be called knowledge. That's opinion, not justified true belief to my way of thinking. So if things depend upon my ability to use reason, knowing that I only know a smattering of truths, and that I am more prone to be biased than upright, I don't trust "justified true belief" to my own justification.

Not even if that use of reason is strictly from Scriptural precepts. Scriptural precepts is one thing, my use of reason from them is another. There's just far too great a chance that I am not including something that I do now know of in the equation. And surely there is a great deal of that. I would hazard that there are a great deal of things that no man knows that may play a part in the equation or syllogism.

Confining myself to Scriptural givens, and reasoning purely and unerringly, if that were possible, and having as a starting point for reason that all the Scriptural givens cannot be contradictory or misleading, I still have no way of knowing whether all contingencies are accounted for. I can only go so far as to say that since God says something is true therefore it is true, and go no further than that. I cannot rely on my own reason, no matter how pure it might ever get to be. The reason? I am limited, not infinite in knowledge.

So whether before or after the Penteteuch makes no difference to whether men could know, or whether they could systemize their epistemology. Either way their only ground was the assumption that God's revelations, both general and special, were authoritative and true. And they could go no further.

That is, they could not induce things as true beyond the revelational limitations. But within those limitations they could induce and deduce (that is, I think it goes in that order.) Whether it is before or after the written Word of God appeared does not make a lot of difference except to the amount that may be induced or deduced. More revelation means more criteria to work with and within, more guidelines to help and more light upon the subjects. We just cannot say that all the light has been shed on the subjects.

But whether someone could answer the question, "Do you know the way to San Jose?" (Just a name that seems to fit the question, somehow) is still just a yes or no question. Either he knew or he didn't. And if he knew, and he was correct, it would be a justified true belief, from where ever he got the information. San Jose would still be San Jose, whether before or after the Penteteuch.